Daily Devotion

Genesis 3:1-5

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

The devil's major weapon against you is deception!

Jesus prayed to the Father for us, "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth" (John 17:17). The truth will always point you towards God. But Jesus said about Satan, "He is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44).

Satan's strategy is to distort the truth, just like he did with Eve in the Garden of Eden, even with Jesus in the desert. He wants to make you question God. He attacks you through your reason. God's reminding you today: fill your mind with the truth of His word if you want to be able to combat the lies of the Devil. 

Daily Devotion

1 Samuel 17:24, 26, 31, 37

When all the men of Israel saw the man [the giant Goliath], they fled from him and were greatly afraid.… Then David spoke to the men who were standing by him, saying, "What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should taunt the armies of the living God?"… When the words which David spoke were heard, they told them to [King] Saul, and he sent for him.… And David said, "The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." And Saul said to David, "Go, and may the LORD be with you."

Look at your present `Goliath' through eyes that remember God helping you in the past!

Goliath was huge. David was little. Goliath was strong. David was weak. Goliath was experienced in battle. David was inexperienced. If David's reason only weighed the current circumstances, he'd have run in fear, just like the rest of the Israelite army. But David's perspective was shaped by his experience of God's involvement in past crises.

Today God's calling you: Remember how I've helped you in the past, and how faithful I've been in caring for you. Let that give you confidence beyond what your reason says as you face today.

Sincerely God......

This last week at Youth Group we had an great time. Here is the sermon notes from what we talked about if you couldn't make it.

Sincerely God. Week 1

Performance

Dear loved one,

I’m writing you to let you know how much you mean to me, and I’m hoping you start to see yourself the way I see you.  There is a lie out there that says your self worth equals your performance plus others opinions. I want you to know thats a lie!  If your thinking that you need to meet certain standards in your life in order for you to be valuable, then let me free you from that.  If you fear failure, let me help you.  Your worth is not found in your ability to meet standards well.  I have given you peace in this area by justifying you based on what my son Jesus was like.  You are fully pleasing to me just as you are. I mean this.

Sincerely, God

What if you were able to receive in the clearest form possible a letter from God expressing His deepest most truthful thoughts about you.

What if you could really know how God saw you.

So he asked me how does God see me?

We know how we see ourself,  we know how we see other people. But is that the same way that God sees you?

Colossians 1:21-22 

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and free from accusation

If you are a Christ follower God sees you Holy, Blameless, and free from all accusations from  the enemy!

Colossians 3:12

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;

Add that to the list..... Your Holy and free from all accusation, without blemish, dearly loved, chosen by God

Hebrews 10:14

For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

So you can add perfect to the list

So if God was making a list of how He saw you this would be the list.  Holy and free from all accusation, without blemish, dearly loved, chosen, righteous, and perfect.

That should blow you away that this is how God sees you.

You might say well Derek this is not how I see myself or others.

Today most of us see ourself in two different realms.

1. Performance- Your ability to do things well
2. Approval- approval you get from other people

These come together to form you... me..... My self worth, who you are cane become wrapped up in these two categories

There is such a huge lie out there right now a lie from the pit of hell. It’s that your self worth is defined by your performance + others people opinion of you.... And it is a LIE!!!!!

The performance part is what I bought into when I became a Christ Follower. That I had to meet certain standards in my life in order to be valuable to God. I had to measure up in order for me to feel good about myself.

If I didn’t measure up and if I fell short somehow then my whole self worth was in the tank.

I don’t know where your at in this but the fear of failure for me got pretty out of control. I couldn’t stand failing to measure up because that meant I wasn’t performing well and if I wasn’t performing well then God was not happy with me. 

And it was this downward spiral that leads you to view yourself and others in a way that does not line up to God’s word.

This tends to be exhausting.

I’m not sure where you are at in this area..... But here are some some statements and you read I want you to rate on a scale of 1-10 rate if you struggle with it all.

This will indicate wether you have bought into this lie...

1) Because of fear I often avoid participating in certain activities

1. When I scenes that I may fail I become nervous and anxious 
2. I worry
3. I unexplained anxiety 
4. I’m a perfectionist
5. I’m compelled to justify my mistakes
6. there are certain areas I feel that I must succeed 
7. I become depressed when I fail
8. I’m self critical

if you scored higher then a 5 honestly... then the performance trap has sunk it’s teeth into you!

I struggled with this for a while, do you?.... I think I struggled with it I think from the begining. Being the Black sheep of the family

I thought that if I always measured up to God then I would never feel out of place or rejected by Him.

Eventually when you live life that way you become exhausted and you find yourself questioning your faith, not reading your bible, not attending youth group, hanging out with a different crowd. etc..

So in reading the scriptures we see a entirely different truth and realize that it’s completely different from what the world demands from us. Our whole culture and world revolves around the performance factor....

If you......

Look a certain way, talk a certain way, dress a certain way, if you achieve some high status in life then you are considered valuable and important in others eyes!!!!!

How liberating is it to come to the realization that God is on a whole other level, he has the remedy to crack this awful deceiving formula called performance.!!!

Let’s look at a very important word in this remedy. 

Justification

Justification is this..... You being justified before God. 

Colossians 1:21-22 

And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and free from accusation

Once you were separated or a enemy of God but now through the work of Christ your relationship is now ok and intact

Before being Justified through Christ the banner on our life was sin/separated. 

Now this banner defined you.... this is who you are..... you are a sinner separated from God!

Now through what Christ did on the cross and resurrected from the dead. He kicked sin out and when you become a Christ follower Jesus come inn and wrecks your life in a good way!!1

He takes this banner of sin and separation and places a new reality... a new banner onto us Forgiven, Holy, Righteous, Chosen, Loved, and Blameless!!!

Jesus died to justify us before God and taking away our sin..

Justification doesn’t stop there. 

Jesus had a banner of His own. Ours said sinner, His said Righteousness.

This is who He was. This was His identity

So justification is about trading banners. Jesus giving us His righteousness, it’s transfered to you.

2 Corinthians 5: 21

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

God made Jesus our sin as we transfered our banner to Jesus and He died with that sin. And after His resurrection His righteousness came back with Him and now we get to wear that and it’s declared over us!!

The moment you step into a relationship with God you exchange banners!!!! And from that moment on you are declared free and righteous!!!! God declare you righteous, that is how we can pray to him, and that is how we can live for him. God has been doing this from day one. He spoke in the begining and formed the world out of nothing. He spoke and it happened.

The same goes today, we serve the same God, he declares you righteous and it is so. He took nothing and made it into something.

This is our God, none of us deserve this but tonight if you are a Christ follower this is spoken over you and it’s not because of your performance.

Justification does not give you the excuse to live how you want to with no respect for consequence, a true understanding of what Justification is will cause you to live for His Kingdom and not YOURS!!!!

Where Are You? 

Are You Separated From God?

Are you caught up in the Performance Trap?

Right Now God is Calling us to Clothe ourselves in His Righteousness through Justification!!!

Daily Devotion

Isaiah 55:8-9

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways", declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts."

Faith relies on the person of God and trusts that His ways are right!

Faith reads God's word and says, "This is what God says." But so often our minds jump in and say, "God may say that, but what I think is…." And sometimes our feelings even get in on the debate and say, "But I feel…, and I am going to do what feels good!"

You see, your reasoning comes from yourself and your feelings come from within you, and you are a fallen being. They will often deceive you. But your faith does not come from yourself. Faith comes from the interaction of your spirit with God's Holy Spirit. Faith "is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8).

That is why Satan will always attack you through your reason and your feelings, trying to destroy your faith.

In today's passage, God is reminding you of who He is—that He is worthy of your faith. Once you settle that, then your reason has a good place to start, with God's word as its foundation. As you act on your understanding of God's word, your feelings will begin to come along as well.

Daily Devotion

Psalm 73:3, 16-18

I was envious of the arrogant as I saw the prosperity of the wicked... When I pondered to understand this, it was troublesome in my sight; Until I came into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. Surely You set them in slippery places...

When times get tough, don't forsake your commitment to godliness!

There will be times when you think that if you just compromised a little on your truthfulness, things would be much better. If you just covered your tracks on this little thing, you would come out ahead.

When those temptations come, God wants you to remember the big picture. Asaph, who wrote Psalm 73, struggled with this same temptation. Things seemed so much better off at the time for the ungodly people he knew. Then he spent some time with God—"I came into the sanctuary of God." As God worked on Asaph's perspective, He reminded Asaph that right now isn't all that matters.

Remember that each choice you make in life leads you down a path that goes somewhere. Whenever you are tempted to ramp down your commitment to God for an immediate improvement in your circumstances, God wants you to ask the question, "Where will this choice lead me in the future? What kind of person will it make me? How will it affect my relationship with God and my ministry to others?" 

Daily Devotion

2 Timothy 3:14-17

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

When dark times come, stand on the foundation of Scripture and what you have seen of its impact in those who have helped you grow spiritually!

Timothy had been warned: dark times are coming. Now Paul explains how to best come through them. God is saying these same things to you. Don't interpret life by your feelings in those hard experiences. Cling to what you know of God. Trust Him. Remember those who have impacted you deeply for God and how trusting Him and His principles have worked out in their lives and follow their example.

Soak yourself in the Scriptures. God will speak to you through them and help you understand His ways. The Bible will show you how you can live in a way that allows God to work in and through you.

Author Kay Arthur says, "I believe the greater the pressure, the greater your need for time alone with Him."

Wisdom is.....?

Wisdom has always seemed so illusive to me. Like some mysterious woman that I’ll never understand it was always reserved in my mind for old men with gray hair or robed chinese guys with long wispy goatees, but not some middle aged dad who has little gray hair and who’s goatee screams “youth pastor” not “wisdom”. Yet over the last couple years, I’ve learned a lot about wisdom (and still learning)… so here’s some thoughts.

Wisdom is not just for old people.

Wisdom is given to those who ask.

Wisdom is more of a choice than some mystical spirit that comes over you.

Wisdom requires looking further than the NOW.

Wisdom is listening to a pastor who has a full head of hair. OK, so I made that one up:)