DAY 316 - Keep the Fires of the Spirit Burning

Romans 12:9-21 (J. B. Phillips New Testament) ⁹ Let us have no imitation Christian love. Let us have a genuine break with evil and a real devotion to good. ¹⁰ Let us have real warm affection for one another as between brothers, and a willingness to let the other man have the credit. ¹¹ Let us not allow slackness to spoil our work and let us keep the fires of the spirit burning, as we do our work for God. ¹² Base your happiness on your hope in Christ. When trials come endure them patiently, steadfastly maintain the habit of prayer. ¹³ Give freely to fellow-Christians in want, never grudging a meal or a bed to those who need them. ¹⁴ And as for those who try to make your life a misery, bless them. Don’t curse, bless. ¹⁵ Share the happiness of those who are happy, the sorrow of those who are sad. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with each other. Don’t become snobbish but take a real interest in ordinary people. Don’t become set in your own opinions. ¹⁷ Don’t pay back a bad turn by a bad turn, to anyone. Don’t say “it doesn’t matter what people think”, but see that your public behaviour is above criticism. ¹⁸ As far as your responsibility goes, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹ Never take vengeance into your own hands, my dear friends: stand back and let God punish if he will. For it is written: ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay’. ^20-21 ... these are God’s words: ‘Therefore if your enemy hungers, feed him; if he thirsts, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head’. Don’t allow yourself to be overpowered with evil. Take the offensive—overpower evil by good!

Paul spends the first eleven chapters of his letter to the Romans explaining that God’s forgiveness is a free gift, and the God has adopted us in Jesus Christ as an act of His sheer grace and mercy. Then he begins talking about ways that we can respond to God’s grace by loving one another, seeking to do good, avoiding those things we know are wrong, showing generosity, bearing patiently the faults of others. Then in the midst of it all, Paul says let us keep the fires of the spirit burning, as we do our work for God.   Most of us know immediately what he means. We have experienced enough of God’s grace to know that the activities of the day have a way of extinguishing the devotion of our hearts. Unbelief, uncertainty, a lack of confidence in our relationship to God begins to creep into our lives. Our hearts grow dull. We become disinterested in worship, prayer, the Scriptures, and even in God. We become quite literally “dis-spirited.”

Keep the fires of the spirit burning, Paul says. God has ignited some spark of devotion in our lives. Kindle the fire that is there. Fan the flame. Share in Christian fellowship. Regularly read books written by Christians concerning their discoveries about God and God’s will for our lives. Read the Scriptures. The Bible expands our consciousness of God and His will, and these words have proven to be helpful, life-giving words time and time again. Pray. Begin and end each day with prayer. Keep the fires of the spirit burning.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope October 28, 1973

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 315 - God First

Exodus 20:1-3 (NIV) And God spoke all these words: ² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ³ “You shall have no other gods before me.

One God and one goal make a difference to the way we live. Our mind may tell us we believe in God, but what does our life tell us? Is there unity, focus, purpose, direction, and a measure of peace, or are we scattered and strained from serving  many unnamed, invisible gods? I am the Lord your God, You shall have no other gods before me. Notice that it is not just any one god that we are called to serve. The issue is not just one god, but what kind of one god that we serve. The Hebrew has a peculiar expression here. The phrase “before me” literally means “to my face” and was an expression used of a man who took a second wife when his first wife was still alive. It had to do with breaching a relationship. You shall have no other gods before me calls us into an exclusive relationship to this particular god “YAWEH,” to the God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament and uniquely revealed in Jesus Christ. We are called to an exclusive relationship to a particular God. When we get married, we do not say we promise to treat our spouse equally as well as we treat other men and women in our life. Marriage is a call to an exclusive relationship as is our call to have no other God before YAWEH.

And that is where the rub to this command comes. There is risk in the demand for an exclusive relationship. When our faith is focused on this one God, we run the risk of being narrow minded.  How do we know when we are being narrow-minded and when we are being focused?  When we make an exclusive commitment to this One God, we set limits on what we will believe. We set boundaries on how we will live. What is the difference between setting boundaries and being intolerant? Do you ever have those kinds of questions? Those kinds of feelings?

How do we know if we are obeying this command? It is like a commitment to a marriage relationship. It is an inward decision and an outward action. Simply living together is not marriage. Marriage commitment changes the relationship. We need the decision. We need the inward giving of ourselves to God however we decide and do it. We don’t drift into marriage and we do not drift into an exclusive commitment to God. There needs to be this inner decision and commitment to an exclusive relationship to the God whose name is Lord.

Relationship demands that we do things to nurture it, and there are several things that we do to nurture this exclusive relationship to God. We worship. We pray. We study. We have our daily devotional time. If we are not doing these things regularly and faithfully the relationship is eroding. We can know we are obeying this command if we have made the inward decision and commitment to an exclusive relationship to the Lord and if we are faithfully doing something to nurture that relationship.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope June 2, 1996

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 314 - A Happy Life or a Holy Life?

I Peter 1:13-16, 18-19 (NRSV) 13 Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. ¹⁴Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. ¹⁵Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; ¹⁶for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’ ¹⁸You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, ¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

A holy life is one separated from the pressures of life and responsive to God. It is life freed from the mold that the world pushes us in. It is a life filled with a sense of call and direction from God. Our church ancestors spoke of Otium Sanctum, what was known as Holy Life & Holy Leisure, and which refers to a sense of balance in life; to work when it is time to work and to play when it is time to play, both to sense God’s call and presence. The Holy Life is the ability to pace ourselves. It is the gift of being at peace within regardless of the chaos or pressures around us.

Holy Ones are people who truly live what they profess and who gain guidance and strength from their personal convictions. The Holy Ones, also now called saints, spend a significant amount of time helping people with physical and emotional needs. They are generous in their giving and forgiving in their relationships. The Holy Life is seen in those who turn a deaf ear to the way of noise and chatter, conflict and gossip, to the unexamined statements that someone believes are true simply because someone has said it. The Holy Life is a chosen life, a focused life. The Holy Life has chosen the way of listening and responding to God.

Are our hearts alive to the hope of a Holy Life, or captured by the promise of the Happy Life? Don’t let the culture get a hold on you with its contrived need and false expectations. To separate ourselves from these pressures means we have to do something. The call is to go to a place where we are free from the pressures; where we at least stand a better opportunity of hearing and receiving God’s word that we were ransomed. Ransom was the first century custom of paying money to buy a slave’s freedom. It is a statement about God’s commitment to us and about our worth to him. It is about our ransom worth, not our inherited worth. While we were sinners we were ransomed, not because we were nice underneath it all, but because we are important to God, faults and all.

And the question for us is” Does that commitment of God bounce off our souls, or does that commitment make it to the heart? The call to Holy Living says we must get away from the pressures of our culture. Receive the reality of God’s commitment to you in Jesus Christ. Recognize, realize, receive your ransomed worth.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 313 - The Awesome Power of Humility

I Peter 5:6-11 (NIV) ⁶ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. ⁷ Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. ⁸ Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. ⁹ Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. ¹⁰ And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. ¹¹ To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, is said to those of us who have a tendency to meet trouble with shrewd ingenuity, fierce determination, and complete control. Determination, strong self-confidence is just no match for the power of the adversary. But, notice that “roar” is all the power the adversary has to take the normal troubles that come our way and make them large, looming, and threatening. We have a natural need to earn, but the roar of the adversary keeps the wheels of our mind whirling for fear that we are not going to have enough. The roar of the adversary takes the natural desire to set goals for our life and roars over them so they become the frantic determination to have our own way. The roar of the lion takes the normal responsibility to discipline our children and roars over it so that it becomes the uptight effort to control our children. The adversary roars over the toil and trouble of our life, always with the same goal: to destroy the firmness of our faith. The adversary roars to fill us with worry, to send us scurrying, and to steal from us our confidence in God.

Has the roar of the adversary ever gotten to you? Exaggerated a difficulty? Made a normal problem more important than it really was? Threatened you? Undid your calm confidence in God? Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God. Humility is such subjection to God that we can lay down the burden of having to get our own way. Humility is freedom from the obsession that things go the way we want them to go. Humility lays aside the unwritten script that says “I have to be treated in a certain way.” Humility is an attitude and a life-style. Humility is living from a confidence that God can be trusted no matter what happens. Humility keeps us firm in our faith.

When our will is bent to God’s will, the roar of the adversary is seen for the bluff it is. The roar of the adversary loses its power to threaten us, or worry us, or to send us scurrying everywhere for security. Humility is a gift that God is seeking to give us. Sometimes when we feel beaten by life, humility is the gift of being broken by God who breaks our pride but mends our egos. When God lays the cloth of humility on us, the clothes feel fresh and new and extremely comfortable. The normal response to being clothed with humility is to breathe a sigh of relief. The heavy burden of having our own way is lifted and the voice of the adversary is stilled. 

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 19, 1996

Copyright Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 312 - A Conflict of Conviction

I Peter 3:13-17 (NRSV) ¹³ Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? ¹⁴But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, ¹⁵but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

Conflict is a part of life. Misunderstandings arise. Accusations fly. Feelings blaze out of control - or smolder just beneath the surface. Sometimes when conflict arises we need to be able to share in a quiet and confident way why we are living the way we live, how we are moved and motivated by the grace and love of Christ to do what we are doing. Simple goodness, and a firm but polite response can disarm a lot of misunderstanding and diffuse a lot of conflict.

If our conscience is clear, it does not make any real difference what others accuse us of or what they say we have done. A person with a clear conscience will gladly hear and will be open and receptive to change. But, for example, if we talk to an alcoholic about his or her drinking, they will probably get defensive, and even make us feel like we are the one who has the problem. They get defensive because their conscience is not clear. To have a clear conscience means that there is a willingness to see where we have been at fault, where we have been responsible, where we have made a mistake, and where to make amends - not just with words but also with actions. People with a clear conscience do not get defensive. They live with a readiness to acknowledge where they have been wrong and to do what they can to make things right. They deal with conflict and accusation in a clear, straightforward way.

Do not be afraid of those who accuse you and complain against you, but respond to them out of a respectful fear of Christ. Do not fear your accusers and complainers. They can make you suffer. They can cause you to make less money. They can cause you to lose your job. They can make life hard on you. But they cannot harm you. They cannot destroy the peace of your soul. They cannot stop God’s plan and purpose for your life. Fear Christ as Lord, and you will really have nothing to fear. It is a paradox, but one many of us have experienced.

Have you ever been in awe of someone, a parent a teacher, a coach? Have you ever had such respectful awe, such a high regard for someone that your greatest fear is to disappoint them, to fail them? It is that kind of fear that Peter is talking about, and it is that kind of fear that keeps us from worrying about or being fearful of anything or anyone else. The more we know of Christ’s love for us, and His commitment to us and His care for us, the more we are prepared to deal with conflict, complaints, and accusations.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 12, 1996

Copyright Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 311 - The Virtue of a Narrow Mind

I Peter 2:1-3 (NKJV) Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, ² as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, ³ if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

I Peter 2:1-9 (NIV) 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. ⁶ For in Scripture it says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” ⁷ Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,”⁸ and, “A stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for. ⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

It is important that what we believe about ourselves fit the reality of who we really are. Throughout the New Testament there is a repeated refrain of “remember who you are in Christ.” Peter has some pretty positive things to say to us about who we are. If you are into positive self-esteem it does not get much better than this, except that our worth, our value is a gift rooted in the truth of God and in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Peter speaks of our worth in Christ because he found his own worth in Christ. He had gone from a phony sense of self worth based on the belief that he was strong and able and capable of handling anything, to the recognition of how fickle and weak he could be, to the firm foundation of value he found in Christ’s honest commitment to him.

Our self worth is a calling. And that means making some adjustments in our lives to bring our thinking, our feeling, and our behavior in line with the truth given to us in Christ. If that call is to get into our soul, then we will have to do some letting go -  laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking. Malice means scheming to get ahead. Guile is pretending to be good. Hypocrisy is pretending to be something we are not. Envy is the petty attitude toward those we think are better off than we are. Slander is putting people down with politeness. We have to let go of the self-deceit that we have about our own worth.

We do not simply put aside deceit, we also feed on the truth, rooted in the Word of God from. Jesus is the cornerstone and He is also a stumbling stone, Peter tells us. He is a stumbling block for those who do not believe and a building block for those who do. We find the truth about ourselves in Him or we stumble by believing the messages that our society gives. That may sound narrow minded to some of us, and it is. The virtue of narrow mindedness is when we focus on listening and hearing the truth about ourselves from Christ. It is not a narrow mindedness of superiority. It is a narrow mindedness of hope and confidence in Christ.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 5, 1996

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)

DAY 310 - Lord, Have Mercy

Matthew 26:14-16, 47-50 (NIV) ¹⁴ Then one of the Twelve—the one called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests ¹⁵ and asked, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?” So they counted out for him thirty pieces of silver. ¹⁶ From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. ⁴⁷ While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived. With him was a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people. ⁴⁸ Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: “The one I kiss is the man; arrest him.” ⁴⁹ Going at once to Jesus, Judas said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. ⁵⁰ Jesus replied, “Do what you came for, friend.” Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him.

Matthew 27:3-5 (NIV) ³ When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. ⁴ “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.” “What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.” ⁵ So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

Jesus is Divine mercy breaking in the reality of human misery, with the authority to heal and to free, but also with the willingness to suffer. From the time that Jesus rode into Jerusalem till he was mocked and was crucified Jesus was out to conquer us with the mercy of God. He means to break us of our prideful self-reliance, of our blind seeking for the illusions of happiness. He means to invade our life with the Spirit, to gain more influence on our thoughts, to shape the desires and passions of our heart, and to direct our behavior toward the fulfillment of God’s purpose for our life. Jesus means to conquer, but He conquers with mercy.

If mercy is the way God in Christ seeks to conquer us, then resistance to mercy is not merely disobedience or even rebellion. Resistance is betrayal, and is there anything more painful than betrayal? We can disobey a boss, but we betray a friend who cares about us. We can disobey the government, but we betray a husband or wife who believes in us. And so, Judas is not simply disobedient. He is a betrayer. He sees the mercy of Jesus toward a woman who is a known sinner, but then sought an opportunity to betray Jesus. And, rather than accept the mercy of God regarding his betrayal of Jesus, He hanged himself.

Betrayal violates a trust. Betrayal is hypocritical and deceptive. Betrayal harms the one who cares about us the most. Only one who is loved and trusted can become a betrayer. It is fairly easy for us to think of our sin as doing something wrong or as not being perfect or as disobeying God. We can live rather comfortably with that kind of failure. But if God is seeking us in mercy, then to refuse that mercy and to reject that mercy is not merely disobedience. It is betrayal of one who cares. The bottom line in our relationship to God is not “am I obeying God or am I disobeying God?” The bottom, line is, “Am I being faithful to God or am I betraying Him?”

From a sermon  preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 31, 1996

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)