Grace and Hope E-Book

Brian Simmons

• Herausgeber: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: The Passion Translation
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 186

Beschreibung

Prepare yourself to remember the meaning of Lent and celebrate Easter this season: grace for our past and present, hope for our future! Beginning with Ash Wednesday, Grace & Hope: A 40-Day Devotional for Lent and Easter will guide you through this holy season of self-reflection, prayer, fasting, and remembrance—all to prepare you for the hopeful words "It is finished!" and even more wondrous words, "He is risen!" Each short, engaging devotional will focus your heart and prepare your soul to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, using a faithful and relevant new translation of the Bible, The Passion Translation. It is an ideal devotional for your own personal, family, or small-group use. And daily Bible readings from The Passion Translation will deepen your understanding of God's Word as you journey toward the cross. We trust this devotional and version of Scripture will kindle in you a burning, passionate desire for the One who bore our pain and shame, and give you a greater measure of grace and hope! 

Leseprobe

Grace and Hope

A 40-DAY DEVOTIONAL FOR LENT AND EASTER

By Dr. Brian Simmons with Jeremy Bouma

© 2016 BroadStreet Publishing Group

Inspired by The Passion Translation by Dr. Brian Simmons

ThePassionTranslation.com

Published by BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC

Racine, Wisconsin, USA

BroadStreetPublishing.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5191-0 (hard cover)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5070-8 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Scripture quotations taken from The Psalms: Poetry on Fire; Proverbs: Wisdom from Above; Matthew: Our Loving King; Luke and Acts: To the Lovers of God; John: Eternal Love; Romans: Grace and Glory; Hebrews and James: Faith Works; and Letters from Heaven: By the Apostle Paul, The Passion Translation®, copyright © 2014. Used by permission of BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC, Racine, Wisconsin, USA. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Garborg Design Works, Inc. www.garborgdesign.com

Interior design and typesetting by Katherine Lloyd at www.TheDESKonline.com

Printed in China

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Contents

Introduction

1     The Overflowing Fountain of God’s Grace!

2     He’s the One; Set Your Hearts on Him!

3     Look, the Lamb of God!

4     What Do You Want?

5     Come Back and Revive Me, God!

6     Christ Lived Our Life to Defeat Our Death

7     Persevere By Searching Your Heart for Hiding Evil and Unbelief

8     A Power Beyond Superhero Strength

9     What Can Wash Away Our Sins?

10    Christ’s Once-for-All Sacrifice

11    Help Is Already Here!

12    The Good News to God’s Wrath

13    Not Responsible and Not Guilty

14    Credited to Our Account as Righteousness

15    Who Ever Heard of Such a Thing!

16    No Longer Be Slaves to Sin

17    Does God Have to Tug and Pull You Along?

18    The Blessing of Spiritual Adoption

19    The Dead Now Live Because of God’s Great Love

20    Out with the Old, In with the New!

21    Who Are You? A Child of Revelation-Light!

22    Arm Yourself!

23    What You Sow You Shall Reap

24    Which Person Are You: Wise or Foolish?

25    Come to Me…and I Will Give You Rest!

26    If You’re Able to Understand—Respond!

27    What’s Your Problem?

28    Will You Share Christ’s Cross?

29    Lord, Give Me Clean Hands and a Pure Heart!

30    The Parable of the Fig Tree and Lumberjack

31    Have You Entered the Narrow Doorway?

32    Count the Cost of Discipleship

33    You Matter to God!

34    Do Whatever It Takes for Jesus

35    Where Are You, My God?

36    Lose Your Life to Keep It

37    Father, Glorify Your Name!

38    The Basin and the Towel

39    It Is Finished!

40    A Day of Darkness…and Hope

More from The Passion Translation

INTRODUCTION

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

So begins the yearly Christian season known as Lent, a follow-up of sorts to the season of Advent.

While during Advent we celebrate the various “comings” of Christ—first as a baby born to take away the sins of the world, and second as the victorious king come again to put the world to rights—during Lent we traditionally take a more contemplative posture, examining ourselves and our own mortality in order to personally identify with what Christ did to break our chains of sin.

In the book of Hebrews we find the perfect marriage of these two important Christian seasons:

Since all his “children” have flesh and blood, so Jesus became human to fully identify with us. He did this, so that he could experience death and annihilate the effects of the intimidating accuser, who holds against us the power of death. By embracing death Jesus sets free those who live their entire lives in bondage to the tormenting dread of death (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Consider this: Jesus became one of us and lived our life in order to experience our death, so that he could break the power of death reflected in the opening words above! This is what we reflect upon and celebrate during the season of Lent.

For those who are unfamiliar with Lent, it is a forty-day journey of self-reflection and self-denial that prepares the believer for Holy Week, leading to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Throughout this period Christians are invited to examine themselves as they remember the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus on their behalf. It’s also a time for setting aside our past sins and failures in light of the blessed future hope of who we will become by God’s grace. Accompanying this season of repentance is fasting, almsgiving, reflection, and prayer.

Lent officially begins with Ash Wednesday, a solemn service in which we’re called to remember our mortality and express our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. We are invited to remember that one day we will return to the dust from whence we came, and it is by God’s gracious gift that we will be resurrected from the dead and given everlasting life.

Traditionally, this season has been marked by fasting from food and entertainment as a way to experience, in some way, Christ’s own self-denial. You may have known a friend or coworker who gave up chocolate or Facebook, wine or TV—perhaps you yourself fasted from something or some experience for Lent as a way to prepare for Easter. While it may sound silly, these forty days of self-denial are meant to help believers identify with and understand the depths of Christ’s own self-denial on our behalf through his suffering and sacrifice on the cross.

But why forty days? The number “forty” is deeply scriptural: God sent rain for forty days and nights during the great Noah flood; Moses spent forty days on Mt. Sinai with God; the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years before gaining the Promised Land; and Jesus went into his own wilderness and fasted for forty days, where he was tested and tempted by Satan before he began his ministry.

So it is this deep, biblical history that inspired early Christians to begin setting aside these days to focus the heart and prepare the soul to celebrate the most important events in history: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it is this practice that inspired this Lenten devotional using a faithful and fresh, reliable and relevant new translation of the Bible, The Passion Translation.

The goal of The Passion Translation is to reintroduce the passion and fire of the Bible to the English reader. It doesn’t merely convey the original, literal meaning of words. It expresses God’s passion for people and his world by translating the original, life-changing message of God’s Word for modern readers.

God longs to have his Word expressed in every language in a way that would unlock the passion of his heart. Our goal is to trigger inside every English speaker an overwhelming response to the truth of the Bible. This is a heart-level translation, from the passion of God’s heart to the passion of your heart. And we’ve put this devotional together to help introduce you to it in a way that will bless your walk through the Lenten and Easter seasons.

For each of the forty days Lent is observed, Monday through Saturday, we have selected a meaningful passage of Scripture for meditation. You’ll also find a short devotion based on that day’s reading and a special Lenten prayer to help guide you through this holy season of self-reflection and self-denial, prayer and fasting, repentance and remembrance—all to prepare you for the hopeful words, “It is finished!” and the even more wondrous words, “He is risen!”

We trust this version of God’s Word will kindle in you a burning, passionate desire for him and his heart, while impacting the church for years to come. We also pray this Lenten devotional will encourage and inspire your faith in the One who bore our pain and shame, so that you could be declared “Not guilty!” and enjoy everlasting life in the age to come!

Day 1

Pslam 51:1–14

1-2God, give me mercy from your fountain of forgiveness!

I know your abundant love is enough

to wash away my guilt.

Because your compassion is so great,

take away this shameful guilt of sin.

Forgive the full extent of my rebellious ways,

and erase this deep stain on my conscience.

3-4For I’m so ashamed.

I feel such pain and anguish within me

I can’t get away from the sting of my sin against you, Lord!

Everything I did, I did right in front of you, for you saw it all.

Against you, and you above all, have I sinned.

Everything you say to me is infallibly true

and your judgment conquers me.

5Lord, I have been a sinner from birth.

Sin’s corruption has polluted my soul.

6I know that you delight to set your truth deep in my spirit.

So come into the hidden places of my heart

and teach me wisdom.

7Purify my conscience! Make this leper clean again!

Wash me in your love until I am pure in heart.

8Satisfy me in your sweetness, and my song of joy will return.

The places within me you have crushed

will rejoice in your healing touch.

9Hide my sins from your face;

erase all my guilt by your saving grace.

10Create a new, clean heart within me.

Fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires,

ready to please you.

11May you never reject me!

May you never take from me your Sacred Spirit!

12Let my passion for life be restored,

tasting joy in every breakthrough you bring to me.

Hold me close to you with a willing spirit

that obeys whatever you say.

13Then I can show to other guilty ones

how loving and merciful you are.

They will find their way back home to you,

knowing that you will forgive them.

14O God, my saving God,

deliver me fully from every sin,

even the sin that brought blood-guilt to my soul.

Then my heart will once again be thrilled to sing

the passionate songs of joy and deliverance!

The Overflowing Fountain of God’s Grace!

One day you are going to die.

On that day your heart will stop, your organs will shut down. Later you’ll be lowered into a six-foot hole in the ground, and eventually your flesh will decompose into dust.

Sobering, isn’t it?

Yet, this is the way Christians have opened the Lenten season, leading to celebrating the most wondrous events in the history of the world: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you’ve attended an Ash Wednesday service, you know the drill: after the service’s reading and sermon, you kneel before the minister to receive the sign of the cross upon your forehead, made with the ashes of burnt palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday service. And then you hear these words, reminding you of your mortality:

“Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

Why do you suppose the church launches this season in this way? Why contemplate our death on the road to celebrating Christ’s death?

I think I know the answer: Until you grasp the gravity of the consequence of sin against God, you can’t fully appreciate the gift of Christ’s defeat of it. Paul reminds us of this consequence in Romans 6:23: “For sin’s meager wages is death.”

The wage we earn because of our work of rebellion against God is death. That is our ultimate problem, requiring the ultimate fix—which, of course, we contemplate and celebrate at the end of our Lenten journey.

Perhaps it’s why after the imposition of ashes we are invited to read or sing Psalm 51. If you haven’t read it yet, do so now. While there’s a lot to celebrate, there’s also a lot to mourn, because the condition this poet describes is the condition we all share.

Notice how the psalmist feels about his condition. It is “shameful.” It’s a “deep stain” on his conscience. He is “ashamed.” It stings. He feels “pain and anguish” because of it, and his soul has been “polluted” by sin’s corruption.

Perhaps you can relate to this feeling of shame and anguish, this sting and pain. I know I can. While it can be uncomfortable and not a little depressing to think about our sin, we must at some point come to grips with it; that is part of the reason we enter into and engage Lent, after all.

And yet…we are not without hope! For as the psalmist reveals, God has a “fountain of forgiveness” bursting with grace for every single person on the planet!

Including you, brother; including you, sister!

God longs to purify each of us and make us clean again; he longs to wash us until we are pure again.

The beauty and majesty of the Lenten and Easter season is that the grace of God flows freely to those who confess their sins and seek God’s healing touch. In fact, an old hymn speaks of this fountain:

There is a fountain filled with blood

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains:

Lose all their guilty stains,

Lose all their guilty stains;

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains.*

Brother, sister, over the next forty days remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return. But also remember there is a fountain of forgiveness out of which flows the magnificent, matchless grace of God to cleanse and purify your guilty stains!

Lenten Prayer

Heavenly Father, at the beginning of Lent I confess all of my rebellious acts against you and your name, and I echo the prayer of the psalmist: Purify my conscience! Make this leper clean again! Wash me in your love until I am pure in heart. Satisfy me in your sweetness, and my song of joy will return. Hide my sins from your face; erase all my guilt in your saving grace. Start over with me, and create a new, clean heart within me!

* William Cowper, “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” Public Domain, pub. 1772.

Day 2

John 1:14–17

14And so the Living Expression

became a man and lived among us!

And we gazed upon the splendor of his glory,

the glory of the One and Only

who came from the Father overflowing

with tender mercy and truth!

15John taught the truth about him

when he announced to the people,

“He’s the One! Set your hearts on him!

I told you he would come after me,

even though he ranks far above me,

for he existed before I was even born.”

16And now out of his fullness we are fulfilled!

And from him we receive grace heaped

upon more grace!

17Moses gave us the Law, but Jesus, the Anointed One,

unveils truth wrapped in tender mercy.

He’s the One; Set Your Hearts on Him!

Life is lived waiting, isn’t it?

You sit at a stoplight, waiting for it to turn green. You wait in line to order your lunch or dinner. You wait for that package to arrive.

You wait for the results on the plastic stick, either one line or two. And then you wait for the baby to be born and grow up—and (hopefully) move out of the house!

You wait for Mr. or Ms. Right or that promised job promotion.

Life is lived waiting.

Now imagine waiting for the one promised to come restore your nation to its former glory, by defeating the foreign invaders; driving them from the land; turning the nation around morally; and reestablishing religious order.

That’s what Israel had been waiting for for generation upon generation: they were waiting for the Messiah, the Anointed One.

During the time of Jesus, the Jewish people were waiting for the One who would come riding on a horse to fight their final fight, rescue their nation by driving Rome from their land, and put them back together again through Torah observance and temple worship.

And yet when Jesus came, the gospel of John tells us that he wasn’t recognized or received—even by his own people!

But John the Baptizer did. He had taught people for years about the coming salvation from Yahweh and invited them to repent for the forgiveness of their sins—just like his father Zechariah prophesied at his birth. (See Luke 1:76–79.)

Then one day—there he was!

Jesus came walking toward John and he let all the world know that this was the One they had been waiting for for generations!

Do you know that Jesus is who you’ve been waiting for, too? That he is the One promised from long ago who would come to fight your final fight, rescue your life, and put your life back together again?

John says Jesus came bearing the very things we’ve needed all along:

Grace and truth.

Jesus brought truth-filled grace, or grace-wrapped truth—however you look at it.

Jesus tells the truth about who we are: brilliantly crafted statues of God who have been created in his image. Yet sin marred God’s image in these statues so they needed to be recreated.

Yet right alongside that truth is grace—God’s unmerited, unworked-for favor and love. John tells us that those who embrace Jesus and take hold of his name are given authority to become who they really are—children of God! Grace heaped upon more grace beckons us and establishes us in God’s family, as full heirs of his glorious riches! God’s grace and love make us a new creation in Christ, in the process of being conformed to his image again.

During Lent we need both grace and truth. We need to be reminded who we were as sinners and reminded who we are as children. We need to contemplate the truth of our past (and, perhaps, present) mistakes, while receiving heaps of God’s love, allowing that contrast to birth thankfulness in our hearts that rises in worship to our Savior.

He is the one you’ve been waiting for; now set your heart on him and him alone!

Lenten Prayer

Jesus, I recognize you are the One I’ve been waiting for my whole life to rescue me from sin and death and restore me to the way you intended me to be. I confess I don’t always treat you that way, but this day I vow to set my heart on you and you alone! Amen.

Day 3

John 1:29–34

29The very next day John saw Jesus coming to him to be baptized, and John cried out, “Look! There he is—God’s Lamb! He will take away the sins of the world! 30I told you that a Mighty One would come who is far greater than I am, because he existed long before I was born! 31My baptism was for the preparation of his appearing to Israel, even though I’ve yet to experience him.”

32Then, as John baptized Jesus he spoke these words: “I see the Spirit of God appear like a dove descending from the heavenly realm and landing upon him—and it rested upon him from that moment forward! 33And even though I’ve yet to experience him, when I was commissioned to baptize with water God spoke these words to me, ‘One day you will see the Spirit descend and remain upon a man. He will be the One I have sent to baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34And now I have seen with discernment. I can tell you for sure that this man is the Son of God.”

Look, the Lamb of God!

Have you ever wondered why John called Jesus “the Lamb of God”? Sounds like an odd title. The Sonof God makes sense. So do Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, the Messiah, and others. Why Lamb?

To understand this significant title we need to go way back into the story of Israel, because this name is deeply Jewish.

Remember the story of the exodus? This story tells of the day when God rescued his people from the hands of the Egyptians using his servant Moses. Because Pharaoh’s heart was hardened to God’s command to “let [his] people go!” God sent a series of plagues. Yet frogs and locusts, boils and darkness couldn’t turn his heart. It was only after God sent the plague that killed each firstborn that Pharaoh finally relented.

This plague was the most devastating of them all, for after midnight God swept over the whole land of Egypt, taking the life of the firstborn son of every person—from Pharaoh to slaves to cattle.

But not the Israelites. The Lord provided protection in the form of a lamb.

It was called the, Passover lamb.

He told his people to slaughter it and smear its blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe of their home. When the Lord came, he would see the blood, pass over the home, and not destroy their firstborn. And he did! He spared the lives of his faithful ones—all because the blood of that pass over lamb.

Passover is celebrated to this day. It was celebrated in Jesus’ day, too—the day he was slaughtered for the sins of the world.

Yet instead of smearing blood over the wood of the doorposts of a home, his blood dripped from the wood of a Roman cross. It is that blood that has taken away the sins of the world!

And here is John, making the announcement to all who would listen the ultimate Passover lamb had arrived to spare the lives of his faithful ones. From the very beginning of Jesus’ story we have a glimpse of his fateful end: a slaughtered lamb, God’s slaughtered Lamb.

Through this sacrifice, Jesus not only dealt with the fruit of the world’s sins but the root, too. Jesus solved the problem of both the effects of our rebellion and its cause, both the results and source of our foul deeds.

And check this out: Our sins are removed! Taken away! Vanished—poof!

Look at how the psalmist describes this removal: