Luke 21:36 Watch therefore, praying in every season that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things which shall occur, and to stand before the Son of Man.
Luke 21:36 was a foundational scripture when I began Worthy News in 1999. The concept was to provide watchmen with prayer points from the news each day and to prepare the body of Messiah to be found worthy of Him.
Our true value was expressed at the cross of Messiah, where God valued us according to the redemptive work of His only Son. In the light of our identity in Christ our value is inestimable. We are worthy in Him. Much of our spiritual battle, however, is about maintaining and expressing our true identity and worth, day by day.
One of the names of our enemy, Satan, is "Belial", which literally translated, is "worthlessness". How apt! In his rebellion, the enemy has become worthless, and his motive is to persuade us to be and feel like him.
In this post-modern age, where meaning and purpose are reduced to instant gratification, relationship is superficial and expedient, good and evil are relative or inverted, and the value of life is cheapened and ephemeral, our sense of worth is assaulted at every turn. The success of our "worthless" enemy is astonishing and presents the greatest challenge to our life of faith.
Yet our greatest challenge is also our greatest opportunity. Our true value in Yeshua is non-negotiable. It simply needs to be remembered, expressed, and presented to the darkness of our time. This is why spiritual disciplines are so important; prayer, scripture, and fellowship. These activities activate our spirits, instill our sense of value, and help us realize our worthiness in the Lord.
Your life is not 'worthless.' Yeshua has powerfully conveyed its worth. Now, more than ever, this truth can bring hope and real life to everyone you meet.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy Devotions. This devotional was originally published on Worthy Devotions and was reproduced with permission.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]There were thousands of people bundled up in freezing New York weather to witness a few short seconds during which a descending ball of light announces the arrival of a New Year — 2023. These hardy people endured the freezing air to mark the passage of time, but even more, because they were anticipating a “new beginning!” Saying goodbye to a tumultuous 2023, they were looking forward to making a fresh start in 2024!
Yeshua (Jesus) gave a remarkable parenthetic instruction in the middle of His Olivet discourse on the time of His coming and the end of the age. While it is unlikely that He himself said this, He certainly inspired Matthew to insert, “..let the reader understand”, concerning this critical event prophesied by Daniel, the Abomination of Desolation. His exhortation intended us (the readers of Matthew’s gospel) to learn what this means.
When I teach about “understanding the will of God,” I’d like to talk about a story that is told in all the synoptic gospels, except that Luke’s account gives a significant nuance. (Many skeptical Bible “critics” point out differences in the gospels to argue that they can’t be reliable — yet it’s actually the differences that support the validity of these accounts because they reveal that the events recorded were simply experienced and told from slightly different viewpoints, a very common circumstance when people are telling a story.)
Charles Swindoll wrote about these men who bring in animals from Africa for American zoos. They say that one of the hardest animals to catch there is the ringtailed monkey. For the Zulus of that continent, however, it’s simple. They’ve been catching this agile little animal with ease for years.
From the beginning, we anticipated a time when we would need to produce all our news content. Over the past month, as many of you are aware, we’ve fully shifted to generating articles exclusively through our dedicated in-house writing team. We’ve also expanded as we continue to freely syndicate our news to any online Christian ministry. Operating on faith and independent of advertising revenue, our ministry’s content is driven not by external factors but by a deep commitment to fulfilling the Lord’s will.
Over the past few days, one of our servers that hosts roughly 20 different web sites was breached and used to send SPAM. While there was no real damage done, the thousands of bounced messages literally caused the server to shut down. There was no personal information stored on the server, however, the hours spent setting up a new server in the midst of a speaking tour created chaos which we really didn’t have the time to deal with. However, the worst of it is all over, and we’re back! Just as we’re getting ready to launch another website (https://worthy.bible) for the Kingdom … we get attacked from all sides!
This is a story relayed by Corrie Ten Boom, “It was Christmas, 1944. My sister, Betsie, had died. I was in a hospital barracks in Ravensbruck, a Nazi prison camp. Dark it was in my heart, and darkness was around me. There were Christmas trees in the street between the barracks. Dead bodies of prisoners had been thrown under the Christmas trees. I tried to talk to the people around me about Christmas, but they mocked and sneered. At last I kept quiet.