Listening to the Word

  Genesis 9-11; Luke 4 “…Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:4 “’The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…’” Luke 4:18 The residents of Babel wanted to build a city and a tower to make a name for themselves. This quest for identity, value, purpose, and meaning in life is within all of us. Jesus lived with his family for thirty years in submission to his earthly parents and to his Father in heaven. When the time came for public ministry, the Father anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God. Whose kingdom are we building and proclaiming? We can build religious and ministry kingdoms that serve ourselves rather than our Father in Heaven. Jesus ‘made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2:7), and through his submissio...

Genesis 6-8; Luke 3 “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:16, 17 Jesus is the Lord of the harvest and his disciples have the privilege of joining him in harvest-mission assignments. We, too, need the ongoing filling, or baptism, of the Spirit to empower us to live on this mission with Jesus, just like his first disciples did. We, too, must be baptized with fire for the cleansing of sin. Without this, we will be unprepared for the testing, temptation, and schemes of the enemy to disqualify us from our mission assignments. Jesus will thresh the harvest to separate the wheat from the chaff. Willingly submitting our lives to the fire of the Holy Spirit’s presence enables us to pass through the fire. Are we avoiding the fire of the Holy Spirit? Are we asking Jesus for the ongoing filling and fire of the Holy S...

  Genesis 3-5; Luke 2   “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”’ ’You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman.’…But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” Genesis 3:1, 4, 9, 10 The schemes of the enemy have not changed much over history. He still sows seeds of doubt and lies, and tries to separate us from the love of God. After they had sinned, Adam and Eve hid from God in fear and shame. This pattern has been repeated countless times throughout human history and in our lives today. Jesus came to set us free from the schemes of the enemy and restore our relationship with God. Jesus invites us to come away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil where we are our own moral masters, and into a relationship of full surrender, fa...

Genesis 1-2; Luke 1 “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’” Genesis 1:28 “’The Lord has done this for me,’ she said. ‘In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.’” Luke 1:25 It is God’s intention that we live under his blessing and flourish. To be spiritually ‘fruitful and multiply’ is to evidence the character of Jesus and lead others to him. This should be normal. The stigma Elizabeth felt as the barren wife of a priest was lifted as God enabled her to bear a son. ‘In these days’ let us pray for God’s favor and blessing that we, too, will bear spiritual children, being fruitful and multiplying both as Christ-followers and as churches. The Church in the majority world is experiencing a spiritual harvest as never before. Like Elizabeth, will we call out to the Lord, and will...