Zondervan Inspire

The Greatest Example

From the Editor: No, this is not a picture of the garden of Gethsemane. I’m sure most of you have figured that out already. But it’s a beautiful garden with a path that shows the way. Kind of like how Jesus shows us the way.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith 

One moment stands above all others in history as the greatest example of loving God with all one's soul. It took place on the night before Jesus died, as he talked to his Father in the garden of Gethsemane. Knowing that the next day he would face the physical, emotional, and spiritual torture of the cross, Jesus prayed, "Not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42). Jesus set aside anything he may have desired and determined to do only what the Father directed.

How do you set your soul to make such a radical decision? Jesus shows the way. You set the direction of your soul by talking to God. The power to follow Jesus' example is found in being able to pray the prayer that Jesus prayed: "Not my will, Lord, but yours be done."

From The Relationship Principles of Jesus

by Tom Holladay

Return to Putting Him First

From the Editor: This picture and this post remind me of how much I need to put God first and depend on him daily—like a small boy depends on his dad.

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith 

Like a husband's first love for his young bride, that's how God feels about you. Like a loving parent desires his children to trust his guidance, God longs to lead you into life. But when we put things that are worth less first in our lives, before God, we end up feeling worthless ourselves. We can never feel secure enough, we can never get enough, because we've abandoned the fountain of living water to dig wells for ourselves that are full of cracks and can never satisfy our deepest thirst. God pleads with people through the prophets to return to putting him first.

From Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended

by John Burke

Competing Values Cannot Coexist

From the Editor: I don’t know about you, but “balance” is something I fight with continually. Tom presents an interesting perspective here, yet other authors preach balance as an essential part of the modern workplace.

The other thing that strikes me is this: At what point do you cross the threshold from earning a living to loving money?

Wishing you blessings today,

Keith 

As we consider our priorities, three relational truths from Matthew 6:24-33 are vital. First, notice that Jesus said we "cannot serve both God and money." He didn't say "should not" or "might not want to attempt to"; he said "cannot." Jesus teaches us that competing values cannot coexist. One will overwhelm the other.

Our modern-day answer is, "I'll manage my life better, and then I'll be able to do more! I'll find time for being completely committed to God and for making money — and for recreation and career and hobbies too!" Jesus says, "You cannot serve both God and money," and we think, "Well, Jesus obviously didn't understand how to multitask!" It doesn't matter how well you manage your life or how many laborsaving, time-saving devices you buy; if you try to hold on to competing values, one will always overwhelm the other.

From The Relationship Principles of Jesus

by Tom Holladay

Your Inheritance Forever

Jesus Christ is Himself the sum total of the covenant, and, as one of its gifts, He is the possession of every believer. Dear Christian, are you able to fathom what you have received in Him, "for in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9)?

Consider the word God in all its infinite greatness, and then meditate on the beauty of "becom[ing] mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). Remember, as God and man, all that Christ ever had or has is yours purely because of His favor. It has been freely bestowed on you and will be your inheritance forever.

From Look Unto Me: The Devotions of Charles Spurgeon

by Jim Reimann

Any comments or testimonies today?

Acting on Renewed Priorities

What Jesus teaches takes just two sentences to say but a lifetime to put into practice: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's it! Jesus teaches that we must replace our old set of values with a new set — and we must then begin to act on this new set of values. First we renew our priorities, and then we act on those renewed priorities. When Jesus taught that love for God and love for our neighbor are to come first, he showed us which values are to have first priority in our lives. Then he described how to live out the priority of loving God in the words "with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" and the priority of loving others in the words "as yourself."

From The Relationship Principles of Jesus

by Tom Holladay

Any comments or testimonies today?

Hardwired to Seek God

This is the message God conveyed through Moses, the prophets, and finally through Jesus: No human being or material thing can satisfy our deepest longings because God has hardwired us for himself first. Just as birds are hardwired to fly south for winter, we were hardwired to seek God. We will never find the life we long for apart from him because he is the Source of all we love.

If we put other things, no matter how good, in the center of our lives, they become rival gods that lead us to destruction — the loss of the life our thirsty souls crave. But when a new vision of God's goodness motivates us to seek him with all we have, everything else comes alive. All our pursuits for relationship, success, security, and purpose get rightly ordered and become life-giving in new ways.

From Soul Revolution: How Imperfect People Become All God Intended

by John Burke

Any comments or testimonies today?

A Different Kind of Nation

Genesis is about the progression of sin, violence, and death—what started with one son killing the other quickly led to an entire civilization in opposition to God. And then Exodus begins with the Israelites enslaved by a nation. Sin always gains a head of steam when it goes unchecked. And that always leads to institutions and cultures and structures that are anti-kingdom. This leads to dehumanizing places, like Egypt had become, which these former slaves standing at the base of Sinai know all too well. And God's response is to form a different kind of nation, a "holy" one shaped not by greed, violence, and abusive power but by compassion, justice, and care for one's neighbor.

From Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile

by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Any comments or testimonies today?

Follow God's Leading

I sometimes wonder how many Christians today have missed out on God's beautiful purpose and have hurt themselves because they strayed outside the edges of God's will for them. They sometimes quote the familiar sentence of Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," but forget that this is not a license for doing our own thing whenever we feel like it. We must follow God's leading the way the Israelites followed the divine cloud through the desert, knowing that it will take us where we need to go. As long as the cloud is determining the route, we can be sure that God will fight on our behalf. Otherwise, we are on our own in enemy territory.

From You Were Made for More: The Life You Have, the Life God Wants You to Have 

by Jim Cymbala

Any comments or testimonies today?

Chuck Colson’s Story about How The Faith Made an Eternal Difference

Watch Chuck Colson tell the story about how his new book The Faith made an eternal difference in the life of a person he had been witnessing to for years.

“Every pastor should read The Faith and every pastor should preach through this book with their congregation—it’s that good.”  —Bill Hybels

To learn more about The Faith, download the FREE study guide, and more, CLICK HERE.

To learn more about The Faith church campaigns, download FREE resources, get significant quantity discounts, and register for your church’s campaign, CLICK HERE.

Where Is There Hope?

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, a great irony persists. Technology has given man power he has never known before; giant institutions, such as the United Nations, offer panaceas for all human ills. But never has man seemed less able to devise political strategies to produce order and harmony among people. The proudest pretensions of the strongest nations are mocked by a handful of bomb-laden terrorists willing to die in order to kill strangers on a train, subway, or jet. Korea, Lebanon, Darfur, Iran, China, and dozens of places like them are but open sores on the body politic, reminding us that even in this age of technological wonders, modern governments have devised nothing to cure the unbridled passions of man.

Where then is hope? It is in the fact that the Kingdom of God has come to earth—the Kingdom announced by Jesus Christ in that obscure Nazareth synagogue two thousand years ago. It is a Kingdom that comes not in a temporary takeover of political structures, but in the lasting takeover of the human heart by the rule of a holy God.

From God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries between
Faith and Politics

by Charles Colson

Any comments or testimonies today?