Day 7
Day 7 of Bury Your Ordinary finishes where we all need to begin, with the process of disciple making. Not talking, not preaching, living it out every day…
Devotional Point 4 today:
…the message of Jesus changes everything… & Changed people change people…
Scripture 4 today:
“Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:9 NIV
Reflection 4 today:
Paul was in the middle of all of the action, he was not sitting above any of it. He had a real job as a tent maker, and lived out the work of disciple making in his every-day life. He was not a “do-I-say“ kind or guy, he was absolutely do-as-I-do. Disciple making it’s not something that occurs in a class or some environment external to the life we live. Disciple making occurs in the every day Nitty Gritty life that we all live. It is also not song elective optional thing for us to add to our lives. When we are transformed by Jesus, it is our life.
Question for the day: how have you made disciple making your life? If not, what do you need to do to change this?
Other Notes: I hope that you have enjoyed the last week of looking at burying our ordinary and moving on to His extraordinary… Tomorrow we will start a new plan called “The Way of the Dragon or the Way of the Lamb”. It is all about the real path to power, something the church has abandoned…
Day 6
Day 6 of Bury Your Ordinary digs into the rat race of performance tyranny that we all seem to get locked into…
Devotional Point 4 today:
…most of us are living in the tyranny of performance…
Scripture 4 today:
“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.” Hebrews 4:9-10 NIV
Reflection 4 today:
Theoretically, the lockdown we have all been through should have precipitated more rest. However it seems that the reverse is in fact true; the concept of work took on a much different meaning for all of us than it did before. In most cases, that meant that even through we were operating from an “office” that was at home, we had to work even harder and even faster than before. And there was no “home” that we went home to… Rest is a very definite choice, something you have to be almost militant in setting it aside, it requires enormous effort…
Question for the day: How can we be better at demarking a time of rest in our week?
Other Notes: Habit 6: Practice living by grace through a weekly Sabbath routine.
Day 5
Day 5 digs into one of those hated subjects in churches, giving. But it gives us the real standard, giving from the heart. God doesn’t need our money, but He does need our hearts…
Devotional Point 4 today:
You cannot claim to love God and then not practice radical generosity.
Scripture 4 today:
“He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” Luke 21:2-4 NIV
Reflection 4 today:
The lust for money and to keep that money is something that has permeated all of human history. First and foremost to have the things that money buys. But second to have the posture of superiority that big money gives. The church has certainly bought into this in the same ways the Scribes and Pharisees bought into it 2 thousand years ago. if I have more money than you I must be more important than you. There are lots of ways to feign superiority, but money is the biggest. Superiority is 100% the opposite of what God wants for us and the world we live in…
Question for the day: money is one way to give front he heart, what other ways are you giving today?
Day 4
Day 4 is where the real burial of our “ordinary” starts, accepting God’s grace to put off the “old. Self”…
Devotional Point 4 today:
Habit 4: Live within the accountability of biblical sexual boundaries.
Scripture 4 today:
“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” Romans 6:6
Reflection 4 today:
The transformation process that Paul talked about in 2 Cor. 5:17 starts with what not to do: sin. The difficulty with it is that the sin emerges from the “old self”, that part of the fallen self that we were born with. And the commonality is that all men are/were afflicted with it. The old self being crucified with Christ is something that just happens, not something that we have any part in. What we do have a part in, is admission of our sin and past sin and accepting the grace of God’s forgiveness.
Question for the day: is there anything in your “old self”that is a blocking your acceptance of God’s grace to transform you?
Day 3
Day 3 of “Bury Your Ordinary” digs into one of the crucial issues of moving from ordinary to extraordinary: listening and hearing God’s voice. The actual creator of the universe wants to speak to you today, are you listening???
Devotional Point 4 today:
Habit 3: Obey the daily promptings of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture 4 today:
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
John 10:27 NIV
Reflection 4 today:
Being called sheep is/was not a compliment, it was just reality. But sheep do have a clear ability to hear and do. We are to listen 24/7, not just once in a awhile when we think we need to. So, listening involves understanding the context, understanding the what and the why, and understanding both the call to action and the call to accountability. We hear the phrase “active listening” but it is far more than that, it is accountable listening, listening to find the next step in a series of many thousands of steps He wants to take us on today…
Question for the day: What changes do you need to make to be able to clearly hear what God is saying to you today? What is that next step???
Day 2
Day 2 gets into an important thing to understand for us as Christians, the concept of sharing our faith. When something great happens to you, you want to share it with others. But it needs to be shared through doors that God opens, not ones that you crash through all on your own…
Devotional Point 4 today: Habit 2: Share your faith every day
Scripture 4 today: “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.” Colossians 4:3 NIV
Reflection 4 today:
These verses and the ones that go with them in Ephesians and other places are usually taken by the church to inspire and challenge the faithful to go out and “break the doors down“ to evangelise the world we live in. However, Paul is praying for God to open doors, not to provide doors for him to crash through, as has been the experience of the church for the last 50 years. Like Paul, we also need to pray for open doors, because when He opens those doors He also prepares the people on the other side of the door to hear the message.
Question for the day: what doors are you praying to open today? How do we make this a regular part of our every-day life???
Day 1
Day 1 of a look at the things we need to put in place to bury that “ordinary” and get on to the extra-ordinary of our newly transformed lives…
Devotional Point 4 today:
Habit 1: Spend the first hour of your morning alone with God.
Scripture 4 today:
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35 NIV
Reflection 4 today:
There are several things for us to take away from these passages today. First, he got up early to do his meetings with the Father, something Isaiah did in the Old Testament, every day, as well as many others. There is importance that it was the first day of the week, they had no “day off” after a glorious Sabbath or healing and baptisms. So, early in the day, every day… Jesus also takes a totally different direction in His ministry after this, He leaves Capernaum and heads out to other places, but it always started with His early morning “quiet time”…
Question for the day: Of all the things we are going to do today, which is more important than our “alone time” with the Father? How can we help others with that?
