Prevent the Crash – Dave’s Daily Devo – March 31

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Prevent the Crash

Galatians 1:1-2

On Monday, October 29, 2018, Lion Air Flight 610 took off at 6:20 AM from Jakarta, Indonesia, on a routine flight.  Only twelve minutes after takeoff the plane crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 passengers and crew. Five months later on March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 took off from Addis Ababa and six minutes after takeoff, this plane crashed killing 157 more.

The FAA  frantically analyzed the flight recorders and examining the wreckage to determine the exact causes of the crashes, but the preliminary assessment was that a computer system that was supposed to protect the pilot from pitching the plane too high which would cause a stall, malfunctioned, and pitched the nose down. The pilots in both crashes did not know how to override the malfunctioning system that caused the deadly dive.

At Sinai God gave Moses the tablets of stone and in Exodus through Deuteronomy, he spelled out the rules of the Sinaitic Covenant. Moses is clear. If his people obeyed these commandments, they would live, but if they disobeyed them, they would die. As we read the rest of the Story in the Old Testament we learn that even Moses never entered the Promised Land because he disobeyed. David, Israel’s greatest king, shattered the commandments against adultery, lying and murder, and both the Northern and Southern Kingdom were destroyed because they disobeyed God.

The point? The Law was good and would bring life to those who obeyed, but the hard fact is that none of us obey and therefore, the Law condemns all of us to death. And this leads us to the gift of God’s Son who perfectly obeyed his Father, and then gave his life so that all could simply admit their sin and trust in the sufficiency of Jesus’ sacrifice for us.

This is the Gospel Paul proclaimed on his first missionary journey to the Galatians, and the message many of them received. Then soon after he left, Jewish Christians, like those in Jerusalem who argued against Peter, Paul, and Barnabas at the Jerusalem Council  (Acts 15) came to Paul’s churches and declared that he was wrong.

Faith in Jesus was not enough. One must get circumcised and then obey the Mosaic Law. This was the only way to guarantee salvation and overcome sin in our daily lives. Now some theological debates are over trivial matters, but this debate in the Book of Galatians decides whether we will fly safe to Jesus or whether we will crash into eternal destruction.

Paul is usually not one to point to his credentials, but when it comes to the truth of the Gospel, check out how Paul begins this most heated of his letters.

“Paul, an apostle, not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—and all the brothers with me.”  Galatians 1:1-2

LORD, Paul saw your resurrected Son on the road to Damascus and your Spirit revealed the true purpose of the Mosaic Law and how it pointed us to your Son, the only Savior who ever rose from the dead. Help us to carefully track Paul’s argument and move those who read these Devos to clearly understand the Gospel and to not allow dependence up any religious system to cause them to crash to their eternal death.

For more from Dave Wyrtzen please visit TruthEncounter.com!

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Leaves of Life – March 31

MARCH THIRTY-FIRST

• Ludwig von Beethoven died 1827.
• Joseph Francis Haydn born 1732.
• Andrew Lang born 1844.
• Charlotte Brontë died 1855.

The Great Being unseen, but all-present, who in his beneficence desires only our welfare, watches the struggle between good and evil in our hearts, and waits to see whether we obey his voice, heard in the whispers of conscience, or lend an ear to the Spirit Evil, which seeks to lead us astray. Rough and steep is the path indicated by divine suggestion; mossy and declining the green way along which temptation strews flowers. Then conscience whispers, “Do what you feel is right, obey me, and I will plant for you firm footing.”
—Charlotte Brontë.

God help us do our duty, and not shrink,
And trust in heaven humbly for the rest.

—Owen Meredith.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life.
—Deuteronomy 30. 19.

My Father, as I review my life I am impressed how accurately my deeds have copied my thoughts. And though I have failed the so often, yet I pray that thou wilt accept my yearnings, to think and work for the best in every day. Amen.

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Worry Doesn’t Solve Anything – Daily Hope with Rick Warren – March 31, 2020

Worry Doesn’t Solve Anything
By Rick Warren

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (Matthew 6:25 NIV)

Worry is essentially a control issue. It’s trying to control the uncontrollable. We can’t control the economy, so we worry about the economy. We can’t control our children, so we worry about our children. We can’t control the future, so we worry about the future.

But worry never solves anything! It’s stewing without doing.

Jesus actually gives four reasons you don’t need to worry in his Sermon on the Mount.

1. Worry is unreasonable.

Matthew 6:25 says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (NIV).

Jesus is saying, if it’s not going to last, don’t worry about it. To worry about something you can change is foolish. To worry about something you can’t change is useless. Either way, it’s unreasonable to worry.

2. Worry is unnatural.

Jesus gives us an illustration from nature in Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (NIV).

There’s only one thing in all of God’s creation that worries: human beings. We’re the only things God has created that don’t trust him, and God says this is unnatural.

3. Worry is unhelpful.

It doesn’t change anything. Matthew 6:27 says, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (NIV). When you worry about a problem, it doesn’t bring you one inch closer to the solution. It’s like sitting in a rocking chair—a lot of activity, energy, and motion, but no progress. Worry doesn’t change anything except you. It makes you miserable!

4. Worry is unnecessary.

Matthew 6:30 says, “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?” (NIV). If you trust in God, you don’t need to worry. Why? Because he has promised to take care of all your needs: “God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19 NIV).

That includes your bills, relational conflicts, dreams, goals, ambitions, and health issues you don’t know what to do with. God will meet all your needs in Christ.

Don’t worry about it!

PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >>

For more Daily Hope with Rick Warren, please visit pastorrick.com!

THE OPERATING PRINCIPLE OF LIFE

Daily in Christ 3/31

March 31

Mark 11:22

And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God”

The sun is perhaps the most credible object of faith for the world. It appears to be immutable. It has always been there, 24 hours of every day, 365 days a year. Without the sun, people couldn’t live. If the sun didn’t rise tomorrow morning, what would happen to the world’s faith? All of humanity would be thrown into confusion.

If we have such great faith in the sun, why don’t we have even greater faith in the Son who made the sun and all the rest of the fixed order of the universe?

Our faith is in God. Genuine faith is born out of a knowledge of the will of God and exists only to fulfill that will. Faith is not a means of getting man’s will done in heaven; it is the means of getting God’s will done on earth.

After hearing me speak on spiritual conflicts, a young man came by to talk about his personal life. He said he’d had several experiences of not being able to speak the name of Jesus aloud. I asked him about his faith. He thought he had made a decision for Christ years earlier in an evangelistic meeting. He tried living with some American Indians to continue his spiritual journey, but that proved to be disastrous. He finally ended up living in a pastor’s home where he was helped with the assurance of his salvation. The pastor encouraged him to just go live by faith.

The young man said to me, “I’ve been trying to live by faith for three years, and it has been one trial after another.”

“Faith in what?” I asked.

He didn’t know how to respond. This young man was trying to live by faith in faith. But faith itself is not a valid object. The only valid object for faith is God and the revelation we have of Him in His Word. Faith is the operating principle of life. The only difference between Christian and non-Christian faith is the object. God must be the object of our faith.

Prayer: Lord God, I place my faith in You alone today. Help me not to allow anyone or anything to take Your place as the object of my faith.

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