On whom or what do I make myself dependent?

 

An Emoji Devotions for Sat, 10th of July 2021

Topic: On whom or what do I make myself dependent?

By H. U. Wenger

Highlights: Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. (Psalm 106:1; if you have a chance, read the psalm from your bible.)

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)

Psalm 106 discusses the love and goodness of God towards the people of Israel and their ingratitude towards him. The Holy Spirit was not yet poured out to the people and only God chosen leaders were filled with the spirit and had therefore the ability to live in the spirit. Jesus Christ is the first example of a human being who consequently showed us a life in the spirit. The Israelites saw their lives shaped by circumstances, by powerful people, by luck and misfortune. They cried out to the Lord in their need, the Lord brought them out of the difficulties, but it never brought them to bough down to the Lord and to consequently follow his commandments. Time and again their way was determined by the human and spiritual forces they deemed crafty, strong and invincible. Time and again they got disappointed and cried out to the Lord only after their wisdom or folly had leaded them into disaster. Does your Christian life resemble that pattern? If so, you are suffering unjustly and there is good news for you. Christ Jesus sternly refused to make himself in any way dependent from worldly powers or from the givens of his life. He carefully looked to be only dependent on his Heavenly Father. Whenever he got into difficult situations, and that happened often, he talked to the father and accepted his will. He then acted accordingly and so proved to be invincible for the Pharisees and Scribes as well as to the political authorities. He adamantly trusted his father with his whole existence. Living in the spirit means to make one dependent only from the Almighty God. In difficult situation I look to him. I am dealing with him, not with the circumstances. I do not deal with obnoxious and obstinate people, but with their creator, whom I know to be on my side. I trust that he will not let me down and never put me to shame.  This is how Jesus lived with his Father during his life on earth. To his disciples he promised the same relationship with him through the Holy Spirit he poured out on them on Pentecost. That Spirit is now living in all who got born again. It is only a leap of faith to trust him, who has been given all authority in heaven and earth, more than we fear for our lives or for our reputation. Trusting Jesus and his Heavenly Father, makes us as steadfast and invincible as he himself has been. 

In Colossians 3 the apostle Paul gives us a blueprint for how we can make us totally dependent on Jesus alone, the same way he was dependent on his Father alone. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus please grant me enough faith to make myself dependent on you alone. Thank you that by standing with you I will never stand alone! I know that you will never put me to shame. Praise be to your holy name! Amen. 

Living among crazy people

 An Emoji Devotions For Fri 9th July, 2021

Topic: Living among crazy people

By H.U. Wenger

I have been brought up in a rural region of Switzerland. There was an unwritten set of rules how people have to behave themselves in order to belong to the respectable society. If you wanted to have a chance to once belong to the elite, you better did your best to fit in. Although I often times had a feeling that following those rules was weird and strange, it still breathed a touch of normalcy, because everybody adhered to it. I had just finished my theological studies, when I was invited by a study friend to join him on a trip to New York. I gladly accepted and we enjoyed the musical “cats” at a theater on the Broadway. Around one o’clock in the morning we came back to the street and I could not believe my eyes. The city was much more alive than every city I knew in broad daylight. The street was packed with people, strangely clothed and wearing blinking colored lights on their hats, their glasses or their shoulders. In amazement, but rather appalled by the sight, I said to my friend: Whoever isn’t crazy here must be crazy and I urged him to retreat into our hotel. In my rural and self-righteous heart I could not find love and mercy for the people of New York. They were deviant and appalling to me. 

Highlights: “But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” (Psalm 86:15)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22 – 23a)

It took me some time to realize that God has as much grace, compassion and abounding love for crazy people as he has for ruraly normalized guys. In a second step I got aware that my perceived normalcy is in many ways as crazy as the felt craziness of the New Yorkers.

In several steps God showed to me that it is not my job to judge the life-style of any society on this planet, but to live in the spirit. The spirit teaches us the character of Jesus and with it the heart of God. It is absolutely impossible to live in the spirit and not have love and compassion for crazy people. Living in the spirit prevents us from being judgmental. Every single human being was created by God himself in his or her mother’s womb for his glory. He delights in all of his handiwork with love and compassion. As a shepherd searches for his sheep, he searches for you and me, regardless of the craziness we have developed in our upbringing. 

As I was walking the Broadway in New York, I was living in the flesh and could not have any love and compassion for the crazy people. I was bound to an unwritten law of a rural society, although I was a Christian at that time. Would it have been possible for me to lead one New Yorker to the Lord? Not with my attitude at the time. Let us hear what the Apostle Paul says: You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5:13 – 15)

By living in the spirit it begins to be fun and adventurous to live among crazy people who are the handiwork of God and searched for by him to be saved. 

Prayer: Lord God free me from my being judgmental and let me live in the spirit to spread your character, your joy, your love and your compassion. Let me be instrumental to bring some of my fellow humans back to you. In Jesus name I pray. Amen   

God’s unfailing love and goodness

 An Emoji Devotions for Thu July 8th, 2021

Topic: God’s unfailing love and goodness

By H.U. Wenger

Highlights: This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1. John 4:9 – 10)

Within your temple, O God, we meditate on your unfailing love. (Psalm 48:9)

Among Christian it is generally accepted that God is good and that he loves mankind. Nevertheless many Christians have difficulties to agree that God is unfailingly and absolutely good and loving. Events in their own life or in the lives of people they know let them think that God can be as well quite cruel and beyond human grasp. It is true and God states it in Isaiah 55 himself that his thoughts and ways are beyond what humans can understand. But whatever God does, his intentions are always full of love and mercy. The riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience are geared to lead us to repentance according to Romans 2:4. As Jesus walked the earth he showed us the character of the father. He had to rebuke the abuse of the law of God for human gain, but he never did anything that would have damaged one single human being. In John 14:6 Jesus stated to his disciples: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In the context he had prepared the disciples for his suffering and his going to the Father and Thomas had questioned how they could know where he is going to. Philipp then said to Jesus: Just show us the Father and it will be enough for us. Jesus replied: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? If Jesus has harmed no one in his earthly life, we can know for sure that from the beginning of the world the Father has loved every human being and he has never ever damaged anyone. 

You may have gone through hardship and difficult experiences, but it has never been the retribution of God. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10) There are three things that bring us into harm’s way: our own sin, the law of sowing and reaping and all the human attempts to be our own God. 

Adam and Eve decided in the temptation against God and for the perspective of being god themselves. This was treason against God and their sin. At the same time it was the planting of a bad seed that lead to strive, envy, hatred murder, oppression and ultimately to a lot of man inflicted misery. 

Through the act of treason Satan got empowered to plague mankind with all sorts of maladies and misfortunes. Since then we have lost the divine protection, but we never lost his goodness and love, that will guide us to repentance. God searches for you and me through his unfailing love and goodness. The sons of Corah praise in Psalm 48 the city of God and mention that they meditate on God’s unfailing love in the temple. 

In the New Testament the temple in Jerusalem disappeared, but through the Holy Spirit God made a temple out of the body of every single one of his followers. We are supposed to meditate on God’s goodness and love in that very temple, despite all the attacks from the enemy. Whenever we think that God has sent us punishment or harm, we are deceived. He does not do such things. All he does is to draw us towards him. “Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:16 – 17) 

Prayer: Thank you Lord for loving me despite my treason against you. Thank you for your atonement and your unfailing love and goodness. Thank you for your being absolutely good. Let me cling to that truth despite my often times distorted perception. Amen. 

Clouds of Possibilities

 

An Emoji Devotions for 7th July 2021

Topic: Clouds of Possibilities

Highlight: If clouds are full of water, they pour rain on the earth. Ecclesiastes 11:13

The world is ruled by fixed laws, the operation of which man has no power to suspend. There is nothing too big for God to do. If we as human could differentiate some things as little and some as big. It is the bigger that bless the lesser. We all look up to God for everything not the other way round. Jeremiah 32:27 “Look, I am Yahweh, the God of all flesh. Is anything too difficult for Me? Our God is able to achieve his purpose with or without us. It is the best to allow God achieve His purpose through us so that He will be happy with us. Whoever makes God happy is filling up their clouds with possibilities. When the Isrealites turned away from God their deliverer, He sent Jesus to save the gentiles. Today God is achieving His purpose of salvation through everyone who preaches the gospel of Christ be it Jew or gentiles. I Sam 2:30 ....But I will honor those who honor me, and I will despise those who think lightly of me. That is why we must honor God in our lives. Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him (Psalms 115:3) He can decide to raise the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; to seats them with princes. He can also decide to make childless woman to become happy mother of children. Psalm 113:7-9

Search your life very well if you are praising God enough. Do not provoke God to look elsewhere for worshipers. You must not get tired of worshipping God everyday because that is the purpose we were all made. Luke 19:40 He replied, “If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!” Keep trusting in the Lord with all your heart. See Him as big as He is. For He is able to make a way where there is no way. He sees what we cannot see. He is the God of possibilities.

Prayer: Help me Lord to make you happy always in the name of Jesus Christ my Redeemer. Amen. 

I will Continue to trust God

 

An Emoji Devotions for Sun July 4, 2021

Topic: I will continue to trust God

Highlight: Even if a whole army comes to fight against me, I will not be afraid. Even if they attack me in war, I will continue to trust God.

Psalms 27:3 

“When you hear music, you are to fall 

down and worship the statue.” The penalty for defying this law was severe. “Whoever does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire” (Daniel 3:6).

That is what today's world music and system teaches us that whoever does not fall down and worship money and fame will immediately be thrown into blazing fire. We watched it in the movies and see videos how celebrities shows only nudity to express their songs. They show drinking and smoking in cinema as if those are the real ways of enjoyment. Then you see real world People who knows nothing going to grocery stores to buy themselves lighter, smokes, and alcohol to copies the ways of celebrities and in the end find themselves having mental disorder.

 Some of the celebrities claimed they sold their soul to the devil before they become rich. They promote wild partying and gangster disciples. They tell teenagers to be rude to adults and make youths see humility as being a simp. They call it different names like "if you don't go hard you go home" in order to make people desperate for money and fame they tell you to join the trend. They use the social trend to lure the youths to do the unthinkable and they are falling for it because they believe that if you don't bow, you will be thrown in the fire. 

In order to be rich and famous some of the youths have turned worse by living notorious lifestyles that has destroyed their liver and kidneys. The ladies call themselves diva and want people in the neighborhood to worship them so they dress to kill and mingle with drug addicts. The ladies wants only guys that has money and exotic cars while the boys are losing their self esteem into suicide, drug addict, gambling, cultism and indecent movies.

They were not told the right thing. That those things they were made to bow to cannot save them but destroy them and they were not told that those who trust God and lives godly lifestyles are the best and they are the mentally healthy people in the society. Though David was a Shepherd boy, he lives a godly life and ended up becoming the King of His Nation. Though Joseph was sent to Prison for not committing fornication, he still became a prime Minister of his time. How many drug addict will be elected as a president of their nation today?

Though Shadrach Meshach and Abednego did not bow to threat of fire they became promoted in their time because they chose to obey God. 

Greatness in life and good health is reserved for God's children only. Even in places of honor great men and women want to deal with honest people. Nobody wants to associate with a miscreant. There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12

Even if a whole army comes to fight against me, I will not be afraid. Even if they attack me in war, I will continue to trust God. What about you? 

Prayer: Father Please help me to continue to trust you in this world and in the world to come. In Jesus name. Amen

When approaching the table

An Emoji Devotions for Sat July 3, 2021

Topic: When approaching the table

Highlight: 

You treat me to a feast, while my enemies watch. You honor me as your guest, and you fill my cup until it overflows.

Psalms 23:5 

..... “The banquet is ready! My cattle and prize calves have all been prepared. Everything is ready. Come to the banquet!”

Matthew 22:4

When you are attuned to God, you will love what He has prepared for feasting. That is what the Scriptures mean when they say, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9

However when you are coming to the table. It is important to come in the right settings.  When the king went in to meet the guests, he found that one of them wasn't wearing the right kind of clothes for the wedding. The king asked, “Friend, why didn't you wear proper clothes for the wedding?” But the guest had no excuse.

Matthew 22:11‭-‬12 

Apostle James said You people aren't faithful to God! Don't you know if you love the world, you are God's enemies? And if you decide to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.

James 4:4 

You do not dress like the world. Your dressing must be matched with God's approved dress code when you are approaching the table prepared by the almighty God. What is the right dress code? 

Isaiah 61:3 gave us a hint about "garment of expressive praise" which means we should enter his gates with Thanksgiving and affectionate praise. 

Isaiah 61:10 gave us a hint about "clothes of Salvation and Coats of Righteousness". Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head. Ecclesiastes 9:8

It is only through Jesus Christ we can have the perfect and fitting garment for the beautiful feast prepared by God. Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6 Please accept and believe in Jesus Christ alone as the way forward to your divine feasting with God. 

Make up your mind today to enter into the garden of God's presence with the right apparel. Remember that God asks many people to come to him. But He only chooses a few people to be there with him.’

 Matthew 22:14

Praise: I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. in Jesus name. Amen

Wings of God

 

An Emoji Devotions for  Thursday 1st July, 2021

Topic: Wings of God.

Highlight: 

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Matthew 6:26

The wings of God have been carved into the grace of our Lord Jesus to help you soar effortlessly on the winds of life. Like birds do fly to the top of mountains for safety without effort. Likewise, You do not need efforts to get to the top if you believe and accept the grace of our Lord Jesus into your life. The grace of our Lord is the wing of God not your wing. So you do not have to worry on how and when to use it. "And who of you by worrying is able to add one cubit to his stature?". It is like how babies keep growing to adult without effort. It does not require worries but it requires  attention. You should be careful not to fall from the wing of grace of God if you worry too much or think it's through your efforts you can accomplish your goals. 

Zero worries does not mean to be carefree with life. When you consider how the beautiful flowers do not labor or spin to grow but they require enough sunlight, air, water, and nutrients from soil to 'wake up' and sprout, or germinate. That's how every born again Christians should be firmly connected to their source through God's word in order to fly high on the wings of God's grace. 

Mark 4:20... like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”

Soaring on God's wing requires daily nurturing on God's words to turn our lives beautifully and fruitful and to make us become wiser than Solomon. Your heavenly father knows what you need and would not want you to stress for it but to ride on His wings. Anyone who rides on God's wing will not strike their foot against a stone. Psalm 91:12. You must believe and accept how the grace of our Lord Jesus works. For the Lord blesses all those who meditate on His words day and night with good success. Joshua 1:8. Remove all doubt and worries from your mind and replace them with confidence in the promises of God's word. 

"So the word of the Lord powerfully continued to spread and prevail." Acts 19:20

Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven [standing firm and unchangeable]. Psalms 119:89

Now you know the reason why Apostle Paul always end His letters with "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Begin to soar of God's wings today. 

Prayer: O Lord Let your wings of grace migrate me into your presence forever and let me experience eternal life of your living words in Jesus name.