Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

John 19:2-3 NLT

'The soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put a purple robe on him. “Hail! King of the Jews!” they mocked, as they slapped him across the face.'

Mental anguish is perhaps my greatest battle. I can be withdrawn, moody and depressed, often accompanied by a loss of self-confidence. I know my natural personality is to live within my head rather than engage with the material world that surrounds me, and maybe that adds to my mental anguish. As I reflect upon it, I have come to meditate upon the crown of thorns here thrust upon the brow of Jesus.

Worrying changes nothing, yet knowing this offers no respite from the anxious thoughts that besiege me. For me, it’s a sort of torture. My thoughts drum back and forth within my skull, destroying concentration, aggravating me and keeping me from sleep. I am living in a world that has not arrived, yet is as real to me as though I were living and having to navigate my way through it.

I do not know how Jesus processed the intense physical and mental pain he experienced. The cruel process of his execution had begun. What were his thoughts as he imagined the journey that lay before him?

Considering Christ in these moments of excruciating pain, I note that he has nothing other than the promise of the Father to hold on to. He has yielded to the Father’s will and now there is this outworking of the divine redemption in his person. My learning is that in the midst of my mental tempest, I must wrestle to recover my sense of identity in God and ride out these moments, rather than giving full expression to my anger, fear and pain. It seems I’ve discovered that the Christian Way is more about learning to find peace through having Christ as my centre than it is in seeking to execute some well-intentioned rescue plan. I’m already rescued; this is the outworking of salvation in me and in the earth.

QUESTION: How do your worries affect your faith in God?

PRAYER: Lord, even when there is pain, sorrow and suffering, help me, as Jesus did, to trust your promises.

Mark 15:15 NLT

'So to pacify the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified.'

The fickleness of the crowd who once hailed Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem is evident to us all. I am reminded of my own fickleness. I have been among that crowd when it’s suited me to keep quiet about my love and friendship with God. It is remarkable how a culture that offers little by way of hope, and has reduced the purpose of life to accumulating wealth and consumer products, can silence a message offering hope to human existence. Individuals are prepared to convince me of the merits of one motorised metal box over another with a zeal that I can barely muster in speaking of God, even to Christians.

When I pursue God, I experience the very real pain of choosing God’s way over my natural inclination. I am also made aware by God’s Spirit of the gap that so easily exists between my vocal declarations and my practical life and time style. This is perhaps where those Church traditions that allow for third party confession to a priest have identified something valuable. When I make confession to God in private, as I do, I am not ever exposing my daily hypocrisy, but entering a loop of self-distortion at best, deception at worst.

I’ve learned that there is no way to follow Jesus without pain to my pretentious (however well-intentioned) self; I’m reminded that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. I, unlike Jesus, might deserve scourging; he, however, embraced it on my behalf so I might know that life in Christ is not without its slings and arrows.

QUESTION: What distracts you most from pursuing a deeper relationship with God?

PRAYER: Lord Jesus, you neither feared nor followed the crowd. Help me to pay attention most of all to your voice.

Luke 21:2-4 NLT

Then a poor widow came by and dropped in two small coins. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has given more than all the rest of them. For they have given a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she has.”

As a young teenager I remember taking my French penfriend on a London sightseeing visit. Sitting in a leafy square to eat lunch, I noticed that there were a lot of ‘tramps’, for want of a better description. We’d eaten our fill and so I just had the thought offering our remaining packed lunches to these guys. I approached a man and he immediately took the food and paused before embracing me in a huge hug. I remember two things; the smell and the sense of peace and warmth that flowed into my soul.

I was a long way from giving “everything I had”, but I do attribute the start of my journey in search of God to that moment. I’d never experienced that inner sense of well-being. It catalysed my work with “Young Oxfam” and my engagement with issues of social justice. This was long before I became a Christian. It’s always good to be reminded that Christians don’t have a monopoly on goodness.

The other thing that was stirred was a reflection about when is enough, enough? I want to acknowledge that we are all different personalities. There is no one right answer to the question. Yet, Jesus appears to recognise that extravagance in giving is to be commended. His own example is itself an example of extravagant giving – or, as with the widow, giving everything she has.

The challenge of giving out of my surplus is that I always have the temptation to increase the size of my surplus. Usually, though, surplus is not a problem I have. There’s usually too much month for the money. It is also giving everything from every part of our lives, and not limited to finance. So we are invited to wrestle with how we can give to God everything, holding nothing back.

QUESTION: Is it possible for you to increase your giving? Make a plan today.

PRAYER: Lord, create in me a generous heart and help me to excel in the grace of giving.

Luke 20:45-47 NLT

Then, with the crowds listening, he turned to his disciples and said, “Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces. And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public.”

It’s easy to feel guilty by the way we live out our Christian faith; it’s also easy to become convinced that we are real assets to God’s kingdom process. My own capacity to feel self-important and ‘special’ simply because of the path I cut into church leadership in my younger days, shocks me. Certainly I performed well and enjoyed the encouragement and affirmation of both peers and those to whom I ministered. Yet, I failed to find the inner resource I needed when tragedy struck.

Church, while essential in expressing God’s love throughout the world and encouraging a loving community, quickly becomes a honeypot for hubris. There’s a tremendous responsibility that God lays upon the Church to be the bearer of good news in a troubled and troubling world.

Jesus identifies these as problems for the Jewish leaders of the Temple system in Jerusalem. There was a hunger for an authentic encounter with God; the queues lining up to get baptised by John indicate this. At the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry, there were a number of experiments taking place as the Jews explored how they might deepen their faithful following of God. Church is also meant to offer an experimental model in which we practise loving God, one another and the stranger. It offers hospitality ahead of judgement. It converses with rather than criticises culture, revealing through its shared life the realisation of the values it holds by revelation of the Holy Spirit. The characteristic of the true Church is that it is the willing servant of all. It is the embodiment of Jesus and appropriately judged as such.

QUESTION: How can you be a part of helping your church love God wholeheartedly?

PRAYER: Lord, may your Church, wherever it is found, be full of your humility, hospitality and love.

Psalm 102:3-4 NLT

For my days disappear like smoke, and my bones burn like red-hot coals. My heart is sick, withered like grass, and I have lost my appetite.

One of the best investments we made in the Oratory is our lovely woodburner. As I bask in its warmth and the comfort drawn from watching wood slowly burn, I am aware of the smoke carried away, invisible, yet whose scent fills the air outside. That smoke is the product from the wood giving itself to warming our home. As my life is expended, I trust to the end of warming the hearts and nourishing the souls of others, even at the cost of my own existence. As the wood disappears, so is our service of God; we are to decrease that he might increase (see John 3:30, NKJV).

The smoke that would have risen from the sacrifices of old was incense in appeasement of a God of justice. Now, forever satisfied through the death of Jesus, there is no need for appeasement; instead, an invitation to lay down my life in voluntary slavery, my response to the selfless act of Jesus. I am the sacrifice; my time, my abilities, my resources.

The obstacles to voluntary slavery are many. The most obvious is the way contemporary society seems hell-bent on “taking” from life and satisfying our most selfish needs. To live as if others are of greater importance than myself is to challenge today’s deepest perception. If you don’t look out for yourself, who will?

However, it is impossible to out-give the Almighty. God has promised that this is the privilege of slavery. But sacrifice and service are unable to feed any need I have for recognition and affirmation. So sometimes I curl up before that woodburner, lick my wounds and make my complaint to God. But God reminds me, I chose to follow him. Self-pity and despondency are the enemies we all confront and contest. When they are in the ascendant our heart grows sick, for we break step with our conviction and calling.

QUESTION: Are you a voluntary slave to the will and purpose of God?

PRAYER: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; I renew my resolve and heart’s desire to serve and obey you as my God, my Lord and my Enabler.