Upper Management

Then he said to Him, If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.' Exodus 33:15-16

Have you ever been told that you're different? I hear that one all the time, and sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad.

It's like, your wife makes a new recipe and you try it and she asks, What do you think?

And you say, Um, well, it's different! Or it could be more like, Wow, there's just something different about that person; I really like them.

We're supposed to be different, so it's important for us to understand what makes us different. Here, in our verses for today, we find our answer-what makes us different is God's presence.

More than that, Moses shows us just how important it is for us to have God's presence and to be different. He tells God, If your presence doesn't go with us, don't even bring us up from here. Don't even bother. In other words, I'm not going if You're not going.

That ought to be your heart. If You're not in, I'm not in. If You're not going, I'm not going.

To put this in perspective, remember what Moses was talking about here-he was saying that he'd rather spend the rest of his life in the barren wilderness in God's presence than continue on to the Promised Land without Him.

What are the dreams of your heart? What things have you pursued in your life? What goals have you aimed for and worked towards? Or, if you are in a place of transition like Israel was, where are you going? Is God going with you, or are these just plans you've made up on your own that you think you'll accomplish in your own strength?

Here's the deal, we need to be different, but what makes us different is God's presence. And we have the promise that He is always with us, so it is now simply up to us to live in such a way that we recognize His presence. This means that we live as Moses did, making sure that we not just do what God says to do, but to do it in a relationship with Him that is more important to us than anything else.

Prayer Lord God,

Thank You for Your presence in my life! Please forgive me for times when I have not made Your presence the most important thing, and help me to always look to You before I go anywhere. Let me not run off on my own, remaining with You, so that I may be known as Yours!

Amen

Your Ultimate Interior Designer

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 Ithink it is so fitting that Jesus was a carpenter when He was on Earth. Do you know why? Because He has always been a craftsman. In fact, He has been the maker of every single greatest masterpiece that has ever been made.

He is the one behind all the masterpieces that are so wonderful and amazing that we don't even put them on the same lists as the great achievements of men-masterpieces like the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon rainforest, the galaxies of the universe, and most of all, the crowning achievement of His craft-the human soul.

What has mankind made that can compare to the works of God? The Sistine Chapel? Sorry, but God actually made the people and angels that Michelangelo depicted on that ceiling-oh, and He made Michelangelo, too. The Golden Gate Bridge? Well, God made all the parts that went into it, not to mention the people who designed and built it.

It doesn't matter, whatever you come up with that man has made, it only serves to glorify God that much more because none of it would have happened without Him somewhere behind the scenes making it possible.

But it's not like this is a competition. And how sad for us if we start trying to compare things like this and miss the point of it all, which is that, amidst all the distractions of the things mankind has created, we-you and me-we are God's crowning creation.

Yet what so often happens is we become enamored with what we think we can build for ourselves in our lives instead of relying on our Creator, the Great Architect who still holds the original blueprints for our lives. He understands the design, the purpose, the abilities, and the potential that each of us has. And He has crafted all of those together into an incredible set of magnificent plans.

And what are His plans for? Our verses today tell us-His plans are for peace and not for evil, plans for hope and a future. Now, I'm sure that all of us today desire these things in our lives, yet if we pursue them according to our own designs, we will fall far short of them.

Only when we let God be who He is-the Great Designer of our lives-will we find these things we so deeply desire.

Prayer Lord God,

Thanks for reminding me that You really have good thoughts and plans for me and that I can trust You to make more of my life than I ever could! Please come and have Your way in me today!

Amen

The Only Life Worth Living For

After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illuminated with his glory. And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! Revelation 18:1-2

Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!

Despite this line from a commercial becoming a viral joke, the potential of falling down is no laughing matter to many senior citizens. What should be no laughing matter to any of us is the reality that Babylon is going to fall and it will never get up again.

What in the world am I talking about? I'm simply declaring the promises of scripture, that's all. See, Isaiah 21 and Revelation 14, 16, and 18 all proclaim that Babylon will fall. And because it's said so many times, we know that it's important.

So what is Babylon that makes this promise so important for us today? Well, Babylon is this city that just keeps coming up throughout human history. It gets its name from the Tower of Babel, which was built as a means of uniting all mankind against God. That's the foundation of this city.

It shows up again centuries later under King Nebuchadnezzar when it rose to great power and conquered most of the world, including Israel. It was a place of absolute wickedness that worshiped astrological gods for the sake of wealth.

It will rise again in the future as both a system and a city and will have authority over the whole world to once again unite mankind against God. It will chase all the desires of the world-wealth, fame, and power. It will wage war against God and those who turn to Him after the Rapture. It is the ultimate manifestation on Earth of Satan's rebellion that happened in the very beginning, declaring that he would rise up and be enthroned above God.

But here's the point: No matter how many times it rises throughout history, its destiny is already declared and determined. It will fall and it will never rise again.

Our choice today is which city are you going to live in-Babylon or Zion? One city is doomed for eternal destruction, the other is destined for eternal glory. The choice isn't hard, but it is a choice you need to make. I pray that you choose wisely.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

You really are my Lord today! I will bow my heart to no other city, system, or king. As I choose You today, please come and build Your kingdom in me!

Amen

The Ultimate Threshold

For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 2 Corinthians 5:2-4 What's your favorite place to shop? Or beyond that, what's the place where you wish you could shop, but you can't afford it? What if someone went there for you and got you the best clothes, the best coat, the best suit that the store has to offer?

Well, let me tell you that someone has already done this for you. His name is Jesus, and He has bought you clothes so wonderful that you can't find the like of them anywhere on earth. Here's the thing-once upon a time, in the beginning, Adam and Eve were naked, and they were okay with that. In fact, I think they were pretty much ignorant of it, because they were spiritually clothed. But when they sinned, their spiritual covering fell off and they then had shame in their physical nakedness. At first they had a good naked, but then they had a bad naked. A day is coming when we will all have the good naked again, being able to stand before God Himself fully clothed in Him and unashamed of our nakedness.

But God promises us more than that. He promises that we will be so clothed in Him that the mortality of our current bodies will be swallowed up in life! How's that for a word picture? Paul paints for us a picture of life so strong, so big, so powerful, and so complete that it swallows up the mortality, weakness, and slow decay of this body!

What is it in this body that you have longed to leave behind? What nagging injury have you had? Tired of headaches? Tired of stress? I'll tell you what, I'm tired of being bald! All of this is coming to an end. God has wonderful new bodies for us in Heaven and more beautiful clothes than you could ever imagine.

This is the life that is waiting for us-the life of Christ in Heaven.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You for Your promises of Heaven! Thank You that there is more to being Yours than just what I have experienced so far in this life. Please help me to live all You have for me in this life as I eagerly wait for all You have for me in Heaven!

Amen

A Better Finish

...And Jesus who is called Justus. Colossians 4:11

What's in a name? Well, you tell me. What nicknames did you have growing up? Differing from our family or given names, which we have from our parents, nicknames most often come from our appearance or our actions.

Consequently, nicknames become a brand over our lives that are hard to escape. We can only get away from them by changing our appearance or actions, which are two very difficult things to change. Nicknames represent the first thing someone notices about us, the way we are introduced to them, and become a defining aspect of our relationships.

Our verse for today talks about someone who had a nickname. His real name was Jesus, which was actually a common name in those days, but his nickname was Justus. Who knows why he was called Justus, whether it was because of something he did, or perhaps his own reverence for Jesus Christ caused him to change his name. Whatever the reason is, I think this verse gives us an interesting twist on nicknames.

It paints a picture for us of someone whose life is so full of Jesus that you could almost use the two names interchangeably. It's Justus, but it's really Jesus living through Justus. It's Jesus, who is called Justus; do you see?

I believe that Jesus has a lot of names. Don't misunderstand me-Jesus is the only name by which we can be saved-not in the name of Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, or any other name. What I mean is that we are the body of Christ, so our lives should be like Jesus disguised as us.

It should be Jesus who is called Bob, Jesus who is called Betsy, Jesus who is called Caden, Jesus who is called Lauren, Jesus who is called...your name.

Do you realize this is actually how we got the name Christian? Christian means, Little Christs, and it was a name given to early-Church believers who so lived like Jesus that the world gave them the same name that He had-Christ-ian.

So, what nicknames do you have? Maybe that's not the question we need to ask. Maybe we need to ask, is your name a nickname for Jesus?

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for being my example in life! I really do want my life to look like Yours, but I need Your help. Have Your way in me and make it true that You are Jesus, living through me.

Amen

The Sucking Sound of Greed

Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to go to you ahead of time, and prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously promised, that it may be ready as a matter of generosity and not as a grudging obligation. But this I say: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 2 Corinthians 9:5-6

What kind of life do you want? No, really, think about it. If money was no object and you had no limitations, what kind of life would you want?

Everyone will give you their opinions about your life and how you should live it. Fortunately for us, the Bible helps to filter out all these voices and build lives that we'll be glad to have lived.

In His Word, God advises us to choose quality over quantity. The world will scream at you, How much do you have? But God is screaming even louder, What kind of life are you living? What you have can't go with you when you die, but how you live your life determines your eternal reward, so what kind of life are you living?

That leads me to an important question: What's your greatest investment? Are you concerned first with what's happening on Wall Street, or in Heaven? Store up treasures in Heaven. Don't let greed rip you off, because the only way to store up eternal investments is to give. Give both regularly and irregularly-regularly as you tithe and irregularly whenever the Spirit prompts you to give above the minimum.

What really helps us in this is to keep things in perspective by establishing eternal values. Remember that, compared to eternity, your life on earth is immeasurably short. It is the most foolish thing we could do to live for what we can get here instead of what we can treasure up for eternity.

The Bible tells us that one day everything we've done in life will be tested by fire. We all have one life, but some people use their life to buy hay and some people use it to buy gold. When the trial by fire comes, the hay will go up in smoke, but the gold will only become more precious.

What's the point? The point is that we need to choose wisely how we live our lives, and a key part of that choice has to do with our money. Will we hoard it, spending it greedily on ourselves? Or will we give it generously as the Word tells us and the Spirit leads?

The choice is up to you, but choose wisely. You will reap the consequences of your choice for eternity.

Prayer Lord God,

Thank You for teaching me wisdom for how to live my life in a way that prepares me for eternity! I choose to listen to Your Word and follow Your Spirit as I give generously.

Amen

Women Drivers

The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven...And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man. 1 Corinthians 15:47,49

What are you teaching your children? I want you to think carefully, because the real answer is probably not the first one that comes to mind.

The first answer you think of is a list of the most common things you say to your children or what you tell them during intentional times of teaching. Perhaps you take the time to sit down with your children and open up the Bible with them, studying together what God says.

But if you are like most families that I know, these intentional times of teaching are few and far between. And for those who do not intentionally teach, then the saying holds true that our children learn more from what is caught than what is taught. They learn more from our actions than from our words.

So let's explore our actions today, and not just the ones you know you shouldn't be doing-any closet over-drinking, ungodly relationships, secret addictions, anger issues, or just plain apathy toward God. Let's explore the things you might not think of on your own, things that seem innocent and can be harmless enough, yet still have the potential to communicate a horrible lie-the lie that God can take second place in our lives.

I want you to think through a normal week. How do you spend your time? If you spend time in God's Word or in prayer, do your children know about it? Do you ever invite them into your private relationship with God to teach them to have one of their own? Is all your time spent on activities or television? Do you race from one thing to another, never slowing down enough to talk about Jesus and invest in His work in each other's lives?

Because the danger in our over-active lives is that we do a great job communicating that our children are important to us, yet accidentally teach through our demonstrated priorities that friendships or success in sports, academics, or arts is more important than hearts that wholly belong to God.

The eternal is forever, but these natural activities will end. Let's make sure our priorities are straight so that our children understand what is truly and eternally important.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

You are most important in my life! I'm sorry for any way in which I have failed to teach my children to have the same love for You that I have. Please help me to prioritize my life, both teaching and demonstrating what You mean to me so that You will mean as much and more to them.

Amen