DYSMAS CONDUIT
FREE FOOD
(Isa 55:1)
TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2010
Question for the day: Have you ever helped another get rid of their REAL junk?
What can we pray with YOU about today?
Good morning,
This is just a reminder that every day, while we are studying God’s Word to add to our website, someone from our ministry, Dysmas Conduit, is holding you up before the Lord in prayer. May He greatly bless you today as you pursue His will and He is glorified through you.
God’s blessings, our love,
George & Sidney Granger
CURRENT PRAYER REQUESTS:
Please pray for Mike and Sandy Brommer as they spread the Lord’s Seed and witness to His glory while on the road today. Please pray also that the Lord will lead them to Kingdom-profitable loads to carry, and that He grants them safe passage today from
Please lift me in prayer; I have been sick since Dec 3; and just spent 4 hours at
Joseph Booth: Please pray that this cold I have will go away and I will get my voice back soon.
Ben Wright: pray for my son who is 15 years old today.
Patrick Dunn: my wife, Jessica to see the light and change through our separation and to be strong for our children Kaleb and Emma. To provide the continuing strength and direction to stay on this blessed path that the Lord has been so gracious to have shown me.
Sherlynn Kerns: my mom’s right hip. Leona Dopp.
Rich & Sharon Waite: my brother, Larry Sirrine, continued healing from surgery.
Kurt & Jayne Heringhausen: safety for Julie, our daughter traveling in
Charlie & Jill Breedlove: God’s direction for Messiah in 2010.
Mark & Denise O’Keefe: for healing of Bailey’s collarbone and Molly H’s foot.
Al & Ann Gay: Linda Alexander
Maggert Family: for our family.
Kent & Lela Toner: Keegan
Dean & Mary Brewster: Karen Ulmer-Bendies shut down and just found out she has bone cancer. Paula for leukemia. Alicia for her to figure out what direction she wants her life to go.
David & Deb Cress: Larry
Neal & Heather Gorney: Neal & I marriage to rebuild our love and trust in one another to grow as husband & wife and parents, pray the Lord blesses our family this new year.
Hollie & Dylan Sirrine: my son Zack’s struggles. My brother Thomas w/stage 4 cancer. My Uncle Rick whose home burned down last week.
Deb Sandow: healing & salvation for Tony & Nancy
CONFIDENTIAL: my brothers who have strayed from the Lord
Emily Maggert: finances & job.
Please continue to pray for Billy Hamburg. He had another surgery and two more tumors were discovered. Discussion is forthcoming concerning bladder removal. Please pray for the Lord’s Hand to help him overcome his anxiety as well as the cancer.
ENCOURAGEMENT FOR TODAY
January 5, 2010
The Friendship Project
Whitney Capps
"But he wanted to justify himself,
so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?'
Luke:10:29 (NIV)
Devotion:
It was a room full of nearly strangers, barely friends-until that day. I asked the ladies to stand as I read from a list of life experiences. If they had lived through one of the descriptions they stood up. One by one, sobbing women rose to their feet as I read the list. They were family in name only - a family of believers from the same church gathered together for a women's retreat where I was the guest speaker.
Twelve women stood together when I asked if anyone had had a miscarriage. One woman had buried a spouse. Five came from unbelieving homes. One had lived through marital infidelity. Three had escaped relationships where they had faced verbal, physical or sexual abuse. Three ladies had struggled with depression. The list went on and on. By the time I had finished, every woman in the room was standing.
We were knee-deep in one another's junk, and yet I had never felt closer to a group of women. As we closed the session I asked them to share more about their stories at their individual tables. As I surveyed the room, women who had been strangers only minutes before were huddled around one another, embracing, sharing and weeping. God was knitting hearts together. It was a moment I'll never forget.
I am realizing that women of all walks of life crave friendships. And yet so many of us feel that we are lacking meaningful, authentic relationships. How is it that a church full of women with a common thread of faith are not friends? Worse yet, if we aren't friends, can we hope to offer authentic relationships to those who enter the doors of our churches every week?
I fear the answer is "no, we can't" unless we change and make a few necessary sacrifices.
Recently I've gleaned some life lessons from the story of the Good Samaritan. In Luke 10:30, Jesus paints a not-so-favorable picture of the religious and respectable. I wonder if He would have the same indictment of our churches today? The priest was seemingly too busy to befriend the one in need.
Can I be honest? I am regularly guilty of this sin. Before and after church my husband and I busy ourselves with the work of tending to our children, and doing the business of church. I move past people who are hurting, but I don't stop with my busyness to see their needs. I rarely get off my horse. I am the priest.
The Levite rode past the hurting man too. Perhaps he felt he was too clean to get dirty in the messy business of grace and mercy. Helping the man in need would have made the Levite ceremonially unclean. He wanted to preserve his position and place.
Let me do a little more truth-telling. I don't usually want to get knee-deep in other people's junk. If I don't get into messy relationships I avoid having to deal not only with my own junk, but other's as well. So I don't get off my horse. I am the Levite.
Here is the problem. Real relationships require time and transparency. If we want to move from being casual acquaintances to genuine friends you and I will have to share pain and joy in an authentic, sacrificial way. I believe this, but for right now it's just theory.
I'm curious. What would happen if we covenanted together to get off our high horses and got into one another's junk? I wonder if our churches would explode. I wonder if lives would be forever changed. I wonder if the Church would shed a little bit of its reputation of hypocrisy.
Want to see what would happen? It's not too late to add a New Year's resolution. Let's resolve to change lives through friendship. Let's slow down. Let's share our stories. Let's get knee-deep.
Dear Lord, give me eyes to see those in need around me, and give me the courage to respond. Father, I want to be a part of life-changing friendships by offering grace and mercy. You call us to love others as ourselves. Help me obey this all-consuming command, in Jesus' Name, amen.
Application Steps:
How can you simplify your Sunday routine to allow more time for building relationships?
With whom can you share part of your story in hopes of offering encouragement and hope?
Reflections:
Do you have genuine, edifying friendships? Why or why not?
Are you reaching out and developing new friendships with those in need around you?
Power Verses:
Luke 10:27, "He answered: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind"; and, "Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (NIV)
Luke 10:33-34, 36-37, "But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds…and took care of him… ‘Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?' The expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.' Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.' (NIV)
…and…
Taking a trip on the Bible Bus
Hebrews 11:8-19
[8] By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. [9] By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. [10] For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
[11] By faith Abraham, even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. [12] And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
[13] All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. [14] People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. [15] If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. [16] Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
[17] By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, [18] even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." [19] Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.
Listen to Scripture at
http://www.audiotreasure.com/webindex.htm
Listen to Thru the Bible
Dr. J.
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/Thru_the_Bible_with_JVernon_McGee/
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