Mars Hill Staff Devotional
from My Utmost for His Highest
by Oswald Chambers
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and *said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael *said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” John 1:47-48 NASB
Key Take-aways:
– Worshiping in everyday occasions readies us for whatever comes our way.
– A crisis does not build something within us – it simply reveals what we are made of already. A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness.
– John 1:51 Nathanael needed to see that, while his private time with God under the fig tree made him spiritually fit, the time had come to worship openly. In the words of John Piper, “there are no holy geographic places any more designated by God as his meeting place with man. Jesus is now that meeting place.”
– John 1:51 calls to mind Gen 28:12-16. Jacob found himself in a holy place. Jacob saw angels ascending and descending on a ladder. In this passage, Jesus communicates that He is the ladder. Also from Piper, “When we move heavenward, we move on the Son of Man. When God moves earthward, he moves on the Son of Man.”
We unpacked 2 Peter 1:3 word by word, “seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” WOW! Every single word had meaning for us.
Key take-aways:
– If you’re waiting for God to grant you something in order for you to experience an abundant life,
then stop waiting. He has already granted us everything we need.
– The way to recognize and lay hold of all He has granted is by truly knowing Him. We do that through
diligent study of His Word, constant communion and intimate obedience.
This is part 2 of 2 from last weeks lesson. First Steps to Restore Broken Lives: Key take away: Very practical, very powerful. We’re all in need of God’s restoration.
“The Place to Start” by Ray Stedman
Read the Scripture: Nehemiah 1:4-11
When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven (Nehemiah 1:4).
Nehemiah clearly has a deep sense of personal concern. He is willing to face the facts, to weep over them and tell God about them. That is always the place to begin. There is nothing superficial about this. A famous song says, Don’t worry, Be happy. But that is mere salve over a deep cancer. What is needed is honestly facing the ruin, whatever it may be, and, without blaming or attempting to involve somebody else, telling it all to God. God always welcomes a broken spirit and a contrite heart.
Follow the pattern of Nehemiah’s prayer. First, he recognized the character of God. The ruin you are concerned with may not always be yours personally. You feel like Nehemiah, and you want to weep and mourn and tell God about it. That is always the place to start, for God is a responsive God. He gives attention to the prayers of His people.
The second thing Nehemiah did was to repent of all personal and corporate sins. This was honestly facing his own guilt. Notice the absence of self-righteousness. He did not say, Lord, I am thinking of those terrible sinners back there in Jerusalem. Be gracious to them because they have fallen into wrong actions. No, he put himself into this picture, saying, I confess before you, Lord, the sins of myself and my father’s house. There was no attempt to blame others for this. It was a simple acknowledgment of wrong.
Then, third, Nehemiah reminded God of His gracious promises. In the book of Deuteronomy 28-30 Moses prophetically outlines the entire history of Israel. He said they would disobey God; they would be scattered among the nations; they would go into exile. But if they would turn and acknowledge their evil, God would bring them back to the land. Nehemiah reminded God of that gracious promise.
The fourth thing Nehemiah did was request specific help to begin this process. It was not going to be easy, but he knew what he had to do. It was going to take the authority of the top power in the whole empire. That was not easy to arrange. But Nehemiah believed that God would help him. And so he started to pray and asked for grace and strength to carry out the steps that were necessary to begin recovery.
Thank You, Father, for this wonderfully practical book that sets out a safe guideline to recovery and usefulness. Help me to begin where Nehemiah began: to tell the whole story in Your ear and thus begin the process of recovery.
Life Application: Are we experiencing the healing power of contrite repentance? Do we acknowledge the effects of our sins on others’ lives?
The brokenness of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s day is a metaphor for a broken human life.
God reveals our brokenness, not to condemn us, but to rebuild my life. Key take away: Are we willing to expose our brokenness? “God opposes the proud
and give grace to the humble.” – James 4:6.
Today’s devotional is part 1 of 2. Next week we’ll look at the 4 steps to restoration and healing.
“Broken Walls, Broken Lives” by Ray Stedman
Read the Scripture: Nehemiah 1:1-3
The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire (Nehemiah 1:3b).
Notice the description of Jerusalem. The people were in trouble and were feeling a great sense of disgrace and reproach. The walls of the city were broken down. The gates had been burned with fire and were no longer usable.
If we take Jerusalem as a symbol of our own lives, there are many of us who fit this description. You look back on your life, and you see there are places where the walls have been broken down. There is no longer any ability left to resist destructive attacks. You have fallen victim to sinful habits that you now find difficult to break. That is the kind of ruin that is described here.
Perhaps you have gone along with the ways of the world. You have fallen into practices that the Bible says are wrong, and you know they are wrong. But you have difficulty stopping them. Perhaps your drift began innocently. You did not realize you were forming a habit, but now you no longer can stop it. Your defenses are gone. The walls of your city are broken down, and perhaps your gates are also burned. Gates are ways in and out. They are the way by which other people get to know you as you really are. Perhaps your gates have been destroyed by wrong habits.
Perhaps you were abused as a child. This phenomenon seems to be surfacing frequently in our day. The shame and the scarring of it have kept you a recluse. Your gates are burned, and nobody has access to you. Perhaps you were a victim of divorce or rape or of some bitter experience, and you feel betrayed or sabotaged.
You want to run and hide. No one can reach you. You have been so badly burned, you are now touchy and inaccessible. There are parts of your life you cannot talk about. You do not want anyone to know. You have a sense of great personal distress and are feeling reproach and disgrace. You have been scarred emotionally. No one may know about it. To others you appear to be a success. They think you are doing fine, but inwardly you know you are not. As you examine the walls and the gates of your life, you find much of it in ruins. How do you handle that?
That is the great question many face. But that is why the Scriptures are given to us. The men and women of the past have been through these same difficulties, and they have told us how to handle them. This great book of Nehemiah is one of the most helpful pictures we have of how to recover from broken lives. The steps that Nehemiah took covers seven chapters of this book. They are specific steps, orderly–and very effective! Taken in order they will lead to a full recovery of usefulness.
Thank You, Father, that You reveal my own brokenness, not in order to condemn me, but to rebuild my life. I give to You all that is in ruins and ask that You rebuild me into the person You want me to be.
Life Application: Are we ready and willing to allow God to expose our brokenness and lead us in paths of healing and usefulness?
For today’s staff devotional, we discussed “Being versus Doing”. Key take away: He is the initiator and we are the responders.
Our role is to say “yes” and follow. His role is to lead and do what
only He can do . . . in us, through us and around us.
Active and Passive by Ray Stedman
Read the Scripture: John 15:4-11
Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me (John 15:4).
Notice that our Lord divides this passage into two sections. There is an activity that is to be done, and a passivity that is to be acknowledged. We are to remain in Him (that is active, something we do), and we are to let Him remain in us (that is passive, something we allow Him to do). Both these relationships are essential, not one as opposed to the other, but both together.
When our Lord says Remain in me, He is talking about the will, and the decisions we make. We must decide to do things that keep ourselves in contact with Him. The Holy Spirit has placed us into Christ. Now we must maintain that relationship by the decisions we make, such as exposing ourselves to His Word and having a prayer relationship with Him. We remain in Him when we bear one another’s burdens and confess our faults and share in fellowship with one another. All of this is designed to relate to Him: Remain in me. If we do that, we are fulfilling this active, necessary decision of the will to obey His Word.
This is what Bible study and prayer are all about. They are not mere mechanical practices that every Christian ought to do in order to get brownie points with God! No, they are means by which we know Him. If you open your Bible and begin to read it without the conscious expectation that it is going to tell you something about Him, you will read in vain. If you try to pray as though it were some exercise in which you chalk off fifteen minutes’ worth, mechanically going through a list, it is a valueless experience. But if you pray because you are talking with One whom you love and want to know more of, sharing with Him out of the fullness of your heart, then prayer becomes a beautiful experience. That is remaining in Him.
But that is only part of it. Jesus says, Remain in me, and I in you. There is also the other side–Let me remain in you. That has to do with empowerment, enablement. You can make choices, but you cannot fulfill them. And though you are responsible to make choices, you are not responsible for the power to carry them out. There you are to depend on Him, to let Him abide in you. You are to rest upon His ability to see you through. As you venture out on that basis, you expect Him to carry you through.
Both of these are absolutely essential. Making decisions and then trying to do the whole thing yourself is going to produce intense activity, but no results. On the other hand, letting Him take all the responsibility and making no choices at all will also produce a fruitless life. We must determine to expose ourselves to Him; we must seek His face in the Word, in prayer, and in fellowship with others. And then we must count on Him to see us through, to supply that enabling power that makes us able to love and forgive and rejoice and give thanks. When we do, we are remaining in Him and letting Him remain in us.
Father, teach me the proper balance between making hard choices to remain in You and resting in You to do in me what only You can do.
Life Application: What is the tremendous difference between our will power and our activity power – between our power to choose and our power to do?
devos from the hill 