Take Care against Being Tempted

Jesus' Fulfillment of Scripture
Jesus' Use of Scripture
Jesus Resists Temptation

Galatians 6:1-5

The Message

Nothing but the Cross

6 ^1-3 Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.

^4-5 Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.

 
For Reflection

Live Creatively, be supportive.
Live Creatively, be humble.
Live Creatively, be forgiving.
Live Creatively, share burdens.

Live Creatively, work for justice.
Live Creatively, know yourself as a child of God.
Live Creatively, commit to the will of God.
Live Creatively, embrace the responsibility of your rebirth,

                           of your transformation,

                           of your evolving reconciliation to God.

LIVE CREATIVELY!

 

Pray

to live creative lives, to build rather than destroy, to love, to up-lift, and to heal.

Keep Watching and Praying

Jesus' Fulfillment of Scripture
Jesus' Use of Scripture
Jesus Resists Temptation

Matthew 26:36-41

The Message

^36-38 Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane and told his disciples, “Stay here while I go over there and pray.” Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then he said, “This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.”
³⁹ Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, “My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”
^40-41 When he came back to his disciples, he found them sound asleep. He said to Peter, “Can’t you stick it out with me a single hour? Stay alert; be in prayer so you don’t wander into temptation without even knowing you’re in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there’s another part that’s as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire.”

 
For Reflection

We all, at one time or another, wish that our suffering would end. Perhaps, in those times more than any others, we need the comforting companionship of friends,  Sometimes, like Peter, we are unaware of the need others have for a friend who will just be there.  And also like Peter we fail at that task.  Showing up in this case is not just half the battle it is the whole war.

 

Pray

that you will be aware of those in your path who need someone close.  Pray that you will show up.  Pray for those who need the healing comfort of God's presence and the presence of supportive friends.  Pray for the courage of friends who stand with you and all who are suffering.

Testing What Is in Your Heart

Jesus' Fulfillment of Scripture
Jesus' Use of Scripture
Jesus Resists Temptation

Deuteronomy 8:1-16

The Message

8 ^1-5 Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.

^6-9 So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
¹⁰ After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
^11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,

the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness,
those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.

For Reflection

Each day we are confronted with new challenges.  Each day we are pressed into making judgments about our actions.  Each day we are witnesses to the Holy Spirit.  Each day we are hallowing God's name.  This daunting task is a privilege to suffer in the name of God.  This task is one we take on by free will.  This task requires that we remember who we are in the site of God.

 

Pray

Our Father who art in heaven, give me the courage, compassion and strength to hallow your name.  Pray that you will be an obedient, faithful steward in the Kingdom of God.

We Have Seen His Glory

What the Prophets Foretold
Jesus and the Davidic Covenant
From Suffering to Glory

John 1:10-18

The Message

^9-13 The Life-Light was the real thing:
    Every person entering Life
    he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
    the world was there through him,
    and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
    but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
    who believed he was who he claimed
    and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
    their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
    not blood-begotten,
    not flesh-begotten,
    not sex-begotten.

¹⁴ The Word became flesh and blood,
    and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
    the one-of-a-kind glory,
    like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
    true from start to finish.

¹⁵ John pointed him out and called, “This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.”

^16-18 We all live off his generous bounty,
        gift after gift after gift.
    We got the basics from Moses,
        and then this exuberant giving and receiving,
    This endless knowing and understanding—
        all this came through Jesus, the Messiah.
    No one has ever seen God,
        not so much as a glimpse.
    This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
        who exists at the very heart of the Father,
        has made him plain as day.

For Reflection

This is the story of God's passion for reconciling human kind to himself and to each other.  Believe and respond in confession, repentance, obedience, praise and thanksgiving.

Pray

Kneel before God.  Pray prayers of confession, repentance, obedience, praise and thanksgiving.  Pray to serve God.

Servant of All

What the Prophets Foretold
Jesus and the Davidic Covenant
From Suffering to Glory

Mark 9:30-37

The Message

^30-32 Leaving there, they went through Galilee. He didn’t want anyone to know their whereabouts, for he wanted to teach his disciples. He told them, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed to some people who want nothing to do with God. They will murder him. Three days after his murder, he will rise, alive.” They didn’t know what he was talking about, but were afraid to ask him about it.

So You Want First Place?

³³ They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he asked them, “What were you discussing on the road?”

³⁴ The silence was deafening—they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest.
³⁵ He sat down and summoned the Twelve. “So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.”
^36-37 He put a child in the middle of the room. Then, cradling the little one in his arms, he said, “Whoever embraces one of these children as I do embraces me, and far more than me—God who sent me.”

For Reflection

Even the disciples didn't get it!  They did not understand that the death and resurrection of Christ would put an end to the common understand of power.  The way was not about power, but rather, control --control of one's self in ways that would avoid being seduced by power, in service to the Kingdom of God and as dependent on God as a child is dependent.  Nurturing as one would nurture a child.

Pray

pray that you will not seek power and position to enhance your vision of who you think you are.  Pray, rather, that you will humble yourself in service to the living God, seeking peace compassion and justice.

A Man of Suffering

What the Prophets Foretold
Jesus and the Davidic Covenant
From Suffering to Glory

Isaiah 52:13-53:6

The Message

It Was Our Pains He Carried

^13-15 “Just watch my servant blossom!
    Exalted, tall, head and shoulders above the crowd!
But he didn’t begin that way.
    At first everyone was appalled.
He didn’t even look human—
    a ruined face, disfigured past recognition.
Nations all over the world will be in awe, taken aback,
    kings shocked into silence when they see him.
For what was unheard of they’ll see with their own eyes,
    what was unthinkable they’ll have right before them.”

53 Who believes what we’ve heard and seen?
    Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this?

^2-6 The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
    a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
    nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
    a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
    We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
    our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
    that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
    that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
    Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
    We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
    on him, on him.

For Reflection

What more evidence do we need to understand the gravity of our sin?  When I, in my mind's eye, look broadly at the last week of Christ's life, the meaning of his murder is inescapable.  To look on God suffering on the cross because we were too fearful to give up self-centered for God-centered lives is the essence of the separation that God's overture to reconcile seeks to resolve.

Even today we distort the nature of sin and God's will to suit our needs; too fearful to go against the cultural grain.  It is the eternal struggle between the selfish and the selfless, the fearful and the fearless, the reconciled and the unreconciled, those enslaved to the dominant culture and those who fear God and, therefore, are free from the seduction of the dominant world culture.

Pray

Sit silently and meditate on the life, death and resurrection of God in Jesus Christ.  See yourself as one of those who called for the crucifixion -- see yourself as one who wept at Christ's death.  See yourself meeting the resurrected Christ. Offer your grief and sorrow to God.  Pledge yourself to a God centered life seeking the peace, compassion and justice violated by ignorance and the seductive power embedded in the cultures of our world.  Pray for the advancing Kingdom of God.

The Completion of God's Plan

What the Prophets Foretold
Jesus and the Davidic Covenant
From Suffering to Glory

Job 23:8-17

The Message

^8-9 “I travel East looking for him—I find no one;
    then West, but not a trace;
I go North, but he’s hidden his tracks;
    then South, but not even a glimpse.

^10-12 “But he knows where I am and what I’ve done.
    He can cross-examine me all he wants, and I’ll pass the test
        with honors.
I’ve followed him closely, my feet in his footprints,
    not once swerving from his way.
I’ve obeyed every word he’s spoken,
    and not just obeyed his advice—I’ve treasured it.

^13-17 “But he is singular and sovereign. Who can argue with him?
    He does what he wants, when he wants to.
He’ll complete in detail what he’s decided about me,
    and whatever else he determines to do.
Is it any wonder that I dread meeting him?
    Whenever I think about it, I get scared all over again.
God makes my heart sink!
    God Almighty gives me the shudders!
I’m completely in the dark,
    I can’t see my hand in front of my face.”

 
For Reflection

One of the keys to Job's persistent faith in a loving, compassionate, and healing god is his constant seeking to find God.  Our faith is strengthened by our search for the living God.  Even though it seems we are completely in the dark our search for truth in God is discovered.  Bit by bit our understanding improves.  Bit by bit we accept the grace of God.

 

Pray

that you will never abandon the search for the Living God.  Invite each new understanding to alter your life.  Pray that you will evolve into the center of God's will.