ONE MONTH TO LIVE - FRIDAY "LEGACY"

In our final daily devotion of the week, I want to ask you a few questions: If you only had one month to live, what would be your legacy? What would you be remembered for? What would you have done in this life?

Today, we are going to try to grasp the concept of: The kind of mark we are leaving on this earth by using a couple biblical principles to build our legacy on. The first is this…

1)There are actions of the wise and actions of the fool, the Bible says. And it’s wise to obey.
In Matthew 7, Jesus is speaking and says this, “Anyone who listens to My teaching and obeys Me is wise like a person who builds a house on solid rock. Though the rain comes in torrents and the flood waters rise and the winds beat against the house it won’t collapse." Why? Because it’s built on rock. Makes sense. But He goes on to say this: "anyone who hears My teaching and ignores it is foolish like a person who builds a house on sand. When the rains and the floods come and the winds beat against the house it will fall with a mighty crash.” A solid rock is Jesus’ visual image of something that we know will last. Jesus is saying it’s not just about listening to My teaching. That’s nothing. Fools can do that. It’s about obeying My teaching. You obey My teaching and you are building your life on a solid foundation.

What comes to my mind is something unmovable? Maybe you have been to the mountains for a vacation. Think about the biggest mountain you have ever seen. It’s just unmovable. That’s the picture of obedience and wisdom.

Then He gives the flip side. There’s a picture of a fool and that’s the person who builds his house directly on the beach in southern California. You might think, “What a great view!” as you slide into the ocean. He’s saying obedience, if you choose obedience, you are wise. Let’s move on to the next one.

2)Obedience to God’s ways will produce fruitfulness.
Another principle I want you to grab onto in John 15. Jesus says “Remain in Me and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine. And you cannot be fruitful apart from Me.” Jesus makes it very clear that if you’re going to obey you’ve got to be connected to Me. And if you’re connected to Me, that obedience is going to produce fruit.

You might be thinking “Fruit! Fruit’s a sissy word. Fruit is my return on investment if I’m obedient?” Some of you might be thinking, I don’t even like fruit. I’m more of a cheeseburger or Taco Bell kind of person. But fruit in the Bible, fruit is a biblical metaphor for richness of life. When you hear you’re going to produce fruit, you’re going to produce something that is amazing. That’s unheard of. That’s awesome. That’s rich. That is everything you dream your life to be. Fruit. It’s a good thing. Obedience to God’s way will produce fruitfulness.

Matthew 7 Jesus said “Yes the way to identify a tree or a person is by the kind of fruit that is produced.” Fruit is the result of obedience. You can tell the good tree because it’s producing good fruit.

You can tell a good person who’s producing good fruit. If you want to know what good fruit is Galatians 5. Study that on your own. Galatians 5 says, “The fruit of God’s Spirit will be revealed this way. [Listen to this list and tell me you don’t want this:] Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control.” That’s the fruit of God’s Spirit. Obedience will produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. That’s fruitfulness.

This idea of a fruit tree, I love the spiritual parallel to this. Because a fruit tree, if a fruit tree is healthy it will continue to produce fruit. If it’s healthy.

Think of the spiritual parallel to your life. If you’re healthy, if you remain in Him, if you walk in the way of obedience you will continue to produce fruit.

I have read a story of a fig tree that is in Jerusalem that has been in Jerusalem since the time of Jesus Christ that is still producing figs. For those of you who are the cheeseburger/Taco Bell type people, here’s where it breaks down. To get a steak you’ve got to kill the cow. The cow’s dead. You have your steak but it doesn’t produce anymore. That’s why the Bible is smarter than us. It’s not about a cow, it’s about fruit. A fruit tree is a great image for legacy.

3)Obedience and fruitfulness will leave a legacy.

This is the winning combination. This is it. If you choose obedience God’s way, remain in Him, connected to Jesus, if you choose obedience – key word choose – you will produce fruitfulness. And that fruitfulness will leave a legacy. That fruitfulness will last.

Watch what Jesus said in John 15 “I appointed you to go and produce fruit that will last.” So what are we talking about? Obedience is the action, fruitfulness is the result now – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control – that’s the result now; Legacy is what will last.
The apostle Paul who wrote over half the books in the New Testament, he uses these same terms really to summarize his life. He uses the terms of death and fruitful living. Philippians 1 Paul says, “For to me living is for Christ and dying is even better. Yet if I live that means fruitful service for Christ.”
Why would he say, “dying is even better”? Because you’re in heaven! You’d be in the presence of God. He had this confident assurance that eternal life for him was not going to be eternal life separated from God. That’s hell. But he was going to have eternal life with God, in God’s presence. So of course, nothing compares to the presence of God. So to live is Christ, but to die that would even be better. To die would be gain. But it’s ok if I have to live, it will include fruitful service. Not just living, not just existing, not just taking up space. If I’ve got to live it’s going to be fruitful living.

So what now? What legacy are you leaving? If you are not producing "fruit" in your life, why not? This is where your life's values and priorities need to change. For the rest of the weekend, think about your life and what you need to change. Right now, spend some time asking God to help you.

See you Sunday!!!

Dan

THURSDAY: One Month To Live - "Forgiveness"

Welcome to Thursday. Today, we are looking at forgiveness. This can be a very tough subject. A while back, in preparing the week of daily devotions for "One Month To Live", it struck me that this subject would be one of the toughest to deal with. This month, we have looked at how to live with passion and how to value the things that mean most to us (God, family, friends, ect). A key component to all of this however, would be to forgive the people that we feel has wronged us in some way and asking for forgiveness from people that we have wronged (even if they don't know it).

Read the following scriptures:

Matthew 6:13-15 (New International Version)

13And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.[a]' 14For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Matthew 18:20-22 (New International Version)

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
22Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[a]

Mark 11:24-26 (New International Version)

24Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."[a]

Colossians 3:12-14 (New International Version)

12Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

These are just a few of the scriptures in the Bible that deal with forgiveness. One thing I would like to point out is that I have not read anywhere in the Bible that we are to forgive only if the other person asks for it. We should live a lifestyle of forgiveness just as God forgives us.

Today, spend some time thinking about the people in your life that you know you need to forgive. If it helps, write it down. After that, reread the above scriptures and...forgive. I know this can be tough. Remember it's not about you telling them that you forgive them, especially if they didn't ask for it. It's about you living your life the way God intends. Pray to God and ask him to help you.
Finally, think about the people that you may have wronged in some way. Again, write it down and...ask them to forgive you.

Please leave a comment here when you have read this devontional.

Have a great day!!! I'm praying for you all!

Dan

ONE MONTH TO LIVE: WEDNESDAY- "Routines"

Wednesday is here!! Today we continue our months theme of "One Month To Live" with a look at something near and dear to all of our hearts, out routine. A routine may be referred to as a course of normal, standardized actions or procedures that are followed regularly and often repetitiously. In other words, your routine is something that you do day in, day out. Kind of like a habit, but a habit that involves your entire life. I think you understand what I'm talking about. Having a routine is not all bad. It is good to have a young child on a routine, especially when sleeping. All of my kids went through a phase when they got out of their normal sleeping routine. Instead of sleeping at night, they decided that they liked the night life and would stay up all night and sleep most of the day. Besides sleeping in the right time of the day, other good routines might be brushing your teeth every morning, doing your homework right after school, positive things like that. The problem comes when your whole life becomes like one huge routine. A few years back, I saw a movie called "Groundhog Day". It starred Bill Murray as a dude that got caught in a kind of time warp where he lived the same day (Groundhog Day) over and over. The first few days, he did the same things that he did the days before. After a few days of doing the same thing over and over, he started to realize that he could do more. To live his life with a little more passion. Now I'm not going to tell you to live like he did in the movie but I do think a lesson can be learned here. Often times, we live our lives on "auto pilot". We, in effect, stop living our lives and start letting our lives live us. If you only had one month to live, would you continue just letting life drag you along?

Romans 12:1-2 gives us some words of encouragement on how we should live our lives.
Romans 12:1-2 (The Message)
Place Your Life Before God
1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Today, ask yourself these questions:
Are you placing your daily life as a daily offering to God?
Do you recognize the kind of life that God wants for you?
What do you need to change in your daily routine to address these issues?

Take some time to write down your answers to these questions.
Re-read the scripture above. Talk to God about it.
Talk to you tomorrow!

Dan aka P.H.

ONE MONTH TO LIVE: TUESDAY "We Need Relationships"

Happy Tuesday!!! We are continuing our daily devotions on our theme: One Month To Live.
Today, I want you to read this statement out loud:
I need relationships even though they are messy.
Now that your whole family thinks you are crazy, let's continue.

God wired us for relationships. We need other people. God created humanity and said, it’s not good to be alone. In your genetic DNA code is the desire for relationships. That’s why we always feel that we need to feel loved and connected and interact with people in a genuine way. We are wired for that. That’s why if we had one month to live it wouldn’t be spent counting money, cleaning your room, spending more time at school. It would be with people.

I admit, I need other people in my life to be fully alive. I need people. My guess is you’d admit it too. I need others. You do! Everybody needs it.

But what about the messy part? What’s the deal with that?

I once heard a well seasoned minister after 30 years in ministry make this observation:
"Nobody’s normal. Everybody is whacked out to some degree. Flawed, weird, odd, strange. Some of them are down right creepy. There are no exceptions to that. If you think you are an exception to that rule it just means that you lack the self-awareness to know that you’re a total nut job. Nobody is normal. You might look normal on the outside but in the inside you have an inner weirdo".

Are you brave enough to admit that’s true about you? I am. So sometimes I’m messy.
What can we do? The first thing we can do is admit and list our own faults.

We should do this because I think this is an important factor in building healthy relationships. It’s having a realistic awareness of your own faults. If you don’t do this, here’s what you go through life doing. You go around picking on others. You go around criticizing and nagging and critiquing and accusing and piling on. But when you have an awareness of your own faults, you tend to lower the bar and be more compassionate and forgiving to other people.

Jesus said in Matthew 7 “Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own. How can you think of saying, Let me help you get rid of that speck in your own eye when you can’t see past the log in your own eye.” I love this image. I see a guy with a big ol' telephone pole out of his face. He’s got this log. The humor is he’s trying to get the speck in the other person’s eye and he’s killing people trying to do that. Jesus is saying, Don’t, look at yourself first.

I want to challenge you to do that. I challenge myself to do it on a daily basis. When you see fault in others (friends, parents, siblings, your youth minister), take a look at yourself first. Try to make an effort that when you find yourself getting ready to blast someone for something they do, think about yourself first. Ask yourself these questions:
*Do I have the same fault?
*Do I cause the fault in the other person by my actions? (example-you hear your younger brother using fould language...but he heard it from you first)
*Did I cause the fault in the other person because of my non-action?
In other words, think about how your influence, or lack of influence on others has an effect on them. Remember, sometimes it's not what you did but what you didn't do. Relationships are messy. But sometimes, we are the biggest part of the mess.

Spend a few moments right now talking to God about it.

ONE MONTH TO LIVE: MONDAY-"GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS"

I hope this Monday finds you well. Today we begin our week of daily Bible study in order for us to go deeper into this months theme: One Month to live. This whole month we are focusing on the question: If you only had one month to live, what would you value most and how can you live your life to support that. So far this month, we have looked at:

Living life with passion
Defining What We Value Most
Depending on God to live out these values
Valuing Our Relationship With God
Looking at what we need to change to live a life that values God

TODAY:
Good News ~ Bad News
To begin, please read Luke 6:17-26 (if you don't have a Bible handy, click HERE)

The teachings of Jesus in Luke 6 contain blessings and warnings. Jesus gives
us this list of good and bad news because our priorities in life so often do not
match His. Jesus turns many of our conceptions of life upside down.

Try to imagine yourself in the scene described in verses 17-19. Picture the
place, the feel of the crowd around you, all the people pressing in on Jesus. Why
had the people come? What was happening? What was Jesus doing?
In verses 20-26, Jesus was addressing first his apostles (He had just chosen
them) and the great crowd of disciples around him, as well as a mass of others.
(See also Matthew 5:3-12.) Who did Jesus say are the “blessed” ones and what is
in store for them? Do these blessings and “rewards” appeal to you?
For the next few minutes, think about some of the priorities in your life. Is it school (ha), work, friends, TV, your computer? Whatever it is, think about what you need to change in order to make your relationship with God #1. As you finish today, talk to God about it, ask Him to help you prioritize your life to the things that He wants you to put first.

FRIDAY-BIBLE 411- Warning Labels

FRIDAY- Warning Label
If the Bible had a warning label, what would it say? Not only is the Bible full of the things that make our life complete, but it also provides us with warnings of what happens to someone who does not obey God's word. Many people think that the Bible is just one big love letter from God, and that is mostly true. What they fail to see is that the Bible also contains stern warnings from God about what will become of us, should we not follow his guidlines.
The Bible warns that:
We are not to add to, or subtract from God's Word
(Revelations 22:18-19) I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city.
Do Not Substitute Human Ideas
(Mark 7:7-8) They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.
Preach and Teach Only God's Word
(2 Timothy 4:2) Preach the Word; be prepared to in season and out of season ; correct, rebuke, and encourage-with great patience and careful instruction.

His Word will Judge Us
Jesus is speaking here. He says clearly that if you don't obey the words he has spoken, you are in trouble in the last day. That day he is referring to is the day of judgment. (John 12:48) There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.
Those are all pretty scary warning labels.
Prayer time: Spend some time talking to God about His “warning labels”. Ask Him to help you follow them.

THURSDAY-Bible 411-THE INSIDE SCOOP

What the Bible Contains:

The Bible is the greatest book every written. It contains all that mankind needs to know that pertains to life and Godliness (2 Peter 1:3). The Bible contains
• The Mind of God - We can know what God thinks on various subjects.
• Where we are at - Are we lost or do we have hope of eternal life?
• The Way of Salvation - God wants us all to come to him. (2 Peter 3:9)
• The Happiness of followers - God knows what is best for
us and that followers of Him are truly happy.
• The Doom of Sinners - Sin cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
There are many questions that seem to have plagued mankind for centuries. Yet, the Bible contains the answers to them! The Bible also contains the answers to the following three questions (as well as many others):
• The Origin of Life (Where did I come from?) (Genesis 2:7)
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)
• The Purpose or Meaning of Life (Why am I here?) (Ecclesiastes 12:13)
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. (Eccl. 12:13)
Matthew 28:19 “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
The Bible is truly a great book and full of far more knowledge than many people realize. The question now becomes. Will you let the Bible guide your life? Will you follow it’s instruction? Will you apply what you learn on a daily basis?
Prayer time: Take some time to talk to God about those questions.