Intentional Faith

Today’s Quote

There is neither encouragement nor room in Bible religion for feeble desires, listless efforts, lazy attitudes; all must be strenuous, urgent, ardent. Flamed desires, impassioned, unwearied insistence delight heaven. God would have His children incorrigibly in earnest and persistently bold in their efforts. Heaven is too busy to listen to half-hearted prayers or to respond to pop-calls. Our whole being must be in our praying.

E.M. Bounds

Devotion for the Day

Excerpt from Psalm 91

“My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”

Reflection by Martin B. Copenhaver

Home. It is hard to think of another word with as many deep resonances. Whether we are responding to the presence or the absence of something called home, the word itself seems to echo in the deeper recesses of our hearts.

A home is so much more than a house. A home is a place, or a dream of a place, where you feel uniquely at home, which is to say a place where you feel like you belong. Some of us have an actual place like that, a place that comforts and enfolds, a place where you can seek refuge from the world and are refreshed to face the world again. Whether you live alone or with others, it is a place where you don’t have to explain everything. It is a place where you can be yourself, for better or worse, and usually it is both. And, in the home of our dreams, at least, it is a place where you feel accepted, loved even. There are not many places like that in the world, and we all need such a place.

The authors of scripture talk about God in some of the same ways, as a shelter and a comfort, as the one who accepts us just as we are, who enfolds us with care and equips us to serve. Perhaps that is why scripture speaks of God as a home. “God is my refuge and my fortress,” writes the psalmist, using the words that would later inspire Luther’s famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.” Elsewhere we read, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Imagine: God is our home.

If the home in which you live is a sanctuary or roiled with conflict, grand or plain, a real place or merely the stuff of dreams, we all have the same gracious home in God. So welcome home.

Prayer

O God, thank you that you have been our refuge, our dwelling place, throughout all generations and are so even now and even for me. Amen.

Today’s Prayer

Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its going down, the Lord’s name is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations, His glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, Who dwells on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth? He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes – with the princes of His people. He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!
Psalm 113

Thoughts on Today’s Text

To begin with it will be important to keep in mind that this is poetry, and well-attested by use as easily one of the most beautiful and loved pieces in the New Testament. The task will thus be in part to rescue or recover a reading that has gained so close an association with weddings and married love. Its placement here as a culmination of the argument of chapter 12 makes clear that it is rather a vision of the love that characterizes the one body of a caring community that is the gift of the Spirit in Christ Jesus our Lord.

At the end of this beautiful poem Paul will remind us that this vision of community is ultimately not about knowing or doing things, but is about knowing a person “face to face” and that living in such a community is merely a reflection of our having first been known and caught up in the love of God (13:12).

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” — these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (2:9-10). It is revelation. Like the beauty of an opening flower, it comes as surprise and as a fantastic vision of the possibilities of life in the oneness of community that is the gift of the Spirit.

“An more excellent way.” The word used here — “way,” road,” or “path;” Greek hodos — has a rich history in the Scriptures and in early Christian reflection and practice. The invitation is to a journey, a venture of which the end is of course only known to God. And so it is ultimately to be cast back upon trust in the wisdom and promises of the God who is faithful and who has called us into this community (1:9).

Today’s Scripture Reading

1 Corinthians 13:1-13 (NIV)
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
– Author Unknown

Today’s Devotion

Psalm 71:1-6

For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.

Talitha Arnold

Last September I did a solo hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, spent two nights at Phantom Ranch, and then trekked back to the top. It was the fourth time I’ve done the hike, the first being when I was in college, the last ten years ago. Not surprisingly it took me a bit longer to get back up this time.

Hiking the Grand Canyon is hiking a mountain in reverse. The hard part comes when you’re already tired and the rim is a mile from the bottom as the crow flies, except you’re not a crow and the trail up is nine miles long.

I have to admit that there were a couple times on the way up that I thought to myself, “This is truly the dumbest thing you have ever done.” Of course I think that at mid-point in every major hike. But as before, the journey was worth it. When you hike the Grand Canyon, you’re walking through literally billions of years of time and almost every eco-system on the planet, down to the center of the earth and back.

When I made it up to the top, I sat on the rim for a long time. I wanted to give my calves a rest and also simply look back down on the trail I’d just hiked. I was filled with a sense of wonder at both the Canyon’s deep beauty and the fact I’d made it down and up once again, proving once again that God loves fools.

“For you, O Lord, are my hope,” writes today’s Psalmist. She or he looks back on their life and knows that God has been “my trust, O Lord, from my youth.”

With the wisdom of the Psalmist, the old Gospel song proclaims, “My soul looks back in wonder at how I got over.” It’s a good thing do every once in a while along the way, whether you’re sitting on the rim of the Grand Canyon or in your living room. Look back in wonder at your journey and the One who’s been with you every step of the way.

Prayer

Thank you, God, for walking with us and for the wonder of it all.

Today’s Prayer

Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its going down, the Lord’s name is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations, His glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, Who dwells on high, Who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth? He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes – with the princes of His people. He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!

Thoughts on Today’s Text

Paul describes Christ as “the image of the invisible God.”
“Image” means “likeness.” It is the same word from which we get our word English word “icon,” referring to a statue.
The same word is used in Matthew 22:20 of Caesar’s image on a coin, and in Revelation 13:14 of the statue of Antichrist.
Paul is teaching that Christ is the adequate and essential expression of the divine nature. He fully represents God because in Him dwells the fullness of deity.
In fact, He is the sole revealer of God, actually manifesting the invisible. His character is the true revelation of the divine glory.

Now remember that Man is created in the “image” of God (Genesis 1:26-27).
That means that like God, man has intellect, emotion, and will, by which we are able to feel, think, and choose.
However, man is not a perfect “image” of God because God is holy and sinless and man is unholy and sinful.
We are human, not divine. Christ on the other hand, is perfect, holy, the absolute, accurate “image” of God (Hebrews 1:3).
In Christ, “the invisible God” literally became “visible.”

Today’s Text

Colossians 1:15-20 (NIV)
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.
17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.