Luke 24:27
John 5:39-40

Commentary Thoughts: Tony Evans

Jesus Christ is the focus of the Bible. It’s history. It’s His-story. After the resurrection, Jesus met two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

They didn’t recognize Him at first, and they communicated their sadness and discouragement about the death of Jesus.

So, Jesus explained that the whole story “beginning with Moses and with all the prophets” was centered on the events that had just transpired in Jerusalem.

He gave them a Sunday school lesson right then and there about how they should understand the Old Testament.

You see, the whole Old Testament is designed to point you to Jesus Christ. The reason they sacrificed lambs was that they were waiting for the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world.

Old Testament and New Testament, Jesus is there on every page. And if you read the Bible with that understanding, your eyes will be opened.

For the Bible is the menu, but Jesus is the meal. You won’t be satisfied by eating the menu. You need to partake of the meal.

So, search the Scriptures with opened eyes, and see that He is the key to everything you read in its pages.

How does this truth change the way you read the Old Testament?

John 17:13-24
Ephesians 4:3-7

Commentary Thoughts: Tony Evans

The Power of Unity

When you go to hear an orchestra, many times, the first notes you hear are chaotic as each individual player warms up on their instrument.

The violin player plays her own tune. The oboe player plays his own tune. And the result is cacophony. But when the conductor walks onto the stage, all of the players submit to his direction, and beautiful music is the result.

In other words, there is strength in unity. There is power in unity, and unity glorifies God like nothing else.

The book of John records the longest prayer by Jesus recorded in the Bible. The main concern of that prayer is unity among God’s people, which signifies the power and importance of unity.

Jesus prayed for all believers, in all times, to become unified. When the body of Christ comes together with one common purpose, we can change the world.

We must work together across racial, cultural and socio-economical boundaries to spread the love and hope of Jesus Christ to a dying world.

Since unity is so important to Jesus, it should be just as important to us. Take a few moments right now to pray for unity in these areas: your personal life, your family, your church and your community.

Romans 6:22
Hebrews 12:10

Commentary Thoughts: Tony Evans

There are many roadblocks and diversions on the pathway to holiness. Let us pray that we might continue to walk in the way He has made ready for us. Let us be quick to admit when we have not lived up to the holiness He desires to find alive within us. Holiness is a gift that comes to us as we walk obediently in the light of His love and grace.

Heavenly Father, I confess that I am not holy as You are holy. I desire to be. I want to be. I strive to be.

But so often I fall short.

I confess my selfishness and my self-absorption. I know these keep me from living a holy life and from being a living demonstration of Your kingdom rule of love.

I confess that I pay far more attention to my own wants and needs than the needs of others. I do not adequately seek what You want me to do with my time, talents, and treasures.

I confess that I seek to feed my pleasures and stroke my own ego rather than pursuing Your way. Sometimes I get lost in my lust for the things I think I need rather than letting You provide for me.

Loving God, I am sorry, and I do want to do better. Forgive me for falling short. Forgive me for my laziness, greed, jealousy, envy, hate, bitterness, pride, and the other things I give in to instead of giving in to You. Forgive me for the things that keep holiness from truly manifesting itself through my life as Your kingdom disciple. Let my light shine as a beacon of holiness. In Jesus’ name, amen.

What are the things you can do to show forth more holiness in your life?

Thank you Marilyn

Matthew 24:22-24

Commentary Thoughts by Tony Evans

Sometimes following Jesus can take you directly into the heart of a storm – into the heart of hopelessness. That’s what happened to Jesus’ disciples on the Sea of Galilee.

They were simply doing what they had been told to do and wound up in one of the worst nights of their lives. We read, “Immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side … ” (Matthew 14:22).

Did you catch that? Jesus made them get into the boat. The disciples were being obedient. They were reading their Bible, listening to the Word, and doing what it said. But then it happened: Winds pounded their boat threatening to destroy them.

The Scripture says, “But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves…” (Matthew 14:24).

Have you ever felt blown about or battered in the middle of doing exactly what you believe God told you to do? I know I have. I wish I could tell you that following Jesus means you will never have to face any storms. I wish I could tell you that it means the waters of this life will always be calm.

But I can’t because the Bible says otherwise. The Bible is full of stories about people who faced hard times while doing exactly what God wanted them to do.

The disciples are one example. The Israelites are another example. When the Israelites reached the Red Sea, Pharoah and his army were behind them.

Water stretched for miles in front of them. There was nowhere to go even though they had gone exactly where God had sent them.

They discovered, as many of us have discovered, that you can be both in the center of God’s will, and still stuck in what appears to be a hopeless situation. That being so, I never want you to confuse trials or hopelessness with an absence of God, or His plans.

He has a purpose for the storms He allows in our lives.

There is a lot of preaching today as well as many Christian books that tell you that if you follow Jesus, you will never have to face any challenges in life. But that wasn’t true for Jesus, or anyone else who followed Him.

This is because God sometimes allows trials into our lives in order to reveal Himself to us in a way that we would not have known Him otherwise.

But whether or not we benefit from these trials or they defeat us depends largely on how we view them and how we respond to God in the middle of them.

Being in a trial is never fun. But you don’t have to go through it alone. The downfall in the economy may have put pressure on your financial life.

Maybe you’ve lost your job due to no fault of your own. Or maybe these pressures have increased the strain at home in your family and you are facing a storm in your marriage or with your kids.

Wherever your storm may be, you are not alone.

Jesus is with you and He will see you through.

Listen for His voice. Look for Him. Remember, if life ever makes you feel like you are drowning, your lifeguard walks on water.

Lamentations 3:18-25
Isaiah 49:23
Romans 4:18

Commentary Thoughts by Tony Evans

Hope can take you a long way. Whenever I counsel someone who is struggling with emotional strongholds, I always want to check their hope-meter. Because when you have lost your hope, you have lost everything. Simply defined, hope is the belief that my tomorrow will be better than my today.

David knew about the power of hope when life looked hopeless.

Psalm 42:1 says, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God.” Without reading further into the psalm, it sounds as if everything is okay with David. But it’s not.

Verse three says, “My tears have been my food day and night.” Friend, when your tears are your food day and night, that means you are really suffering from hopelessness and despair. As David pens this psalm, he is depressed, and his soul is discouraged. And yet, he says he is going to remember the Lord.

“The Lord will command His lovingkindness,” David writes (v. 8).

Though God has not done it yet, David has confidence that He will. So he talks to himself. He writes to himself – he journals about his faith in God.

There are times when life crumbles around you, your friends may not be nearby, or they may be telling you the wrong things, when you need to take it upon yourself to speak to yourself.

Look at yourself in the mirror and speak God’s truth. Write notes to yourself and leave them in places you will see them. Encourage yourself. This is what David did on several occasions.

He asks himself, “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?” He doesn’t deny his pain or avoid it, rather he addresses it and tells himself what to do.

“Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God” (v. 11).

What changed David’s feelings of hopelessness and discouragement? He looked in a different direction. He looked at what God was going to do, even though he couldn’t see it at the time. In other words, he looked by faith.

The way to overcome the emotional stronghold of despair, depression, or hopelessness is to fast-forward through the tough times – the battle scenes, the drought – to the end. Look toward the place where you surrender your thoughts to the love, grace, and faithfulness of God.

When you do that, then the thing that is causing you to feel the way you do will no longer own you.

Whatever is going wrong in your life will not have the last word. Remember – Satan may have “a” word, the doctor may have “a” word, your job, friends or spouse may have “a” word, but God always has “the” final word.

In Lamentations 3, Jeremiah was nothing short of depressed. But instead of wallowing in it, he remembered God. When he began to turn his thoughts toward the goodness of God – in spite of the fact that he couldn’t see God’s goodness at the moment – he started to feel differently about the mess he was in.

In fact, in verse 18 of Lamentation 3, Jeremiah lets us know that he has lost all hope. And yet we see his hope return when he returns his thoughts toward God. We read:

“Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness. Surely my soul remembers and is bowed down within me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.

The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I have hope in Him.’” (Lamentations 3:19-25)

Friend, God can take a mess and make a miracle if you put your hope in Him. He promises that,

“those who hope in me will not be disappointed.” (Isaiah 49:23)

In fact, God is able to turn things around so completely and satisfy you so fully that He will do more than merely bring you out of your emotional bondage. He can even cause you to forget how deep it ever was.

I know your hopelessness may seem overwhelming, and you may even wonder how you could ever overcome it. But, if you will do as Abraham did – who hoped when he had none at all

… “In hope against all hope he believed,” (Romans 4:18) God will honor your trust. He can turn your emotional pain into victorious gain.

Philippians 4:1-19
Luke 6:38
Galatians 6:7

Commentary Thoughts by Tony Evans

Your harvest depends on what you sow.

This is the simple principle of farming that if you plant apple seeds, you won’t get a pear tree. What you plant has to be predicated on what you want to harvest. That’s why Jesus said in Luke 6:38, “Give, and it will be given to you.” Your need will tell you the kind of seed to plant so that your seed will reproduce after its own kind. The Bible cautions us: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

The problem is a lot of people want to sow evil and reap good. So if your sowing is bad, expect to reap bad unless you resow. To access God’s grace in the law of the harvest, you sow what you want to reap.

The apostle Paul made a great promise in Philippians 4:19, which says: “And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus.” The phrase “according to” means “in keeping with;” in other words, a supply that is in character with the God who owns it all. That’s exciting, but the preceding 18 verses of Philippians 4 show that this promise of a bountiful harvest on God’s part is set in the context of faithful giving to His work as the Philippians supported Paul.

If the Lord were to give you the necessities of life - food, clothing, shelter - “according to” your giving to His work, would you have plenty?

New Devotional Series
A U Turn from Emotional Issues

Romans 6:1-4
2 Corinthians 5:17

Commentary Thoughts

Let me remind you of a very important truth about emotions: they don’t have an intellect.

They don’t think. They merely respond.

Emotions must borrow thoughts in order to stimulate feelings. Therefore, whoever or whatever controls your thoughts, controls how you feel. Your emotions are established and ruled by how you think about the circumstances in your life.

So, if you want to master your emotions and overcome emotional strongholds in your life, you need to master your thinking.

When you align your thoughts with God’s truth, you will be set free.

Take a look in the mirror. That person you see was co-crucified, co-buried, and co-resurrected with Christ.

In the eyes of God, when Jesus died two thousand years ago, so did you. When He was buried, you lay in the tomb with Him. When He rose, you did too.

Even though you may only have received Christ a short time ago, God took what happened to Jesus so many years ago and has made it part of your spiritual reality.

Satan is a master at planting thoughts in your mind and making you think they are your own.

Perhaps you do hear him saying something like, “I can’t overcome low self-esteem and the comparison trap. I can’t be free from this emotional bondage. I can’t resist these old habits of falling into depression.” He may say those things to you, or you may even say them to yourself, but in order to overcome them, you must stop believing the lies.

All those statements may have been true when the old you was alive, but that person died on the cross along with Christ. You are a completely new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

What lies are you believing about yourself?

Genesis 32
2 Corinthians 12:8-10
Philippians 2:5-11

Commentary by Tony Evans

Why is the “thorn in the flesh” not removed?

Paul unsuccessfully implored the Lord to remove this “thorn in the flesh” three times. Instead of removing the thorn, God explained the lesson that the thorn was in place to teach:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:8).”

What sort of power is best demonstrated or “perfected” through weakness? Paul went on to identify this power as the power of Christ—a power that was not demonstrated in pride and boasting but in humble, self-giving service to others, leading ultimately to death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-11).

It is only in the utter weakness and death on the cross that the power of the resurrection is released into our world. Paul’s affliction was training him to choose the humble, self-giving “weakness” of Christ over the rival temptation to pride, boasting, and power:

“Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weakness, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

As a result, Paul’s weak, afflicted life was becoming a vehicle that exalted God rather than himself.

I want to remind you of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob who spent his later years afflicted by a limp that he had received at the hand of an angel of the Lord in a midnight wrestling match (Genesis 32).

Jacob would have viewed this as a “grace limp” because the dislocation of his hip constantly reminded him that he had met God and for once had refused to let God go, receiving a blessing for himself and his descendants.

Are you willing to face God and learn the lessons He has for you in the midst of your affliction? Have your places of affliction and seasons of weakness become reminders of God’s grace and strength?

Have you learned, like Paul, to be content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecution, and with difficulties for Christ’s sake? For when we are weak, then we are made truly strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Are you allowing your life to be a vehicle that exalts God rather than yourself, like Paul?