Day one:
Reading: James 3:1-12
In march of last year, an oil tanker from Hong Kong named the Pacific Adventurer ran headlong into a tropical storm. The results were disastrous. From a leak in the ailing vessel, almost 250 tons of oil oozed across a 37-mile stretch of Australia’s Sunshine Coast. What’s more, 31 containers of ammonium nitrate broke loose and punctured the ship’s hull. The BBC reported how ‘environmental experts fear [that] the nutrient-rich fertilizer could cause [damage to] algal blooms, suffocate fish and kill natural habitats.’ What a wide swath of mayhem from one ship being tossed in a tempest!
Scripture often warns of the vast destruction that comes from small and overlooked places. We might think that ruin comes only from the sins that get the most attention: adultery, murder, injustice. For most of us, however, the temptations that undo us will emerge from more subtle corners. As James says, “We all make many mistakes” (3:2).
The write goes on to state that a small bit in a horse’s mouth will make it ‘go wherever we want’; and mammoth ships are turned by ‘a small rudder’ (v3-4). Nearer to James’ concern was the tongue, that small piece of flesh that has the capacity to do great good or harm. The tongue ‘praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God’ (v9).
Wise pastors and Bible teachers have taught us that blatant, abhorrent sins rarely arrive all at once out of nowhere. Usually, sins take root after we’ve given ourselves over to long patterns of disobedience as we harbor a heart chilled to God’s voice. Supposed ‘small’ sins do destroy us and others. As we start 2010, let’s make sure we don’t miss the little things that can bring us down. – Winn Collier (taken from Our Daily Journey)
Reflection:
-what small sins have you allowed to go unchecked?
-how might these small sins lead to destruction?
Day two:
Turning It Around for Good
“So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” – 2 Corinthians 12:7-9
With all due respect to Rabbi Kushner, God does allow bad things to happen to good people. He doesn’t cause them, but He doesn’t prevent them either. The world is free and God doesn’t very often step in and alter the fact that the effects of sin are visiting themselves randomly upon the creation. So God lets trials happen to the Christian just like He lets them happen to the pagans so that the superiority of the life lived in God can be demonstrated through our lives. The majority of the world is choosing not to worship God, but a few of us, by God’s grace, can draw down upon God’s promised resources to get us through.
God did not cause the horrible events in your life, but you need to embrace the fact that He allowed them. God could not make a world in which we are free and at the same time guarantee that everyone would choose Him. So the world is broken and bad things happen. But God promises that He will be with those who love Him. He will bring us through the fire, and we will come forth as gold.
God allowed Paul to suffer a “thorn . . . in the flesh.” Paul said that God allowed “a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Paul understood that God allowed this pain in his life for a reason. God allowed a demon to harass, or buffet Paul. The word buffet means to strike with a fist or beat. But God permitted it with a purpose: to keep [Paul] from being conceited.
God is so sovereign. He’s so much in control that even when Satan tries to ruin our lives, God takes the weapon that Satan wants to use to destroy us and turns it into a good thing. God says, “If you will lean hard on Me in the midst of this difficult time, I’ll take that thorn and make it for your good.”
We all have a thorn. We all have something that God has allowed into our lives that Satan meant for our destruction but that God has turned around to help us grow and change.
-James MacDonald
Day three:
Jesus Stands for You
“Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him.” – Acts 7:54-58
Get your arms around a really, really important truth. God is never more present in your life than when you are suffering. The harder the trial, the closer He moves toward you. Are you feeling crushed today? He is rushing toward you to stand beside you and help you.
Jesus Christ is an experienced sufferer. Lest you hold in your mind a picture of an anemic, weak Jesus, replace it with this: Jesus has His PhD in suffering. He has suffered like no other for your sin and mine. Not only does He identify with your suffering, but He is present with you in your suffering. First Peter 4:14 says, “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”
There’s a unique intimacy with Christ when you’re suffering for Him. It’s unlike anything else. Think of Stephen in Acts 7 when he was giving up his life for Christ. As the crowd began to stone him, Stephen “gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God (v.55).” If you’re a careful Bible student, you’d question, Why was Jesus standing? Hebrews makes such a big deal about how “he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (1:3).” Yet in this glimpse into glory, Stephen, at the moment of his greatest suffering, saw Jesus standing for him.
And it’s not just emotional support. As we’ve already seen, this new intimacy with Christ Paul describes as “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10, NASB).
Believe by faith that in the middle of your trials you are experiencing the fellowship of God’s presence that gives you new courage to not give up. I’m not going to lose my faith, God help me. I’m going to keep on. I hate this world, but I’m longing for heaven. I’m going to serve Him until I get there. I’m telling you—in those moments of faith, there’s a wave of grace that God rushes upon you. Sometimes I think I can feel His breath.
How do you keep this wave in motion? Keep your communication open with the Lord. I’m not talking casual prayers over the shoulder. I mean on your face before God – a posture that we’ve had too little of in our lives. And in that place, the Lord will meet you. If you will humble yourself, the Lord will be present with you. He is an experienced sufferer, fellowshipping with you.
God is never more present than when His children are suffering. Draw near. –James MAcDOnald
Day four:
One way
Reading: Acts 4:5-12
We live in a day of options and alternatives. Marketers know that people like choices. Just think of how many cell phone plans there are to choose from or how many cable television channels you can flip through.
But we worship and serve a God who says he is the one and only way. He doesn’t present a ‘build-your-own-way-to-salvation’ plan. The God of the Bible offers one way to eternal life – that’s it.
Scripture speaks right to this truth. There’s just one God. Deuteronomy 4:39 says, “Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord, he is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other.’
In addition to that, there’s only one way to this one God. Jesus says in John 14:6, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ There is one single way. One God, available one way through one name.
Renew your mind with this unchanging, eternal truth: God is about ones.
While we may want to have it our way, God requires we do it his way. Why? Reason 1: He is God and we are not. Reason 2: His plan is the most phenomenal plan of the universe. He is able to do ‘far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,’ Ephesians 3:20 says. But we must choose it.
God has grace for everyone who wants to get on his program, but he also has a hand of judgement for everyone who pursues an alternate plan. Second Chronicles 13:12 says, ‘O sons of Israel, do not fight against the Lord, the God of your fathers, for you cannot succeed.’
Are you among the followers of Christ on this one road to heaven? Jesus alone can satisfy your heart’s deepest longing and your life’s greatest need. Aren’t you tried of your own plan? –James MacDonald (taken from Our Journey)
Day five:
Thanksgiving
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he has redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south… He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.” – Psalm 107:1-9
Psalm 107 is all about thankfulness. Very specifically Psalm 107 repeats one verse four different times.
“O, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His wonderful works to the children of men.”
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Praise and gratitude are inseparable. Praise starts from the soles of our feet and comes up through the muscles and sinews and joints and organs of our bodies and it bursts from our throat. It’s with all our hearts that we give God thanks. It is not something shallow or frivolous, flippant or superficial. Gratitude is the deepest expression of the soul in love with God. And he says, “With all my heart I give You thanks.”
The original meaning of praise was “to give public acknowledgement.” It’s the thought of telling others about something that means much to us. Not the normal term for giving thanks.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not negative on gratitude. What really bugs me, though, is when people express their gratitude today, late in November and then return to their self-centered, dissatisfied, hopeless and pathetic outlook on life the other 364 days.
Gratitude is more than an annual ritual performed hastily before diving into the Thanksgiving meal. It’s more than a holiday decoration, more than a snappy word that rhymes with “attitude.” Of all the human emotions, gratitude is the most powerful. So powerful is gratitude, it can obliterate fear, hopelessness and doubt. Gratitude can heal a broken heart, slow the aging process and restore broken relationships. Gratitude creates hope and hope brings joy. It is in joy, not fear, that we find strength. –JAMES MacDonald
Reflection: -take some time to write out the many things you’ve to thank God for, for all He has done for you.
Day six:
Do I Wear the Marks?
“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” – 1 John 5:13-15
Are you a Christian? How do you know?
You’re not a Christian because you say you are anymore than you’re in Cincinnati because you know how to get there. Being a Christian is not about knowing how to become a Christian; it’s about knowing you are one.
If you don’t have a mane; if you don’t have sharp teeth; if you don’t have a long tail – you’re not a lion no matter what you say.
If you don’t have tires; if you don’t have a motor; and if you don’t have a steering wheel – you’re not a car no matter you say.
If you can’t carry a tune; and if you can’t hit a note; and if your singing doesn’t bless people – stick to the shower, because you’re not a soloist no matter what you say.
In the same sense, Christians have fruit; they have characteristics; they have evidence; they have identifying marks.
John said in 1 John 5:13, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” You can have the assurance that you’re saved. You don’t have to wonder – just ask yourself, “Do I have the identifying marks?”
The book of 1 John repeatedly explains the distinguishing characteristics of followers of Christ. No one has them perfectly, but look at your life and ask yourself if you’re increasing in these marks:
Am I loving more deeply? Not perfectly, but increasingly…
Am I obeying more faithfully? Not perfectly, but increasingly…
Am I living authentically? The Christian life is not a charade. I’m not wearing a mask. I’m not acting like I’m something I’m not. My heart is very tender to the Lord and He’s growing me. That’s part of being a real Christian.
When you see these marks in your life, and you know that you long to know Him more and be passionate about doing what pleases Him increasingly more in your life, then your heart swells with assurance. You belong to Him. –James MacDonald.
Day seven:
Answer the call
Reading: Ephesians 2:4-10
Every person who names the name of Jesus Christ has a threefold call on his life.
First, God calls us to know His Son Jesus Christ personally through faith. Responding to this call changes everything – our life, our purpose, our eternal destiny – but it’s not the whole story. God’s call doesn’t stop at conversion. Really it’s just the beginning.
God also calls you to follow Him. Jesus extends to us the same invitation that He did to the disciples on the shore of Galilee: “Come, follow Me.” This call to discipleship makes a place for you to walk and talk with the Lord daily; it’s an invitation to know and be known by the Lover of your soul.
But again, the call extends even beyond this to the call to serve Christ. Contrary to many people’s priority lists, working for God is not in the options column. No, He could easily do it. He calls us to leave the bench and join in the game because He wants to bless us. jus ask any faithful, fruitful follower of Christ, and they’ll tell you all about the joy of rolling up your sleeves and pouring yourself into the place He reserves for you to serve.
Ephesians 2:8-10 sums up our threefold calling thus: “By grace you have been saved through faith [the call to conversion]. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, … For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works [the call to service], which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them [ the call to discipleship].”
Obeying the call to know Christ, you’ll have the gift of eternal life. Obeying the call to follow Christ, you’ll fellowship with Jesus that brings increasing faith and joy. Obeying the call to serve Christ, you’ll experience the rush of investing in something greater than your life. It takes obedience in all three aspects to experience the abundant life Christ promises.
Reflection:
-what I learnt about God
-the insights, instructions or inspiration I’ve gleaned
-how I’m going to apply it






















