Today's Reading: Mark 10: 1-16
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link: Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf.
Please click this link to read Mark 10: 1-16
Bible Study
According to CBC News, new statistic shows that 4 in 10 1st marriages end in divorce in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/10/04/vanier-study004.html. The problem of divorce has always been a big one since Moses' time!
Those Pharisees wanted to set a trap on Jesus at the place where John the Baptist used to do his ministry. John was killed because of his opposition to the king's divorce and so the Pharisees wanted to do the same thing to Jesus in order to remove Him on earth. Jesus did not give a full answer until He and disciples were inside a house alone because He wanted to teach His disciples an important lesson. He told the Pharisees that "Moses gave you this rule because of your hardheartedness". He told His disciples that it is adultery.
N.T. Wright link the divorce passage with Jesus receiving the little children one with a very special message:
But the next paragraph in Mark reminds us of another dimension. Who, today, is liable to earn Jesus' anger at preventing little children feeling the warmth of God's love and welcome? Hardly the churches, where youth work often flourishes today. Rather, the people who suppose that children and their feelings don't matter, and that adults can make whatever arrangements suit them. Marriage break-up can devastate children, even grown-up children, with long-lasting ill effects. Which is kinder, more Christian: to say that these things don't matter, or to take a strong line, like Jesus, on behalf of the truly weak and vulnerable?
What have you got from Jesus today? Do you have a new understanding in the issue of divorce?
Have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to God as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: Watch out for the spirit of separation!
What I got from Jesus today is beyond divorce. He told me to watch out for the spirit of separation! It's one of Satan's most devastating work to separation every kind of possible relationship. With the cunning work of the spirit of separation, people's eyes are blinded, people's minds are confused, people's souls are poisoned. I have seen too many cases of broken families, broken friendship, broken churches, broken societies, broken countries, broken world...
Only to be anointed by the Holy Spirit daily, the Spirit of Truth can protect you from the attack of the spirit of separation and to have a counter-attack to the spirit of separation to "preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoner, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Wow! This is what I just wrote in my Devotion on Fire blog! Is that a coincidence? I don't think so! Praise the Lord for you warning and invitation that we need to be anointed by the Holy Spirit each day so that we will not be devoured by the spirit of separation!
Please go to this link for today's devotion on Fire for the second part of your devotion:
This is surely a kind of 1001 nights unending stories!
Dear Holy Spirit,
Pour down your anointing to us that we won't be blinded by the spirit of separation and that we are able to tell your unending story of salvation, love and acceptance. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Chinese praise song - 主你是我力量 You are my strength
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