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 145:1-3 I will extol you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.
2 Every day I will bless you and praise your name forever and ever.
3 Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.
Read the Entire Psalm
God’s greatness is unsearchable. There are great men and women in our world. There are great men and women of the past. You could search out their great accomplishments and characteristics and write them down. You could never exhaustively catalog the Lord’s greatness. His greatness is beyond searching out. Think of His greatness in just designing the human body. His greatness is seen in creating the human body and sustaining life. Consider the greatness of plotting out the seasons and systems needed for life on earth. He holds all things together day after day with no real effort because He IS great. His greatness is unsearchable. Praise God for His greatness.
SCRIPTURE READING:
Haggai 2:10-19 – The Message
10-12 On the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month (again, this was in the second year of Darius), God’s Message came to Haggai: “God-of-the-Angel-Armies speaks: Consult the priests for a ruling. If someone carries a piece of sacred meat in his pocket, meat that is set apart for sacrifice on the altar, and the pocket touches a loaf of bread, a dish of stew, a bottle of wine or oil, or any other food, will these foods be made holy by such contact?”
The priests said, “No.”
13 Then Haggai said, “How about someone who is contaminated by touching a corpse—if that person touches one of these foods, will it be contaminated?”
The priests said, “Yes, it will be contaminated.”
14 Then Haggai said, “‘So, this people is contaminated. Their nation is contaminated. Everything they do is contaminated. Whatever they do for me is contaminated.’ God says so.
15-17 “‘Think back. Before you set out to lay the first foundation stones for the rebuilding of my Temple, how did it go with you? Isn’t it true that your foot-dragging, halfhearted efforts at rebuilding the Temple of God were reflected in a sluggish, halfway return on your crops—half the grain you were used to getting, half the wine? I hit you with drought and blight and hail. Everything you were doing got hit. But it didn’t seem to faze you. You continued to ignore me.’ God’s Decree.
18-19 “‘Now think ahead from this same date—this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month. Think ahead from when the Temple rebuilding was launched. Has anything in your fields—vine, fig tree, pomegranate, olive tree—failed to flourish? From now on you can count on a blessing.’”
Having God’s Ear through Prayer
- Express thanksgiving 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 our nation. Pray for our local, state, and national leaders.
Living as God’s People by applying the Bible
Scripture Reflection from the Sermon
Jesus, the New and Better Sin Offering, has made us clean before God by His sacrificial death and resurrection. We are clean!
But one of the great tactics of the enemy is to make followers of Jesus ineffective by keeping them in the dark, hiding from God and one another because of sin and shame. The enemy will breed every form of lie in your heart and mind so as to convince you that Jesus cannot be trusted to handle your sin. He wants you to believe that God doesn’t know about your sin and that, if He did, He would condemn you and punish you. If we believe him, we can end up sulking around in the shadows, hiding from our Father in shame, and blaming one another like Adam and Eve in Garden, naked and afraid.
But the truth of the matter is that God knows about all your sin – all of it. He’s known about all of it from eternity past. And all of it was nailed to cross with Christ Jesus. All of it was paid for and forgiven and defeated. If you are in Christ, you have been declared clean and righteous, once and for all. He is faithful.
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” (Heb. 10:19-23)
Approach Jesus with confidence today.