OT DAY 56 - Don't Put World Value to God's Kingdom (請按此處收聼廣東話Cantonese podcast click here)

Today's Reading: Genesis 17:7-8

** If you would like to learn a simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please read my “Count Down 5” from my Devotion on Fire blog:

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html

To use this simple and good way of Daily Devotion method please click this link:

 .Subject Shifting Devotion.pdf

Please click this link to read Genesis 17:7-8

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis 17&version=ESV

Chinese: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=創 世 記 17&version=CUV

Bible Study

      Yesterday's passage shows us that God gives a new name to Abram as Abraham to go with His promise that Abraham will be the father of all nations. Do you know what that really means? 

Let's take a look at what Professor John Goldingay says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

     There is a world of difference between being an alien and being a citizen…
     Solemnly, being an alien is also the position Abraham's family has in Canaan itself, and the position it will continue to have for generations…It is a significant promise that they will not always be aliens.  One day the country will be their age long or perpetual holding, and it cannot then simply be taken away from them.  "holding" most often refers to the tract of land that an individual family occupies; God allocates the country as a whole to the clans, and the clans allocate it to individual families, and no one can appropriate it.  It is each family's secure possession.  That is the position God promises that Israel will eventually have in relation to the whole country of Canaan…
     The New Testament takes up the image of life as an alien to describe the position of Christians in the world.  We are aliens there (1 Peter 1:1,4,17; 2:11-12).  The idea is not that God's created world is not our home in the sense that we are just passing through it on the way to heaven.  It is that we could not be citizens of the "world" because it works on a basis that has little to do with Christ.  If we feel at home in that world, something worrying has happened to us.    

John Goldingay. Genesis for Everyone - Part Two. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.4-5.

      Do you feel at home in this worldly value system? Are you living each day in God's Kingdom value system? 

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe":  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

Spiritual Journal

    The title I heard from Jesus today is: Don't put world value to God's Kingdom

    What I got from Jesus today is a time to reveal our true citizenship. A citizen of this world where many worldly things are lording you, or, a citizen of God's Kingdom that you have only one King, Jesus Christ is your Lord and King.

    Saying you have Jesus Christ as King is so easy, but really living out our Kingdom citizenship is so difficult. It is so easy to pull all kinds of worldly value systems into God's Kingdom, confusing Christian value and characters, breaking trustful relationship between each others, destroying families and churches. It is happening all over the world concerning with Christians and Christian leaders! Sad! 

     Do you think today's passage and message is only talking about the Israelites, the kingdom of David? Do you think the good news today that we are not aliens but citizens of God's land concerns us as Christians in the world that we have our "holding" in God's Kingdom? Yes, definitely! 

It is talking about the coming of God's Kingdom, a Kingdom that is totally different from this world, a Kingdom value system rather than this worldly system. It's talking about our Kingdom ministry. A "holding" that we so need to change this world like two thousand years ago that because of Jesus is Lord, the Early Church changed the whole world in just three hundred years!

    Don't put world value to God's Kingdom. Use everything you have got to put God's Kingdom value to change the world!

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to follow you as our Lord and King to put your Kingdom value to change this world so that we can secure our "holding".  In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

    Please click this link to the app. Andy Ng wrote. You really need to use that if you have an Android cel. Andy said he is going to do the App. for iPhone later:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.rec.app

Please click this link to worship with us -

從心合一

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWZQyLzDRQ

Amazing Grace My Chains are Gone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbe7OruLk8I

You may choose to follow my other daily blog: 

Daily Devotion on Fire 2(2 years plan -One year New Testament, one year Old Testament): 

http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/

Daily Devotion on Fire (3 years and 3 months plan, one chapter a day to finish reading the whole Bible): 

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build (40 days daily devotion- For Renewal or First Step for new Christians): http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Emmanuel330 (40 weeks First Step Bible Study): 

http://emmanuel330.blogspot.ca/

This blog:

Discipler 123 (Daily devotion using N.T. Wright's NT for Everyone as source)

http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/

Rev. Nicky Gumbel's daily devotion: Bible in One Year

http://www.htb.org.uk/bioy