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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

Keep it simple
17 NOVEMBER 2023

‘I will give you shepherds…who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.’
Jeremiah 3:15 NIV

Seeking to impress the congregation, a young seminary graduate incorporated the biggest words he could find into his Sunday-morning sermon. It was a disaster! Stepping down from the pulpit, he met an old preacher who said, ‘Son, you spoke over their heads.’ Irritated and defensive, the young seminarian said, ‘Then why don’t they stretch their necks?’ To which the old preacher replied, ‘Jesus said, “Feed my sheep,” not my giraffes!’

Whether you’re in a pulpit, a classroom, a board meeting, or talking to someone one-to-one over coffee, you must decide whether your goal is to impress people – or help them. God said, ‘I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding.’ Your aim shouldn’t be merely to communicate knowledge – but understanding. The measure of a good teacher isn’t what he or she knows – it’s what the student learns. Making things simple is a necessary skill if you want to connect with people. To put it in the words of Albert Einstein: ‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough.’ If you’re serious about trying to reach people, keep these four words firmly in mind:

1) Heart. To move someone, you must touch them on an emotional level.

2) Hope. By spelling out their potential and their possibilities, you will inspire them to try.

3) Help. Show them how to apply what you’re saying in a tangible way.

4) Humour. By laughing at your own mistakes, you let people know their problem isn’t unique – and to someone who is struggling, that can be the best feeling in the world.

Ezekiel 35-36, 1 Peter 1

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

You can’t have a testimony without a test
18 NOVEMBER 2023

‘I will…test them as gold is tested.’
Zechariah 13:9 NAS

If you’re being tested today, you’re in good company! Job, the most righteous man on earth, was tested beyond what most of us will ever have to endure. And when he emerged, he told God, ‘I heard about you from others; now I have seen you’ (Job 42:5 CEV). In the heat of the furnace, you experience God up close and personal.

Sheila Schuller Coleman says, ‘Some tests are intended to assess what we’ve learned; others are intended to teach. We learn our most profound lessons when we’re tested…Like what we’re capable of…where we need to grow…and that there’s still more to learn! When your faith is being tested, the last thing you’re thinking about is learning a lesson…you just want to survive. But the lesson we learn from Job is that when we keep our faith in the most testing of times, we’ll “come out as gold” (Job 23:10 NASB). Think about it: did you ever hear a testimony that wasn’t about someone surviving a test? James says, “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials” (James 1:2 NIV). When we suffer, when people say hateful things, when we lose our homes, when we encounter rifts in our family, when the doctor calls with a dire diagnosis – the last thing we feel is joy…If anyone could speak with authority on praising God in trials, it was Paul. He was beaten, thrown into jail, and run out of town. How does your week compare to his?’

When you get through this test, you will have a testimony to God’s strength and faithfulness, and be able to say, ‘The Lord is my God.’

Ezekiel 37-39, 1 Peter 2

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

Being friends with God (1)
19 NOVEMBER 2023

‘I know you by name and you have found favour with me.’
Exodus 33:12 NIVUK

Moses talked with God like a friend, sharing what he felt and thought. And God wanted it that way. Here is how the conversation went: ‘Moses said to the Lord, “You have been telling me, ‘Lead these people,’…You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favour with me.’”’ Moses is mirroring back to God what God had previously said to him. Remember saying to your spouse or your best friend, ‘You were the one who said…’? That’s what Moses is doing here: reminding God of His own words. And God wants you to remember His Word and to speak it back to Him (see Isaiah 43:26). Not because He needs to be reminded but because you do! And because His Word is the only Word that He is committed to fulfil (see Matthew 24:35).

When you pray using God’s Word, you are praying in His will, and you’re guaranteed to get a hearing. So, learn and memorise Scriptures that touch on your needs and desires, and when you talk to God, recall them, and pray them back to Him. For example, when you pray, ‘Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours’ (Mark 11:24 NIV), God will acknowledge it! The more you learn of His Word, the more your prayer time will conform to His will and the more you will feel aligned with Him. Keep your Bible handy when you talk to God so that He can direct your thoughts to the words He wants you to pray.

Luke 22:1-30, Psalms 119:89-176

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

Being friends with God (2)
20 NOVEMBER 2023

‘If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you.’
Exodus 33:13 NIVUK

Listen to more of Moses’ friendly talk with God: ‘If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favour with you.’ Moses is in a national crisis that could end Israel’s relationship with God, and what is he praying for? Not, ‘God, I’m in a tough spot. You have to resolve this for me!’ But, ‘Teach me your ways so I may know you!’ Moses wants more than just to know God’s awesome works. His heart cries out to know God’s heart and what makes it tick – the inner ways of God. ‘To know Him’ includes all the other things Moses could ever seek, including the solution to his problem. And God gave him what he asked. ‘He made known his ways unto Moses’ (Psalm 103:7 KJV).

Here is more of that conversation: God responded, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’ (v. 14 NIV). That ‘you’ in the Hebrew is singular. God promised to accompany Moses and give rest to him. Anybody else would have accepted gladly. Not Moses. His prayer was bigger than his own concerns. ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here’ (v. 15 NIV). In other words, ‘Lord, it’s not for me I’m praying; it’s for us!’ And God answered that prayer.

Are your prayers bigger than yourself and your own needs? The Bible says, ‘For God so loved the world’ (John 3:16 KJV). Do you pray for your town, nation, and the world? You have been called to and you should!

Ezekiel 40-41, 1 Peter 3

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

Pray for a ‘sympathy breakthrough’
21 NOVEMBER 2023

‘Clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.’
Colossians 3:12 NLT

The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, ‘If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.’ In his documentary on twentieth-century wars, Jonathan Glover refers to what he calls ‘sympathy breakthroughs’. Even in the situation of war, acts of compassion supersede the conflict. Most sympathy breakthroughs, according to Glover, are triggered by eye-to-eye contact, and that eye-to-eye contact displaces hand-to-hand combat.

Have you ever had a sympathy breakthrough? If not, pray for one. It’s a moment when your tendency to hate is overcome by your will to love. A moment when proactive compassion overrules negative anger. A moment when you’re concerned more about someone else’s pain than your own. Those are the moments when you discover what it really means to love God with all your heart. It’s much simpler to act like a Christian than it is to react like one. Anybody can put on an act. But your reactions expose what is really in your heart. And if you love God with all your heart, you won’t merely act like it. You will react like it.

The apostle Paul puts it this way: ‘Clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony’ (vv. 12-14 NLT).

Ezekiel 42-44, 1 Peter 4

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

What makes you glad, sad, or mad?
22 NOVEMBER 2023

‘To him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown.’
Job 6:14 NKJV

A pastor writes: ‘What makes you glad or sad or mad? What puts a holy smile on your face? What causes your spirit to sob uncontrollably? What makes you pound your fist on the table out of righteous indignation? Somewhere in the mixture of that gladness, sadness, and madness is your God-ordained passion. Or maybe we should say compassion, because you are feeling what God feels. And once you identify it, doing something about it isn’t optional. You can’t not do something about it.’

In 2006, Blake Mycoskie was touring Argentina when he noticed that many of the children didn’t have shoes. He could have returned to the United States and gone about his business. Instead, he started TOMS shoes, a business with a mission of putting shoes on the feet of children in developing countries. It works like this: when you buy a pair of TOMS shoes, you’re giving a pair of shoes to a barefoot child somewhere. For every pair of shoes purchased, a pair is given away. Their mission is straightforward: one for one.

Blake identified a need. He personalised it. And he decided to do something about it. It didn’t start out big, it started out small. Yet that is how primal moments begin. A person decides to do something about something that makes him glad or sad or mad. It was barefoot kids who broke Blake’s heart. And he literally placed shoes on his faith. When you discover the thing that makes you glad or sad or mad, the only question left is this: what are you going to do about it?

Ezekiel 45-46, 1 Peter 5

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

You are a wonder
23 NOVEMBER 2023

‘I praise you because I am…wonderfully made.’
Psalm 139:14 NIV

Despite your aches and pains, you are a living, breathing, walking, talking wonder. The psalmist said, ‘You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made’ (vv. 13-14 NIV).

One author explains: ‘Most of us take our eyesight for granted, but even the simplest of processes is divinely complex. The retina, for example, conducts close to ten billion calculations every second, and that is before an image even travels through the optic nerve to the visual cortex. The human nose can detect one-millionth of one milligram of garlic floating in the air and distinguish among ten thousand distinct odours. The hairs blanketing your body magnify the sensation of touch so that you can discern a thousandth of an ounce of pressure on the tip of a half-inch hair. Amazing, isn’t it?’

Trillions of chemical reactions are taking place in every cell of your body every second. You are inhaling oxygen, metabolising energy, digesting food, maintaining equilibrium, purifying toxins, producing hormones, exhaling carbon dioxide, repairing tissues, and circulating blood. As you read this, millions of electrical impulses are firing across billions of synaptic pathways, and you don’t even think about it.

But you should, and you should praise God for the gift of life and the multitude of His blessings you enjoy. And you should do one more all-important thing: discover your life’s purpose and dedicate yourself to fulfilling it. It has been said the two most important days in a person’s life are the day they’re born and the day they discover why they were born. Think about it!

Ezekiel 47-48, 2 Peter 1

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

The art of being a sheep (1)
24 NOVEMBER 2023

‘The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.’
Psalm 23:1 NIV

Perhaps you memorised Psalm 23 as a child. The vivid visual images remain with us lifelong. Author Hannah Whitall Smith said, ‘What we all need is just to get back into the nursery again, and take up our childish verses once more, and, while reading them with the intelligence of our grown-up years, to believe them with all our old childish faith.’

As adults we become jaded, losing the simple joy that stress-filled lives require. We need to remember these three things:

1) Who our shepherd is – ‘The Lord’. He is the source of everything we will ever need, beginning with salvation. Jesus said: ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep’ (John 10:11 NKJV).

2) What the shepherd’s job is – protector and provider for the sheep. And He knows how to handle wayward, headstrong, vulnerable sheep and care for them. Long before Jesus came as our shepherd, the Father said, ‘I will rescue [my flock] and no longer let them be mistreated…I will give you a shepherd from the family of my servant King David…All of you, both strong and weak, will have the same shepherd, and he will take good care of you’ (Ezekiel 34:22-23 CEV).

3) What the sheep’s job is – to trust the shepherd completely. Attempting to do His job will exhaust and defeat us. We must believe ‘with all our old childish faith’ that Jesus is a dependable, committed, and capable shepherd – and then act like we believe it.

Knowing that His goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives lifts our present worries and dispels all our future concerns.

Daniel 1-2, 2 Peter 2

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TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

The art of being a sheep (2)
25 NOVEMBER 2023

‘The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.’
Psalm 23:1 NIV
We need to know two things:

1) Our shepherd’s character. Jesus distinguished good shepherds from bad ones (see John 10:11-16). Bad shepherds look out for their own interests, not the welfare of the sheep. They’re unreliable; when a threat arises, they abandon the flock. But Jesus claimed, ‘I am the good shepherd’ (John 10:11 KJV). What makes Him good? ‘The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep’ (v. 11 NKJV). Their needs and their security come before his own, and, if necessary, he will die for them. ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me’ (v. 14 NIV). Jesus knows each of His sheep individually and desires an intimate relationship with them. He calls each one by name; they trust Him and follow where He leads (see John 10:3). You can rely on your shepherd to protect and guide you!

2) The sheep’s condition is the shepherd’s business. He can’t be a good shepherd if his sheep’s needs aren’t being met. Sheep don’t know the path to the pasture, the location of the watering hole, or the strategy for their own safety. But the shepherd does. His sheep believe in him, rely on him, and follow him. But believing in and relying on His protection and provision isn’t instinctive – it’s the only decision you make; an act of your will. Regardless of your feelings or circumstances, you make up your mind to trust the shepherd to handle things and act as your security. When you turn your worries and concerns over to Him and rest in His goodness, He fulfils His promise that you will ‘lack nothing’.

Daniel 3-4, 2 Peter 3

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[TODAY'S WORD FOR TODAY™

God will rescue you
26 NOVEMBER 2023

‘We stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God.’
2 Corinthians 1:9 NLT

Are you feeling hopeless about the situation you’re in and don’t know which way to turn? Maybe you’re struggling to find a reason to keep going, but you’re so tired and overwhelmed that you just want to give up. If that’s the case, you’re in a vulnerable place. Look out – Satan will try to convince you there must be sin in your life, or that you’re out of God’s will, or that He is unhappy with you because you have disobeyed Him in some area you’re unaware of. Don’t buy it! You can be in the centre of God’s will doing everything the right way, and still experience adversity.

The apostle Paul writes: ‘You ought to know…about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead. And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us. And you are helping us by praying for us. Then many people will give thanks because God has graciously answered so many prayers for our safety’ (2 Corinthians 1:8-11 NLT).

Two elements are at work in your life today. First, God is teaching you to lean on Him instead of on yourself. Second, people around you are being strengthened and encouraged as they see the grace of God at work in your life.

Luke 22:31-46, Psalms 120-124