1 Corinthians 15:55-58 "O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?" The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
Every day roughly 150,000 around the world die. Death has a way of raising our spiritual temperature and quickening us to re-evaluate life...especially to ask, "Am I doing all that I can do?"
Have you ever heard of how the Nobel Peace Prize originated?
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, awoke one morning in 1888, shocked to discover his own obituary in the morning news. The newspaper had mistakenly printed the story about Alfred, instead of his brother, who had just passed away. As he read his own epitaph, the story of the "Dynamite King", the great industrialist who made an immense fortune from explosives -- Alfred Nobel was rudely awakened to the fact that the world viewed him as a merchant of death! The mistake was not wasted on him. Rather, it served as his wake-up call!
As he read his obituary with horror, Alfred resolved to make clear to the world his understanding of the true meaning and purpose of his life. So he used his immense fortune to create a foundation which would promote and embody his ideal for world peace...and he is now remembered, not as the "Dynamite King", but the creator of what we know now as the "Nobel Peace Prize."
Let's allow this little message to be our wake up call. Let's re-evaluate our lives, look within...and ask ourselves, "Are we truly doing all that we can be doing for the Lord?" Because when this life is finally past, and our deeds are all recorded in the "Books", only what was done with and for the Lord, will last...forever!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Why is it that some believers seem to go much deeper in their walk with God than others? I believe it has to do with a desire to pursue God and not to stop until they feel His very presence in their lives. These believers decide not to settle for anything less than a growing, vibrant relationship with God, and God honors that desire for those who seek it.
This pivotal passage of scripture, Isaiah 52 and continuing into Isaiah 53, profiles a suffering servant whom the nation of Israel would not recognize. The spiritual leaders of Yeshua’s (Jesus) day were blinded to the messianic passages which pointed to the messiah’s role as a humble servant and bearer of sins.
A recent study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and University of California Los Angeles wanted to find out, “if you had to choose between more time and more money, what would it be?” While they found most respondents answered, “more money”, they also found that those who preferred “more time” were generally happier! When I read this article, it reminded me of a story, that I’d like to share.
The Lord spoke to Moses, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt to be desperately cornered with the Red sea before them and Pharaoh’s chariots advancing upon them from behind. Overwhelmed with terror they cry out to Moses, “It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” Having just miraculously escaped from the miserable life of slavery, and only beginning their new life of freedom, the children of Israel were faced with the most dire threat to their existence.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve begun a series of devotions based on the Exodus wanderings of the Children of Israel, and their tragic mistakes which we can learn from and avoid. One powerful influence common to their failures was fear.
For the past two weeks we have examined lessons from the OT account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt in hope of avoiding the errors and attitudes of the children of Israel. This week we will draw connections between the Exodus and the prophecies in the book of Revelation.
For the past two weeks we’ve been building life lessons derived from the Exodus wanderings and from Paul’s exhortations to the church in Corinth. Notice carefully that Paul says, “these were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”…
…that is, written for us today! – admonitions from Paul to learn lessons from the history of the children of Israel.