Devotion
Be Perfect
Frances Taylor
Not easy to love our enemies, especially when the faults of our enemies are often being placed in front of us by well-meaning friends or the media! But who really is our enemy? Usually the term enemy refers to someone we fear and fear usually comes from a lack of knowledge. This isn't to say that there aren't people who have enemies, who have been threatened or harmed by others. There are countries that attack other countries and violence under any circumstance needs to be stopped. But I don't think that these are the enemies Jesus is talking about. Just because we disagree with the attitudes of others doesn't mean that we have the right to hate. The best way to deal with enemies is to pray for them. In order to end hate in this world, we need to replace it with love and the author of love is God. I wonder what would happen if the entire Christian world prayed for an end of violence and hate every day for a year. An interesting thought, isn't it! Perhaps all who are reading this today might make a vow to begin this Lent to pray each day, either in the morning or at night for an end of violence in our homes, our neighborhoods and our world.
Prayer
Lord of love, help us to spread that love in our world and eliminate the hate that causes such pain. Amen.
See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
Inspiration
To reject the truths taught in God's Word, spoken by his prophets and apostles and by Jesus Christ his Son, is a grave offense. In the days when Hebrews was written, there were still true prophets in the Church, speaking from God. Today, we have his written Word as our "prophet. " If a preacher preaches truly according to the Book, we are in a grave sin if we reject it.
Prayer
Help me, O Lord, to discern when your Word is being taught correctly and when it is not. Teach me to embrace your truths and love them. Help me to walk in them and meditate on them. Let me not sin in rejecting the plain teachings of the Bible. Amen.
Night Prayer
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Inspiration
Sin rules our lives until we accept Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. When we invite Him into our lives, our old sinful heart dies, and God creates within us a new one, where sin no longer rules our life; God does! Our thoughts and actions begin to change because we no longer desire a sinful lifestyle. We joyfully devote our lives to serving Him and inviting others to understand His promise of salvation.
Prayer
Dear Lord, we are sinners born again and recreated to live according to Your will. We are grateful for Your love and the peace we experience by abolishing our old sinful self. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
Devotion
Satan Has Been Defeated
Frances Taylor
Salvation and power have come with Christ and Satan has been defeated. Sin and death have been conquered by the actions of one man, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, both human and divine who came into the world to bring the Good News of salvation by living, dying and rising for us. As Christians we claim to believe this but our actions sometimes deny it. Unfortunately, people seem to resurrect Satan all the time. We allow him to lead us away from God, forgetting the way to the Father that is love, and giving in to Satan's path of hatred, anger, pride, lust, chaos and destruction.
Satan, of course, doesn't present these as bad things, he makes them seem attractive. He presents sin as goods to be desired, as things to make us happy or give us pleasure. It can be hard to stay on the path that leads to God when the world seems to be crowding us and pushing us off of it. How easy it is to forget the sacrifice that bought our freedom! Which of us ...
