Colossians 3:16 – Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.
For today’s transmission, watch this testimony of Matt Redman, of how God took him from experiencing deep hurts as a child, into the worshipper as he is known today.
After watching, spend time worshipping the Lord with the following song.
1 Peter 2:9-10 – “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. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
“In us and in our communities the Spirit is at work and reproducing the very life of God, so that in our present between-the-times existence, we might live the life of the future, toward which we are walking. This is what lies behind Paul’s command in Philippians 1:27, wherein a wordplay of the fact that Philippi was a Roman colony, whose free people were therefore citizens of Rome, Paul urges them to live out their heavenly citizenship in Philippi in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Picking up this same imagery again in 3:20 he says that “our citizenship is in heaven.” God’s people in Philippi were in effect a “colony of heaven” in this colony of Rome. Paul’s point is that if people are to see what heaven is to be like, they should see it now in the way the heavenly citizens live their life together. Obviously, only the Spirit of the living God can pull that off! But that is what it is all about.” (G. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God. Kindle Locations 2105-2106)
Today pray for your church and ministry group, asking that we will become the heavenly colony in this world.
John 20:24-29 – Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ”Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, ”Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, ”Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
“Life in the power of the Resurrection is no simple and happy life, Without complexity or pain. How did Jesus writes to be our pledge, example, and prototype? When Jesus appeared to Thomas after the resurrection, he did not simply show Thomas healed and antiseptic scars. To Thomas he said, “Put your finger here; here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Do not be unbelieving anymore; but believe.”
“Jesus rose from the dead in the joy of the Resurrection, and yet he did not cease to be who he had been at the worst moment of his death. He rose with his wounds. In much the same way, as we grow into the image of the resurrected Jesus, our pledge, example, and prototype, we also rise with our wounds. We, too, find that a resurrection in God is not a denial or disparagement of our wounds and vulnerability. It is not a sloughing off of our own past, no matter how painful and full of brokenness our past has been. The resurrection is not an abandonment of the cross but the incorporation of the suffering of the cross into the resurrection itself.
“As we bring to the life of prayer all that has ever happened to us, we find that nothing finally is wasted. Rather than casting off unwanted parts of ourselves, we find instead that childhood pain, adult humiliation, experiences of joy, our own treacheries, confusion, loss-all are gathered in and somehow healed and transformed. We become able to look at our own past with love. Where we saw before only wasteland of pain, now we see rich farmlands sown and watered by God’s grace, bearing crops that become for us the very means of our love.” (R. Bondi, To Love and to Pray, Kindle Locations 1788-1789)
Today, in light of Jesus’ resurrection power and reality, pray over your past hurts, mistakes, wounds, and experience Jesus’ own nail scarred hands bring healing and life into you.
Romans 6:12-14 (MSG) – “That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time-remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!-into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.”
“Can the Holy Spirit really change a life from the inside and break the power and defilement of sin? Allow me to share a true-life testimony of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. While Chuck is known internationally as a conference speaker, author and prayer leader, many don’t know his background. His father was an alcoholic and gambler who gambled away the family’s sizable inheritance. While his mother struggled to hold the family together, his dad drifted from one adulterous relationship to another. As Chuck moved into his teenage years, his father subjected him to increasingly severe levels of emotional and physical abuse.
As a pastor, I have found that people who have endured heavy abuse are often scarred for life. Abused children become angry adults filled with bitterness and resentment, and they often become trapped in the same lifestyle practice by the parents that abused them. Chuck’s background was as bad as that of anyone I’ve known, yet somehow Chuck escaped this destructive cycle. How did Chuck escape the defilement of this background and go onto become a godly Christian leader? Although Chuck came to know Jesus as a child, by the time he graduated from high school he had already begun to follow the destructive example of his father. Even though he hated the things his father had done, Chuck found himself doing much of the same. He pursued a path of destruction for 18 months until he finally suffered a physical collapse and ended in the hospital with double pneumonia. By the grace of God Chuck was put in a room with a Pentecostal preacher for two weeks. In the hospital room, Chuck read The cross and the switchblade and then he began to read the Bible. As he read the Bible, God began to speak to him. There came a point when God came down into the hospital room and gave Chuck this promise: “I will restore to you that which you have lost.” As Chuck continued to read the word, God began to turn his life around.
When Chuck was 24 years old, God took him to Romans 6:14 where he read “sin shall not have dominion over you.” Chuck determined from that point not to rationalize his sin or excuse it any longer. He would submit to the Lord and allow God to bring his life into obedience to the word. Since that day for the last 25 years, Chuck has read through the entire Bible at least once, sometimes twice each year. He rises early in the morning, and daily saturates his mind with God’s word. As Chuck reads the word, he is committed to obeying what God tells him. God has told Chuck to do some difficult things, and to give up things that were very precious to him. But the result has been that the Holy Spirit has had great freedom to produce the character of Christ within his heart. The vicious cycle of sin and destruction was broken from Chuck’s life.
People who hear chuck minister frequently ask how the power and revelation of God flows freely through him. The answer is that Chuck has allowed the Holy Spirit to transform his life and produce in him a purified vessel. That’s what the Spirit desires to accomplish in every believer. The Holy Spirit is always ready to do his work in our lives. He is looking for men and women who yield their lives to him with repentant hearts and feed their spirits the food of his word, so that the transforming work of the Spirit can be accomplished. If you are spending time in the word of God, searching it with a humble heart and allowing the Spirit to supply it to your life, you will grow from being a weak Christian to becoming a Spirit-filled Christian.” (R. Heidler, Experiencing the Spirit, 76-78)
Today, spend time in prayer as you say the words “Holy Spirit, have your full way with me – in my past, in my present, and in my future.”
Matthew 13:8-9,23 – “Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop-a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear…But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
Today’s passage speaks of transformation that lasts, much like a seed that falls on good soil and produces a crop that yields up to a 100-fold. For today’s transmission, watch the following video where Louis Zamperini (whose life story was depicted in the movie Unbroken, 2014), shares of his transformation experience.
Today, spend time in prayer asking that you will experience transformation that lasts.