New Weekly Devotions…

As I get started in my new ministry at the West Wyomissing Chapel, I plan on getting into the routine of writing out a 5 day personal devotions booklet that will help students look deeper into whatever we are studying at Thursday night youth group. So, whether you are part of the youth ministry at the Chapel or not, I hope you find these Bible studies helpful. If you’ve never had a personal Bible study time or you’ve been doing it for a while,  feel free to check out the directions that are meant to help you get the most out of your devos time!

Instructions to get the most out of your daily devotions:

 (1) Be consistent. Choose a time and stick to meeting with God everyday!

 (2) Open up your quiet time in prayer asking God to help you understand what you are reading and apply what you are learning to your life.

 (3) Read the verse or verses that are listed for your particular day a few times. I find that sometimes it is easy to miss something the first or second time I read it, but on the third time I notice something cool that I totally missed before.

 (4) Ask some basic observation questions about the verse(s): Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? I’ll place a few questions in each day to help guide you through the process. All the questions will help you to get a better idea of what the verse(s) is trying to teach you and how it connects with the verses around it.

 (5) Now it’s time for application. Has God taught you something new about Himself? Has He convicted you of a particular sin or an area of your life that you have not surrendered to Him? Are you motivated to shine your light in a dark world in a new way? This part of your devotions is so important! I encourage you to think about it, right it down, and maybe even tell a friend about it to hold you accountable to what God has taught you!

 Biblical meaning of the word ‘heart’: a metaphor for the human will & emotions.

 Day #1: Read Jeremiah 17:9

 Think of a time when you have been deceptive to another person…what was your goal? How did that hurt yourself and the other person?

 Would you agree or disagree that our hearts are good at being deceptive? Why?

 What do you think it means that our hearts are desperately sick?

 If we are unable to cure the sickness of our hearts, what other options do we have?

 What is the Bible’s solution to our heart sickness?

 Day #2: Read Ezekiel 36:26 – 28

God’s chosen people, the Israelites, had a sin problem, just like you and I. God knew that they weren’t capable to fixing the external sin problem (actions) on their own, so he took matters into his own hands and offered to fix the internal sin problem (wicked heart that produces sinful actions) give them a new heart, just like he offers to us.

 Why do we tend to automatically try to fix external problems without even considering the internal problems?

 Why do you think the Israelites had such a tough time living in a way that pleased God? Come to think of it, why do we have a tough time doing the same thing?

 Does God’s offer of giving us a new heart get you excited? Why or why not?

 How do we go about receiving the offer of a new heart? (Read John 3:16)

 Day #3: Read Psalm 119:11

 What does it mean to store up God’s word in your heart?

 How can that assist us in not sinning against God?

 Day #4: Read Galatians 4:1-7

 What problem or situation in life did we all have before God sent his Son?

 How did His Son do to repair that problem?

 Once the heart problem was repaired, what did God give us to help us walk in a relationship with him?

 Day #5: Read Matthew 5:8  

 We learned that the only way to obtain a ‘good’ heart is through trust in Jesus Christ, God’s Son, and what he did by dying on the cross for our sins and rising again. Once you have that ‘good’ heart, how do we go about keeping that heart pure?

 What are some things that we see or are involved in everyday that make our hearts impure?

 Why is it so difficult to recognize God’s work in our lives when we are cluttered by sin?

 What can you do or who can you lean on to fix that problem?

 

 

 

 

from my morning reading…

“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”

-Psalm 1

challenge for the new school year

So, the end of summer vacation for students is getting close (me too…my job changes quite a bit during the school year), so it’s time to consider the end of our youth group pool parties and get ready for the excitement of a new school year. On Sunday morning, I’ll be teaching the middle schoolers and senior high groups combined, so I’m going to use that opportunity to challenge them with the Great Commission and what it means for them as they gear up for a school year!

5 ways you can live out the Great Commission @ school this year:

(1) Love people like Jesus would

(2) Build intentional relationships where the Gospel can be shared

(3) Start a Bible study and/or prayer group for believer and not-yet-believers

(4) Invite people to youth group (especially those who aren’t connected to any other Bible-teaching churches)

(5) Be real – don’t put up an act!

Slip and fly…

Roadblock to the Great Commandment

Over this summer, the middle school and senior high youth groups at Brandywine Bible Church have been going through a series called “Don’t Waste Your Summer” based on the book “Don’t Waste Your Life” by John Piper. I’m liking it. It has been challenging and fun at the same time to take the heart of his message, which is to joyfully display God’s glory in every single area of our lives, and break it down into about 7 youth talks to be given throughout the summer months. Interwoven in those months was a mission trip to Kentucky and still in the near future we will be spending a weekday with the entire youth group and serve our neighbors by washing their cars, doing yardwork, and inviting them to our bbq in what we will call “An Unwasted Summer Day”. I’ll talk more about that in a future blog posting.

This week, we are continuing the series by looking at the Great Commandment and considering how unforgiveness can sabatoge our ability to obey God in loving Him and loving our neighbor, and essentially, wasting our summer. Let’s look at Jesus words as He gives this commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

The second part of this commandment  instructs believers that part of loving God with all of your heart is loving your neighbor as yourself. That verse has always been easy to wrap my mind around (as opposed to loving God who we cannot physically look at) since people are right in front of us, but I find it really hard to put into practice! Loving people, both believers and non-believers alike, can get kind of messy and sometimes we fall really short of the command that God sets before us. Piper especially challenges our attitude by asking a few tough questions in relation to other people: are you quick to find faults? do you hold grudges? do you have a tough time showing mercy? do you have a forgiving spirit?

John Piper gives Christians 2 motivations that we have to forgive our neighbors. One is to forgive just because He forgave us, which is Biblical. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32). He does suggest, however, that forgiving because God forgave us is not the main reason we should be forgiving other people. The main reason is that God’s forgiveness gives us God – essentially a relationship with Him not His gifts to us. It removes the obstacle of sin through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and gives us the opportunity to enjoy fellowship with Him. The joy that we experience through knowing Him and giving Him all the glory gives us the motivation to share our joy with other people by forgiving them in a selfless way. So, it’s not just the thought that God did something for us so we want to give it back to someone else (which is a worthy reason) but that we are so joyful and satisfied in our relationship with Him that we want to share it with everyone around us by being a forgiving person! Let’s get rid of the roadblock of unforgiveness and live in the joy that God meant for us to enjoy!

Youth miniStarZ

Ha ha…I enjoyed this one!

It’s a slow process

As I study Colossians 3, I am trying to get a good handle on the concepts of justification and sanctification so that I will be able to teach something insightful–or at least understandable, at some point . I do know the definitions of both words…justification is being declared not guilty by God b/c of the work that Christ did by dying on the cross for my sins…sanctification is the progressive growing into Christ’s image all throughout a lifetime. See, I know the definitions, but past experience tells me that teaching these words will take more than a definition if anyone is gonna remember what we studied one week later. So, the thing that really got my attention tonight was a quote in the notes of my NAS study Bible. This is what it said about sanctification: “Become in experience what you already are by God’s grace.” Simple, but very nice. God justified me at salvation and has a plan for me even though he knew: every mistake I would make, how slow I am to change, that sometimes I don’t even feel like being more like Him, the times I would rely on the ‘old self’ rather than the ‘new self’, and the list goes on. Who else besides God has that much patience? As human beings, when we ask someone to do something, we usually want some results, right? It is difficult to understand how God, who is powerful and all-knowing, will continue working with (or in) us even when we are not the quickest to respond to his love, mercy, and grace. Any thoughts?

A Closer Look at Jonah – Part 2

After getting angry about having to preach to the Ninevites, Jonah  finally obeys God and goes (this brings up another discussion about our attitudes matching up with our actions). Then, Jonah’s worst nightmare comes true and the people repent of their sin before God. So, God being the loving and merciful God that He is forgives the people.  Jonah 3:10says, “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” In chapter 2, God forgives and rescues Jonah for not being obedient. Now in chapter 3, God forgives and does not destroy the people of Nineveh. Jonah didn’t want these people to experience the same forgiveness that he had experienced. Here are some questions to get you thinking about Jonah up to this point in the story:

Do you think that Jonah had any trace of a good reason for being so mad?

What should have Jonah’s attitude been when the people of Ninevah responded the way they did (they repented of their sins) in chapter 3?

 What sin or sins do you think are leading him to feel this way?

 Are there any people in your life that you have placed in the “doesn’t deserve God’s forgiveness” category? What can you do to be obedient to God? What will need to change?

A Closer Look at Jonah – Part 1

Here are some thoughts I had on the book of Jonah that I came up with when I taught the book last year -

I’m starting to think that I’m not so different from this reluctant prophet. In case you don’t know the story…Jonah was a prophet who God told to travel to Ninevah so that he could warn the city to repent of their wicked ways and turn to the one true God, but he decided to jump on a boat going in the opposite direction to get away from God instead. At first you might think that Jonah would be more than willing to go, especially since God did send him personally and giving prophecy was his occupation, because both of these things are absolutely true. However, after I listened to the message online, I learned that Ninevah was even more wicked than I had ever imagined…These people would destroy cities along with men, women and children just to make themselves look great. The men of Ninevah even went so far as to showcase their evil work by hanging the skin of their victims on their city wall. These were indeed evil people. Jonah didn’t want to go to Ninevah because he was scared that these people would recognize and repent of their sin, then God wouldn’t inflict the destruction that he intended. To be honest, I’m like that a lot of times. When I see bad things going on around the world, I want to see people brought to justice and punished really badly, to the extent that it almost makes me feel a little better about the situation. The part that I’m not proud of is that many times I have no desire to see these people recognize and repent of their sins. I’ve read that Ninevah was located in modern-day Iraq…a country where we have seen plenty of evil come out of in recent years. God desires that evil people from this country repent of their sin and turn to Him. God is full of both justice and mercy and if people humble themselves by coming to Him, then He will forgive. The message that sticks out to me in the first chapter of Jonah is that as a person who already has a relationship with God, I need to ask Him to develop more of a heart of love towards sinners. Does anybody else ever feel this way?

Cliffnotes Classic – from 2 years ago

Clarification: When I talk about the past several weeks, I really mean 2 years + the past several weeks

For the past several weeks, our senior high youth ministry has been studying the book of I Timothy. Specifically, we read the section where Paul is encouraging Timothy, who happens to be a young leader in the church, to be an example to the older people in the church through his conduct, speech, love, faith, and purity. This week, kind of playing off that passage, we focused on what it would look like for a young person to live for God even when the results of acting in the right way are not so good or maybe even bad. So, we studied Genesis 39 to look at the life of Joseph and how he risked everything to stay righteous and pure before God when Potiphar’s wife made sexual advances towards him. Moving back a little bit in the story, Joseph was sold by his brothers to the Ishmaelites to be a servant. The Ishmaelites ended up selling Joseph to Potiphar, who was a high ranking official for Pharaoh. As Joseph served in Potiphar’s house, the Lord gave Joseph a lot of success, and this did not go unnoticed by Potiphar. Genesis 39:2-4 says, “The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.” Things didn’t start out so good for Joseph when his brothers sold him into slavery, but it seems like life is starting to get a lot better for this guy as he moves up the ranks in Potiphar’s house. However, when everything seemed to be going good, his boss’s wife messes the whole thing up by trying to seduce him while he is trying to get his work done. Check out Joseph’s response to her sexual advances in Verses 9-10 “…My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing against God? And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her.” On another occassion, Potiphar’s wife asks him to go to bed with her again, but this time she gets agressive and grabs his cloak to keep him from resisting. He decides to run from this situation, but as he breaks free, she rips off a piece of fabric from his cloak. Joseph is indeed a great example for us to follow as far as not attempting to take on tempation head-on but running the opposite direction from a bad situation. Good decision for Joseph, but the situation does not end there. He is about to face bad consequences for doing the right thing. Now, Potiphar’s wife begins screaming to deceive everyone in the house into thinking that Joseph was trying to rape her. Now Potiphar gets angry and throws Joseph in prison, which removes him from his great position in the household that he worked so hard to obtain. If you read ahead in Genesis, you will learn that Joseph ends up interpreting some dreams and reaching an even higher position of authority in all of Egypt, but we cannot overlook the bad situatin he ended up in for doing the right thing in Genesis 39. Here are a few principles that we talked about at youth group last night: First, running away from temptation is a very good option. Second, sometimes doing the right thing does not bring you praise or rewards. Actually, it may lead you to a difficult life situation. Third, choosing obedience to God is always the best choice becasue God is more than enough to take care of your every need. Having God’s favor far outweighs anything this world has to offer. And sometimes, such as in Joseph’s case, the Lord may reward your obedience with even more responsibility. Check out Genesis 39:21-23 “But while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him; he showed kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.”