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Psalm 103:20 (NIV)  Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word.  The word translated angel means messenger.  Angels were created to carry out specific spiritual functions on behalf of God and His people.  Throughout the Bible you will read about them worshipping God, carrying out assignments for Him, serving as agents of His judgment, providing strength and protection for God’s people, delivering God’s people in times of peril, and sometimes providing…

Luke 4:31 (NIV)  Then He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath began to teach the people.  I have visited the ruins of that synagogue where Jesus taught.  Teaching was an important aspect of His everyday life.  He unpacked the scriptures, told parables full of practical applications.  He taught his disciples as they walked from one town to another and as they rode the boat across the Galilee.  Those conversations were full of life applications…

John 21:17b (NIV)   Peter said, “Lord, you know everything.  You know that I love you.”  Love holds us steady when we don’t understand.  Believing in God’s sovereignty brings us peace.  When the paradigm changes and former things, familiar things, reliable people and processes are gone, love holds us steady while life reorients around us.  It is not easy.  We must be flexible.  He DOES know everything.  He knows when we tremble and cry, long for the  “good old days” …

John 21:18 (NIV)   “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  Jesus’  words to Peter described a reality that found fulfillment in Peter’s death (upside down on a cross, according to church historians).  But it also describes something more.  It describes a life…

Matthew 4:19 (NIV)   “Come, follow me,” Jesus said…   The disciples dropped their nets, sold their boats, and went  “all in.”  Noemi Chavez tells us:  “The disciples never said: I will follow for a season to see if it works, or I will follow for a while and then we will talk—but no promises.  Likes and dislikes are not important in God’s Kingdom.  Those disciples were on a mission—till death!  Life has an assignment.  Don’t count on a safe,…

John 21:12 (NIV)   Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast”…  Think of it: Jesus made breakfast for His disciples!  “Some of the greatest lessons are not in the miracle moments, but in the journey” (Noemi Chavez).  Breakfast together.  Laughing about life.  Sharing stories.  Oh, how He loved them.  How He loves you!  Slow down, and learn to be present in each moment.  Notice the little joys tucked into life.  Enjoy the hugs from your children.  Hold hands with…

John 21:15 (NIV)   When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love me more than these?”  “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”  Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”  “It is one thing to have expectations of Jesus; but its another thing to understand that He has expectations of us” (Noemi Chavez).  When do we transition into adulthood in the Kingdom of God?  When did you start caring…

John 21:3 (NIV)   “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.”  So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.  Jesus had told the disciples that after His resurrection they were to go to Galilee, and He would meet them there (Matt. 26:32; Mark 14:28 NLT).  They went.  They waited.  Nothing.  So, they fished.  It’s what they knew best, but it was a futile endeavor. …

Isaiah 6:8  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”  That moment of awe in God’s presence changed Isaiah.  It enabled Him to perceive God clearly, recognize human frailty, discern God’s call, and receive atonement with humility.  When we allow God to transform us through AWE-filled experiences, we are humbled and enabled to move forward in the right attitude, to minister to hurting people all around us.  It is…

Isaiah 6:5 (NIV)  “Woe to me!”  I cried.  “I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”   Isaiah saw the reality of his human condition and it left no room for pride—only repentance.  No matter how long or how fervent our relationship has been with the Lord, any fresh revelation brings an awareness of our human frailties; but…

Isaiah 6:4 (NIV)  At the sound of their voices (the angel-seraphs) the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.   Isaiah’s vision continued and he felt the shaking of doorposts and thresholds.  Doorposts and thresholds represent a transition from one room into another.  Isaiah felt the shaking.  This experience was moving him from one kind of relationship with God into another.  He would not only warn the people about the consequences of evil, but also deliver…

Isaiah 6:2-3 (The Message)  Angel-seraphs hovered above Him…and they called back and forth one to the other, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is God…”   Have you experienced a moment of AWE?  You looked into the face of your newborn baby, or you sat at the bedside of a dying saint as they slipped into eternity.  Isaiah had a revelation of God that inspired such a depth of awe that it changed the trajectory of his life.  When we have a strong…

Isaiah 6:1 (NIV)  In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted…   King Uzziah had died and the country was in transition.  When life changes (and it always does) people feel anxious and start to ask questions and wonder about the future.  Something has  “died”  and our hearts are plowed open.  There is a timeless truth we need to discover in times of transition: GOD REIGNS, even if earthly thrones…

Isaiah 1:16 (NIV)  …wash and make yourselves clean.  Take your evil deeds out of my sight!  Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!  Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.   Both the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judah) had fallen into serious moral and spiritual decline.  The first 39 chapters of Isaiah reveal Israel’s need to repent and return to their covenant with God (Deut. 11:8-32).  What…

Isaiah 50:4  The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.  The Lord wants to use you and me to speak words to weary souls that will sustain them.  He will give you those words early in the morning as He  “wakens my ear to listen like one being taught” (4b).  Have you experienced the still small voice of the Holy Spirit in the dawn’s early light as you sit before God…

John 12:50b  So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.  Even as Jesus spoke exactly what the Father told Him to say, the Holy Spirit wants to lead us in our conversations so we know what and how to speak about the Kingdom of God to the people around us: our spouse, children, friends, co-workers.  Our words should refresh, reassure, speak truth, restore, and mend.  How good are you at letting others speak?  Do…

I John 2:27  But you have received the Holy Spirit, and He lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true.  For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what He teaches is true—it is not a lie.  This verse is NOT teaching us that we should not study God’s Word or listen to Bible teachers.  Reading this verse in context, we realize it is referring to the false teachers of that…

Mark 1:22  The people were amazed at His teaching, because He taught them as one who had authority…   The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to speak in Jesus’  name.  Our  “Power of Attorney”  to act in His name has validity in Heaven.  When we are living in sync with Holy Spirit leadership, remarkable things can happen: healings, miracles, divine discernment, wisdom, special faith, and more.  The same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead can be at…

Mark 3:14-15  (Jesus) appointed twelve—designating them apostles—that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.   The Holy Spirit equips us. He gives us the necessary means to carry out our God-assigned tasks.  There is a great difference between God’s ways and thoughts and ours.  His are infinitely higher and superior to ours (Isaiah 55:8-9).  So, living a Spirit-led life requires attention to the Kingdom of…

Acts 1:4-5  Once when (Jesus) was eating with (the disciples), He commanded them, “Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift He promised, as I told you before…in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.   It was on the 50th day after Easter that the apostles were praying together in the Upper Room and the Holy Spirit descended on them, just as Jesus predicted.  (This year Pentecost Sunday is being celebrated…

Romans 11:33a (NIV)  Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!  We serve a rational God—creative and intelligent but also compassionate, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love (Ps. 103:8).  He has an end in mind that is consistent with His character.  His motives toward us are always pure, consistent with His nature and for our good.  Jesus is His  “express image” (Heb. 1:30. …

Exodus 15:11 (NLT)  Who is like you among the gods, O LORD—glorious in holiness, awesome in splendor, performing great wonders?    What have we learned so far this week regarding the existence of God?  God has revealed Himself in creation.  Scripture assumes the existence of God but does not seek to prove it.  People’s innate belief in God’s existence and humanity’s moral nature all testify to God’s existence.  Remarkably, God cared enough to reveal Himself to us so that we…

Romans 2:14-15 (The Message)  When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience.  They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation.  There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong.  People are moral beings, with a sense of right and wrong.  Conscience is inherent in…

Romans 1:20 (NLT)  For ever since the world was created people have seen the earth and sky.  Through everything God made, they can clearly see His invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature… A universal belief in a supreme being is innate or intuitive in people everywhere.  However, this belief is not so universal in what that god is like.  Christians believe in one loving God who is interested in a personal relationship with them.  Those who believe in other…

Psalm 19:1 (NLT)  The heavens proclaim the glory of God.  The skies display His craftsmanship.  A remarkable interdependency exists between everything in the universe.  Vegetation depends on sun and soil and water.  Streams flow into rivers and oceans.  Animals depend upon nature’s multiple food sources.  People depend upon wood for fire.  Without sufficient rain, crops die.  An intricate balance exists that gives us compelling evidence for God’s existence and is known as the cosmological argument.  The cosmos, this orderly, harmonious…

Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)  And it is impossible to please God without faith.  Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him.  The Bible makes no attempt to prove God’s existence.  The writers assume He exists and expect people to believe it by faith.  Anyone who comes to Him “must believe that He exists.”  But people will not put their faith in someone in whom they don’t believe.  Read…

John 21:16b (NLT) “Then take care of my sheep,” Jesus said.  Jesus had come to save the  “sheep”  at the cost of His own life (John 10:15).  He asked Peter to take up the task.  “Feed” (vs. 15, 17) means to supply with food, or to take to pasture.  “Tend” (vs. 16) includes all the care a shepherd would give to his sheep.  Both lambs and sheep, whether small or grown, would be the object of Peter’s new mission in…

John 21:16b (NLT) “Yes, Lord,”  Peter said, “you know that I love you.”   Jesus sought to prove Peter’s innermost purpose in following Him.  “The desire for personal success, eminence, achievement, reward, or even the relatively unselfish motive of doing something for needy humanity was not enough.  Only a complete love for Christ would be sufficient to carry Peter and his fellow disciples through the careers which awaited them.”  Peter’s response was sincere.  He had learned that he could not…

John 21:15 (The Message) After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”   How many times have you heard Jesus say these words to you?  What things gain ground unexpectedly in your life, making it necessary for the Lord to question your wholeheartedness?  How easy is it for you to honestly and humbly respond?  It happens in different stages of life.  Somehow we get busy and Jesus asks for a…

John 21:12 (NLT) “Now come and have some breakfast!” Jesus said.  The invitation to eat was  “a call to the resumption of that fellowship which His death had broken.”  The fact that He ate with them would strengthen the conviction that He was really with them.  Later Peter referred to it in his preaching (Acts 10:41).  Jesus wanted them to know that personal contact with Him was possible after the resurrection.  When we face a near death experience or a…

John 21:3 (NLT)  (Jesus) called out, “Fellows, have you caught any fish?”  The disciples responded to the overwhelming perplexities of the happenings in Jerusalem by withdrawing to Galilee and engaging in the rugged joy of hard work.  The danger was that they might forget the life into which Jesus had called them: I will make you fishers of men (Matt. 4:19).  So Jesus appeared on the shore and repeated a familiar miracle (Luke 5:1-11).  John instantly recognized what had happened,…

John 21:3 (The Message) Simon Peter announced, “I’m going fishing.”  The rest of them replied, “We’re going with you.”  They went out and got in the boat.  They caught nothing that night.   With all the blur of their last week in Jerusalem still fresh in their memories, the disciples withdrew into Galilee.  It had been a trying and confusing period of their lives.  Before He had died, Jesus had taught them more than their immature spiritual state could assimilate. …

John 14:16 (NIV) And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever…  “The provision for the disciples’ future included a new dynamic: the Holy Spirit. He would be their advocate—to make the reality of God convincing to all men in the same way that Jesus did to his disciples. He would provide a fellowship with God even closer than they had experienced in the physical presence of Jesus.” Open up to…

John 14:15 (NLT) If you love me, obey my commandments.   “Having assured the disciples that He was not deserting them but rather going before to prepare a place for them, Jesus proceeded to ask for their obedience.” Does the Lord have your whole heart? If so, you will obey Him. Love is the new motive for our lives; obedience to Him is the new standard for our activity.