DAILY DEVOTIONAL

DAY 1

Silent Signals- Job 33:13-29, John 5:25-29

Right now, there are invisible waves swirling around your head.
Television shows, radio programs, phone conversations and GPS
coordinates relentlessly bombard the world around you. Most of
them dissipate into the ground or pulse unnoticed into the empty
darkness of space. In the midst of all that noise, you can sit outside
and enjoy a quiet evening completely oblivious to the barrage. But
if you flip on a radio, television or cell phone, the silence suddenly
has meaning.

One of those signals swirling around your head right now is the
voice of God. It's not electronic. It can't be measured with
instruments or received by devices. Up to this point, you may not
have noticed God's voice, but it's there.

The book of Job is a strange story in the middle of the Bible about a
man who became angry with God when his life started falling apart.
Job accused God of not speaking, but Job's friend Elihu corrected
Job's perspective. "Why do you complain to him that he responds to
no one's words? For God does speak--now one way, now another--
though no one perceives it," (Job 33:13-14 NLT).

Elihu made a wise observation. God's always speaking, but we're

not always listening. He speaks directly and indirectly. He speaks
through dreams and through people. He speaks through pain and
through joy. He speaks through life and through death. He's always
speaking, and today he's talking to you. It’s really quite simple to
hear him. All you need to do is turn on the only receiver you have
that will pick up his signal -- your spirit.

When Jesus was confronted by the religious leaders of his time for
breaking their sacred rules, he responded with this statement. "And
I assure you that the time is coming, indeed it's here now, when the
Prayer
God, I now realize how you have been pursuing me my
entire life. I can now clearly see how much you love me,
and I am ready to give up everything to follow you.
Forgive my sins. Make me new. Be my savior. Amen.
dead will hear my voice--the voice of the Son of God. And those
who listen will live," (John 5:25 NLT).
Take a look at your life. Can you recognize any circumstances God
may be using to get your attention? Can you think of people God
might have placed in your life to help you hear his voice? Read
through the Bible passages in Job and John, and try to recognize all
the ways God has been speaking that you may not have given much
thought to before now.
Prayer
God, would you make your voice clear above the noise of my busy
life? Help me recognize the people and events that you’re using to
get my attention. Open my heart and my mind to understand these
passages from the Bible.
DAY 2
Parallels- Psalms 139, Ephesians 2:9-10, Judges 6:11-27
God can see out across all of time like waves on the horizon of
Heaven. He sees you -- every version of you. He sees the selfish
and selfless, wise and foolish. He sees your darkest shame and
proudest joy. He sees you in the present and the past just as clearly
as he sees you in the future.
In fact, he sees every possible version of your future -- all the
alternate versions of what you might become with different choices
and circumstances. He knows your greatest potential and the
greatest threats to your destiny. God exists outside of time and has
the amazing ability to see all these versions of you at once. The
good and bad -- the past, present and future -- are all intertwined in
his eyes.
We're accustomed to seeing ourselves as we are today. We assume
God sees us the same way, but God's feelings for you are like the
light from stars. When you appreciate the beauty of a starry night, it
can feel as if that moment were arranged just for you. But the light
from the most distant of those stars has been traveling for thousands
of years just to meet your eyes as you glance up.
Meanwhile, the nearest stars only had to shine their beams for a few
years to reach you at that same time. They're all part of an ancient
symphony God choreographed to reach you at that exact moment. It
may seem haphazard, but God tapped his baton to start the concert
long before your great grandparents were conceived.
Imagine living for another hundred years, and you're lying on your
back looking up at the sky watching the constellations take shape
early in the evening. That future celestial concert has already been
written, and it's speeding toward that future moment with you in the
backyard of a home you don't even own yet on a cloudless night at
that exact moment you will walk outside.
God's feelings for you are just as choreographed. Long
before you gasped for your first breath of earth air, and
before you ever read your first passages from the Bible, and
long before you did anything to deserve approval or
punishment from God -- he was writing the symphony of his
love for you -- all of you.
That's why when God's angel spoke to a frightened impotent
Gideon hiding in the winepress, he said "the Lord is with you,
Mighty Warrior." It wasn't a pep talk. He wasn't trying to
psych Gideon up so he would act boldly. God saw every
version of Gideon, including the future warrior who would
soon destroy the ungodly idols of his father and lead a bold
DAY 7
Hidden Treasure-
You've made it to the final section. Now, I want to offer you
the hidden treasure. It's buried amidst the hustle and bustle
of your life. It's covered up by the crisscrossing signals of a
busy world, but when you see it clearly for the first time its
value is undeniable.
Every human is full of sin and corruption. Even people who
have learned the art of self-discipline and self-sacrifice
cannot free themselves from the bondage of sin. It's part of
our spiritual DNA from birth. But God has drafted a story just
for you.
Perhaps your story includes a brief chapter where you spent
several days reading through a devotional Bible plan on your
phone and encountered the love of God for the first time.
Whatever your story, regardless of whether you're on the first
draft or the fiftieth, God is relentless.
God's son, Jesus, was so adamant about freeing you from
sin's bondage that he actually became sin and was executed
in order to satisfy the penalty against your life. But you have
to pick up the story there. It's your choice whether your story
gets published or discarded. Consider the cost, but also
consider the value of the trade. If you're ready to take the
next step, just pray this prayer to God today.
if you decide to become a Christ follower, life will change.
You will give up some things, some people, some habits and
some time. The people who successfully make the leap are
like those men in Jesus' parable -- those who recognize the
value in the trade and are willing to give up everything to
obtain it.
Jim Elliot, a famous missionary to Ecuador in the 1950s, said,
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that
which he cannot lose." God is offering to adopt you as his
child, pardon every sin you’ll ever commit and allow you to
live forever in paradise. No matter what you have to give up --
- that’s a good deal.
Prayer
God, I realize that following you may end up costing me
some temporary pleasures. Help me understand how
much I stand to gain by trusting you with my life.
charge with an underdog army to dispel the evil that had
plagued Israel.
If you ever intend to have a deeper relationship with God than
you do right now, you will have to learn to accept his
unconditional love. Don't bring your guilty presumptions.
Jesus saw all of your sins before he carried them on the
cross, and he suffered in spite of it all because his love for
you was established long ago.
Prayer
God, help me to understand the depth and complexity of
your love. You know more about me than I can
comprehend, and you still love me. Open my eyes so that
I recognize the little moments you choreographed just
for me.
DAY 3
Perfection Not Required-
Romans 5:6-11, John 3:16-21, John 14:6
When you first realize that God has orchestrated all of creation to
reach you with His message, it can be intriguing -- maybe even
exhilarating. Then, you remember just how imperfect you are.
That's a natural reaction when you start getting closer to God. He's
perfect.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is supposed to be "good news" -- that's
what the word gospel means. But the harsh truth is that we are
separated from God because of our imperfection. Our sin is like a
disease that leaves us in quarantine. Because of God’s perfection,
he cannot allow sin to go unpunished. Left untreated, your sin
disease will eventually land you in a place reserved for punishing
Satan himself. It’s called Hell -- a place of darkness, fire and pain.
The good news is that God’s perfection and holiness are equally
matched by his mercy and compassion. He doesn’t want a single
human to suffer in Hell, so he made a cure available. To satisfy the
penalty for our sins, he allowed his son Jesus to take punishment in
our place. In exchange, God offers us forgiveness -- a complete
pardon.
If you choose to become a Christ follower, you have to be equally
willing to acknowledge your deepest sins and accept his most
comprehensive forgiveness. The Gospel is a universal appeal to a
universally broken species. If you think you have something to
offer God that would make him more likely to accept you, just
forget about it. The very best any of us could manage would be
ridiculously insignificant and just as ridiculously unnecessary.
Since Jesus alone was capable of paying our penalty, he became the
only door through which we have access to God. Jesus told his
closest followers, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can
come to the Father except through me." His exclusive claim is bold,
but he backed it up by laying down his own life in our place.
One of my favorite quotes from the Bible to share with people is,
"God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us
while we were still sinners." Paul wrote that in his letter to the
Roman church surrounded by a pagan culture far from God.
The really scary thing about the limitless forgiveness of God is that
it leaves us all without an excuse. God has opened the doors of
Heaven to all of humanity. With such an open invitation, if we
choose not to accept it, we decline our only means of salvation.
There's no alternative. There's no back door. The front door is open
and the invitation has been issued without prejudice.
DAY 6
Trading Up- Matthew 13:44-46, Mark 10:17-31
In the thirteenth chapter of the book of Matthew, Jesus
shares a one-line parable about a man who finds a piece of
real estate that he just can't turn down. Somehow the man
discovers a field with a valuable treasure hidden inside.
Recognizing the value, the man hides the treasure again,
goes home, sells everything he owns and returns to purchase
the field. The treasure was worth far more than everything the
man owned, so he was willing to give up everything to
possess it.
Jesus follows up that story with another about a merchant
who bought and sold pearls. One day he came across a pearl
so perfect that he had to own it, so he traded everything he
had to do so.
Those two parables were just stories that Jesus used to
illustrate his teaching, but there was also an actual young
man who came to Jesus asking, "What must I do to be
saved?" He was not ready for Jesus' answer.
"Sell everything you have. Give the money to the poor, and
then come follow me."
The man walked away sad because he was wealthy. Giving up
everything you own is painful. Jesus doesn't require us to give up
our material goods in order to become his disciples, but he does
ask us to consider the cost of following him.
It seems strange that a God who knows everything is waiting
on us to decide which story we’ll choose, but that’s the fragile
nature of the world we live in. Horrific things happen every
day because God has given mankind the power of choice.
We can choose evil or good, action or inaction. Ultimately,
God already knows what you’ll decide, but that doesn’t nullify
your ability to choose.
How will your story end? Will there be a chapter where you
discover the forgiveness, peace and joy that is waiting for
you. Or, will it end with the sad irony of knowing that salvation
was standing just within your reach but you were reluctant to
reach out in the darkness and risk looking foolish?
Prayer
God, give me boldness to reach out to you. Help me to
make wise use of the choice you have provided me. I
want to live the best version of your story for my life.
A powerfully limitless God would like to consider you a friend.
You can ignore his invitation, but the door won't close as long as
there's breath in your lungs. You can be a rebel, but you don't have
the power to change his mind. He won't rescind his invitation.
Prayer
God, I know that I am far from perfect. Help me comprehend
your forgiveness and your plan for restoration. Jesus, give me the
courage to accept you as the only doorway to God.
DAY 4
Elaborate Deception- Luke 4:14-21,
The enemy of our soul has constructed an elaborate
deception that makes our present enslavement feel lavish
and our freedom like a sacrifice. It's difficult to set someone
free when they don't yet realize they're enslaved. First, the
veil over their reality must be peeled back so they can be
shown the truth.
That's the same challenge that Christians face today. We live
a world where our beliefs feel dated and empty. The world
around us blinds our eyes so that we can't see how short our
time is. We're building elaborate castles on the deck of a
sinking ship, standing back and admiring accomplishments
that will soon be pulled under the icy cold swells of time.
You may not feel like a slave. You might find the Bible difficult DAY 5
to decipher and religion hard to swallow. But there's
something inside that has you reading this. You may have
never felt comfortable in a church, but you just can't let go of Work in Progress-Philippians 1:6, Hebrews 12:1-2,
the idea that there's a force greater than yourself out there
somewhere that's directing all of this. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that Jesus is the
author and finisher of our faith. He's always been the pursuer,
and we are the objects of his pursuit. Not only has he
Thump.
pursued us, but he has been writing the story of our salvation.
Like scraps of paper on the floor of a fiction writer, some
Thump. Thump.
stories will be discarded and never experienced. But Jesus is
prolific, and he's comprehensive in his pursuit. There's a
Your heart's beating in your chest. You feel it, but you don't salvation story for everyone.
see it. That's where you are with God right now. You feel
something, but you have no context to interpret it.
He's already drafted your story, even the parts that haven't
happened yet. It's more than a story. You might think of it like
When Jesus taught in the synagogue of his boyhood home, a blueprint, an itinerary, or a plan -- God's plan -- for you. I've
he was handed a scroll of Isaiah's prophecies. He read a heard it so much that it sounds bogus.
passage about setting captives free and binding up broken
hearts. When he had finished reading it, he said, "The
"God has a plan for your life."
Scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day!"
Essentially, he was telling everyone that he had come to set
But He really does. I don't know everything that your plan
people free.
entails, but I do know it contains a moment where you choose
to accept God's forgiveness and become a Christ follower. If
His mission hasn't changed today. If there's a nagging
that's a moment you haven't lived yet, you have a choice.
thought in the back of your mind or a restless feeling deep in
your gut, keep reading. My hope is that your eyes will be
Fiction writers often write entire chapters that never make it
opened to the true reality around you, and that you'll see
into the final draft. Sometimes a writer will draft alternate
Jesus for who he really is... your Savior.
versions of a chapter. Only one will make it into the published
book.
Prayer
There are alternate versions of your story laid on God's desk,
God, I want to see you in a new way. Give me wisdom to
and he's waiting on you to see which one makes it into the
see past the deception to my true state. Regardless of
"published" version of your life. He's the author of your faith,
my previous experience with religion and faith, I want to
but he's also the finisher. In the Bible we read "that he who
know the real you.
began a good work in you will complete it."