Message: In 1 Samuel God told the prophet that he was going to see the man he would anoint to be king at a particular time and place. A day later an
unassuming Saul of Kish (and his servant) had come into the city looking for some missing donkeys that belonged to his father. They had been gone long enough that he was now afraid that his father would lose concern for the
missing donkeys and instead start wondering what happened to them. Saul’s servant knew that there was a “seer” (prophet of God) who would be able to tell them where to go to locate the missing donkeys so they discussed what kind of gift would be appropriate to take the prophet and began to ask around about how to locate him. They had absolutely no clue that they were on a
divine assignment that would not only change Saul’s life but also the entire nation of Israel. As I read this I thought about all of the divine assignments we are walking out. Often times we have no idea what they are at the time. We may be busy in our regular routines, and like Saul, even distressed looking for something lost. When we look back later on we can sometimes connect the dots of events that seemed so ordinary at the time and appreciate the beauty of perfectly aligned moments where God was at work. As I read this I wondered what Saul’s demeanor was during his time of stress and I thought about how important it was that the servant he was with pointed him towards the prophet seeking God. Clearly God was not choosing Saul out of that very moment. God was watching his life. Although we will not likely be stumbling upon being anointed as king, we are definitely being called for kingdom purposes. Nothing is random and who we are during our normal mundane life
matters. God sees us when we don’t believe we are on the radar for anything special. He knows are character and he is making plans for us. Saul didn’t have any idea what he was being considered for. He was just doing life as usual. This challenges me to remain faithful even when our influence feels obscure and minimal. Not because we hope to be chosen for something as powerful as being anointed king, but because God is watching our lives and has plans in mind for us that we have never dreamed of.

In first Samuel 8 the prophet Samuel was getting old so he appointed his sons to judge over Israel. They were not honorable men and were already taking bribes, perverting justice and abusing their power so Israel rejected this idea. They had definitely seen this scenario before with Eli and they decided they wanted to have their own king “like everyone else”. Samuel was displeased with this idea and he cried out to God about it. God advised him to give them what they want but make sure they understand that a king will take the best of everything they own and will be self-serving. God told Samuel that this was nothing new. Israel wasn’t rejecting him, they were rejecting God….again. As I read this I went back several times over because to me it didn’t seem terribly unreasonable for them to reject Samuel’s sons if they were corrupt. What hit me was that when God said they were rejecting Him and not Samuel I realized that their hearts were already turned away from God. They were all disobeying God too and maybe the corruption of Samuel’s sons was more of a product of the rebellion in the land. Their hearts weren’t turned toward God to cry out in repentance. They were rejecting the plan of God to lead them and instead of crying out for God to judge the authority over them they were taking matters into their own hands. Had their hearts been turned toward God he may have judged the corrupt leaders and led them with all of the blessings He had always intended for them. Instead they wanted to be like everyone else and allow a corrupt king to lead them. This also removed from them any responsiblity for being accountable to God. They could now rely fully on the king for their prosperity without having to answer to God about their lives in order to receive God’s favor and blessing. As I started to think about us as Americans and our desire to rely on and blame our government to handle what we should be relying on God for. Government can’t fix poverty and social justice problems but we are constantly blaming and spinning our wheels with our expectations of the government to do what God intended for the church to do. These are heart issues that laws and politicians don’t have the power to touch. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit to move in people, but we have rejected this and instead placed our government on the throne. Even those who have rejected the government have not turned to God for this. They have turned to yet another form of rebellion while claiming to honor God in their defiance. Change will not come until believers repent, surrender fully to God and allow Him to change our hearts. When we as a church are in a place of repentance and surrender, he will move in the hearts of those who lead us. God placed authorities in our lives and they will rule over us according to the way we are submitted to God. If we rebel against our leaders-even and especially the corrupt ones, we fail to acknowledge God’s authority. This is so difficult to understand, but if we will deal with our own hearts and hold ourselves accountable, he will judge those who are in authority and He will do it HIS way. We ought to know by now that his ways are not ours. We can’t possibly know or understand how he will accomplish this but if we are submitted to God we can trust that he will take care of us.

Message:  In Samuel 7 the Israelites began seeking God 20 years after the ark had been returned to them Samuel the prophet said “If you are returning to God with all your heart get rid of your foreign gods and the Ashtoreths that are among you. Dedicate yourself to the Lord and worship Him only, then he will rescue you from the hand of the Philistines.” They  removed those things and then Samuel called them to gather and they fasted and gave sacrifices. Even as they were gathering together the Philistines were watching and on the move to attack them. They may have observed that not much had changed with Israel in the past 20 years in spite of receiving the ark of the covenant back. The Philistines served foreign gods so they surely recognized the practices and the Ashtereth that were on display in Israel. Seeing that Israel was not being faithful to their God may have given the Philistines confidence that they could beat them as they had before.

What I really saw in this is that when we are dormant in our faith and allow ungodliness to come in we kind of blend in with the world and though the devil is trying to suck the life out of us and keep us dormant with our sin, he doesn’t pose a big obvious threat until we start to wake up and pursue God. Being awake is extremely important, but as Samuel called out to Israel, we have to get rid of the illegitimate gods and practices that we adopt in our lives when we are dormant in our faith. When we find ourselves asleep at the wheel.  It’s not enough to just add more of God to our lives. We have to remove everything else and allow God to consume us. When we do this God chases off our enemies even as they are actively pursuing and seeking to devour us. God steps in because he sees that we are fully His. It’s important to note that if we try to hang onto unholy things, it is also a display to the enemy that we are still marked as his. The only way to remove the authority of the enemy from our lives is to remove the things that mark us as his. He has no authority over us as long as we have renounced him and removed anything that would give him rights or access. We can’t play with sin and renounce it at the same time. We can’t play with sin and expect the devil to stay back because our behavior is inviting him in. On the contrary, when we completely belong to God we can stand in the confidence that he chases off the enemy on our behalf. Don’t flirt with the devil!

Message:  In 1 Samuel 6 the Philistines had possession of the ark of the covenant for 7 months. They had moved it from city to city to see if it would be accepted in their land somewhere because they were being tormented with painful tumor-like boils or wounds. The KJV tells us they were “emeroids in their secret parts” and some even died from it. The Philistines decided they needed to give it back but they wanted to make sure they did it properly so they consulted their leaders. The leaders advised them to send it back with a restitution offering. According to the footnotes in my bible a restitution offering was given when something holy had been defiled. Their restitution offering was 2 milk cows that had never been yoked before and they formed gold pieces shaped like the tumors they wanted to be healed from and the mice they wanted to be delivered from. They were pretty sure this was the hand of God against them and they wanted to be smarter than the Egyptians so they prepared all of this very carefully, placed the ark of the covenant on a cart and sent the cows to see if they would go to their land. This would be the sign if it really was God’s hand against them. Not only did the “cows come home” but they didn’t stray one way or the other. They walked directly up the hill and when the Israelites saw it they rejoiced and they chopped up the cart to sacrifice the cows. The Philistine leaders observed all of this and then left to go home. Then God struck down 70 men from the land Beth-she-mesh because they looked inside the ark of the covenant. The people mourned and said “who can stand in the presence of the Lord?”.

What I took from this is that even the Philistines who served other gods recognized the holiness of God enough to fear and treat the ark with reverence. They were very intentional in preparing their restitution offering even though this was not their god. They seemed to know what to do to honor and respect the ark, but it didn’t take long for the men in Israel to treat it with familiarity by looking inside. This was well known in Israel that only a priest who had been consecrated was able to see inside the ark and only Levites were permitted to touch it. Familiarity can be dangerous. It’s good to feel at home, deeply honest and comfortable with God and his ways, but if we allow our familiarity to allow us to treat God with disrespect we are in trouble. There should always be a tension between the God who calls us friend, and the God who requires our respect. I don’t believe that God is offended by the questions we have when they are honest and out of a humble heart desiring to understand. Where we become offensive is when we start to question the heart of God and demand answers. This is a prideful stance that elevates our flesh to assume we have a right to know the mind of God. We saw a touch of this in Job when God answered him “where were you when I formed the earth?”

My challenge to myself today is to ponder the things of God that have become familiar enough that I approach them with disrespect. We read a few days ago that we shouldn’t expect to stand in the presence of God while defiantly holding onto our sin because God is a holy God and his presence consumes everything and burns up that which is impure. If we are deliberately hanging onto impure things we will be scorched right with it. Today I remind myself that the God I serve and worship is holy and to be treated with the highest respect. I take nothing for granted knowing that the promises he gives are gifts I don’t deserve, not rights. I accept them with humility and thanksgiving knowing that I will receive what he has promised because of his faithfulness and not because I demand that he do so.

Message:  In 1 Samuel 4 God allowed the Philistines to defeat Israel. After the defeat they brought the ark of the covenant with them expecting that bringing the presence of God with them would bless them and ensure a victory. Not only were they defeated even worse, but the Philistines captured the ark of the covenant and took it with them. Eli’s 2 evil sons were killed in that defeat together as God said they would. When Eli received the news he fell backward out of his chair and broke his neck, and the wife of one of the sons gave birth prematurely and died in labor.

As I read this I thought about all of the times we have attempted to live with some sort of disobedience in our lives. God warns us to get rid of it like he did Eli, but we don’t. Life starts to defeat us due to our disobedience so instead of fixing the sin issue, we worship and get in God’s presence expecting him to turn it around for us. But He doesn’t move in our worship without our surrender and obedience. In fact, we can’t even authentically worship God without our surrender because worship IS surrender!

I find it interesting that Israel treated the ark like a good luck charm. They thought it would bring them good, but their destruction was even worse because there was still disobedience among them. In fact, the priest was allowing the disobedience to continue right in the house of God and it affected all of Israel. When the Philistines saw the ark they took it and tried to treat it like one of their other idols. They placed it next to their idol Dagon and found Dagon knocked over the first morning and broken the next. Everywhere that ark went it brought destruction because the presence of God is not a good luck charm. His presence will not bless or prosper sin.  It’s a pure and holy consuming fire that burns up and destroys anything that is unholy. When we come into the presence of God we should come with a sacrifice and expect that sin and unholiness will be destroyed in His presence. If we are not willing to sacrifice our sin, we will find ourselves destroyed along with it. My challenge today is to ask God what sin issue or matter of the heart that I’m still trying to hang onto and protect, and how has my lack of obedience been causing destruction in the presence of God?

Message:  Revelation 2 describes the vision John had of a visit to heaven where he saw Jesus and was told to write down the things he saw and heard. He scribed letters to 7 churches. All of the letters commended each church for the good things they were doing, but also corrected them and called them to repentance for other things. All of the letters had different things but they seemed to be idolatry practices that were learned and brought into the church from the influences of around them. These practices were intermingled and accepted within the church and Jesus was calling them out and threatening to remove their “lampstand” if they didn’t repent. The vision John had showed 7 lampstands representing the 7 churches and I have always understood those lampstands to represent their influence. As I read and write this right now I can’t help but wonder if that lampstand also represents their ability to see truth. What I am getting out of this is the importance of maintaining the truth and purity of the gospel. We can’t take other things and combine them with the gospel and still call it truth. I have heard many Christians refer to “Karma”. Not only does this come from the Muslim religion, but it completely undermines and contradicts the entire point of the gospel. Although most people who talk about Karma really don’t understand the origin of it, the whole premise confuses the gospel message that sins are forgiven and covered, not tracked and punished here on earth in real-time. This is just an example but there are plenty of other philosophies and things that we have been taught in life, but have confused the gospel but adding them to the gospel as truth. We even have to be careful with the way we have heard others interpret and apply scripture because often times these interpretations are wrong and people don’t know the difference so they accept it was gospel even though it contradicts the gospel message. We have to be so careful with what we here and this is why it’s so important that we read the word daily and read all scripture within the proper context. Otherwise we will be guilty of muddying the gospel with our own thoughts and added beliefs. Paul wrote most of the New Testament talking about the importance of keeping the purity of the gospel. This is as true today as it ever was!

Message:  In 1 Samuel 2 the little boy that was dedicated to the temple was beginning to hear from God. He wasn’t sure what it was at first, so he kept responding to Eli the priest. After a few times Eli recognized what was happening and directed Samuel to respond “Here I am Lord. Speak, your servant is listening.” Even as I write these words I relate to this so much. God is always speaking to us through people and situations. When we are first learning to hear from God it can be confusing, and we may try to respond to the people and situations around us instead, but God continues calling to us. As we learn to recognize his voice more often, we learn to step back from situations and say “Here I am. Speak, your servant is listening.” Instead of asking why things are happening, this is our opportunity to ask God what he is trying to speak to us and what he is trying to show us.

In this case Eli had known for years that his sons were defiling the house of God but he refused to do anything about it. His sons were not only defiling the house of God, but they were defiling the sacrifices the people brought and abusing the people with their conduct. Eli allowed this to continue for years despite the warnings from God. The first word Samuel received as a young prophet was a word of judgment against Eli and his sons because they had ignored the voice of God. I found it interesting that Eli seemed to know already what it was going to be. He told Samuel to speak the word of God without hiding any of it because he knew the young prophet would be afraid to speak the judgment that God had given him. Eli had been actively ignoring God’s voice so he knew it was coming and he had already determined himself to accept the consequence.

 This really had me thinking about a time when I was a teenager and I really felt God talking to me about my life. I was enjoying the comfort and familiarity of my sin so I remember consciously turning on music and other distractions to drown out the thoughts because I was feeling guilty. I was actively ignoring God and somehow even at that age I really knew it. God kept speaking and eventually at age 18 I responded. Looking back I see how gracious he was to continue speaking while I was ignoring him. It becomes dangerous to get used to ignoring God’s voice because if we drown it out for too long we learn to treat it like background noise. For Eli and his sons that background noise went on too long and judgment came. For us, judgement will come a little differently. We are in a time of grace where God calls us to examine ourselves before judgment day comes. If we ignore his voice too long, we may find we waited a day too long. My challenge to myself is to pay attention to what I keep hearing as background noise. The edge and frustration I’m feeling just might be me trying to drown out the voice of God with distractions. When I feel this way I need to say “Speak, your servant is listening.”

Message:  Jude is another one-chapter book (or really a letter) written to the church. Reading it gives the impression that he is talking about unsaved people living in sin but really he is talking about people who identify themselves as believers but continue to live in sin. They know about God and they participate in all of the Christian activity of the church, but their lives have not been changed. I feel like this is the most dangerous place to be because the fellowship and familiarity leads us to believe we are safe, but if we are not surrendered over, we are far from safe. This is often confused with religion or false perfection but it has nothing to do with either of these things. It has everything to do with what we discussed yesterday. When we say yes to Jesus, everything belongs to Him. We relinquish our right to decide for ourselves what is right and we surrender ourselves to him entirely. A book like this can cause one of two reactions. The first is that we look at other people who are in church and living in sin and we deflect our own issues, and the second is that we read this and become immersed in shame. What I am taking away from this is that we first need to look at ourselves and ask God what things in our lives have become non-negotiables. In other words, what areas of our lives have we avoided dealing with because we don’t want God to touch them or ask us to change. This may or may not be an obvious outright sin behavior. It may be a secret sin issue or indulgence, or it may be other deep-rooted mindsets. An attitude of denial or justification, unforgiveness, a prejudice or judgment, issues with authority. We also need to be aware that there are people among us who are living this way and love them with some truth while protecting ourselves from being negatively influenced. Yesterday I found an areas of control that I thought I had surrendered, so today I’m asking God to show me the areas of my life where I am walking in disobedience in any of these areas. I’m also asking God to show me how to lovingly challenge others who are living carnal lives while identifying themselves as believers.

Message: In 1 Samuel 1 There was a woman named Hannah who was barren. She was deeply anguished over it and when she came to the temple with her sacrifice to pray she vowed to God that if he would give her a child she would give him back to the Lord permanently.  She prayed so emotionally that the priest thought she was drunk. She explained herself and he blessed her offering of prayer and sacrifice and said “let it be according to what you have asked.” Hannah left her anguish there and a short time later she conceived. As promised, as soon as the baby was weaned from nursing she brought him to the temple to live and serve permanently. Reading this is super odd because we can’t fathom dropping off our children at the church and I’m pretty sure they would kindly ask us to take our children home with us. What I really got out of this was that she asked God for a promise and when he gave it to her she understood that he belonged to God. I feel like we struggle with that because we have family members, finances and all kinds of promises in our hands that we believe belong to us. When we believe they belong to us we no longer are willing to give up control of these things. We want to dictate how it will be used, how much and for what purpose. If we don’t understand that our children, husbands, finances and our very own lives belong to God we will fight God for control and then be angry at him for not submitting to our plans. Something that I constantly have to check myself in is the way I’m praying. Sometimes I listen to myself and realize I’m trying to give God some good ideas of how he should handle my situations and what he really wants is for me to surrender it and submit to his plan for it. When I feel myself pulling that direction I have to stop and ask God to help me to cooperate with what he is already working out. This story was such an important reminder to me that everything in my life belongs to God. We manage things and should do so responsibly but we have to remember that the decisions are not ours to make. They belong to God.

Message:  In Ruth 4 we read the finale to the story of Ruth & Naomi, except that it wasn’t the finale at all. It was just the beginning. The details are difficult to understand without knowing a little bit of cultural history. When Naomi returned home she had a right to some land that her family had owned. It belonged to her husband and should have been passed down to her sons but since they were all dead Naomi didn’t have the legal right to obtain it herself. It had to be redeemed through a close male relative that was willing to buy it. Morally there was also an obligation to marry Ruth and carry on the name of her dead husband. Since her dead husband belonged to Naomi, the children that came from Ruth would care and provide for Naomi as if they were the grandsons of her dead sons. The person redeeming the land would pay the cost, marry the wife and take on the responsibility of providing for not only her and her children, but the children would not carry his name. They would carry the name of Ruth’s dead husband so that his name would not be erased from the lineage. The man that was next in line was interested in the property, but he didn’t want to make the sacrifice to carry on another man’s name. He wanted to preserve his own name so he declined and Boaz married Ruth. The beauty of it all is that Boaz chose the unselfish route because it was right and his decision not only made his name famous, but it also put him in the genealogical line of King David and then ultimately Jesus Christ. This is another example of the cost of chasing after your own life to fulfill your own happiness, versus giving up the rights to your own life sacrificially and finding a better one. The other beautiful thing is that this story is a foreshadowing of what Jesus would later do for all of us. Boaz unselfishly paid a cost to redeem this family as Jesus paid a great cost to redeem us all. What I got from this is the importance of getting rid of the “what’s in it for me” mindset. This is not to say we shouldn’t prioritize and weed out the things that are not in line with our goals, but that our goals because that’s very important, but our goals should be for the purpose of the gospel and not for the glory of our own name or reputation. For Boaz this move was morally right even though it was not intended to benefit him. What he did was so unselfish that it caught the attention of everyone. Instead of being well esteemed for his preserved lineage, he became famous throughout history for his character. He had no way of knowing that more than 2000 years later people would be saying “marry a Boaz”.

Message:  In1 John 5 John was talking about what it means to know God. It’s so much more than believing in God because it requires a response of obedience from us. It’s not enough to say that we know God or believe in God because we know that Satan himself both knows God and believes in him but wanted to elevate himself rather than submit, obey and surrender his soul. We can’t serve our own selfishness and still serve God. This is very important to establish before reading verse 14. Verse 14 says “now this is the confidence that we have before Him. Whenever we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked Him for.” This is an amazing verse, but I have heard it used out of context more often than I have heard it used in context. While I believe that God is generous and a giver of beautiful gits, I don’t believe this is what this verse is about. I believe this verse is about asking God for a deeper intimacy and knowledge of Him. The footnotes in my bible says this:  The deepest answer to prayer is to know that he hears us. To know this is to have what we asked for. For believers, prayer seeks communication with the Father more than the acquisition of favors or the satisfaction of desires. I have experienced this and it is more powerful and satisfying than receiving anything material. There have been times I have struggled either over understanding situations or understanding something I have read. In my prayer time the times I have asked God to show me what I don’t understand or what I need to correct, or what I simply don’t understand. That kind of prayer brings a different kind of vulnerability with God that is far more intimate than anything else I could possibly ask for. The most beautiful part is when he has revealed the answer I needed and prayed for later that day. It might be in something I read, heard on a podcast or just processed through but there is moment that is more powerful than anything I can describe when I realize I have the answer because GOD HEARD ME. Many of these moments have been through correction and I can’t describe how loving correction feels when you know it came from God. When it comes because he was answering the question I asked of Him. To know God is wonderful, but to be known by God is indescribable. Asking for material things or even favored situations fuels our own desires, but asking God to make himself known to us is beyond anything imaginable. It brings a confidence and an intimacy that favor or material items could never compete with. I have prayed for my share of those things too, but these experiences have impacted me for life. This is why I believe the very next verse is so important and makes more sense in this particular context. Verse 17 tells us that if we see our brother in sin he should ask, and God will give life to him. So not only should we pray to know God intimately, but if we pray for other people to know God like this it is a prayer God not only hears but will answer. This challenges me to not only dig deeper in my desire to know God more intimately, but to also dig deeper in my prayer for others and their intimacy with God. There is no gift more incredible than this!

Message: In Ruth 2 Ruth decides to go to a field and harvest grain behind the workers. There were laws about leaving behind pieces in the field for the poor and the foreign to eat. This was necessary for their survival, but it was also very risky because a woman out in the field with the workers was vulnerable for being raped. The man that owned the field not only allowed her to harvest, but he instructed his workers to leave her more than just pieces and he protected her by sending her to harvest with his female servants and commanding the workers not to touch her. She was overwhelmed by his kindness and he told her that all of the good she had done for her mother in law had been reported to him. This is what stood out to me in this story. Ruth was not doing these things to be noticed. She was doing what she felt was right and God was blessing her through Boaz. She had no idea who he was and that he had the ability to change her whole situation. Boaz was like the ‘undercover CEO” who caught her working hard and being honorable when she thought she was only among field workers. I think this is the most beautiful part because she was just hard at work doing what needed to be done without any ulterior motives and God aligned her circumstances. This reminds me that when we do what is right we often feel unnoticed, but God sees what we do in secret and the bible says that he rewards us openly. We shouldn’t do these things with a motive of being rewarded. We should do them because it’s right, but the encouragement here is that God rewards what seems to be unseen by anyone else. He knows every sacrifice we have made and every act of obedience that we have chosen and even though it may not change our current situation, we know that God is faithful, just and loves to show kindness to those who obey him. This is a reminder to me that we are not working to be noticed by people. When we are more concerned about what God sees, our actions often have a way of being rewarded by people. This story reminds me of Galatians 6:9 ”Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” This is a New Testament encouragement that reinforces this character and I thought it was really cool that it also referenced the reward as “reaping a harvest” since this is literally what Ruth was doing in this story.

Message: In Ruth 1 we read about Naomi, who lost her husband and then both of her sons. Death is hard enough, but in those times, women were not able to sustain themselves. They had to have a husband or sons to care for them or they would literally starve to death. There were no WIC welfare programs so if a woman was abandoned, it was so much more than grief and loneliness. Naomi understood that she was in a dire straits situation because she was too old to have another husband, and definitely too old to have more children that could grow up to take care of her. She knew her only hope was to go back to her hometown where her family was and pray they would take her in. She also knew that for her daughters in law there was still hope for them. They were young enough to remarry and build families. She loved them and wanted what was best for them so this is why she fought them so hard not to follow her. She wanted them to not only survive, but to thrive. Usually when we read this story we kind of bag on Naomi for being bitter, and then we bag on Orpah for leaving and we say “be like Ruth”. Everything inside me says, yes! Be like Ruth! But I think it’s important to understand we are not always in a “ruth” position. We need to also know when we are in a “Naomi” situation and even when we are in an “Orpah” situation. Naomi was hurting and desperate, but she chose to love her daughters in law more than herself by trying to send them home. She was choosing what was best for them and not clinging to them in her own fear and desperation. She did not put a single ounce of guilt on her daughters in law. She may have been bitter about her situation, but she fully accepted it and made plans to make the best of it by going home to her family. She did not wallow in her misery and she didn’t want to drag anyone else down with her. I love the way Naomi accepted her situation and still encouraged her daughters in law to flourish and redeem their own lives in spite of her own pain. We NEED women like Naomi and when we find ourselves in a “Naomi” situation we need to choose unselfishness and be willing to cheer for those who are close to us. We might be out of a job but if we can pray for someone else who needs a job, and cheer for someone who just got promoted or landed a new job we are being like Naomi. If we can encourage someone who has a family crisis while we are in the middle of our own crisis we are like Naomi. My challenge as I read this is to ask God to open my eyes to the people around me who are hurting, and encourage even when I need my own encouragement. The beautiful end to this story is that Ruth responded to the care of her mother in law and was faithful and loyal to a woman that she knew loved her and wanted what was best for her. When God blessed Ruth for her loyalty to Naomi, he also blessed Naomi though Ruth.

Message: In 1 John 2 John was answering many of the things that we often wrestle with in our minds. It almost sounded like he was talking in circles as he clarified that we are not to intentionally and freely live in sin, but if we do stumble and sin we have an advocate between us and God through Jesus. There should always be a tension between understanding that we were called out of sin, but we will occasionally stumble and sin. We can’t run fully in either direction. To bring this into perspective John reminds us that when we get saved we are no longer part of the world and it’s systems of belief. We abandon our prior ways to live a new way because the ways of the world and that system of thinking  does not work together with a life in Christ. We have to change our mindsets in order to follow after Christ so this leaves us no room to continue on in the same lifestyle. I have heard from so many believers who feel they are on track and then they drift off-course and feel like they have to start all over. This can become a recurrent pattern. Especially if they feel like each time they have to go back to the beginning and try to walk forward without making a mistake. These patterns are unproductive and exhausting because instead of picking up where they stumbled, they feel like they are starting over and trying to walk further without stumbling. If we understand that the stumbling will happen and learn to pick up and continue forward in those moments we will learn how to remain on track in spite of mistakes. This stops the cycle of starting over and pushes us into real growth. Remaining in Christ doesn’t mean we won’t make mistakes. It means that we wake up each and every day and meet with God. We commit our hearts to follow him every day so that we don’t wander off. I think this is what the Lord’s prayer is all about. It’s a daily commitment of our hearts to stay close and keep in check as we as God to help us to do what we can’t. This is surrender.

Message:  Yesterday we read the very difficult chapter in Judges 19 and today we continue on to see how it was handled. Where we left off reading, the Levite man had taken his concubine’s raped, abused and unresponsive body home, slaughtered her into 12 pieces and sent a piece to each of the tribes of Israel. This was a call to action and according to the footnotes in my bible this resembled another incident in 1 Samuel where Saul cut up a pair of oxen and distributed them to the 12 tribes. This act may have implied some sort of curse for those who failed to respond. The response was unified and they said “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen…think it over, discuss it and speak up!” Their leaders and warriors assembled as one united army and asked the Levite man what happened. His version of the story was very carefully worded and made him sound like the victim. He told them that the men of the city “ganged up” on him and surrounded the house he was staying in. He told the tribes that the men took his concubine and raped her and killed her, but he didn’t tell them that he was the one who gave her to these men and that he went to bed while she suffered this abuse all night. He told them that he cut her into pieces because “they committed a horrible shame” and he wanted their judgment and verdict immediately.

Israel responded by saying nobody will return to their tents until they handle the situation appropriately so they went as a united army to confront the entire tribe of Benjamin and demand that they hand over the guilty men that committed the crime. All they had to do was hand over the guilty men from that one city, but they chose to stand with their guilty brothers and fight it out instead. It was a difficult battle and even though the tribes of Israel prayed and asked God for direction they suffered heavy losses for several days until the Lord finally told them he was giving them over to them. They defeated the tribe of Benjamin and burned down the city. The only survivors were those who had run away and hid in the wilderness. As I read this I thought about the spiritual battle in a fight like this. It broke my heart that so much loss occurred but it made me angry that the Levite maintained his innocence, acted like a victim and refused to take responsibility for handing over his concubine to these evil men in order to protect himself. It also made me angry that the tribe of Benjamin protected their guilty brothers instead of demanding repentance. I believe there is a very significant message in this story to the men and leaders of the church (both locally and as a whole), but I also have to take this story and see where it applies in my own life. There are situations I have been in where I definitely felt victimized, but I also had a responsibility to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. I have failed miserably and I have also succeeded in situations like this. We are all vulnerable in certain situations and we are all responsible for someone vulnerable even in our own vulnerability. If we get caught up in our own victim mentality, we will find ourselves in self-preservation mode and we will refuse to take responsibility for protecting someone vulnerable right in front of us or under our care. Sometimes we find ourselves protecting a perpetrator over a victim because we have deep relationship ties and incredible loyalty. In some cases it may even be fear due to an unhealthy relationship.  We fight an internal battle of wanting the best for someone we care about while being tempted to turn a blind eye to their sin and destruction. Taking responsibility means we have to either step out of the victim role so that we don’t sacrifice someone else to save ourselves, or we have to confront someone we deeply care about for their sin against someone else. Our situations may not be as extreme as the rape and torture of this woman, but we all face something. My challenge to myself is to ask God to open my eyes to situations I have either been ignoring or actively covering in my own life or in someone I care about. I also feel a burden to pray for the church at large because the fight against sexual sin is enormous and we can’t sleep peacefully, or sit quietly and ignore the torture and abuse going on around us without taking responsibility for what we know.

Message:  Judges 18 tells one of the most disturbing stories I know of in the bible. Every time I read it I feel sick and I pray for understanding because it’s not one of those stories you can explain away by mentioning the culture. A Levite man “acquires” a concubine. A concubine is a lower-status wife and already we can see that a concubine was more like sex property than she was a companion. The concubine had left her master and run back home to her father’s house so he went to “speak kindly to her” in the hopes of bringing her back home with him. On the journey back they went 6 miles out of their way to stop in a town of Israelites because the man thought it would be safer than stopping in a foreign land. When they got to a town of Israelites, they didn’t find any hospitality until the end of the evening when an old man found them and was eager to take them in and get them to safety in his home. It seems he knew there was danger out in the city. Later in the evening some men came banging on the door demanding that the old man send out the Levite man so they could have sex with him. This was considered so horrific that instead, the old man offered them his virgin daughter and the Levite man’s concubine. In order to protect his male guest, he sent his female concubine out the door to allow these men to do whatever they wanted to her. They raped her and abused her all night and she eventually found her way back to the door and the Levite man found her unresponsive body in the morning. The Levite man got up from his peaceful night’s sleep and carried her abused, unresponsive body to his donkey. He took her body home, chopped it up into 12 pieces like an animal slaughter and sent a piece to each tribe. This was intended to get the attention of Israel to show how evil the men of the tribe of Benjamin had become. As harsh as some of the biblically cultural things are, the bible makes it very clear that this was not normal. This was not only unusual, but it was disturbing enough to them to get their attention and call for action.  As I read it once again today, it occurred to me today that this story was intended to be disturbing so we could sit in the uncomfortable and begin to ask questions. WHY is this story in the bible?? The first thing I thought of is that the Levite man avoided a foreign town and thought an Israelite town would be safer. Usually the stories about Israel represent the church or even ourselves individually so I saw this as a parallel to the evil that lurks in the church today. Statistics show that there is just as much sexual perversion and addiction in the church as there is out in the world. The people we would expect to be safe are often the most dangerous. In the story the old man fought against the perversion of the townspeople taking his male guest for sex, and instead he offered his virgin (young innocent) daughter and the man’s concubine for them to satisfy their sexual appetite. Sexual perversion dehumanizes women and takes young girls as victims of sex trafficking. We don’t talk openly about this in most churches, yet the church at large uses it’s voice the loudest about standing against homosexuality. This parallel is astounding to me and it certainly got my attention. The next chapter shows how they punished the tribe of Benjamin and later made attempts to restore it. This story is also very similar to another story back in Genesis  when the angels stayed overnight with Lot before they destroyed Sodom & Gomorrah. I believe this was intentional as well to show that the level of evil equated with Sodom & Gomorrah. This is not a story that glorifies the traumatic and horrific abuse of women. This is a story that demands our attention to the sin in the church that needs to be exposed. We all have a part to play in this because we are all aware and have been enablers to it by allowing it to remain hidden. In the New Testament, Paul called out one of the churches for allowing a man who was openly having a relationship with his father’s wife to remain part of the church. They were proud of their acceptance and Paul demanded that they send him out so there would be hope for repentance and change. I don’t know what the answers are, but this story has drastically changed my perspective and I feel challenged to pray for the church as a whole and ask God to show us how to stand up, expose sin and rebuild the people who have been damaged by it whether they were a victim or a perpetrator. This is not an easy read but this is real and we have to be willing to fight for change and freedom.

Message: Today I found another interesting parallel between what we read in Judges 18 and what we read in 2 Peter 2. In Judges 18 there had been a young Levite who was traveling in a foreign land. The Levites were a tribe of priests for Israel but this young man was far from his people and not yet old enough to be a priest according to the law. A man named Micah found him and invited him to live with him and be paid to act as his priest. The thing is, Micah had all kinds of idols in his home and he wasn’t looking to serve God. He was looking for favor and blessing. God’s favor can’t be bought and this young Levite was not even properly prepared to be a priest anyway. The tribe of Dan came along eventually and found him there. They asked him about their journey to take over a land they had been scouting out and without consulting God he told them exactly what they wanted to hear. They took him with them, but they also took the household idols along like some sort of luck charm. Although they did defeat and take over the land they were after, the description is very clear that they did this out of their own strength and not because God handed them over to them. The end of the chapter says that they continued in the idolatry and were later exiled. In 2 Peter 2, Peter was warning about false teachers who once knew the ways of God, but got caught up in greed and lust. They were present in those times and are still present now. They know enough to lead people deceptively into ideas that distort the truth of the gospel into something that fulfills their lustful desires. They know how to use scripture and twist into something else, but Peter was warning them and is warning us of all the times that God spared the righteous and punished those who chased after evil. He used the fallen angels as an example and the ancient world who was flooded while Noah and his family were spared. He used Sodom & Gomorrah as an example while God spared Lot. His point was that God will protect and spare those who follow after him for truth, but not those who chase after selfishness. The scary part of it all as that some of these false teachers can be very convincing if we don’t know, or even want to know the truth for ourselves. In Judges 18 the entire tribe of Dan should have known better but they were fixated on their desire to take over this land. When the young Levite told them what they wanted to hear they didn’t even question it. They ran with it and it almost appeared that it worked for them for a bit. This is the danger of following the words of man who are chasing after favor and prosperity without chasing after God for truth. This is not to say that God does not have favor and prosperity in mind for us, but if that is what we are focused on we will be misled. The most disturbing part of all of this is that this is not about people in the world who are living in ignorance. This is about people in the world who knew the ways of God and strayed off into selfish pursuits. Some are still preaching and teaching while others live in a world like the tribe of Dan where they carry on their lives pursuing all of their ambitions and desires which serve them as idols, while also keeping a “priest” in their back pocket to fool themselves into believing they are serving God. This is a dangerous place to be and the only way out is full surrender. We can’t pursue God’s favor without pursuing God himself. We can’t serve our own desires and agendas and say we belong to God.  My challenge to myself is to evaluate my list of goals and desires and acknowledge that everything I desire belongs to God. He can give and take as he wills in my life because my life belongs to him.

Message: In 2 Peter 1 Peter seems to be talking to Gentile believers because he is confirming them as “those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ.” This was a big deal to the Jews because they had been the only chosen and privileged ones before. They were consecrated and set apart. Now the Gentiles were invited into the new covenant and as the Jews were learning to live according to the spirit instead of following the laws, the gentiles were learning to live in a new way as well. As Peter continued, he was calling them to a higher standard of living. They hadn’t lived by the rules of the law before and they were learning how to follow the holy spirit into righteousness and circumcision of the heart. He reminded them of all of the benefits and promises that came with their salvation and he commanded them to “supplement their faith” with goodness leading to knowledge, leading to self-control, leading to endurance, leading to godliness, leading to brotherly affection, leading to love. The footnotes in my bible refer to this as the ladder of faith. Our salvation should not be a one-time experience but a continuing growth into all of these things. We are never done growing and in verse 9 Peter says that the person who lacks these things is blind, but those who intentionally follow these things will never stumble. It seems like a logical analogy that if we are watching where we are walking we won’t trip, but if we are not paying attention to where we are walking we will most certainly stumble on something. This whole chapter is about staying alert and focused in our walk so that we continue growing in our walk. There are times it is tempting to glaze over for a bit. We have all had those times where we drove somewhere and suddenly had an awareness that we drove along in auto-pilot mode without really paying attention. It’s a strange feeling and our sudden awareness means we understand that not paying attention is dangerous but so easy to do. In our walk we can fall into auto pilot as well. We are actively doing things and because of that we assume we are growing and changing until we have the “awareness moment”. This chapter challenges me to wake up and make sure I am not drifting into autopilot because I am actively doing things. Even as I read daily and write out my devotions I can become stagnant if I don’t actually do something intentional with these challenges. I need to be mindful of them all day long and actually challenge myself. Not just say that I will. Challenge accepted!!

Message: Judges 16 is the ending to the fascinating, but sad story of Samson. He was marked for great things even before he was born. His mother abstained from certain things during her pregnancy and he took a Nazirite vow which made him consecrated (set apart) for a very specific purpose. He was supposed to deliver Israel from the Philistines. God gave him a supernatural strength and even reading about the things he did is unbelievable! Unfortunately, Samson was run by his desires and passions so although he was specially gifted and God still used the power to punish the Philistines through Samson’s erratic behavior, it was never used to the complete potential. Samson ultimately gave up his life while defeating the Philistines in one last act of vengeance. As I thought about Samson’s story I thought of all of us. We have all been called and set apart but whether consistently, or occasionally, we chase after our own passions and desires. When we do this we minimize the potential God intended for us. If we are completely given over to it like Samson was we may find ourselves tortured and oppressed by an enemy that we were intended to destroy. This story challenges me to examine my uncontrolled emotions, passions and desires. For Samson his uncontrolled emotions drove him toward women. Not nice women, but manipulative women who were not shy about their ill intent. I can’t relate to that one but my emotions have definitely taken the wheel in plenty of other areas in my life. Emotions have a powerful influence and they are often what keep us from doing what is right in a moment when our logic knows better. For me it can be anger and frustration that keep me from connecting with someone, or humbling myself to let an offense go. It can be negative relationship patterns or destructive thoughts. At the end of the story Samson called on God one last time. He wanted one last vengeance for his eyes that the Philistines had gouged out and God gave it to him. I wonder what might have happened if he had asked for his strength in order to finish his purpose? It seems he even finished his life chasing after his own emotions. Our story may be similar to Samson’s as far as chasing our emotions, but it doesn’t have to end that way. Lord please help me surrender my emotions when they want to control me!

Message: In 1 Peter 4 we continued reading about suffering. Since chapter 4 is a continuation of chapter 3 we had left off reading about the suffering of Christ in the flesh. Peter challenges us that Christ suffered with purposeful intention and that we need to suffer with the same resolve. We talked about this yesterday and I named the devotional “Suffering with purpose” because it is a mindset. Chapter 4 goes on to remind us that judgment begins in the house of God so we need to make sure that our suffering is not due to our own disobedience and bad behavior because there is no reward or glory in that. We will experience a different kind of suffering when we are living in obedience and are suffering as a result of doing what is right. Verse 12 goes on to say that we shouldn’t be surprised when this kind of suffering happens. I think this is a really important thing to understand because as Christians we know that we have been given promises and sometimes we become so focused on the promises that we begin to believe that any problems or suffering we encounter are out of place or from the devil. We get stuck in the mode of asking “why” we are suffering and this opens the door to self-pity and defeat. Peter is encouraging us to equip ourselves by preparing our minds in advance that we will suffer. This is not a self-defeating, negative, expect the worst kind of mindset, but the kind of mental preparation we need so that we don’t feel blindsided when things happen. When I work out, I expect to be sore. If I dread being sore to the point that it stops me from working out I miss the opportunity and the benefit of gaining strength and health. When the next day aches come I feel the pain, but it comes with a certain satisfaction because I know the pain came from working out. I know that my muscles have been stretched and tested to the limits so that I can be stronger and more fit. Our suffering is an opportunity for growth. Even if we caused it we still have an opportunity to learn and grow from it. We have to stop asking “why” and instead ask God “what”…as in “what do you want to do in me through this?” I never understood James 1:2 “count it all joy when you experience trials” until I started to understand that all pain is an opportunity for growth. This is where maturity and growth happen and this is what increases our faith. When we make it through some hard things and look back, we are able to see that even though we hurt and we suffered, we were not overcome by it. God walked with us through the process and we are now better for it. We are the people we are today because of the hard things we walked through. Don’t waste an opportunity asking why. Instead ask what and grow from it. Don’t waste pain!