The Heart of the Issue

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”-Proverbs 4:23-

What is your “heart”? In science, we know that it’s the blood-pumping organ that makes the rest of the body run. It doesn’t think; it doesn’t feel. But in Hebrew culture, the heart was seen differently. It was a metaphor for the center or the core of a person’s personality. It was the spiritual hub, and one’s life flowed from its orientation. Everything flowed from the heart — not only blood, but personality, motives, emotions, and will.
In Hebrew, the word for “heart” means “the kernel of the nut.” Your heart reflects your true identity. Understanding this concept helps us realize why “guarding the heart” is so important. We recognize it as the source from which our thoughts, feelings, and actions flow.
Imagine the futility and frustration of trying to clean a downstream section of a creek, when all the while a garbage dump up at the creek’s source is continually polluting it with load after load of filth. Sure, you could go and clean every day, but it would be like pushing a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down again.
How much of your life do you spend dealing with the visible garbage downstream, rather than what produces it? It’s easy to focus on “behavior modification,” just picking up bits of trash here & there as we see them. But that only addresses the symptoms. It’s a quick-fix methodology for a long-term issue. It’s like a bandage for your elbow when the issue is your heart. It’s not that addressing behaviors can’t yield positive results; it’s simply that the heart of the issue is an issue of the heart.
We need to learn to hike upstream, with the Holy Spirit as our guide, to remedy the issue at the source. It’s a staggering commitment, but it will be worth the extra effort.

Pursuing Today
Do some serious reflecting on these questions as a kind of “spiritual heart test”: What disappoints you? What do you complain about the most? Where do you make financial sacrifices? What worries you? Where do you go when you’re hurting? What infuriates you? What are your dreams? Memorize God’s promise: “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).

It’s Not Too Late

“Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
-1 Corinthians 15:58-

We all want to be difference makers — not space takers or time wasters. But if we’re honest, most of us say, “It’s too late now; I’m too far down my career path; I’ve made too many bad choices; I’m too old; I burned those bridges a long time ago; I’m carrying too much baggage; I can’t break these habits; There’s no way to hit rewind or click delete; It’s too late now.”
You may never have felt called to the mission field, but you may feel that you had some kind of opportunity and you missed it. When you sensed that God wanted you to make a difference in your neighborhood, you failed to reach out. You once made a genuine effort to meet your neighbors and learn their names, but now, many of them have moved away, and it would be awkward to start over with the ones who haven’t. You believed that God wanted you to be a spiritual leader in your home, but you felt inadequate. Now, you see your children making bad decisions, walking away from their faith, but they’re out of your home and it’s too late to go back and fix your mistakes.
You don’t know how to push the restart button. And like most people, not knowing what to do means you default to doing nothing. You find yourself just sitting at home.
But, it’s still not too late with Jesus. It’s not too late to have a fresh start. Look at the apostle Paul, who used to be Saul, the Chritian-killer. If it wasn’t too late for Paul, it can’t be too late for you and me to surrender to Jesus and then make a difference. It’s not too late to quit living accidentally and start living on purpose.
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, un-believing heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’ ” (Hebrews 3:12-13).

Pursuing Today
Name 1 or 2 things you wish you would have done differently in your life. What career would you have chosen? What opportunity would you have taken advantage of? Can you think of a time when you sensed God calling you to do something and you ignored it? Write out a prayer asking Him what to do and how. And “if you hear God’s voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:15). Write down what you will do today. Take that first step. DO SOMETHING!

25 Days of Pursuing

It started with a decision to follow. A response, really, to Jesus’ invitation to follow Him. To get to know Him and to be fully known by Him.
But you can’t follow Him completely unless you’re willing to leave some things behind. “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves,” Jesus said (Matthew 16:24).
And now, at this point of our journey together, we’ll focus on pursuing Jesus. A pursuit is an activity with a specific goal and end game. It carries the idea of living on purpose. We demonstrate our commitment to Christ by giving our lives to His mission. We begin to see people as He saw them and to love them with His love. We live by kingdom priorities and principles. We engage in meaningful relationships and make a difference in our communities. We meet needs and serve others, not because it’s a civil duty or a social obligation, but because it is the way Jesus lived.
Remember this: “Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6).

A Prayer of Denial

God, I see that in becoming like Jesus, I have to lose more of me, and eventually lose all of me, because only then will I discover the real life You have for me. I know that letting go of me and living for You is better, so much better. It’s just hard. I’m comfortable with me. I’m selfish. I want what I want. I am demanding. I act entitled so easily. I twist motives so I seem really ambitious instead of conceited. My whole day can revolve around my wants, and then I’ll pretend that it didn’t so it looks like I denied myself. I am not comfortable in denial.
In my honest moments, though, I know it’s better, so I have big hopes for letting go of myself with this prayer. I need You. Will you unravel my layers of selfishness? Will you re-align my deepest motives? Will you empower me to say yes and no to the right things? You say that I can deny myself because Your Holy Spirit lives in me. He’s powerful. I believe You. I say yes to following Jesus, so I say yes to dying to myself.
Please God, may the entitled, wanting, comfortable, demanding, self-absorbed me, become less and less so I am eventually completely lost in You.
AMEN.

Sacrificial Living

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”-John 15:13-

You hear about them occasionally: real-life heroes who sacrifice themselves for others. They pay the ultimate price by giving up their very lives. A soldier on the foreign battlefield. A firefighter rushing into a burning building. A concerned passerby who steps into harm’s way. The stories become legends. Monuments are built with pride. It’s the stuff greatness is made of. Some of their names we know and remember; others died in obscurity. Still, they are heroes just the same.
Hebrews 11 has come to be known as the “faith chapter” of the Bible, listing mighty heroes of old like Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We read about Joseph and Moses. We see recognizable names like Gideon, Samson, and mighty King David.
Then we read about others. Faceless people whose names we may never know, but heroes nonetheless. We read about how they “were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated” (Hebrews 11:35-37). And then we read this short commendation: “The world was not worthy of them” (vs. 38).
I don’t know all that Jesus will ask of you as you follow Him. I don’t know what denying yourself will look like in your lifetime. Forsaking pleasure, sure. Letting go of recognition and applause, quite possibly. Denying god’s of lust and power? Certainly. Laying down your very life? Perhaps, I don’t know. But I do know this: If your life comes to that, your sacrifice will be worth it. And one day, when Jesus returns, you’ll be counted among those who triumph over the accuser, who “did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (see Revelation 12:10-11). And Jesus Himself will commend you. Well Done.

DENYING TODAY
You don’t have to read too many headlines to know that Christians around the world are being persecuted for their faith. Pray today for our persecuted brothers and sisters. Pray that they will sense God’s presence and feel connected to the greater body of Christ. Pray for their boldness to make Christ known. Pray that they will forgive and love their persecutors. Pray that they will rejoice in suffering and be refreshed through God’s Word and grow in their faith. Pray that they’ll be strengthened through the prayers of fellow believers. And pray that they’ll experience God’s comfort when their family members are killed, injured, or imprisoned for their witness. (Consider visiting the “Voice of the Martyrs” website, www.persecution.com, for more information regarding the persecuted church.)

Chasing After the Wind

“Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” . . . All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear it’s fill o hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. . . . I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.-Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 8-9, 14-

Have you ever wondered why so many people are bored today, during an age of technological wonders, of over 200 TV channels? Science writer, Winifred Gallagher believes that boredom is largely a recent problem that is absent from many other cultures. She describes a Western anthropologist who has studied the bushmen of Namibia for years and has become fluent in their language. He has attempted over the years to come up with an equivalent word for “boredom” in their language, but there is a disconnect; they don’t understand the concept. The closest they can come to it is tired. Our word boredom, didn’t appear in English until the Industrial Age — about the time modern entertainment began to evolve.
Wise King Solomon may not have had a word for boredom, either, but he portrayed it well with words like meaningless and vanity — “a chasing after the wind.” Go outside and take 3 minutes to chase the wind. Go ahead. Are you back? How’d that go for you? What do you have to show for it?
Solomon made a relentless pursuit of pleasure and entertainment. He denied himself nothing. He enjoyed comedy and laughter, parties and projects. And at the end of it all, his conclusion was that it was all meaningless. He seems to say, “It just wears me out.”
Christian writer A. W. Tozer observed that the more vibrant our inner lives are, the less we need from the outside — that is, the more active we are in mind and spirit, the less we need to fall back on external media and other input. The apostle Paul put it this way: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:1-2). We were made for God, and until He is our greatest pleasure, all the other pleasures of this life will lead to emptiness.

DENYING TODAY
Think about these revealing questions: What are your favorite forms of entertainment? Where and when have you exhibited the most passion and excitement? What kinds of entertainment media have you found to be the most addictive? Decide now that the next time you feel bored, instead of turning on the TV or picking up your smartphone or tablet, you’ll do something to renew your mind. (Here’s a hint: Worship and the Word are both good places to start.)

Whining or Worshiping?

“Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure children of God, without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” (Philippians 2:14-15)

Observation: A complaining spirit infects our everyday environment. At work, at home, on social media, it can be contagious. Your candidate doesn’t win the election, so you blame the other party for all of society’s woes. Your team doesn’t win the tournament, and the referees were biased or the coach was incompetent. Your kids don’t clean up after themselves. Your husband is insensitive. Your job is too demanding and the pay isn’t fair. Your lunch wasn’t prepared correctly. The winter was too long, but then the heat of summer comes too soon. My guess is that while reading these examples, you found yourself easily agreeing, maybe even jumping to your own list of complaints!
Even God’s people can easily slip into a complaining attitude, because, after all, it’s not really a sin, is it? Complaining sure seems relatively harmless compared to murder, adultery, or theft. Grumbling now and then doesn’t affect others like lying or jealousy.
But what we complain about reveals what really matters to us. Our grumbling has a way of exposing where our hearts are centered. Whining, in many ways, is the polar opposite of worshiping our Lord. Worship is when we glorify God for who He is and acknowledge what He has done for us, but whining is ignoring who God is and forgetting what He has done for us.
So, Paul says, in effect, You want to be blameless? You want to live a pure life? You want your life to shine like a bright star on a cloudless night? Then don’t grumble. Don’t argue or complain. Instead of whining, try worshiping.

DENYING TODAY
You won’t be able to do this without God’s help, but just for today, make this commitment: As a follower of Jesus, do everything without grumbling or complaining. When you are tempted to whine, turn it into a moment of worship. When tempted to complain, respond instead with thanksgiving. Read a psalm, pray a prayer, turn up the worship music, and thank God for all that He has already done for you. (For a further challenge, try this for a week. Enlist a few close friends or family members to try it with you and hold you accountable.)

The Time Crunch

Our days are like identical suitcases – all the same size – but some people can pack more into them than others.

Everyone receives an equal supply of time. The only difference between us is in the way we invest it. Each week brings us 168 golden hours. We spend approximately 56 hours for sleep and recuperation. We spend approximately 24 hours for eating and personal duties. We spend approximately 50 hours for earning a living.
We have approximately 38 hours left to spend just as we wish. But how do we spend them?
Recreation
Family
God and Church
Education
Physical Fitness

Five hours a day – 38 hours a week X 52 = 1976 hours each year!
Nearly 2000 hours a year, 10 years = 20,000 hours!

The heart of time management is your willingness and ability to maximize God’s gift of time, not hyperventilating with calendars, clipboards, and stop-watches.

God has given us the precious gift of time, of which we must be good stewards. The management of time must be our #1 priority. Without some organization of our day, it will waste away without purpose, and drain away without accomplishment.

Two Foundational Biblical Principles For Time Management:

Principle #1 – Realize that you have enough time to do all that God wants you to do.

Read Matthew 6:30-34.
Too much to do? Not enough time? Seek God’s kingdom and righteousness first; that will set your priorities straight. If you truly can’t get everything done, perhaps you are doing some things that God doesn’t need you to do! The key is to say yes to the right things, which is why we must always seek God first.

Principle #2 – Come apart & rest or you’ll come apart.

Following John the Baptist’s beheading:
Read Matthew 14:13.

Following the feeding of the 5000:
Read Matthew 14:23.

The best remedy for a schedule that is out of control is to get alone with God and practice principle #1.

My Time With God

Preparation Time
Read Ecclesiastes 3:11-12.

Check the areas of time that you struggle with the most, and make a note as to why:
( ) Time at Work:
( ) Time With Family:
( ) Time With God:
( ) Time With Friends:

Waiting Time
During your waiting time, let God…

Love You.
“God I feel your love today, and thank you for the gift of time.”

Search You.
“God, you have permission to reveal any poor usage of time in my life.”

Show You.
“God, is there anything that I need to know as I enter this day?”

Confession Time
Read Ecclesiastes 1:14.

Confess the areas in which you have wasted God’s precious gift of time:

Bible Time
We can never pray out of God’s will when we pray God’s Word.

…Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 slowly a couple of times.
…Close your eyes and allow a main truth to surface in your heart.
…Pray the Scripture and allow God to minister to you.

Meditation Time
After praying the Scriptures, write down the thoughts that God has impressed upon your mind:

Intercession Time – Praying for Others
Begin this time with a prayer of blessing and thanksgiving for the people for whom you will now intercede. Pray that God would give them insight to their own stewardship of time.
Name Request

Petition Time – Praying for Yourself

How to Petition God Properly
Talk to Him about the “little things”
Be honest with God
Pray “Thy Will Be Done”

Prayer Requests

Application Time
The smallest obedient act is better than the greatest intention.

Q: What is the main thing that God has impressed on me today?

Q: What am I going to do about it?

Steps To Take In My Obedience to God This Week:

My Goal: To implement the above steps in the next 7 days.

Faith Time
Faith is our positive response to what God has said. Spend a few moments praying through your eyes of faith. Tell God the positive things you see happening because of His goodness!

Praise and Thanksgiving Time

Praise God by recognizing WHO HE IS!
Thank God by recognizing WHAT HE HAS DONE!

This Week’s Memory Verse (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

This Week’s Time Alone With God

Monday – This Lesson

Tuesday – Identify your main time wasters.

Wednesday – Talk to God about His priorities for your life.

Thursday – Meditate on John 17:4.
(How could Jesus have been finished? There were still the blind, the lame, the sick, and the unconverted! He knew His mission and He had finished,)

Friday – Review your memory verse (Ecclesiastes 3:1),

Slow Down And Fast

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:16-18)

I grew up going to potluck dinners. If the term potluck is unfamiliar to you, think of it as the “white elephant gift exchange” concept applied to church wide fellowship dinners. It’s a meal where each family brings something to eat and sets it out on the table for everyone to share. You never know what you’re going to get. A lot of it is not that desirable, like the Jell-o salad that consists of leftovers such as beets, tuna fish, Spam, Velveeta cheese (which isn’t cheese), and peanut butter mixed together with Jell-o. Or the marinated carrots that someone always brings. I always begged my mom to take something good, like a bucket of chicken or her Cherry/cream cheese dessert. I remember many church events that centered around these meals. But I can’t remember a single one that celebrated fasting.
To fast is to voluntarily abstain from food for spiritual purposes. But fasting has been neglected in the church for a long time. When was the last time you heard a sermon about it? (Maybe the church is fasting from fasting. I don’t think that counts.) It is mentioned in the Bible as many as 77 times, and although God does not command us to fast, Jesus seems to assume that we will. (Notice that He says “when,” not “if.”)
Fasting is not the same as a crash diet. It’s goal isn’t a “quick cleanse” or rapid weight loss. It is not meant to make us appear more spiritual to others or look better in the sight of God. Instead, it is an expression of grief over loss or sorrow for sin. Fasting displays mastery over our bodies and tangibly demonstrates our dependence on God. For thousands of years, God’s people have fasted to empower their prayers or to ensure safety. In the New Testament, believers fasted to seek God’s guidance. Jesus Himself, fasted 40 days and nights in the wilderness before setting out on His public ministry.
Fasting simply brings us closer to Him. By denying ourselves what our bodies often crave the most, we dedicate our entire worship in love to the God who sustains us.

DENYING TODAY
Privately declare a fast — not in order to fit into your skinny jeans or swimsuit, or even as a test of your discipline. Fast for the express purpose of spending time with God. Choose a water-only fast for one day or three days, or fast from specific foods for the next week or two. Pray that you will have a greater hunger for God and His Word than for the food of this world.

Soul Food

“Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”-1 Corinthians 10:31-

Eating is good. (Did I just hear an “Amen”?) Yet every gift God gives us can be twisted into a lure to pull us away from Him.
The gods of food work overtime in the United States. You walk into a restaurant, an environment filled with stimulating sights and smells. The host hands you a menu so thick it has to be divided into chapters, illustrated with mouthwatering pictures. Nobody goes into such a place simply for bodily sustenance. It’s all about satisfaction, isn’t it? We are looking for a little slice of heaven. In fact, we seem to invoke heaven or spirituality quite often where food is concerned: “This cake is heavenly,” “This pie is out of this world,” “soul food,” “angel food cake,” “nectar of the gods.”
Food can be just as much a god for people who would never eat anything except organic health foods. Some people build their lives around diet & exercise, obsessed with outward appearance and enticed to worship their own image.
Whether you eat to indulge or eat to be healthy, either way, you can be drawn into serving something other than the God who created the food itself. In the Scriptures, food is always a gift from heaven. God Himself showed Adam and Eve the great bounty of good things He had prepared for them to eat. He designed us to enjoy eating, not simply to eat as a matter of sustenance. He created a vast spectrum of foods and flavors. He even tells us, “Go, eat your food with gladness.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7).
But we’ll never be fully satisfied until we find our satisfaction in Him. Jesus calls Himself “the bread of life” (John 6:35). And when we come to Him, we’ll never go hungry; when we believe in Him, we won’t thirst again. Even though we can’t see it, He is the food we’re really looking for.

DENYING TODAY
Next time you sit down for a meal, say grace with fresh appreciation for what God has provided. Deny food power over you; it can’t assuage your guilt, and it won’t provide any lasting comfort. Instead, acknowledge that God Himself has provided everything we’ll ever need — physically and spiritually — and be grateful.