Tuesday - November 11 - Tiffany

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 21-22; 1 Peter 3

Today's scripture focus is Mark 12:35-37

 

Whose Son Is the Christ?

³⁵ And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? ³⁶ David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
    until I put your enemies under your feet.”’

³⁷ David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly.

 

 

Jesus here was calling out the scribes for their lack of ability to explain fully the scriptures of the Old Testament. It doesn't make sense that king David would call a son "My Lord" and yet the Messiah was to come from the royal family.

 

I think "The great throng heard him gladly" is my favorite line in these few verses.  The people wanted to understand - they had waited so long for the Messiah and there was so much they didn't understand! And here was Jesus, performing miracles, explaining things they had wondered in their hearts their whole lives.

 

Jesus, from the line of David, the Lord come to earth to save us all. I'm so glad he still speaks and explains things to us today!

 

 

Tomorrow's scripture focus: Mark 12:38-44

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Ezekiel 23-24; 1 Peter 4

Monday, November 10th Mark 12:28-34

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 19-20, 1 Peter 2

Today's scripture focus is Mark 12:28-34

Mark 12:28-34English Standard Version (ESV)

The Great Commandment

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Accompanying Robert Rayburn sermon:  The Kingdom of Love
Accompanying John MacArthur sermon: Loving God
Accompanying David Legge sermon: Question Time

Love God and love people - that truly summarizes the 10 commandments.

The first four of the ten commandments listed in Exodus 20 deal with loving God....

 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

The last six deal with loving people.....

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that theLord your God is giving you.

13 “You shall not murder.

14 “You shall not commit adultery.

15 “You shall not steal.

16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”

Legge adds this important point....
it is utterly impossible for any man or woman just in the simple strength of their human flesh to love God the way it says here, with all their heart, with all their soul, and with all their mind, and with all strength; and to love their neighbour as themselves. That's why we live in this messed up world, because men can't do it - they try to do it, that's called religion, but they can't do it. The only way you can do this is by grace, a free gift, through faith, that's what you accept the gift with, when the Holy Spirit comes into your life when you're born-again as a Christian, and the Lord God of heaven starts to live out the life of Jesus in you - that's the only way that can be done, through the law of the Spirit in the New Covenant, no other way.
Rayburn adds an important point too - love if the fulfillment of the law.  Jesus explicitly ties love to obedience.   
to obey him is the way to love him because it pleases and honors him. So far from love being in conflict with the law, without the law we would not knowhow to love and we would certainly not know how best to love.

The Lord makes a point of this, I think, by drawing these two commandments together: the commandment to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. That is to say, you cannot really love another human being – not as that person ought to be loved – if you do not first love God. And you cannot love God without loving others in the radical way in which God commands you love them, the same radical way in which he loved you. The love of your neighbor flows from and is empowered by your love for God and the love of God is demonstrated and practiced in your love for you neighbor because that is what pleases him most.

Legge and MacArthur note that the scribe was near the kingdom.  But near is not good enough.  As Legge noted, eventually we need to stop questioning and start believing.  We will not know the answer to every single questions - we are not God.  At some point we need to stop questions Christ and start believing Him.  The scribe understood that it was an internal issue, not a ceremonial ritual - hopefully, after Jesus' death and resurrection, this scribe took the next step and actually entered the kingdom!

Rayburn adds that sometimes we can miss the obvious.  We can be so busy thinking about what we need to do, or what we need to work on, that we can miss the obvious - love.

Love and one does all. Love and one fulfills the entire law. Love and one lives as God would have a man or woman live. Love and Christ is pleased. Love and the great purposes of your life will be fulfilled, no matter what comes. Love and because God is love you will find yourself at one with God and with reality itself.
And, of course, love not as the world defines it, but as scripture defines it - 1 Corinthians 13 and Exodus 20 are two great places to start!


Tomorrow's scripture focus: Mark 12:35-37

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Ezekiel 21-22, 1 Peter 3

Friday, November 7 Mark 12:18-27

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 13-14, 1 Peter 1

Today's scripture focus is Mark 12:18-27

Mark 12:18-27English Standard Version (ESV)

The Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection

18 And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man[a] must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. 22 And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. 23 In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

24 Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neithermarry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

Accompanying John MacArthur sermon: Biblical Ignorance in High Places
Accompanying Robert Rayburn sermon: Heaven: Imagined and Real
Accompanying David Legge sermon: Question Time

Rayburn:
The Bible is not all that forthcoming about what heaven will be like, but we are told enough to know that our lives there will be the truest fulfillment of all that is best in our lives in this world and that we will be engaged in useful and satisfying work of high purpose as well as basking in the presence and glory of God.

However, here is a piece of teaching about heaven that has seemed, at least to many Christians, to make heaven, if not boring, at least less than one might have hoped. I suspect for many Christians through the ages this paragraph has been one of the most disappointing in the Bible. They don’t deny that what the Lord says is true. He is the Lord! But they wish it were not. Most of the teaching they find in Holy Scripture – teaching about life in this world and life in the next – they happily agree with. They believe that it is true and they are glad it istrue. Even the more difficult parts they accept as good and necessary. But I have spoken with many Christians through the years who accept this teaching about there being no marriage in heaven with a sigh. They don’t want to be like the angels when they get to heaven, at least not in this respect. The a-sexual life does not appeal to them. They want to be married. They want to be in love in the way in which husbands and wives alone can be in love. I confess to being one of those who thinks this way.

My marriage has been the source of great happiness to me and it is hard for me to accept that, for eternity to come, this happiness will not be part of my life. It would make me very happy to know that I would be married to Florence for ever... Happily married Christians find it strange to think that they will not be married in heaven. I’ve heard a great many say precisely that. But, nevertheless, that is what the Lord says. We shall be like the angels in this respect, that we will not marry or be married. Our life in heaven, true and authentic human life though it will be, will not be precisely like our human life in this world and this is one grand difference. It will not be a sexual and romantic life as it has been here.

Now in all seriousness, it must be said that there are many others, including many devout Christian men and women, who find this text a great comfort. Their marriage has been for them the principal trial of their lives and the thought that they will soon be free of it does not come as a blow or a disappointment to them. The news is frankly a relief. In the case of others who have never been married and who have been hard put not to think of themselves as second-class citizens in the church as a result, this is likewise no hardship for them to hear. For the Lord to say that there will be no marriage in heaven is for some Christians almost a manifesto of their full rights in the kingdom of God...

The Lord made short shrift of the question the Sadducees thought was so clever.... The Lord’s problem with the Sadducees was not first their quibbles about the manner of life in the world to come but their denial of the reality of life in the world to come. The remark about there being no marriage in heaven is what arrests our attention, but the Lord’s interest lies primarily elsewhere. He strikes at the main issue by citing Exodus 3:6 and proving from that text that God is the God of those who live on, that those who are his people ascend to higher life even after they have died.

C.S. Lewis once criticized Rudyard Kipling for lacking what he called a “doctrine of ends.” That is, he did not look at this life....from the vantage point of the ultimate issue of things. He had no doctrine of the end of the world, of the world to come, of the connection between this world and the next. That was the Sadducees’ problem. They had no doctrine of ends, or, better, they had a false doctrine of ends and that false doctrine prevented them from a true understanding of this life and this world.

This is, in fact, the problem of our world. It explains Europe’s declining birthrate, it explains abortion and euthanasia in the modern Western world, it explains so much about crime and divorce and pornography, and modern relationships, and television and the internet and the worldliness of ordinary human life; it explains so much about how ordinary people live their ordinary lives every ordinary day in our world. They have no doctrine of ends. They do not see the present in terms of an eternal future. They measure the present by the present only and that changes everything, distorts everything, corrupts everything because the meaning of the present cannot be known in terms of the present alone. You cannot know the truth about today, about your life today, unless you connect today to the future, the eternal future. You cannot rightly measure the meaning of life, of anyone’s life unless you measure it by eternity, your life after death, your existence that continues forever in either heaven or hell.

We do not disbelieve, you and I, not in the sense of embracing the Sadducees naked unbelief in life after death. But you know and I know that, nevertheless, we make their mistake every day we live. Too often we also live as if we had no doctrine of ends. Too often we live as if there were no world to come, as if we were not to continue our lives after we died, as if heaven and hell were not real, or, as if heaven were not to be as glorious as Holy Scripture says it will be. We rightly reject the Sadducees unbelief, but, alas, there is still so much of the Sadducee in every one of us, however heartily and sincerely we reject their secularism and their unbelief.

The remark about there being no marriage in heaven has this great benefit. It forces us to think about heaven as a real place, not an imagined place, but a real place, a place where we are going, where we will soon be, where we will soon live if we have living faith in Jesus Christ. We can indulge vague illusions about heaven, too vague to leave their mark on our daily lives, but here we are confronted with the real thing, the real place, the real life – a life different in some ways that we expected, even than we may have hoped. That is how real heaven is....

I know, as every Christian knows, that when I am in heaven, and my heart is perfectly pure, and I am with the Lord and with his saints, and I see an eternity of sinless joy stretching before me, when I feel a perfect and powerful love in my heart for everyone else and feel theirs for me in return, then I know that I will miss nothing, regret nothing, wish for nothing else but what the Lord Christ has given me. If there is not marriage, life will be better for it, not worse; however difficult it may be for us to understand that now. Heaven is a real place!


Monday's scripture focus: Mark 12:28-34

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Ezekiel 15-16
Sunday's passage: Ezekiel 17-18
Monday's passage: Ezekiel 19-20, 1 Peter 2

Thursday, November 6th Mark 12:13-17

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 11-12, Song of Solomon 8, James 5

Today's scripture focus is Mark 12:13-17

Mark 12:13-17English Standard Version (ESV)

Paying Taxes to Caesar

13 And they sent to him some of the Pharisees and some of the Herodians, to trap him in his talk. 14 And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone's opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” 15 But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar's.” 17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” And they marveled at him.

Accompanying Robert Rayburn sermon: The Christian and The State

It is, of course, ironic that the Pharisees use false flattery to try to lower Jesus' guard, but are actually speaking the truth, though they do not believe it themselves.

I love the display, yet again, of Jesus' intelligence and wit.  In a single sentence He manages to affirm the legitimacy of the government, while also affirming that we owe God our allegiance over and above human government.   God alone has absolute and unqualified authority over humanity, but for the most part, is is possible to fulfill our obligations to both God and the state.

Christians do have the obligation to obey the government, even when that government is foolish and corrupt.  But if the government asks us to do anything that would dishonour God, we are to refuse.

Rayburn:
we can fail to appreciate the breathtaking implications of the second half: “give to God what is God’s.” With those seemingly innocent and innocuous words, the Lord Christ as much as wrote the death sentences of untold thousands of his followers and committed vast multitudes more to great suffering and sorrow.

Jesus himself paid his taxes and paid them to the full; but he categorically refused to give to the government – either the Jewish government or the Roman – his obedience when it ordered him to do what his Father forbad or when it demanded that he disobey the will of his Father in heaven. He went to the cross, in part, because of that refusal....

Don’t underestimate the implications of the Lord’s short sentence: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar and to God’s what is God’s.” It makes Christians loyal citizens and martyrs at one and the same time. ...

We pay taxes, we obey the laws, all the laws as God has commanded us, until that moment when we are required to do what God forbids or forbidden to do what God commands. There is something very prosaic and ordinary about a faithful Christian life: he or she is a faithful payer of taxes, even taxes that are being put to silly or wicked use. It is for them an act of Christian devotion. But there is, at the same time, something wonderfully extravagant about a faithful Christian life: he or she will give up anything and everything for the sake of loyalty to God and Christ. There is the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the other-worldly, the ordinary and the extraordinary in every true Christian life. Every Christian is to be both: the faithful citizen and the martyr for God. In the world, but not of the world. That is because our Savior said that we are to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. It is a philosophy of life that he has given us. Something to do and to be every day of our lives.

Tomorrow's scripture focus: Mark 12:18-27

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Ezekiel 13-14, 1 Peter 1

Wednesday, November 5th Mark 12:1-12

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 9-10; Song of Solomon 7; James 4

Today's scripture focus is Mark 12:1-12

Mark 12:1-12English Standard Version (ESV)

The Parable of the Tenants

12 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
11 this was the Lord's doing,
    and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.

Accompanying John MacArthur sermon: The Rejected Cornerstone
Accompanying David Legge sermon: Question Time
Accompanying Robert Rayburn sermon: Unbelief


Why was Jesus rejected?

Rayburn:
A god who does nothing and demands nothing, a god whom we can control with relatively modest investments of time and money, a god who leaves us be, who permits us to remain who and what we are: that is the god people are searching for. That is the God these clerics and churchmen were happy to serve. The living God, the God who actually exists, the God to whom we owe our lives, the moral God who made us moral creatures, who gave us a conscience, who make us live in a moral world, and who promises to hold us accountable; that God men and women do not seek. The God who enters the world to encounter us, the God who appeared as a man in Jesus Christ, who makes demands, who issues a summons, who requires that we understand our existence in reference to him; that God is not what people seek. The Bible says as much. In this sense “there is no one who seeks after God,” a text from Psalm 10 that Paul quotes in Romans 3.

“In his pride the wicked does not seek [the Lord]; in all his thoughts there is no room for God.”

That is what the Lord is saying here in his parable describing the tenants who planned to kill the son of the owner of the vineyard so that they could have the vineyard for themselves. The people did not reject Jesus, nor did the religious leadership, because he failed to prove himself to them....There is evidence aplenty....

There is the evidence of creation itself...We know too much about the universe to believe it came into being by chance or accidentally. There is the evidence of man’s nature, his consciousness and self-awareness, his personality, his moral nature, his conscience, his capacity to appreciate goodness and beauty, his concept of time, the longings of his heart; there is the historical and moral authority of Jesus Christ, the historical verifiability of the Bible, there is the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the evidence of the Christian life, and on and on.

But all of this has a flip side. There is a summons contained in all of this evidence. It is a summons to submission to the living God, the Maker of heaven and earth. It is a summons to bow the knee and to worship and obey the one who has given you life. It is a summons to acknowledge that his will must become the norm of your life. And it is finally a summons to acknowledge that you and I have lived constantly and profoundly and comprehensively in ways that are unworthy of this God and of the nature he gave me, that I must confess myself a sinner, that I must seek forgiveness in that way that God himself has provided for it, and that I must embrace a new life of obedience and service in gratitude for his gifts to me.

There is the rub. There is the reason for unbelief. To believe, really to believe, is to bow, to confess, and to obey. Pride will not bow, nor will it confess, nor will it obey. It will not no matter the cost. That is why men and women do not believe. It is not for want of evidence. It is not an act of courage on their part. It is unwillingness to surrender themselves; it is rebellion, jealousy, and defiance. The same rebellion and jealousy and defiance we Christians still find so much of in our own hearts and minds. It is not difficult for us to understand the bias that accounts for unbelief. We have so much of that same anti-God bias remaining inside us! It is the desire to be one’s own God, which both explains unbelief and guarantees that it will never succeed. Man is not God; he makes, in fact, a very poor, a pathetic imitation of God. And he invariably disappoints those who worship him as God, including himself.

Worse still, denying God does not alter the fact of God’s existence or his absolute rule over this world and the life of human beings in this world. The Sanhedrin managed to kill Jesus and by so doing they only served unwittingly to assist in the salvation of the world, to exalt Jesus to the highest place in heaven and on earth, and to secure their own judgment on the last day. They did not manage to keep him dead or to stamp out the movement that was growing around him. In fact, by their hateful acts they ignited that movement and sent it on its course of conquest throughout the world. They had a bias against Jesus deep in their hearts. They didn’t want him to be their Lord. All men have such a bias. It is why it is such an extraordinary thing to believe in him. It means you must have changed your heart and bent your will. Think of it – God changed you! Or can change you, and will if you ask him.




Tomorrow's scripture focus: Mark 12:13-17

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Ezekiel 11-12, Song of Solomon 8, James 5

Tuesday - November 4 - Tiffany

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 7-8; Song of Solomon 6; James 3
Today's scripture focus is Mark 11:27-33



Mark 11:27-33English Standard Version (ESV)

The Authority of Jesus Challenged

²⁷ And they came again to Jerusalem. And as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him, ²⁸ and they said to him, “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” ²⁹ Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. ³⁰ Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.” ³¹ And they discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ ³² But shall we say, ‘From man’?”—they were afraid of the people, for they all held that John really was a prophet. ³³ So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”


This passage makes me chuckle a little bit. It reminds me of conversations with my kids. "Mom, what's for supper?" "Chicken casserole." 5 minutes later, "mom, what's for supper?" "I just answered that, don't you remember?" And you can see their little brains turning that they remember asking, and they don't want to get chastised for not remembering, so they just say "Oh, yeah."
I feel like the disciples "we don't know" was just an "oh yeah" they didn't want Jesus to chastise them, but they didn't want the people upset either.

Jesus had done miracles, he had cast out demons with God's power, the triumphant entry was just a day or so before. He was not hiding who he was, why he was there, and yet the priests and elders STILL questioned him.

 

I wonder if they were caught between their tradition and their desire for the freedom Jesus promised. And if they could get Jesus to tell them, just one more time, then they would really believe him.

But probably not, Jesus knows men's hearts, and I know he knew their reason behind the question.

 

Jesus was beyond having his authority challenged, and very close to having it challenged on the threat of death. But he knew his purpose, and he was following the course.

I am so very thankful for that.

Tomorrow's scripture focus:

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage: Ezekiel 9-10; Song of Solomon 7; James 4

Monday, November 3 - by Pamela

Today's passage from the Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Ezekiel 5-6, Song of Solomon 5, James 2

Today's scripture focus is Mark 11:22-26

²² “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. ²³ “Truly^[a] I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. ²⁵ And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” ^[26] [b]

Scripture: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

Observation: Name it and Claim it because Jesus said so.

Application: My husband (and others!) have called me the "name it and claim it" person. I set up these massive dreams that seem so incredibly impossible and yet occasionally they do come true. Like that time I found the perfect storybook dress up costume (link here) or the time I wrote out my dream job (link here) and then 10 days later this happened (link here) or many other situations like this. My husband shakes his head sometimes because our oldest daughter is so much like me and for her it seems like the "name it and claim it" idea works too.

While I would be the first one to dismiss the idea that I prayed for it and then it came true, it struck me today while reading this passage that "naming it and claiming it" is exactly what Jesus says we should do. Why can't we dream big? Why can't we imagine the impossible? Why can't we approach the creator of the entire universe with a seemingly impossible prayer request?

I have to say that even though I have affectionately been dubbed the "name it and claim it" girl, I don't think I actually believe it on the really big things. I can list off a huge list of wants for our house and miraculous be granted every single item on my list. I can go in search of a certain item in a thrift store and be fortunate to find it. I can dream big about my future job and a dream to stay at it when all directions point to it ending after just one year (but it didn't). I can "name it" when it seems like the outcome can still be good in a variety of other ways....it wouldn't really matter if I didn't find a certain item in the thrift store....it wouldn't matter if ALL the items on my wish list would't have been checked off.....it wouldn't really matter if my job would end after just one term because maybe I could just get another position. I have an easier time "naming it" if the "claiming it" part didn't actually matter...when it does...that's where my faith falls short.

My heart is heavy as I pray for my cousin and her husband to see their desire for a child come to fruition. My relationship with my parents and sister is non-existant. The uncertainty of my children's future weighs heavy on me as I wonder what lies ahead for them spiritually, socially, and educationally. Jesus tells us: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."
Why do I have so much trouble believing this when He has demonstrated this in so many ways and yet I am discouraged by the size of the mountain. 

Prayer: Dear Lord. You are the creator of all. The all-knowing, all-powerful, almighty. I know this with my head but help me believe it with my heart. Thank you for your faithful reminders that you give so graciously. Thank you for the reminders that you are the God of the big things and the small. Pour out your mercy on me as I struggle to realize that You can take it on even if I can't see how. Amen.

Tomorrow's scripture focus is Mark 11:27-33

Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage is Ezekiel 7-8, Song of Solomon 6, James 3