Living Stones Church, Red Deer, Alberta

Darkness can be a terrible thing. Not only can it be scary, but it is also dangerous. While physical darkness is threatening, spiritual darkness is the actual danger. At some point, all people have been spiritually blinded, but when we are exposed to Jesus and His light, we have an opportunity to not only escape the dark, but to overcome it and help bring others out. The world is lost in the darkness, and as believers, we can often try to cure the symptoms of that darkness instead of the root cause. Falsely we believe that if we create a world that looks healthy, we can deceive ourselves and think it is healthy. If we put all our energy and hope into curing the symptoms, we have already lost the true battle and missed God's call upon His church and people. We are bearers of Christ's light, and our call is to offer, share and give it to a blind world. Spiritual darkness is a growing problem, but we have the only true answer. God has given us abilities, gifts, His Word, and His Presence to walk in a dark world. Are our eyes seeing the spiritual blindness all around us? Are our hearts responding to that darkness? Do we know how to walk in the dark? Are our hearts breaking for the lost? Will we stand by or enter the world as bearers of Christ's light?

The Book of Ruth

In a sinful, broken world, there is a great need for love to be demonstrated. One of the most moving stories in the Bible is the story of two ordinary women struggling with significant losses. Both of these women had lost their husbands. For Naomi, the mother-in-law of Ruth, the future looked bleak. All she could see was poverty and uncertainty ahead. She had no hope of a future home and family and became embittered by what God had allowed to occur in her life. She felt God had dealt harshly with her. In an alien culture and land, she decided to return to the home of her youth. She remembered with fondness the times of God’s abundance, the love of a husband, and the delightful squeals of her children, but these carefree memories also reminded her of her losses. Death has claimed both her boys and her husband. She had left her home with her family, full of hopes and dreams. Now she returns mourning their loss. She had left full, and now she returns empty. That is the setting for the story of Ruth and Naomi.

But God doesn’t leave these two women to fend for themselves. All through the book of Ruth, we see that chance happenings are the hand of God’s gracious provision. It is the story of going from emptiness to fullness, brokenness to wholeness. What fascinates me is that though great losses happen to people, even God’s people, God is working out His purposes. Many times, we cannot discern what He is doing. What seems like a disaster is one of the instruments in God’s hand, shaping our lives and destiny.

We find in the drama the moving story of the love and devotion of a daughter-in-law. It is this devotion that is an expression of God’s provision. This relationship is the beginning of God’s restorative process. This relationship reveals that God is gracious and loving. What Naomi does not see in her losses is one of God’s greatest gifts—the gift of relationship.

Mark 11

There has never been more information poured into our lives than now. But what is actual reality and truth, and what is fiction? What do you believe? And why do you believe it? What we think shapes our decisions, ultimately affecting what we do and how we do it. Jesus, in talking to his disciples after they had witnessed many miracles and listened to Jesus explain many things, asked the most critical question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ The answer to that question shapes a person’s life. Yet, that question needs to be understood in light of His authority and our response to that authority. If we believe Jesus is who He has revealed Himself to be, it will affect who we are, who we will become, and ultimately where we will spend eternity.

It’s interesting reading the gospel writers explaining the various moments in the life of Jesus. One of the more moving accounts is in the final days of Jesus’ life as He enters Jerusalem, which the church celebrates as Palm Sunday because of the Palm branches placed before Jesus as He rode into the city. Matthew described the event this way in Matthew 21:10: “When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?’”

Luke also reported that the city was stirred, and the term used there is where we get our term “seismic.” There is a sense from both of these writers of the amazing excitement and anticipation that Jesus was about to do something significant.

Jeremiah 33, Jeremiah Series

Sin shatters our sense of self-identity. What others do to us, what we do to others, and finally, what we do to ourselves distorts the image of God in our lives. Sin, followed by failure, loss, rejection and abandonment, causes us to wonder who we are and where God is in the equation. The exile shattered the nation of Israel. The questions that came to the surface in their minds were: Are we still God’s chosen people, or are we rejected? To this issue, God wanted to reassure His people that they were not rejected but that a transformation was about to occur in their hearts that would change everything. When God wants to reassure people of what He is about to do, He speaks again. Here we see that God is reaffirming to Jeremiah what He is about to do, so we see that God’s word came to Jeremiah again.

Jeremiah 33:1-3: While Jeremiah was still confined in the courtyard of the guard, the word of the LORD came to him a second time: “This is what the LORD says, he who made the earth, the LORD who formed it and established it—the LORD is his name: ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’

The hidden things God will reveal to Jeremiah are yet to come. They lie in the future. So, what is God about to do? How should we respond to the future God has planned for us? Is there any response we should have when God makes promises to us? Matthew Henry, the puritan devotional writer, says: “Promises are given, not to supersede, but to quicken and encourage prayer.”5 We need to act on God’s promises by praying they will be enacted in our lives. God makes promises for a brighter tomorrow. God begins in the nations painful present to encourage a better day ahead. We discover what God reveals to His servant and messenger, Jeremiah, a message of hope and future blessings. So, what was God revealing?

In less than a week, Jesus would be crucified. He was returning to Jerusalem to become the paschal lamb that would take away the world's sins. Even though this action had not happened yet, Jesus’ self-giving extravagant love inspired devotion and a similar heart in the lives of others. One such person was Mary from Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. Jesus arrived in Bethany, the village just 2 miles on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where an amazing expression of extravagant love and devotion became a prophetic picture of Jesus’ upcoming death. How do we inspire extravagant love? How can this love be demonstrated through our lives to Christ and those around us?