Devotional Guide For the week of March 9, 2008
STARVED FOR HOPE
About hope
To read the Bible in one year, today read Nehemiah 4-6
To Know:
³Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, ŒRabbi, eat.¹ But he said
to
them, ŒI have food to eat of which you do not know.¹ So the disciples said
to one another, ŒHas any one brought him food?¹ Jesus said to them, ŒMy
food
is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.¹² (Jn.
4:31-34)
The human heart is hungry for hope. Hope nourishes the human spirit.
Hopelessness creates in us a spiritual wasteland. Our craving for hope is
a
clue to understanding the meaning of freedom. Has anyone not heard the
expression ³free as a bird²? Birds certainly appear to be utterly
unfettered
as they swoop and swerve about in the air. To the casual observer it may
seem that birds are at liberty to do whatever they want, whenever they
want,
for any reason they want. The truth is far different. Birds fly to
survive.
It is hunger and their search for food that determines the direction birds
take as they fly through the air.
The man or woman without hope is not free. Can we wonder that the enemy
strategy is to steal our hope? Satan¹s tactic is to keep us from faith in
Christ. The evil one labors to hide the truth of Christ from our mind. One
proven way to conceal the truth is by preaching another Christ. It is by
preaching a Jesus who is not God in the flesh, who did not die for our
sins,
and who did not rise from the dead. This is the Jesus preached in many
modern pulpits. This is the Jesus that many have been persuaded to follow.
True freedom is found in faith in the Christ revealed in the Bible. He
and,
he alone, satisfies the hunger of the human heart. Hungering for him makes
us Œfree as a bird.¹
To Do:
When the Jesus Christ revealed to us in the pages of scripture is
proclaimed, sinners receive hope. Therefore, Christians are under orders
to
make known the Christ of the Bible. In this we are become heralds of hope.
To Ask:
Father, help me give someone hope.
03108$-03108
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