OT DAY 177 - Stay in My Covenant, I Will Enlarge Your Territory (Please click here for English podcast)

I guess you must have completed Break.Build 40 days daily devotion not long ago. And now you are back to Discipler 123. It would be a waste if you do not use the 40 days Break.Build to help someone to have 40 days daily devotion from now on! 

You can click the link below to my new 40 days Break.Build site any time you like to having a 40 days "Break.Build" daily devotion as a discipler to help those Jesus prepares for you to disciple. You need to know that the call and purpose of my Break.Build and this Discipler123 blog/podcast is for you to become a discipler to help more people to have a daily intimate relationship with Jesus and then they become disciplers too:
http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Silence

1.   Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2.   Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1.   Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2.   Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3.   Open your heart to praise the Lord

       Clap your hands, all peoples!
                  Shout to God with loud songs of joy!
2        For the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared,
                             a great king over all the earth.

                                                         Psalm 47:1-2

                                                                       

Confession and repentance

1.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

     “Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2.  Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

     "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus 34&version=ESV

10 And he said, “Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been created in all the earth or in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of the Lord, for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you.

11 “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. ..

24 For I will cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one shall covet your land, when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year.

                                                                  Exodus 34:10-12, 24

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"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening
       When was the first time God made a covenant with you? Here in this passage is the first time God made a covenant with Moses and the Israelites in a clear and concrete word. 

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay says: 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

       Once again Moses begs God to go with him and his people.  God's response is to talk about sealing a covenant.  It is the first time God has done so in Exodus.  Exodus 24 did involve a kind of re-sealing of the covenant relationship in light of the exodus, but only here does God make this explicit.   
       

John Goldingay. Exodus and Leviticus for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.126.

      Today is an important day for me. Because God reminded me of the first time he made a covenant with me, and that was in spring of 1974. Wow! The past few hours was so moving when the Lord showed me that.

      I was in a retreat at St. Christopher Orphanage with some twenty choirs members of my home church, Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Hong Kong. On the second day of the retreat I woke up early in the morning around 6a.m. All people were still sleeping. I walked out the dorm where we stayed and saw the small chapel of the Orphanage. I walked inside and I saw the early morning sunlight shining on a big Bible in the altar. I approached and read what was there in the Bible. The Lord led me to look at a passage in the opening Bible and I read:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.” 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.                     Jeremiah 18: 1-6

      Then Jesus told me, "If you are willing to admit that you are just clay and allow me to shape you as a potter, your prayers will be granted."

      You know what I was praying at that time for a few months? Because I was in the last year of High School and I did not know whether I could be able to be admitted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I knelt down before the altar and prayed, with lots of tear I entered into a covenant relationship with God the first time. I broke that covenant numerous time since then but what I have experienced is just as it says in Exodus 34. God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. When we are willing to be in the covenant He made with us then He will enlarge our territory.

     I praise God for how He enlarge my territory since then to become who I am now. Praise God for how He reminded me today to invite you to enter into that similar encounter with God as I have today. And, to receive that question:

When was the first time God made a covenant with you?

     Count His blessings now to recall how God enlarge your territory when you are willing to enter into the covenant with Him. Pray that you won't miss the chance for God to enlarge your territory because you break His covenant. 

Dear Lord Jesus,

      Lead us to recall how we entered into your covenant with us. Help us to be in this covenant trusting that you will enlarge our territory to glorify your Holy Name. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Reflect on these questions:

1.  Count His blessings of how your territory being enlarged because of your willingness to keep God's covenant?

2.  How committed are you in this covenant recently?

  

Praise and Thanksgiving

Let's give thanks for God with us. Let us praise Him:

10,000 Reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

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

You may choose to follow my other daily blog:

Daily Devotion on Fire: http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Daily Devotion on Fire 2: http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build: http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/