Hearing God’s Voice from His Word
James 4:8 says, “Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
Take a moment and turn your attention to God. Tell God that you desire to trust and obey Him. Ask God to speak to you from His word.
Psalm of the Day
Psalm 90:1-2 Lord, you have been our refuge in every generation.
2 Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from eternity to eternity, you are God.
Read the Entire Psalm
Eternal God – God has always been. He will alway be. Mountains seem stable and constant, God existed before the mountains. There was an existence before the earth and the world. God was all that existed in that reality. Praise Him for His eternal nature.
Scripture Reading
1 John 3:11-21
New International Version
11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God
Having God’s Ear through Prayer
- Express thanks to God.
- Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal sin to you.
- Confess your sin to Him and receive forgiveness.
(1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sin He is faithful and just and will forgive our sins.”) - Bring your personal requests to God.
(Psalm 62:8 “Pour out your heart before God”) - Pray for someone in your small group.
- Join with others from River and pray for Isaac and Suzanne as they serve overseas at Black Forest Academy.
Living as God’s People by applying the Bible
Scripture Reflection from the Sermon
What do you think you are capable of in terms of evil? It is likely that your heart has been trained by the Word and the Spirit so that now, it is not capable of what we call “great evil.” Of course, we’re all susceptible to all kinds of sins, especially the sin of putting ourselves at the center of our own lives. We are not all susceptible to every sin. Over time, our hearts can and should be trained such that certain things would not be attractive or even possible for us to do. But imagine your heart without the Spirit’s work in it. Imagine your heart if you had, for all the years of your life, simply allowed it to go its own way. What would you be capable of if you had given full vent to your flesh? It is terrible to imagine. There is a sense in which we are not capable of certain evil, at least not in our current state of Christian maturity and life in Christ. This is good and as it should be. There is another sense in which every human heart, left to itself, is capable of enormous evil. There are people you work around, drive by, eat next to in restaurants whose hearts have not been shaped by terrible evil, but neither have they been shaped by Christ. Those people look “normal,” but if certain circumstances were in play, they would suddenly show themselves to be capable of doing terrible things. History has shown this to be the case. What is the point? When you look at your own life, be grateful to God. He has kept you from falling into the darkness of great evil. When you look at others, don’t see “normal” people, see “in Christ” or not. If they are not in Christ, then they are in terrible danger, both in time and in eternity.