Tagged: message of the day
“Then you shall delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth.” –Isaiah 58:14 We are on the fourth day of a forty-day journey through the desert of Lent. Our destination is the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. When we meet the risen Christ in a new way this Easter time, “light shall rise” for us “in the darkness, and the gloom shall become” like midday (Is 58:10). “Then the Lord will guide” us always and give us “plenty even on the parched land” (Is 58:11). “The ancient ruins shall be...
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“Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?” –Isaiah 58:5 Fasting is limiting our intake of food in obedience to God for the building of His kingdom. It may involve eating nothing, eating a little less, or eating plainer, less tasty foods. Although the Lord often calls us to cut back significantly in eating, fasting is not a matter of quantity but obedience. For instance, to fast severely when God is calling us to something else is not pleasing to Him. A Lenten fast is a little different than another fast. The Lenten fast is an...
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“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life.” –Deuteronomy 30:19 On this second day of Lent, the Lord tells us that Lent is a matter of life or death. Because of what we let the Lord do in us last Lent, some babies, poor people, and elderly people are alive today who would have been killed in our culture of death. Conversely, it is possible that because of our resistance to God’s grace last Lent, some attacks on life which could have been stopped are continuing to plague us. Moreover, Lent is a...
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“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to Me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts.” –Joel 2:12-13 Because we are all members of Christ’s Body and therefore need each other (1 Cor 12:12ff), we must not absent ourselves from the assembly (Heb 10:25). Instead, we should “call an assembly; gather the people, notify the congregation; assemble the elders” (Jl 2:15-16). God the Father wants His family together. Jesus prays that we would be one as He and the Father are one (Jn 17:21). The Holy Spirit makes us one body (1 Cor 12:13)....
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“Are your minds completely blinded? Have you eyes but no sight?” –Mark 8:17-18 Jesus was appalled at His disciples’ spiritual blindness. They were blinded to the significance of the two multiplications of the loaves and fishes. They were blinded to Who Jesus was. This blindness would eventually lead His disciples to abandon Jesus on Calvary. Spiritual blindness caused Jesus’ death on the cross. It caused the Third Reich, the Holocaust of six million Jews, slavery for centuries, and countless other atrocities. Spiritual blindness causes starvation, racism, the sexual abuse of children, mass murder from abortion, etc. Spiritual blindness is caused...
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