Tag: Scripture

Converse with the Almighty

bible

Saturday’s Weekly Recap with Graysen Pack

This week we’ve walked through another six chapters of Proverbs and found words that, although written thousands of years ago, still speak to the persistent struggles of human existence.  Answers to guide us seek the wealth that God promises, to join God’s work as he defends the orphaned and poor, to earnestly engage in honest community, to be aware of the emotional strife of ourselves and others, and to use our words to build a church of sincerity.

 

It can be easy to forget that even when we read the oldest parts of the Bible, the words are still alive and active.  And we don’t really read Scripture, but instead engage in a conversation with it.  It isn’t a professor lecturing at us from the front of a large classroom.  Instead, it is a dialogue that speaks to who, where, and when we are.  The words of God are both alive in the history of Israel and the church as well as our lives today.

 

As you continue to read through the Word of God this year, remember that you are entering a conversation that will speak to your life and the life of the world today.

2500 Years Later

Sunday Intro by Graysen Pack

God's Word RemainsLiving & Active

As we continue our readings in Proverbs (Chapters 22-26 this week), we are going to be leaving a collection of sayings by Solomon that contrast the wise and the foolish.  We’ll then move into a new section of Proverbs, the sayings of the Wise.  These proverbs, unlike previous ones, aren’t written down by Solomon directly but put down to paper by the servants of King Hezekiah years later.


This reveals one of the defining characteristics of Wisdom literature as it’s found in Scripture: it is a product of the dynamic tension that ancient people faced in their day to day lives.  These are sayings that were passed down for generations from the time of Solomon to the days of Hezekiah and then put to paper.  Unlike some portions of the Hebrew Bible, the Wisdom literature found in Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Job, and Ecclesiastes are intrinsically shaped by the ways that the Jews of ancient Israel were trying to understand the role of faith in their daily actions.

 

This is what makes these scriptures deep, meaningful, and particularly relevant to the struggles we still face today.  So, as we explore the Proverbs this week, I encourage you to not see them as a detached set of sayings from a time long gone, but as markers laid out by individuals of faith who found themselves in older variations of the exact same challenges we encounter in our own lives some 2500 years later.

Choose Life!

two paths

This year at Fuel, we have talked about honor. We know now that we should honor God first with our lives and honor other areas of our lives like our parents, the Bible, Christ, relationships, others, and our internal and external selves. As we move into the upcoming year at Fuel, our Grow Devotions will look a little different. We want to keep growing in our understanding of who God is and in our relationship with him. To do this, we have to make it a daily task to get into God’s word. And, we shouldn’t only get into it! We have to write it on our hearts. We have to make it something that is our reflex reaction to turn to in hard situations. Each week, we are going to begin the week with a video, audio clip, or blog introduction of our devotional writer for the next week. Then, we will dive into our scripture reading which we will read daily throughout the week, followed by a recap on Saturday about some of the highlights of the previous week. We encourage you to memorize the weekly scriptures and write them on your heart so that you can have them be the truths that you go to for encouragement and wisdom, instead of turning to the lies of the world.

View the video clip above to learn about our memory verse this week and what we will be talking about this week!

Our Memory Verse:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set befoore you life and eath, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, love the LORD your God, obey Him, and remain faithful to Him. For He is your life, and He will prolong your life in the land the LORD swore to give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.                                            ~ Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Let’s Talk About Temptation

1 Corinthians 10-13

verse-of-the-day (1)

Tuesday, June 20

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.  1 Corinthians 10:13

 

Let’s talk about temptation. Everyone is tempted, and everyone has succumbed to temptation at some point in their life, and probably numerous times. I will be the first to admit that fact in my own life. The first thing Paul does is acknowledge the universality of temptation—temptation is ubiquitous. Temptation is a common experience for all humankind. Some people might think that they are experiencing a unique type or degree of temptation, but Paul overwrites that attitude by confirming that no one is alone in experiencing any form of temptation, for every possible sort of temptation has been shared by other individuals.

 

We all struggle with temptation, that is the common thread that unites the human race. But unlike individuals who do not trust in God, the experience of temptation for believers can be different. Those who believe in God are not in a position of helplessness.

 

Some people have told me about their experience facing temptation, “I couldn’t help it. It was too appealing. I got tired of resisting. I just couldn’t stop myself.” The idea that there was nothing that could have been done to prevent sin is calling God a LIAR.

 

Paul says, “God is faithful!” What is God faithful for? He is faithful to: 1) limit the power of the temptation in your life, and 2) provide strength to endure or a possibility to remove the temptation. These are two promises of God when it comes to facing temptation. Either they are true or God is a liar. The problem many people face is that they doubt God is able to actually help them overcome temptation. They feel like it is all a matter of the will to resist temptation, and when their will weakens (as everyone’s does at some point), they feel like they just couldn’t continue to stand against the temptation and decide to just give in.

 

Satan is constantly battling for our mind and to entice our flesh. Elsewhere, Paul describes this battle in terms of “the schemes of the devil” and the “flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:11, 16). To combat these threats, Paul encourages believers to equip themselves with the “armor of God” (Eph. 6:11-17) in order to stand firm against the devil and his tactics and influence. While Paul describes a set of defensive armaments to be prepared to engage in spiritual warfare with the devil in Ephesians 6, his point in 1 Corinthians 10:13 is that of trust and reliance upon God to keep one’s foot from slipping and falling into sin.

 

It takes a resolved heart and mind to build the confidence that God will come through and be there in your time of need. Furthermore, there are two practices that can be of great help in overcoming temptation: 1) knowing Scripture (like verse 13) can turn the tables in the struggle against temptation, and 2) prayer.

 

If you are able to bring to mind what God has revealed about a particular temptation, it has the power to release the grip of the temptation to the point that you can endure it or eliminate the cause of the temptation altogether. That is the reason Paul calls Scripture the “sword of the spirit” (Eph. 6:17). It has the ability to defeat thoughts, attitudes, and desire that contend against the knowledge and will of God and to free a person from feeling like there is no other way out.

 

Secondly, prayer is always helpful and necessary when facing temptation. Temptations can come from our own desires or as a spiritual attack from the devil. Whichever it is, we can go to God in prayer asking for strength and wisdom to allow his will to prevail and to help us bring our body into subjection to what is godly and be led by the spirit away from the temptation. James writes in his letter, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (Jas. 1:5).

 

If you struggle with a certain temptation, ask God for wisdom, and he will give it to you. And remember that we all have temptations, and nothing is new that we might encounter. God has seen it all before, and he has helped people through it all before. He promises to help you too, if you will but trust him and look to him for deliverance from it.

 

God is faithful, but do we have the courage to let him prove it?

 

-Jerry Wierwille

 

(Photo Credit: https://biblia.com/bible/niv/1%20Corinthians%2010.13)

Choose Your Battles

Mark 10-13

temple tantrum brick testament

Thursday, May 11

What are some of the things that make you mad and how do you react when you are upset?  Do you think Jesus ever got mad or expressed his anger?

We read in Mark 11 of a time where Jesus was anything but quiet and soft spoken. We see Him turning tables and running people out of the temple. This is not to say that we should go flipping tables and chasing people whenever we get upset, that is NOT what was happening here. Jesus reacted in this way not because someone disagreed with Him, in those instances He says to turn the other cheek. He reacted this way because these individuals had taken the temple of His Father and they were using it like a common marketplace. The things they were doing were a disgrace to the sanctuary of God. Jesus was angry with a righteous indignation. He was furious because the temple of God was being defiled!

Do you get more upset and react in a more dramatic way if someone speaks against you or against your God? Hopefully we are faster to defend our God rather than ourselves. We tend to be pretty quick to jump at small things, leaving the big things for someone else to handle. I think of David before He became king, he was willing to fight a giant because of what he had said about our God.

We must pick our battles. It isn’t easy to let someone talk about you or your family. It isn’t easy to let them bad mouth a friend. These things don’t matter as much in the end though. What truly matters is how we defend our faith, how we stand for our God. We MUST stand firm when it comes to the scripture, we MUST share our faith, and we MUST learn to choose our battles as Jesus did.

– Bill Dunn

 

(Photo Credit: 

http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_life_of_jesus/temple_tantrum/jn02_15b.html)

Responding to the Glory of God

 

Ezekiel 43-44

IMG_0009

Sunday, April 2

How should we respond to God’s glory?

To be able to answer this question, we should know what God’s glory is. A simple definition is His character, holiness, and excellence revealed. It is the essence of God on display.

In today’s passage, we read about Ezekiel experiencing God’s glory in a vision. He hears the voice of the LORD (Yahweh), which sounds like “the roar of rushing waters,” sees the land “radiant with his glory,” and witnesses the glory of Yahweh filling the temple (Ezek. 43:1-6).

You and I will likely never get the opportunity to receive a vision from the Almighty in which we can see His glory in such an amazing fashion. But God has revealed aspects of His character, holiness, and excellence to us in several ways. In these we can experience the glory of God and respond to it.

God has revealed Himself through His creation. This idea is called Natural Revelation. Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” When one looks at nature it is difficult, at least for me, to believe that everything seen came about by chance and was not designed by an intelligent being. While Natural Revelation doesn’t tell us much about who God is, it does show a great deal about what He is capable of and how great He is.

God has also revealed Himself through the scriptures. What Natural Revelation leaves out about who God is, the Bible fills in much more. The writers of each book in the Bible were inspired by God through His holy spirit. They rely stories of the wonderful things He has done and inform readers of what He can do, and some even reveal what He will do in the future. The Bible offers a large portrait of the greatness and goodness of God, but doesn’t give a complete picture. Not until we dwell with Him in His kingdom will we experience the full weight of His glory.

God has revealed Himself through His son. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree is an expression often used to illustrate how a son is very much like his father, this could be said of Jesus. But more accurately it would be said that the apple doesn’t fall from the tree at all, it is essentially still part of the tree. Jesus is the exact representation of His father. If we want to get a better picture or understanding of God, the best thing we can do is to simply read the Gospels that tell of Jesus. The character of Christ is the character of God. The attributes Jesus exhibits are the same of his father. The glory of God is seen in His son.

The question still remains, how are we to respond to God’s glory?

I think our response should be twofold.

(1) We should be reverent. God is not like us. He is perfect. He is holy. He has great power. He created the world in which we live and, when we messed it us, had a way to make it right again. So, he deserves to be praised. He is entitled (it is his right) to be worshiped. This reverence we have for God should lead to not just passive adoration, but active glorification. We can stand in church and say God is great, but if we think this to be a great truth, it should move us to give our lives to him and serve him everyday of our lives.

(2) We should be repentant. When I say God is holy this means two things: he is set apart and he is pure. We, as human being who engage in sin, are not pure and we tend to act the same as everyone else, making us not set apart. That being said, we are called to be holy as God is holy. The first step towards holiness is repentance. We must forsake our sin and choose Jesus instead. He is the only one who can make us holy.

As you read our passage for today, as you go outdoors and see the beauty that is nature, and when you read about Jesus in the gospels, think about how you should respond. After all, you’re experiencing God’s glory.

-Joel Fletcher

Joel Fletcher is a former student of ABC. He currently lives in Minnesota with his wonderful wife Stephanie. He likes to read boring non-fiction books, watch boring baseball, and hang out with his NON-BORING wife in his free time. He is planning on teaching a class at FUEL this year (its topic will not be boring).

Don’t Just Skip It

Psalm 106-108

psalm-107-14-quote-lg

Friday, January 13

It’s amazing, when you love a book or a movie how much you can pour over it to soak it all in. In nerd culture, of which I am most decidedly a part, people discuss and debate and argue over things we find in the stuff we like. There are always questions as a matter of taste (changing something from book to movie form and how books have a 99.999% chance of being better). In the universes we love, there are strange theories. (Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars is a Sith Lord, or so some people say). There are even theories for Children’s Films (I personally believe that the Troll’s cursed Prince Hans into his betrayal of Anna in Disney’s Frozen.) While you may think these are dumb or take them super serious, they all hold something in common. The people who make up fan theories have poured over the source material so they don’t miss anything.
It’s hard to do this when we are reading through the Bible in a year, but the same thing happens in Scripture. When you know a general idea of the whole story, little details pop up that are fascinating. Notice that the children of the cursed Ham happen to be Egypt, a nation of oppressors, and Canaan, the ones God commanded the Israelites to kill. (Gen. 11) Today’s reading does the same thing. These verses are Psalm 108:7-9. I know I have tended to read them like this: “I will divide up [bad person/place], I will apportion [bad place]… Judah [I know that good place] is my scepter, [bad place?] is my wash basin.” You get the idea. But that is a sad way to read it. Don’t miss what God is trying to tell us.
—Shechem was a terrible man who did a terrible thing to a woman in Israel. (Gen. 34) God gave victory to the sons of Jacob over Shechem. God is saying I will divide up and give to my holy ones the land/wealth of the evil.
— The people of Succoth did not help Gideon, the valiant warrior of God. God gave victory to Gideon in multiple ways, one being humiliating the princes of Succoth and killing the men of their towns. (Judges 8) God will grant victory to his people over their enemies.
— By referencing Manasseh, Ephraim and Judah, God is saying that Both the Northern and the South Kingdoms are his. If David wrote this psalm, then it is a condemnation on the Northern tribes for breaking away from the rulers in Judah.
— Moab tried to stop Israel from dwelling in the Land God had promised to them and God struck them down. Edom also refused to allow Israelites to travel through their land.
— The Philistines (descendants of Egypt, according to Gen. 10) were what seems to be the arch-rivals of Israel’s claim on their ancient Land.
Just getting a small amount of information opens up so much about the text of the Bible. The truth is that it is good to read fast and cover a lot of material, but it is also good to read slowly and deeply and soak it in. Don’t let one overshadow the other, because if you read a lot it will help you read deeply. So, the next time you come to a list of names, or a bunch of cities, or weird visions, DON’T SKIP IT. Who knows what God expects you to find?
-Jake Ballard
(Photo credit: http://www.psalmsquotes.com/psalm-107-14-quote.htm)