Please join our new Mentor 123 campaign starting this coming Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013!
What you need to do is to find two more people meeting once a week for three months, encouraging each others to have daily devotion - a daily intimate personal relationship with Jesus!
To create a momentum to this new yearly campaign I am going to start a new blog and podcast on that day. I will direct my two blogs and podcasts to that new site to have a 40 days BREAK.BUILD daily devotion. For a preliminary format please go to this site: http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/ .
You can see the layout and titles of all 40 days. Come on , let's get two more people to start a daily tasting of Jesus wonderful banquet specially prepared for us!
Today's Reading: Luke 16: 1-9
**For a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link:
Please click this link to read Luke 16: 1-9
Bible Study
This is one of those difficult passages in the Bible. It has nothing to do with buying your way into heaven or a piece of moral teaching about money and how to use it. N.T. Wright gives us a clear teaching:
The master is God; the steward is Israel Israel is supposed to be God's property-manager, the light of God's world, responsible to Go and set over his possessions. But Israel has failed in the task, and is under threat of imminent dismissal. What then ought Israel to do?
The Pharisees' answer was to pull the regulations of the law even tighter, to try to make Israel more holy. This, as we've seen, had the effect that they were excluding the very people that Jesus was reaching out to. Jesus, in this parable, indicates that if Israel is facing a major crisis the answer is rather to throw caution to the winds, to forget the extra bits and pieces of law which the Pharisees have heaped up, and to make friends as and where they can. That's what 'the children of this world' would do, and 'the children of light' - that is, the Israelites - ought to do so as well...
How can it be reused in our own day? Obviously it has nothing to do with commending sharp practice in business or personal finance. Rather, it advises us to sit light to the extra regulations which we impose on one another, not least in the church, which are over and above the gospel itself. The church passes through turbulent times, and frequently needs to reassess what matters and what doesn't. The twentieth century saw the so-called 'mainline' churches in many parts of the world - the traditional denominations - in decline, with newer churches, not least in the Third World, growing and spreading. What should traditional churches do when faced with their own mortality? Perhaps they should learn to think unconventionally, to be prepared to make new friends across traditional barriers, to throw caution to the winds and discover again, in the true fellowship of the gospel, a home that will last.
Do you understand what Jesus is really saying to you now? Are you making "not a big deal" a big deal minimizing the power of the Kingdom and not extending His Kingdom?
Let's 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 Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"
Spiritual Journal
What I heard from Jesus today is: Don't make "not a big deal" a big deal!
What I received from Jesus today is a plead to all of us to let go of all those things that Jesus wants us to let go. I have seen too much killing in the name of God and it is so painful! Why church leaders plot to wipe other churches' name out of this world with every kind of cunning and poisoning schemes? Why not accept each others and get out of our limited, narrow mind to help each others to live out the gospel, to save not to kill, to love not to hate, to be connected not to disconnect, to allow other leaders and their ministries to prosper but not to destroy them in the name of UNITY!
Why we always make "not a big deal" a big deal? I just don't understand!
Dear Lord Jesus,
Lead us to understand what is the real big deal so that we can truly extend your mighty Kingdom and to honor your glorious name. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Please click this link to worship with us -
Shine Jesus Shine
Chinese praise song -
Stream of Praise 赞美之泉
Israel Study Tour Highlight DAY 3 - Jordan River(what is living water and disappointed water), Golan Heights, Mt. Hermon(the place of Jesus' transfiguration), reserve of Dan
