Day 5
Today we finish our series with the look at how Jesus modelled the handling of temptation…
Devotional Point 4 today: With each attack from the devil, Jesus responded with the Word of God.
Scripture 4 today: “Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Matthew 4:7 NIV
Reflection 4 today: The theologian James Boice equates the multi media extravaganzas any churches today with that of Satan’s temptation of Jesus. We humans are easily drawn to “shiny things“. But there is nothing shiny about the gospel, transformative but not shiny. So they’re really are two parts to repelling The Temptations: the first is to quote scripture and the second is to quote the right scripture. Which is a pretty compelling reason to why we need to know scripture and the right scripture.
I hope you enjoyed this quick refresher on how important it is to continually reset our minds… Tomorrow we start a new series called the Power of Father Love, a 7-day series that is all about what is in the title…
Day 4
Today we look at what we are choosing to put in front of ourselves…
Devotional Point 4 today: let’s be proactively mindful of what we choose to put in front of us…
Scripture 4 today: “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” Colossians 3:2 NIV
Reflection 4 today: When we first become Christians, spiritual things are a subset of our “normal” life. As we are transformed, “normal” life becomes a subset of of our spiritual life. As a subset of our earthly lives, everting that we have and are and go through are no longer as important as they once were, and sometimes bordering on irrelevant… This only happens with a 24/7 focus on the “heavenly things”…
Day 3
Today we look at the source of wrong thinking and what to do about it…
Devotional Point 4 today: We can’t let them dictate our lives—we must choose to capture our thoughts.
Scripture 4 today: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV
Reflection 4 today: somehow, most of the church has bought into this Liberal western concept of entertaining all thoughts and all philosophies and all possible ways of life. Otherwise you are called a bigot. For us, the “ways of the world“ are all the lies from the power of Satan and need to be dealt with as such. We have been given the power to take all of these thoughts captive and never let them come back. They must all be destroyed in the Holy Spirit gives us all the power we need to destroy them.
Day 2
Today we look at the thoughts we need to focus on…
Devotional Point 4 today: We can test our thoughts every day…
Scripture 4 today: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8 NIV
Reflection 4 today: you don’t have to go far out of your way to discover the weaknesses and problems of other people, they tend to broadcast them quite loudly. and it is quite easy to get fixated on those weaknesses, as if it were some responsibility of ours to fix them. We are called to look at the good and potential good in each person we come across today. For the most part this would be virtually impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. These two words, lovely and admirable are only use this one time in the entire New Testament.
Day 1
Today we start our new series by revisiting the foundation of transformation: renewing the mind…
Devotional Point 4 today: What kind of renovation does your mind need?
Scripture 4 today: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 NIV
Reflection 4 today: most of Christianity has bought into the whole mind modification part of the self help business which is a multi billion dollar business globally. Its premise is that I am the king of my life and I will decide what and how I think. Most of us in our Christian lives started on modification not transformation, that was what we were taught… What Paul is talking about here and several other places is total transformation out of how the world thinks. It is all about total transformation today…
