Theme For The Week: Our main text for this series of devotionals is from Luke 8.1-3. You can listen to the sermon that accompanies it here.

Intro Prayer: “Jesus, please help me in this time to be fully present to You and myself that I may commune with You for the sake of your glory and the world around me.”

Silence: In this time, try and become silent before the Lord both internally and externally for 5 minutes. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to stillness.

Devotional: This week you are going to learn a simple way for understanding and sharing the Gospel- the Good News of the Kingdom of God. First we learned that the Gospel message starts with Creation: God’s Perfect Design. Second, we see The Fall: Brokenness. But God does not leave us! He comes in Jesus to redeem us from our brokenness and sin and restore us to God’s perfect design. Our redemption empowers us to grow and go.

As we practice the way of Jesus we grow into the people God designed us to be. And we are called to go back into a broken world to help others come to know Jesus and experience His redeeming power.

Today’s Scripture reflects on both the growing and the going.

Scripture: Read today’s text slowly. Feed your spirit on the words. Your goal in this time is to commune with Jesus through His Word. Take note as you sense His Presence.

1 Peter 2.1 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 5.17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Worship: Respond to Jesus with worship today! Our worship song for today is So Will I by Hillsong. We have worshipped to it all week as we savor Jesus and the gift of the Gospel.

Listen: Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Write down anything you sense the Lord speaking.

Obedience: What from today is the Lord calling you to put in practice? Could be to pray for someone, to call someone, to serve someone etc.

Theme For The Week: Our main text for this series of devotionals is from Luke 8.1-3. You can listen to the sermon that accompanies it here.

Intro Prayer: “Jesus, please help me in this time to be fully present to You and myself that I may commune with You for the sake of your glory and the world around me.”

Silence: In this time, try and become silent before the Lord both internally and externally for 5 minutes. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to stillness.

Devotional: This week you are going to learn a simple way of understanding and sharing the Gospel- the Good News of the Kingdom of God. First, we learned that the Gospel message starts with Creation: God’s Perfect Design. Second, we see The Fall: Brokeness. But God does not leave us! He comes in Jesus to redeem us from our brokenness and sin and restore us to God’s perfect design. Today we are going to focus on that redemption.

Jesus restores us back to fellowship with God, restores our identity as children of God and restores our lives back towards God’s perfect design. The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Ephesus about this redemption.

Scripture: Read today’s text slowly. Feed your spirit on the words. Your goal in this time is to commune with Jesus through His Word. Take note as you sense His Presence.

Ephesians 2.1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Worship: Respond to Jesus with worship today! Our worship song for this week is So Will I by Hillsong.

Listen: Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Write down anything you sense the Lord speaking.

Obedience: What from today is the Lord calling you to put in practice? Could be to pray for someone, to call someone, to serve someone etc.

Theme For The Week: Our main text for this series of devotionals is from Luke 8.1-3. You can listen to the sermon that accompanies it here.

Intro Prayer: “Jesus, please help me in this time to be fully present to You and myself that I may commune with You for the sake of your glory and the world around me.”

Silence: In this time, try and become silent before the Lord both internally and externally for 5 minutes. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to stillness.

Devotional: This week you are going to learn a simple way of understanding and sharing the Gospel- the Good News of the Kingdom of God. First, we learned that the Gospel message starts with Creation: God’s Perfect Design. Second, we see The Fall: Brokenness. But God does not leave us! He comes in Jesus to redeem us from our brokenness and sin and restore us to God’s perfect design.

There is so much we could say about Jesus! But for today, we are going to focus on the truths that Jesus is God. He lived a perfect life because He is Perfect Life. And he came to restore us back to God’s perfect design.

The Apostle John articulates all of this in the opening of John chapter 1.

Scripture: Read today’s text slowly. Feed your spirit on the words. Your goal in this time is to commune with Jesus through His Word. Take note as you sense His Presence.

John 1.1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

15 (John testified concerning him. He cried out, saying, “This is the one I spoke about when I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’”) 16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

Worship: Respond to Jesus with worship today! Our song for this week is So Will I by Hillsong.

Listen: Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Write down anything you sense the Lord speaking.

Obedience: What from today is the Lord calling you to put in practice? Could be to pray for someone, to call someone, to serve someone etc.

Background: Our key text for this series of devotionals is from Luke 8.1-3. You can listen to the sermon “Inheritance // The Gift of The Gospel” that accompanies it here. This week we are focusing on the contents of the Gospel that Jesus and his disciples were proclaiming. Today’s focus is Fall: Brokeness

Intro Prayer: “Jesus, please help me in this time to be fully present to You and to myself that I may commune with You for the sake of your glory and the world around me.”

Silence: In this time, try and become silent before the Lord both internally and externally for 5 minutes. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to stillness.

Devotional: This week you are going to learn a simple way for understanding and sharing the Gospel- the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Yesterday we learned that the Gospel message starts with Creation: God’s Perfect Design. But we all know that is not the world we live in as we look at our own lives and the headlines of each day. Why is our world so far from what God originally designed?

The Bible points out to us, what has long been called “The Fall.” Mankind, rather than honor God as King and Creator, said, “We want to be our own kings. We want to be our own creators.” And as we made that choice, humanity began to unravel.

Relationship with God was broken, not because God was petty, but because we turned away. Our own souls were fractured as we rejected our God-given identity and purpose. Our relationships with one another also suffered and rather than living in harmony we lived in discord. This isn’t the end of the story, but it is an important part for us to know and understand.

Scripture: Read today’s text slowly. Feed your spirit on the words. Your goal in this time is to commune with Jesus through His Word. Take note as you sense His Presence.

Romans 1.18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Worship: Respond to Jesus with worship and repentance today. This week’s song is So Will I by Hillsong. It focuses on all that we are engaging with this week.

Listen: Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Write down anything you sense the Lord speaking.

Obedience: What from today is the Lord calling you to put in practice? Could be to pray for someone, to call someone, to serve someone etc. Obedience is our appropriate response to Jesus and the gift of the Gospel.

Theme For The Week: Our main text for this series of devotionals is from Luke 8.1-3. You can listen to the sermon that accompanies it here.

Intro Prayer: “Jesus, please help me in this time to be fully present to You and myself that I may commune with You for the sake of your glory and the world around me.”

Silence: In this time, try and become silent before the Lord both internally and externally for 5 minutes. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to stillness.

Devotional: This week you are going to learn a simple way of understanding and sharing the Gospel- the Good News of the Kingdom of God. The story begins with Creation. When God created the world, he made it perfect, with intentionality, creativity, and beauty. That includes humanity. God created us in His image. Because of this, we all have inherent worth and calling, not because of what we do, but because of who we are.

As you read today, note the repetition of God declaring that creation was good, and finally with the creation of humankind that it was very good. The Scripture for today’s reading is not meant to be a science book, so but is intended to point us to the Source and the meaning of Creation.

Scripture: Read today’s text slowly. Feed your spirit on the words. Your goal in this time is to commune with Jesus through His Word. Take note as you sense His Presence.

Genesis 1.1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Worship: Respond to Jesus with worship. This week’s song is So Will I by Hillsong. It captures all that we are focusing on this week.

Listen: Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Write down anything you sense the Lord speaking.

Obedience: What from today is the Lord calling you to put in practice? Could be to pray for someone, to call someone, to serve someone, etc.

Theme For The Week: Our key text for this series of devotionals is from Luke 8.1-3. You can listen to the sermon that accompanies it here.

Intro Prayer: “Jesus, please help me in this time to be fully present to You and to myself that I may commune with You for the sake of your glory and the world around me.”

Silence: In this time, try and become silent before the Lord both internally and externally for 5 minutes. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to stillness.

Devotional: Jesus and his disciples (both men and women) were traveling around proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. The word “Gospel” is an older English translation of “good news.” In the Roman times in which Jesus lived, when a new emperor came into power, around the Roman Empire the good news of the kingdom of (Insert Emperor’s name here). And it was proclaimed as good news because the new emperor would put a stop to war and bring peace and prosperity with his reign.

When Jesus and his disciples were proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God, they were declaring that Jesus was the true and better emperor/king of not just the Roman empire, but the whole world. And that He was ushering in a new era that would defeat sin and death and usher in peace and prosperity with His reign.

This good news has come to you today! God has graciously given you the good news of the Gospel as an inheritance from Him! May you live from the good news that Jesus is King.

Scripture: Read today’s text slowly. Feed your spirit on the words. Your goal in this time is to commune with Jesus through His Word. Take note as you sense His Presence.

Luke 8.1. After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; 3 Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

Worship: Respond to Jesus with worship. This week we will be worshipping to So Will I by Hillsong. It focuses on all that we will learn and reflect on this week.

Listen: Take time to listen to the Holy Spirit. Write down anything you sense the Lord speaking.

Obedience: What from today is the Lord calling you to put in practice? Could be to pray for someone, to call someone, to serve someone etc.