Week 44 Day 3
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
1 Thess. 5:12-13 Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other.
Heb. 13:17 Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.
Reflect:
Moses was one of history’s greatest and most reluctant leaders. God spoke to him face-to-face as a man speaks to a friend (Exodus 33:11). He led an entire nation out of bondage on a perilous journey over 40 years. He had moral courage, wisdom, a clear vision, and he was a spiritually deep man. Yet, he failed in a way that might have seemed subtle, but was in fact quite significant. He added to what God had said and in so doing he got in the way of God’s glory revealed to the people. In spite of this costly failure by Moses, his overall pattern of leadership was a good one. He sacrificed for his people and he only led because obedience required it of him; he would have preferred for someone else to do it. The people of Israel, like all people, had an imperfect leader. But unlike many people they had a man who knew, loved, and (for the vast majority of the time) obeyed God. It was not Moses’ occasional failures that made their lives so hard, it was their own failures to follow him that did. It is sadly true that: “A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the LORD” (Pr. 19:3). In the case of Israel, their folly was often seen in their refusal to follow God’s appointed leader and then they would complain to God when things didn’t go well as a result. It is never wise to blindly follow a leader. It is never good to put a leader on a pedestal. But it is certainly never wise or good to make a leader’s God-given calling more difficult than it needs to be. Israel loved to complain. They had short “gratitude memory” and it led to a childish approach to life and leadership, namely, “But what have you done for me today?” This is the language and the heart of a child. We are not to be children, but spiritual adults. Spiritual adults operate well under God-ordained leaders and God-ordained leaders operate well over spiritual adults. What is an advantage to one is an advantage to another.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.