Category: Devotionals

40 Days of Prayer Campaign

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

40 Days of Prayer Graphic

How is your prayer life? Do you pray for the lost? Do you pray for your city? Do you prayer for your government? Do you pray for those in your own church?

40 Days of Prayer Campaign

Recently, a member of our congregation came to me with a burden to pray like Moses did for the nation of Israel in Deuteronomy 9. Out of that conversation birthed 40 Days of Prayer. Here is the heart of the campaign:

40 Days of Prayer is an event inspired by the longsuffering and abundant mercy of a holy God and modeled after the dedicated period of fasting and effective, intercessory prayer of Moses. Moses led and lived among a rebellious people destined to perish under God’s wrath. Sound familiar? Like Moses, we desire to seek and apply God’s wisdom as the world hopelessly applies man’s wisdom to address cultural, social, economic, political and spiritual matters.  We invite you to partner with us in a focused and fervent 40 days of prayer.

7 Daily Devotions to Prepare the Heart

In order to prepare our hearts to pray for 40 Days, we wrote 7 daily devotionals. We are encouraging those who desire to pray alongside of us for the next 40 days to read through these devotionals and fast one day during the week. In an effort to help you prepare your heart to pray for 40 days, I will be posting those devotionals on my blog for the next 7 days.

If you would like more information about 40 Days of Prayer, including how you can download a PDF copy of the information and how you can link with us on social media, visit our website: sycamoredecatur.com/40DaysofPrayer

What Do You Treasure?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals3 Comments

Treasure Chest

What do you treasure? Is it earthly treasure or heavenly treasure? We would all like to think that we treasure the things of heaven, but that is not always true. Since that is the case, Jesus commands us not to store up earthly treasure. Instead we are to store up heavenly treasure.

In order to work against storing up earthly treasure, we need to know what we might have a tendency to treasure. I believe we can figure that out by thinking through a few questions.

What Do You Have Tendency to Treasure?

(1) What are the things you protect the most?

  • What do you keep behind lock and key at your house?
  • What do you rarely use for fear it might get messed up?

(2) What are the things you put before Godly activity?

What I mean by godly activity is: Reading your Bible, Prayer, Worship, and Christian fellowship

  • What takes the place of your Bible reading or prayer?
  • What is it that you are willing to do instead of coming to the worship service?
  • What is it that keeps you from times of fellowship with other brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the week?

(3) What do you pour the most energy and effort into?

  • Your house or yard?
  • A car you are fixing up?
  • Finding the best deal?
  • Things you create such as art, pictures, books, or blogs?

(4) What are the things that tug at your mind or emotions?

  • What are you constantly thinking about?
  • Planning to do?
  • Day-dreaming about?

Conclusion

Answering these questions honestly can help you determine what you have a tendency to treasure. Figuring that out is important so that you can guard yourself from storing up earthly treasures.

Question for Reflection

  1. Would you be willing to share what you have a tendency to treasure?

Resource

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The Valley of Vision: Devotion to God

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals2 Comments 
Valley of Vision
God of my end,

It is my greatest, noblest pleasure
    to be acquainted with Thee
    and with my rational, immortal soul;

It is sweet and entertaining
    to look into my being
    when all my powers and passions
    are united and engaged in pursuit of Thee,
    when my soul longs and passionately breathes
    after conformity to Thee
    and the full enjoyment of Thee;

No hours pass away with so much pleasure
    as those spent in communion with Thee
    and with my heart.

O how desirable, how profitable to the Christian life
    is a spirit of holy watchfulness
    and godly jealousy over myself,
    when my soul is afraid of nothing
    except grieving and offending Thee,
    the blessed God, my Father and friend,
    whom I then love and long to please,
    rather than be happy in myself!

Knowing, as I do, that this is the pious temper,
    worthy of the highest ambition, and closest
    pursuit of intelligent creatures and holy Christians,
    may my joy derive from glorifying and delighting Thee.

I long to fill all my time for Thee,
    whether at home or in the way;
    to place all my concerns in Thy hands;
    to be entirely at Thy disposal,
    having no will or interest of my own.

Help me to live to Thee for ever,
    to make Thee my last and only end,
    so that I may never more in one instance
    love my sinful self.

Resources

The Valley of Vision, Devotion, 236-37 (leather bound edition)

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Trip Lee: On the Gospel & Romans 8

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

What Is the Gospel? from Desiring God on Vimeo.

How Romans 8 Helps Trip Lee from Desiring God on Vimeo.

God as Our Creator | Part 2

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

Leaves Changing

Chances are if you started a Bible reading program this New Year, the first verse you read was Genesis 1:1. Even if you have not, it is a familiar passage to us all.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This succinct statement is packed with application both for us individually and our worldview. In my last post in this series, I looked at how God as Our Creator applies to our worldview. You can read that post here. In this post, I will reflect on how God as Our Creator applies to us individually.

What are the individual implications of God being our Creator?

(1) If God is our Creator, we should listen to what He says to us and keep His commandments.

As our Creator God has authority over our lives. The writer of Ecclesiastes comes to this conclusion in the final chapter of his book. There the writer tells us if we want to find meaning in life, we are to fear God and keep His commandments. The reason that can be his conclusion is because God is our Creator. He is the one who made us, and He is the One we are to submit to as Lord.

(2) If God is our Creator, He is also our Sustainer.

God is the One who upholds all things. The reason the earth spins, the laws of science do not change, why we have a never ending supply of oxygen, why our crops grow, why anything happens the way it does, is because God sustains the universe. Without God holding all things together, everything would fall apart. Hebrews 1:3-4 says,

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

The writer of Hebrews makes is clear God upholds the world by the word of His power. Nothing more but His Word is needed to Sustain His own creation, which He also created by the Word of His mouth.

God as Sustainer means we fully depend on Him for everything in our life. To forget that means we will try to do things our own way. When we strike out on our own, leaving behind what we know about God, we act like a fool and repay God with sin instead of worship (Deut 32:4-7).

God as Sustainer also means that all creation depends on something outside of themselves. Self-help books and religious teaching that tells us to look inside ourselves to fix the problem has it wrong. Instead of looking inside ourselves, we must look outside ourselves to God. He is the only one who can provide an answer for the problems we face.

(3) If God is our Creator, True Worship begins when we see that we are but creatures and owe our Creator thanksgiving, praise, and obedience.

Worship is not solely what we do when we gather together on Sunday Morning. Rather True Worship is given with our entire lives every minute of every day. By living with the idea that God is our Creator who has authority over our lives and who is our Sustainer we set ourselves up to worship God because this understanding will lead to thankfulness, praise, and obedience. When these things characterize our daily lives, then we are truly worshipping God.

(4) If God is our Creator, He leaves us without excuse because He places His fingerprints all over creation.

Romans 1:18-32 tell us that God made Himself plain in Creation, but man did not submit to Him as God. Instead we worshipped the creation. As a result, God gave man over to the lusts of their heart, and because of our rejection of God we deserve to die.

The main thread that runs through these verses is that God has made Himself known to His creation. He has placed His fingerprint everywhere for man to see. Intelligent Design is evident in all creation, so man has no excuse for not searching out and worshipping God.

Questions for Reflection

  1. Can you think of any other ways God as our Creator applies to us individually?
  2. If God is our Creator and King, when we sin against Him, we are doing more than just breaking the rules. What are we doing?

God as Our Creator | Part 1

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Devotionals2 Comments

Leaves Changing

Chances are if you started a Bible reading program this New Year, the first verse you read was Genesis 1:1. Even if you have not, it is a familiar passage to us all.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

This succinct statement is packed with application both for us individually and our worldview. Let’s start with worldview.

Worldview

The first thing that may come to your mind when you hear the word worldview is:

What is a worldview?

A worldview is a set of ideas and beliefs through which we interpret the world and interact with it.

For example, as Christians we believe life is sacred, which means we believe abortion and murder are wrong, should not be practiced, and those who commit such acts should be punished.

Our example shows us that our belief shapes the way we interpret and interact with the world. Since it is a set of beliefs that shape the way we interpret and interact with the world, every religion, philosophy, or way of thinking has worldview implications.

How do we know which one is right?

As Christians, we believe our worldview is right because our God is the Creator of the entire world. We read that in Genesis 1:1. As the Creator, He interacts with His creation through His Word, the Bible, which necessitates the Bible be correct.

How do we know Scripture is correct?

Scripture is correct because it has proven itself to be true through both internal and external evidence. I don’t have space to go into all the evidence, so let me briefly point out that part of that evidence has to do with answering questions that every worldview must answer. Those are:

(1) How did we get here?
(2) How did the world get the way it is?
(3) How is it going to be fixed?

Scripture answers these questions. It tells us that God created the World, sin is the reason the world is the way it is, and Jesus is the way everything will be set right.

If Scripture could not provide these answers, then we should not allow it to operate as our dominate worldview. Scripture, however, does answer these questions, which means we can trust the claim of Genesis 1:1 that God is our Creator. As such, we should allow Him, through His Word, to shape the way we view the world.

Looking forward

In the next post in this series, I will look at how God as our Creator applies to us individually.

Question for Reflection

  1. Can you think of a worldview that cannot answer one of the three questions above?