ALL THINGS NEW! The IRRESISTIBLE GOSPEL A Devotional for the Season After Pentecost
“Wake up Sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!” (Ephesians 5:14)
“Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.” (John 5:25)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Easter changes everything! Easter changes our lives. Easter changes the world. When we encounter the Risen Christ, our hearts leap for joy. His very voice causes our sin-sick souls to rise from the dead, and enter into a whole new Resurrection Life. The Good News he brings is simply irresistible! It is far better and more satisfying than anything this old world has to offer. It is attractive and appealing. It is beautiful and gracious. It is filled with light and hope and love. It is like sweet refreshing rain falling on a dry and thirsty land. This is God’s master plan and His deepest desire from the dawn of time: “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” (Rev. 21:5)
The first-century church certainly recognized this. And, evidently, so did the world around them. “Look how they love one another!” they marveled, as they watched the Christians work and play and serve and minister together, reaching out with compassion to the least, the last, and the lost. In the Spirit and power of the Risen Christ, the early church became an irresistible revolution that turned the world around them upside down.
Their quality of life was so rich and authentic, their worship so genuine, and their love for their neighbors so real and obvious, they were “enjoying the favor of all the people” and “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47)
So what happened? What went wrong between then and now? Why is there an increasing number of people today who now identify themselves as “Nones” (No Religious Affiliation) and “Dones” (We’ve Been There, Done That, and now we’re through with the church for good!). Why do more and more people see the church as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution to all our many problems?
Pastor and author, Scott Sauls, says: “The problem isn’t with Christianity as much as it is with our flawed approach to and understanding of Christianity. We have let ourselves become imbalanced, lopsided, and unfocused (much like the rigid, holier-than-thou Pharisees and the materialistic, secular Sadducees of the New Testament).”
He continues: “As one who longs to see Christianity return to a place of life- giving, contagious presence in the world, I am both haunted and motivated by the characterization in Acts of the early church. That description compels me to ask: What would it look like for Christians to be reignited in this kind of faith for our time? What would it look like for us to become those who live most beautifully, love most deeply, and serve most faithfully in the places where we live, work, and play? What would it look like … for us to live so compellingly and lovingly in our neighborhoods, cities, and nations that if we were suddenly removed from the world, our nonbelieving neighbors would miss us terribly? … What would it look like for Christians to become not only the best kind of friends, but the best kind of enemies, returning insults with kindness and persecution with prayers? What would it look like for Christians, en masse, to start loving and following the whole Jesus and the whole Scripture, the whole time, into the whole world?” (Scott Sauls, Irresistible Faith)
Our desire and our goal in this new sermon series, All Things New!, is to discover the answer to Sauls’ provocative questions by putting our own faith into action, by the grace of God, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ name. This devotional was designed to help you meditate on God’s Word as his new creation in Christ, and to pray daily as his devoted disciple, as we learn to practice a daily rhythm of contemplative private reflection and active public service. This is the Way our Master modeled for us in his own earthly life.
Along with daily Scripture readings to pray and ponder (Monday – Friday of each week), there will also be various quotes, readings, poems, and songs from fellow Christian sojourners (both ancient and modern) to help inspire and encourage you in your journey as a new creation in Christ. The scripture reading for Friday will be the sermon text for the following Sunday morning worship service. You are encouraged to journal your personal prayers and confessions, as well as your most passionate hopes and dreams for the light of salvation to dawn and for the world to flourish, as we pray together with Jesus, saying, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven!”
“Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” (Romans 6:1-4 NLT)
Monday, June 10 – The Spirit-filled Church
“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit!” says the Lord . . .
Prayer for the New Day: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. And kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And you will renew the face of the earth! We ask this through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.”
Hymn Breathe on me, Breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love the way you love, and do what you would do.
Wisdom to Live By: “Jesus’ spirit constructed a new creation of humanity. In the beginning, God breathed the divine spirit into Adam and created humans in God’s image. By breathing His Spirit into this new community, Jesus recreated humanity afresh in His image. In John 20:22 Jesus breathed on His disciples, an allusion to God breathing into Adam in Genesis 2:7. This new humanity would be a community with a particular kind of spirit, the spirit of Jesus Christ. The church is Jesus’ continued presence in the world, tongued with fire and driven by wind.” (Leonard Sweet & Frank Viola, Jesus: A Theography)
Scripture Meditation: John 16:7-15
Lord, hear my prayer:
Tuesday, June 11 – The Spirit-filled Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 33
Wisdom to Live By: “We believe in the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, our Comforter and Counselor, who is sent by God to convict us of our sin, call us to repentance, and glorify our Lord Jesus, as He regenerates and indwells our hearts, empowering us to live like Christ, and carry on His work in the world.” (From Core Beliefs of SonRise Christian Fellowship)
Scripture Meditation: Acts 10:1-48
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Wednesday, June 12 – The Spirit-filled Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 119:105-112
Wisdom to Live By: “We believe that the Church is the living body of Christ on earth, a foretaste of God’s New Creation, the communion of saints, and the fellowship of redeemed sinners, called to be salt and light for the sake of the world, as we live holy lives of love and service and proclaim the Gospel in Jesus’ name.” (From Core Beliefs of SonRise Christian Fellowship)
Scripture Meditation: Ephesians 4:1-16
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Thursday, June 13 – The Spirit-filled Church
Prayer for the New Day:
In the morning when I began to wake it happened again that feeling that you, Beloved, had stood over me all night long keeping watch ...... that feeling that as soon as I began to wake, you put your lips to my forehead and lit a holy lamp inside my heart.
Wisdom to Live By: “In his masterful exposition of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that Christians become a light to the world to the degree that they stand out as different from the world. The world does not thirst for a religious imitation of itself, nor does it thirst for an ‘us against them’ moral turf war with its zealous religious neighbors. The world thirsts for a different kind of neighbor – not the kind who deny their fellow man, take up their comforts, and follow their dreams – but the kind who deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow Jesus in his mission of loving a weary world to life.” (Scott Sauls, Irresistible Faith)
Scripture Meditation: Luke 5:27-39
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Friday, June 14 – The Healing Church
Prayer for the New Day: “Spirit of the Living God, be the Gardener of my soul. For so long I have been waiting, silent and still – experiencing a winter of the soul. But now, in the strong name of Jesus Christ, I dare to ask: Clear away the dead growth of the past, Break up the hard clods of custom and routine, Stir in the rich compost of vision and challenge, Bury deep in my soul the implanted Word, Cultivate and water and tend my heart, until new life buds and opens and flowers. Amen.” (Richard Foster)
The Prophetic Voice of the Spirit: Isaiah 58:6-12
Scripture Meditation: Acts 3:1-10
Lord, hear my prayer:
Monday, June 17 – The Healing Church
“Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me!”
Hymn Praise, my soul, the King of heaven; To his feet your tribute bring; Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, Evermore his praises sing: Alleluia! Alleluia! Praise the everlasting King.
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 107:1-22
Wisdom to Live By: “We are afraid of showing weakness. We are afraid of not succeeding. Deep inside we are afraid of not being recognized. So we pretend we are the best. We hide behind power. We hide behind all sorts of things. However, when we meet people with disabilities and reveal to them through our eyes and ears and words that they are precious, they are changed. But we too are changed. We are led to God.” (Jean Vanier)
Scripture Meditation: Luke 8:40-56
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Tuesday, June 18 – The Healing Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 86
Scripture Meditation: Acts 5:12-16
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Wednesday, June 19 – The Healing Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 81
Wisdom to Live By: “Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.” (N.T. Wright)
Scripture Meditation: John 14:10-21
Lord, hear my prayer:
Thursday, June 20 – The Healing Church
Prayer for the New Day: “Lord Jesus Christ, when I read the gospel stories I am touched by your healing power. You healed sick bodies to be sure, but you did so much more. You healed the spirit and the deep inner mind. Most of all I am touched by your actions of acceptance that spoke healing into those who lived on the margins of life – shoved aside by the strong and the powerful. Speak your healing into me, Lord – body, mind and soul. Most of all, heal my sense of worthlessness. My head tells me that I am of infinite value to you but my heart cannot believe it. Heal my heart, Jesus, heal my heart. Amen.” (Richard Foster)
Scripture Meditation: Mark 5:1-20
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Friday, June 21 – The Heroic Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 25
Scripture Meditation: Acts 4:1-22
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Monday, June 24 – The Heroic Church
“With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall!”
Hymn A Mighty Fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing: For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe; his craft and pow’r are great, and armed with cruel hate, On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing, Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing: Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He; Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same, And He must win the battle.
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 18:1-29
Wisdom to Live By: “The true follower of Christ will not ask, ‘If I embrace this truth, what will it cost me?’ Rather he will say, ‘This is truth. God help me to walk in it, let come what may!’” (A.W. Tozer)
Scripture Meditation: Daniel 3:1-30
Lord, hear my prayer:
Tuesday, June 25 – The Heroic Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 46
Wisdom to Live By: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” (Jim Elliot, missionary and martyr)
Scripture Meditation: John 21:15-19
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Wednesday, June 26 – The Heroic Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 91
Wisdom from the Early Church: Polycarp (69-155 AD) was a bishop of the early church, a disciple of the apostle John, a contemporary of Ignatius, and the teacher of Irenaeus. After being arrested for his Christian faith, when Polycarp stood before the Roman proconsul, all he had to do was say, “Caesar is Lord,” and offer a pinch of incense to Caesar’s statue, and he would live, but he refused. Before he was martyred, he declared: “Eighty-six years I have served Christ, and He never did me any wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”
Scripture Meditation: Acts 6:8-7:1-3, 44-60
Lord, hear my prayer:
Thursday, June 27 – The Heroic Church
Prayer for the New Day:
My life is an instant, An hour which passes by; My life is a moment Which I have no power to stay. You know, O my God, That to love you on earth – I have only today. (Therese of Lisieux, 1873-1897)
St. Therese is best known for her “Little Way” of prayer in which she would intentionally seek out the menial task, welcome unjust criticism, befriend those who annoyed her, and help those who were ungrateful.
Scripture Meditation: Romans 12:14-21
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Friday, June 28 – In Preparation for United Independence Day Worship Service
Prayer for the New Day: “Today, O Lord, I say YES! To you, to life, to all that is true, and good, and beautiful. Amen.” (Richard Foster)
Wisdom to Live By: “Jesus reveals that, where God reigns, national walls will be torn down and national distinctions rendered insignificant. ‘In Christ,’ Paul says, ‘there is neither Jew nor Gentile.’ In Christ ‘the dividing wall of hostility’ has been abolished between groups of people and a ‘new humanity’ has been created. A central aspect of the Kingdom revolution, therefore, is manifesting the beauty of what it looks like for a people to be freed from the idol of nationalism and to be reunited under the God who is Lord of all nations.” (Gregory A. Boyd)
Scripture Meditation: Isaiah 56:1-8
Lord, hear my prayer:
Monday, July 1
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord!”
Hymn Beautiful Savior, Lord of the nations, Son of God and Son of Man! Glory and honor, Praise, adoration, Now and forevermore be Thine!
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 2
Wisdom to Live By: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” (Mother Teresa)
Scripture Meditation: Revelation 22:1-6
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Tuesday, July 2
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 57:7-11
Wisdom to Live By: “A woman who recently came back to faith told me, ‘I’m absolutely in love with my church. When I encounter people with out-of-control lives, broken hearts and marriages, confused and lonely spirits, I don’t say, ‘Here are four things you need to believe.’ I say, ‘I have found the most wonderful, loving, embracing community in the world. My life has been completely changed. Come with me and see for yourself.’ I said to her, ‘You sound like an evangelist.’ She smiled and said, ‘Yep, I guess I am’ . . . Missional evangelism is indirect, authentic, and real … This form of personal contact is the primary means of bringing people to Christ and the church.” (Robert E. Webber, Journey to Jesus)
Scripture Meditation: John 1:35-51
Lord, hear my prayer:
Wednesday, July 3
Prayer for the New Day: “Jesus, we believe in your kingdom coming. Even amid pain and despair, we believe that each brave prophet – with each unknown disciple who stretches her arm as a bridge between broken world and a holy kingdom – you are laying another brick for the New Jerusalem. Amen.” (Shane Claiborne; Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Common Prayer)
Wisdom to Live By: “People who believe in war leave all behind, prepared to die: what price are we prepared to pay to be a people who believe in peace? . . . God, grant me the courage; help me, that I may plant seeds of peace.” (Jim Wallis)
Scripture Meditation: Matthew 5:1-16
Lord, hear my prayer:
Thursday, July 4 – Independence Day
Prayer for the New Day: 1 Kings 3:7-9
Wisdom to Live By: “Jesus refused to let the Kingdom he came to establish get fused with the political squabbles of his day . . . In fact, while Jesus didn’t utter a word about politics, he was a subversive political revolutionary. His life, ministry, teachings, death, and resurrection revolted against every unjust and oppressive aspect of the polis (Greek for ‘society’). This is why Jesus was a threat to the religious and political authorities – and ultimately why they felt they had to crucify him. We who have pledged our lives to following Jesus are to be political revolutionaries in the same way. Rather than putting our trust in how we vote every couple of years, we’re to follow Jesus’ example and vote with our lives, day in and day out.” (Gregory A. Boyd)
Scripture Meditation: John 8:31-59
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Friday, July 5 – The Praying Church
Prayer for the New Day: “To better know your grace, to better walk in communion, and to better participate in your mission of loving people, places, and things to life, we pray for a faith that will cause the world to find in you an irresistible Lord and Savior. Lord, hear our prayer.” (Scott Sauls, Irresistible Faith)
Wisdom from the Early Church: “We who formerly hated and murdered one another and did not even share our hearth with those of a different tribe because of their customs, now, after Christ’s appearance, live together and share the same table. Now we pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us unjustly so that they too may live in accordance with Christ’s wonderful teachings, that they too may enter into the expectation, that they too may receive the same good things that we will receive from God, the ruler of the universe.” (Justin Martyr, 100-165 AD)
Scripture Meditation: Acts 4:23-31
Lord, hear our prayer:
Monday, July 8 – The Praying Church
Root us, Lord, in your life – the life that lasts forever!
Hymn O worship the King, all glorious above; O gratefully sing his power and his love; Our shield and defender, the ancient of days, Pavilioned in splendor, and girded with praise.
Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail, In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail; Thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end, Our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 63
Wisdom to Live By: “A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
Scripture Meditation: James 5:13-20
Lord, hear my prayer:
Tuesday, July 9 – The Praying Church
Prayer for the New Day:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. (Francis of Assisi)
Wisdom to Live By: “Prayer does not equip us for greater works – prayer is the greater work . . . In the teachings of Jesus Christ, prayer is the working of the miracle of redemption in me, which produces the miracle of redemption in others, through the power of God . . . What an astonishment it will be to see, once the veil is finally lifted, all the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you have been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ.” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest)
Scripture Meditation: Matthew 6:5-15
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Wednesday, July 10 – The Praying Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 148
Wisdom to Live By: “Praying is no easy matter. It demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your person, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched.” (Henri Nouwen)
Scripture Meditation: 1 John 1:1-10
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Thursday, July 11 – The Praying Church
Prayer for the New Day: “Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and, while nursing them, minister unto you. Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say, ‘Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.’” (Mother Teresa)
Wisdom to Live By: “To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” (Karl Barth)
Scripture Meditation: Mark 9:14-29
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Friday, July l2 – The Hospitable Church
Prayer for the New Day: Psalm 84
Wisdom to Live By: “In the midst of all the violence and corruption of the world God invites us today to create new places of belonging, places of sharing, of peace and of kindness, places where no-one needs to defend himself or herself; places where each one is loved and accepted with one’s own fragility, abilities and disabilities. This is my vision for our churches: that they become places of belonging, places of sharing.” (Jean Vanier)
Scripture Meditation: Acts 4:32-35; Heb. 13:1-3
Lord, hear my prayer:
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