Category: Devotions

FRIDAY 3rd

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

NIV (v2) – ‘We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition.’

ESV (v2) – ‘But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.’

Today’s devotion is another of those timely reminders for us to pray for the persecuted Church in this world today, for our brothers and sisters who are undergoing testing, trials, tribulation and even torture for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Some are even faced with the horror of death, being martyred because they dare to love the Lord Jesus Christ and be loyal to him.

Paul is reporting what had happened to himself and those with him as he had gone to take the gospel to Philippi and then on to Thessalonica, (Acts 16 & 17) We will recall in Philippi he and Silas had ended up in prison, but even in that situation God came through and delivered them as they sang and prayed and as a result the jailor and his family got saved,  but opposition from the authorities didn’t deter them from moving on to the next mission field and to continue to preach the good news, where we find a riot broke out! This tells us that even the devil knows that the gospel is good news, and he will do all he can to prevent the news from getting out and getting to those who need to hear it, he knows he is defeated, and he wants to do his utmost to prevent others from hearing and being set free!

Paul says that they ‘had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God’ the Holy Spirit who we saw a couple of days ago, will not only bring us joy in the midst of difficulty, he will also give us boldness in the midst of difficulty, boldness to face the enemy, boldness to stand and to declare the gospel and boldness to stand up for the gospel, to defend the honour of His name.

THURSDAY 2nd

1 Thessalonians 1:8-10

NIV (v10) – ‘. . . and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.’

ESV (v10) – ‘. . . and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.’

This letter that Paul has written to the Thessalonian believers, has a few references to the 2^nd coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, our verse today, it’s hinted at in 2:12, and mentioned in 3:19, 3:11-13, 4:13-18. 5:9-11, 5:23.

Here in our text today we wait patiently. Jesus said he would come again, and he will.

In breaking this verse down, we see firstly that we are waiting for God’s Son from heaven, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. He came the first time from heaven as a babe in Bethlehem to become the means of our salvation, after he had fulfilled his Fathers will he returned to heaven, we know this from Scriptures such as Acts 1:11, Philippians 3:20,  at present he is preparing a place for us (John 14:2) and interceding for us (Hebrews 4:14-16), but we wait because we know he will come again, from heaven, a second time not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:28) Secondly, we wait for the one who God raised from the dead, this of course is the same one, the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are reminded that he can come again because although he died and was buried, he rose again, and he lives forever over death to reign, it is because he is a risen, living and conquering Saviour that he can come again to save us, and it is as we see thirdly that he will deliver us from the wrath that is to come. There is going to be a dreadful outpouring of the wrath of God on this earth, we see it in the book of Revelation, see especially chapter 16 that talks about the seven bowls of the wrath of God, but the good news is the Saviour who we are waiting for his going to come and to deliver us from it.

In this letter, Paul twice says ‘encourage one another’ (4:18, 5:11) may we be encouraged again today, with the glorious truth that Jesus is coming again. Are you ready? Are you waiting?

WEDNESDAY September 1st

1 Thessalonians 1:8-10

NIV (v8) – ‘The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it . . .’

ESV (v8) – ‘For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything.’

Our verse today is a continuation from yesterday of what Paul is describing as the testimony of the faith of the believers in Thessalonica to those all around them. I like the wording of the NIV that says ‘the message rang out from you’ I like the ESV as well, (sounded forth) but it is the words ‘rang out’ it tells us that they well and truly belted out the message of the gospel by their lives, they had heard it, they had received it and they had responded to it and now they were passing it on. What God had done among them and for them was evident for all around to see and hear, so much so that Paul didn’t even need to mention it, it was so well known, it had rung out loud and clear.

I think I may have mentioned this in a much earlier devotion, but while I was growing up as a young lad on the farm in Herefordshire, at 6pm either every evening or one  particular night a week (I don’t remember, I just remember hearing it) the air raid siren that had been used during the second world war, was tested, this was in the 1960’s so at least 15- 20 years after the end of the war, I guess, because I don’t really know why, it was tested just in case war broke out again, and I do not even know when the practise came to an end, but we lived a few miles away from the city where the siren was sounded, but I can distinctly remember hearing it. It needed to be a clear, specific, and loud sound to give sufficient warning to all. The Thessalonian believers having been gripped by the power of the gospel, were like a siren, they made sure that the message rang out not only in Macedonia and Achaia but everywhere, as far as they possibly could, warning men and women of their sin and their need of a Saviour, their faith was spread forth for others to hear and to know.

May God helps us as individuals and as a Church fellowship in Gateshead to know what it is to be clear, specific, and loud with the presentation of the gospel, so that others will hear and respond by faith. May our testimony ring out loud and clear not only in the vicinity of the Church but in the surrounding areas.

TUESDAY 31st

1 Thessalonians 1:6-7

NIV (vv6-7) – ‘You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.’

ESV (vv6-7) – ‘And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.’

In these couple of verses, Paul is expressing his pleasure in seeing that the Thessalonian believers had not only embraced the gospel but were willing to embrace the suffering that they had had to endure because of it, and they endured it with the joy given them by the Holy Spirit. Their suffering happened immediately upon their willingness to accept the gospel for Acts 17:5-9 records that a riot took place, but those who responded persevered and knew as a result the joy of the Holy Spirit. This speaks to us of a further work of the Holy Spirit, we often talk of his role as an advocate, as the one who brings things back to remembrance,  the one who comes to fill and to empower, the one who gives fruit and gifts, but here the Holy Spirit is the one who comes to give joy in the midst of suffering, is it not wonderful to know that should we be suffering at this moment as a Christian, that we will not only know God’s grace which he will give to us in sufficient measure, (1 Corinthians 12:6) but we can know the joy of the Holy Spirit.

Joy is linked to the Holy Spirit in Acts 13:52 where we read ‘And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit,’ are you feeling downcast, under pressure, maybe even suffering in some way because of your faith, then allow the same Holy Spirit who ministered to these believers to come and to overwhelm you with his joy.

Finally, from these verses we see that the Thessalonian believers became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia, what a testimony, may we as we are filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit be an example, a testimony to all around us of the work of grace that God has done and continues to do in our lives.

MONDAY 30^th

1 Thessalonians 1:4-5

NIV (vv4-5) – ‘For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake.’

ESV (vv4-5) – ‘For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.’

The gospel came to the Thessalonian’s in word, in power, in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. It must have been an amazing experience to sit under the teaching and preaching ministry of the New Testament apostles, they truly were men who had the calling and the anointing of God upon their lives, they preached the gospel with such a powerful anointing upon it that the hearers came under deep conviction that led to repentance and salvation. We know that it happened on the day of Pentecost, after Peter stood up with the eleven and preached. It says that the crowd who listened were cut to the heart, conviction was at work deep in their lives causing them to respond with the question, ‘What shall we do?’ to which Peter responded ‘Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’, (Acts 2:37-38) Later in Acts we have the account of where Peter preached to the uncircumcised, that is the Gentiles, after responding to the call to go to Cornelius, and even while Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. (Acts 10) When it came to them preaching of Jesus in Thessalonica the statement is made, ‘These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also’ (Acts 17:6) it was a cry of dismay, from those who were antagonists,  but it was also a testimony to the powerful preaching of the apostle.

May this become our experience as we preach and teach Jesus at Emmanuel, my earnest prayer is that we will truly know what it is to deliver the gospel, not simply with words, but also in power, with the Holy Spirit working with deep conviction. One of the things we have started doing in our mid-week prayer meeting is to pray in particular for the Sunday morning service, that we will truly know the power and the presence of God among us, please, please, can I urge you, if you can, to please come along to join with us as we meet for prayer that together we can cry out to God to visit us afresh, that we will truly be a Church where signs and wonders will accompany the preaching of the Word. Who knows, maybe we will turn Gateshead upside down!

FRIDAY 27^th

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

NIV (vv2-3) – ‘We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

ESV (vv2-3) – ‘We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Continuing with the same verses today, Paul continued to say that they remembered the work of faith, labour of love and steadfastness of hope that the Church had in the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice the triplet of words, faith, love, and hope, which we will recall is found at the end of the great chapter of love, but in a different order, ‘So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ (1 Corinthians 13:13) All three virtues were evident in the Church at Thessalonica and caused Paul to rejoice and give thanks to God.

The three corresponding words that Paul attaches to the three virtues are, work, labour, and steadfastness (ESV) The NIV puts it this way:

Work produced by faith

Labour prompted by love

Endurance inspired by hope

They as a Church, a body of believers were working and labouring in the gospel because of their strong faith and love, and the hope that they had received from the gospel which was anchored in the Lord Jesus Christ caused them to endure or to persevere in all that they were doing. Work and labour seem to be similar words, it is important to understand that the labour or work was not to produce faith or to save them, but it was an outworking of the saving faith they had already received. The gospel had changed them, and it also influenced them, and caused them to make their salvation not only personal and saving and an inner experience,  but it was practical in service, or it’s outworking as well. James talks of this in his letter, ‘But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works’ James 2:16. May our relationship with the Lord Jesus not only be an inward experience, but may it be evident by who we are and by what we do. May our faith produce work for Jesus, prompt labour out of love for others and our hope inspire us to endure, whatever may come against us.

THURSDAY 26^th

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

NIV (vv2-3) – ‘We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

ESV (vv2-3) – ‘We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

We return to the same verses as yesterday, and I want to pick up on what Paul is saying here concerning the believers in Thessalonica, remember they are a body of believers who have been added to the Church following Paul’s missionary visit to them a few years earlier. He says ‘We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers’.

Prayer is an important part of the life of the Church, on the morning of the day when I was preparing this devotion, I had a text message from one of our Church family quoting the words of the hymn, ‘Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath . . .’ and it is, and it is also the Church’s vital breath, the early Church made prayer an important part of their regular activity as we read in Acts 2:42 ‘And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers’, Paul himself often mentions how he prayed for those in the Churches, prayer is important to us as a fellowship, and features in our Church activity, and so it must, the challenge is are we willing to get involved, to be willing to be together, to be devoted as the early Church was, found in the place of unity for corporate prayer and thanksgiving. In our text Paul says that ‘we thank God and continually mention you in our prayers’, I think the ‘we’ here means that the three mentioned in verse one, Paul, Timothy and Silas prayed together for the Thessalonian Church, and I would assume for other Churches as well, may we take our lead from them and come together to pray for each other, for the local Church and for others as well, not only for any particular needs that may be expressed, but that the blessing of God might be upon all that we do for the extension of his Kingdom.

Wednesday 25^th

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

NIV (vv2-3) – ‘We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

ESV (vv2-3) – ‘We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.’

Today we are going to commence looking at Pauls first letter to the Church at Thessalonica. The greeting would indicate that it is from Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy and the second verse starting with ‘we’ verifies them as sending the letter together, Paul being the principal author. Silvanus is Silas who we read as being with Paul in the book of Acts. (Acts 16 & 17)

In verse 2 they commence by reminding the Church at Thessalonica that they give thanks to God for them, constantly mentioning them in their prayers.

This Church was borne out of the ministry of these three, Paul and Silas had preached there over a period of three Sabbath days, we read this in Acts 17:1-3, the message they declared was to explain and prove that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead. They made it clear to those who heard that ‘this Jesus who I proclaim to you is the Christ’.

We will return to 1 Thessalonians 1:2 again tomorrow, but for today it is an opportunity to remind ourselves that the main message of the Church must be the Lord Jesus Christ and the very fact that it was necessary for him to suffer, die and to be raised from the dead. (1 Corinthians 15:1-6)

This is the message the world needs to hear, and it must continue to be the bedrock of us who have come to faith. In the words of a hymn, Jesus only is our message.

It continues in the report in Acts 17 to say, ‘And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.’ (v4)

I must be honest and say, as a pastor I don’t want men and women to join with me, or with us because we preach a message that is pandering to their itching ears,(not that we do) I want others to join with us because they have heard about Jesus and him crucified and that he as the one who has been raised from the dead, men and women whose lives have been touched because we have proclaimed the Christ. We must always remain Christ centred, and Christ focused.

24^th August 2021

Tuesday 24^th

Yesterday we came to the end of our look at the Psalms 41-80 and tomorrow we will begin to look at 1 Thessalonians.

Today we will have a short recap, we commenced the daily devotions on Sunday March 22^nd and for the first 105 devotions looked at various Scriptures / subjects. Since then, I have looked through various books of the Bible, we have briefly covered Genesis through to Joshua, Galatians through to Colossians, Hebrews and James and Psalms 1-80 and considered 20 hymns. It has taken 478 devotions to get to today!

Originally the devotions were prepared for the period of the first lockdown, and as we continued with the pandemic, I continued to prepare them daily until April 18^th this year and then changing to just weekdays from April 19^th.

We are now beginning to get back towards some normality, with us now having a midweek prayer meeting and soon a Bible study, however, because there are those who have told me they are still benefitting from and enjoy receiving the devotions I have decided to continue with them for a period on the same weekday only basis but some of them may be shorter than what I have been doing. I will re-access again later.

Thank you for your continuing support and encouragement and may you and we together as a Church family, and those who join with us through the devotions and video continue to know God’s blessing and may he cause us to be fruitful in the ongoing work of the Lord.

I didn’t put a Scripture at the beginning, I will end with it here, Philippians 1:6-7a ‘And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you (us) will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace . . .’

Monday 23^rd

Psalm 80

NIV (v7) – ‘Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us,  that we may be saved.’

ESV (v7) – ‘Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved!’

The last of our present look at the Psalms, the verse I have chosen appears three time in this psalm, firstly in verse 3 without the words ‘of host’ (ESV) and the same again in verse 19. It is a cry from the heart of Asaph that God would come and visit his people again and restore them to be the people they should be, his picture being that of Israel as being a vine that was plucked out of Egypt and planted in a new vineyard, and that its branches had spread under the hand of God, but things had gone wrong, those from around them had come and trampled the vine, ravaging the people of Israel and causing them to diminish as a people, Asaph was crying out for God to come and to restore them, to save them, to cause them to flourish again as his people. In verse 18 he cries out among other things ‘. . . give us life, and we will call upon your name.’ The restoration they needed was for new life to be given to the vine, life that would cause it to grow again, life that would cause it to become fruitful again, life that was the very life of God, life that would cause it to spread its branches again so that it would be a blessing to those around it.

This prayer needs to be the prayer of the Church in the United Kingdom, that God will restore it to that which he has called it to be, that his face will shine once again upon it and that the Church will be saved! It seems strange to ask that the Church will be saved, but when we hear of denominations that are undermining the pure word of God to accommodate those who live in a manner that is opposed to the word of God then the Church needs saving, there needs to be a restoration of truth, the preaching of truth and the upholding of truth, the vine is being trampled upon, the enemy is seeking to ravage and to destroy, and there needs to be modern day Asaph’s who will stand boldly and cry out ‘Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved!’

There is a sense that we can make it our prayer locally as well, that God will restore anything that we may have lost, that God will cause his face to shine upon us, that God will save us or keep us, that we at Emmanuel will continue to be a people who will honour God and honour his Word, that God will give us life, that God will cause us to be like a fruitful vine with branches that will reach out and be a blessing to the community around us.