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7/30/09 devotion

John Ch 6 V 1-15

¹Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), ²and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. ³Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. ⁴The Jewish Passover Feast was near.

⁵When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” ⁶He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

⁷Philip answered him, “Eight months’ wages^[a] would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

⁸Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, ⁹“Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”

¹⁰Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. ¹¹Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.

¹²When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” ¹³So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

¹⁴After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” ¹⁵Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

.  All believers accepted Jesus’ salvation, and with this they are all saved; but many of the believers still did not give God our full trust. Many of us still worry about the things of this world, how will we feed and cloth ourselves if we do not get a good job? From this passage God showed us that He was able to feed the five thousand with five small barley loaves and two small fish. Whenever we eat, we should also give thanks to God for providing the food. Sure, the food may be made by a chef, by your mom, or whoever, but who created the ingredients for us to eat?

.  Because the five thousand who followed Him trusted in Jesus, God made sure they were not disappointed. He fed all of them. Through this passage, God speaks to us. If we are able to trust in Him with all our heart, with all our mind, and all our strength, God will provide. When you feel able to put your life into God’s hands, just give a prayer, as I have. ” God, I know I do not deserve this life, as I am sinful; but because of your grace I am able to be saved. I trust You to provide for me in my life, and I will live each and every day to glorify You, in all that I do. Lord, let your will be done.”

.  God is not a part of our schedule, He is our schedule. We should be dedicating each of our accomplishments, each of our achievements, to God. We should be seeking praise from God, the Creator of the universe, rather than the praise from mere men. May all the glory in everything I do go to God, for He is my life.

.  The crowd wanted to make Jesus king because they believed Jesus came to make His kingdom on Earth, but Jesus rejected the offer because His kingdom was not to be on earth, but in heaven. If Jesus accepted the offer, then we would not have been able to be saved through Him.

7/29/09 devotion

John Ch 5 V 31-47

³¹“If I testify about myself, my testimony is not valid. ³²There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is valid.

³³“You have sent to John and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴Not that I accept human testimony; but I mention it that you may be saved. ³⁵John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light.

³⁶“I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me. ³⁷And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, ³⁸nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. ³⁹You diligently study^[c] the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, ⁴⁰yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

⁴¹“I do not accept praise from men, ⁴²but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. ⁴³I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. ⁴⁴How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God^[d]?

⁴⁵“But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. ⁴⁶If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. ⁴⁷But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?”

.  If Jesus testified about Himself, it would not be a vaild testimony. But it through all the prophets that Jesus is prophesied. God has chosen those prophets to tell the world about Jesus, the Savior, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent Jesus to complete His promise of a Savior. We have never heard His voice or seen His form, but we have His Holy Spirit in us if we have accepted.

.  For those who do not yet know Christ, they still do not understand God and Jesus’ purpose. Non-believers will find many other ways to try and find the way to achieve eternal life, yet deny the One who was sent to die on this earth for all of our sins. Jesus does not accept praise from men, but gives all the glory to God, and because of this many people despise Him. God says that most of us try and attain praise from men, and yet do not try to receive the greatest praise of all; praise from God, our Creator.

.  Many of the non-believers will believe in many of the prophets of the old, and yet do not believe the prophet’s words about the Savior that will and has come. If the non-believers are not able to believe the prophet’s words, how will they even believe Jesus’ words, the one who died to cleanse us of all our sins?

7/28/09 devotion

John Ch 5 V 16-30

¹⁶So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him. ¹⁷Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” ¹⁸For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

¹⁹Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. ²⁰For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these. ²¹For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. ²²Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, ²³that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

²⁴“I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. ²⁵I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. ²⁶For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. ²⁷And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

²⁸“Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice ²⁹and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. ³⁰By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.

.  God is always working in our lives each and every second. Even on the Sabbath, a day of rest, God is still working. On the days of rest, generally sundays, it is good to go to church because it is a place where fellow believers in Christ can come together to glorify Him. God judges no one, but it is through Jesus that we are judged, that all who believes in Him shall be saved.

.  Whoever believes in the Son, Jesus, will not be sent to hell, for we have been born again, saved from the punishment reserved for those who sin. Since we were born into this world, the only thing that awaits us after death on earth is eternal death, now those who hear and accept Jesus will ‘live’, reborn in the mind, and also living an eternal life after death with God. As God can give life, He also gives life through Jesus, the one who was sent down to earth.

.  God does not want us to be surprised, but know as a fact that there will be a time when Jesus returns, and all the people, dead or alive, will be judged.

7/27/09 devotion

John Ch 5 V 1-15

¹Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. ²Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda^[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.^{[b] 5}One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

⁸Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, ¹⁰and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

¹¹But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ “

¹²So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

¹³The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

¹⁴Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” ¹⁵The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

.  God is able to bring anyone to Him, no matter how impossible it may seem. We may be deterred to reach out to some people who may seem as if all hope is lost, but as long as the person did not reject God after understanding who He is, anyone can be saved. Before we even accepted Jesus, God was already there, asking us if we want to know Him. Since the beginning, God is always watching over us, waiting for us to come back to Him. Once we have returned, as in accepting Jesus Christ, He will change us anew. We should go out and tell everyone about the joy of knowing God, the happiness that comes from knowing that Jesus, God, died for us on the cross so that whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life. He is our God, our creator, our master, and our best friend.

7/26/09 Devotion

John Ch 4 V 43-54

⁴³After the two days he left for Galilee. ⁴⁴(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) ⁴⁵When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.

⁴⁶Once more he visited Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. ⁴⁷When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

⁴⁸“Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

⁴⁹The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

⁵⁰Jesus replied, “You may go. Your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. ⁵¹While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. ⁵²When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour.”

⁵³Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and all his household believed.

⁵⁴This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.

Jesus did not go near His birthplace because many people there saw Him as a carpenter’s son, so they disliked Him. Same with us, when someone knows us very well, it would be harder to change their opinion of us in a short time.

God tells us that unless we saw miracles with our own eyes, we would never believe in Jesus. This is true for all of us, why would we accept Jesus without experiencing His love beforehand? We were all non-believers once, what has gotten us to believe in a person we can’t see? It is because of what Jesus has done in our lives, and also as you know more and more about Him, your eyes will be open and you will begin to see just how much Jesus loves you, through the many blessings He puts into your lives. After we have accepted Jesus though, from then on, I pray that we do not only believe because we have seen miraculous signs, but because we have experienced God’s love, and want to glorify Him through the rest of our lives here on earth. If we truly believe in our prayers that God will answer, God will deliver. There is nothing too big or too small for Him to handle. Don’t forget, He is our creator, He knows what is best for us.

7/25/09 devotion

John Ch 4 V 27-42

²⁷Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

²⁸Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ^[b]?” ³⁰They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

³¹Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

³²But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

³³Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

³⁴“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. ³⁵Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. ³⁸I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

³⁹Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” ⁴⁰So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. ⁴¹And because of his words many more became believers.

⁴²They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
.  God has plans for us, and we should carry them out with no hesitation and no questions asked, to know that God always wants the best for us. Through us God is sowing the seeds of faith into the non-believers, so that they may have eternal life. The prophets have done the hard work, spreading the word that the Messiah was coming down to earth, and after Jesus died for our sins, our work had become much easier. We only have to accept that Jesus died on the sins for us, and we shall have eternal life.

.  When we have accepted Jesus and we begin to live our lives glorifying God, it is testimony that Jesus in our savior. To all of our friends and the people we meet, they may accept Jesus just because of the changes that we have. In sowing the seeds of faith in these people, they may one day come to know God, and come to know just how much the God of the universe loves us.

7/24/09 devotion

John Ch 4 V 1-26

¹The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, ²although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. ³When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

⁴Now he had to go through Samaria. ⁵So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

⁹The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a])

¹⁰Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹²Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

¹³Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

¹⁵The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

¹⁶He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

¹⁷“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. ¹⁸The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

¹⁹“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

²¹Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

²⁵The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

²⁶Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

When Jesus learned that the Pharisees were beginning to notice Him, He left for a safer place. Even though we as believers should be telling others about God, we should also look out for our safety, pray for protection from harm. When Jesus asked the Samaritan woman for water, she asked why would Jews ask Samaritans for water when they looked down on them. God replied that He could give her the living water. When God speaks to us through the Bible and through signs in our lives, if we are not believers, we would either miss those signs or in the case of the Bible, just think it is a book. If you had not accepted Christ yet, then the Bible will just seem to be a book that teaches good morals. The living water that Jesus offers us is salvation; instead of an eternity in hell because we are sinners, we accept Christ and spend an eternity in heaven with Him.

.  Here the woman either is mocking Jesus or is misinterpreting Him when she asks for the water, so that she will never be thirsty again. This is the same with non-believers, when they hear the news about Jesus, they may accept Jesus for the wrong reasons. These people may believe that if they accept Jesus, their life on earth would have no troubles and they would become wealthy. When these people are going the wrong way, God has to send a message, sometimes it takes drastic measures for us to see that we are going the wrong way. In this case, God had to tell the woman how much of a sinner she was. We are suppose to accept Jesus not to make our lives better, but because we repent that we are sinners. We need Jesus, the sinless sacrifice for all of our sins, to wash our sins away. It is through this acknowledgment, and when we begin to live our lives to glorify God, that our lives will be filled with joy, because we will be living every moment of our lives dedicated to our Lord, the Creator of the universe.

.  The woman sees that Jesus is not a normal person, then asks why the Jews say that people can only worship in Jerusalem? Jesus replies that even though for now salvation is only for the Jews, there will come a time when anyone can be saved. That is after Jesus had died for us, and whoever then believes in His sacrifice and repents, will be saved. After the woman replies that she believes God will come and explain everything, Jesus replies, ” I who speak to you am he.” Jesus is God.

7/23/09 Devotion

John Ch 3 V 22-36

²²After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. ²³Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized. ²⁴(This was before John was put in prison.) ²⁵An argument developed between some of John’s disciples and a certain Jew^[i] over the matter of ceremonial washing. ²⁶They came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, that man who was with you on the other side of the Jordan—the one you testified about—well, he is baptizing, and everyone is going to him.”

²⁷To this John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. ²⁸You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ^[j] but am sent ahead of him.’ ²⁹The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. ³⁰He must become greater; I must become less.

³¹“The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. ³²He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. ³³The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. ³⁴For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God^[k] gives the Spirit without limit. ³⁵The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. ³⁶Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”^[l]

God sent Jesus down to the earth so that whoever believes in Him will be saved. In this passage, God tells us that while we spread the news about Jesus, it is not about ourselves. When the Jews told John that Jesus was getting all the attention, John replied that he is not the Christ. We are like John, in that the praise and worship should not be directed toward us, but toward God. Our joy is from people being saved, so that God receives another person into heaven, which brings Him joy. We are mere humans, from the earth.

When Jesus came down to earth, there were still those who did not believe Him. But John testifies here that God is truthful, Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus speaks words only from God, and has no sin, but love. Whoever believes in Jesus shall have eternal life, but for those that don’t;like every man who was not cleaned of sin, they shall perish an eternal death.

7/22/09 devotion

John Ch 3 V 1-21

¹Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. ²He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

³In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.^[a]“

⁴“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

⁵Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. ⁶Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit^[b] gives birth to spirit. ⁷You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You^[c] must be born again.’ ⁸The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

⁹“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.

¹⁰“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? ¹¹I tell you the truth, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. ¹²I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? ¹³No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.^{[d] 14}Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.^[e]

¹⁶“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,^[f] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.^{[g] 19}This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. ²⁰Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. ²¹But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”^[h]
.  Many people see Jesus as just a man who received powers from God. God tells us that no one will be able to go to heaven, unless he is born again. In this case, to be born again is to accept Jesus Christ as our savior, and repent as sinners. After we have accepted Jesus into our hearts, the Holy Spirit will begin to change us to be more loving and kind. We are reborn through the Holy Spirit.

.  God has already time and time again reminds of Jesus, and yet many people do not believe. If we do not believe God’s actions here on earth, how will we believe Him about heaven? The only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ. God sent Jesus to be the sinless sacrifice for all of humanity, so that if we believe in Him, we would be saved from eternal death. Jesus is the light of this world, but men have turned to indulge in sin, and does not want to leave it. Whoever believes in Jesus will change in person, so that others may see God’s love flowing through us believers.