Tag: jesus

Living Sacrifice Day 25 – The Dual Responsibility of a Believer

Justin Hibbard


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Begin by reading John 17

Romans 12:1-8 is one of those power packed passages. We’ve spent 24 days analyzing it, and we’ve only gotten through the first two verses. If we step back for a minute, we see that there are essentially two parts to this passage of Scripture. It may help that your Bible divides them with a paragraph and maybe a heading as well.

Romans 12:1-2 talks about our personal responsibility as a Christian. Being a 24/7 worshiper, a living sacrifice is something that primarily you will do when no one else is around. It is about integrity and a personal walk with God. And because you are a Believer and have the blood of Christ over you, you are a member of an invisible church, made up of Believers from the past, the present, the future – from the Americas to the far ends of the earth.

The second part of this passage, verses 3-8 deals with our responsibility as a member of the body of Christ. As we’ll see in the upcoming weeks, Paul is talking about how we are to work together with other Believers to use our gifts to serve the Lord. If verses 1-2 talk about our personal responsibility as a member of the invisible church, then verses 3-8 deal with our personal responsibility as a member of the visible church.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t have to go to church to be a Christian?” Maybe you’ve heard the statement, “Going to church makes you as much of a Christian as going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.” Both statements are equally true. There are many Christians who are members of the invisible church but are not part of a visible church. On the other hand, there are people who are involved with the visible church but aren’t members of the invisible church.

Both are important. While God relates with us individually, He is also the Father of a family and will relate to a collective group of Believers. When Jesus poured out His heart in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for the unity of His children – His disciples. I have three young children, and when I think about them growing up, I hope that they have a close relationship with each other. No father wants to see his children grow apart let alone bicker and argue their whole lives.

Since our Father relates with us all on a personal level, in a sense, the closer we draw to each other, the greater we realize our Father is. Because of our sin and human limitations, we cannot experience everything God has to offer. Someone may experience God as a healer. Someone else may have experienced God as one who forgives the most dismal of past sins. Someone else may experience God speaking to them about a future event. If we don’t share our experiences together, we will tend to see God only as He pertains to us in our limited view. There are always others around us who know more about God, have a stronger relationship with Him, or have had different experiences with our Heavenly Father. When we spend time with each other, we experience God in new and perhaps different ways. We begin to see more of Him.

Our dual responsibility as Believers is to grow personally in our walks with God. Then, we are to share that relationship with other people. We are to encourage our brothers and sisters by telling and exemplifying what God is doing in our lives, and we are to learn and share in their experiences and personal encounters with our Father – the Creator of the world.

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Living Sacrifice Day 24 – The Desires of Your Heart

Justin Hibbard


Prefer to listen to today’s devotional? Click here.

Begin by reading Matthew 6:19-7:13

Have you ever seen a child throw a temper-tantrum when they didn’t get their way? Have you ever heard someone say, “if you love me, then you would…?” Being human beings, we often associate love with getting what we want. Good news. Jesus tells us that He wants to give us the desires of our heart.

But there’s a catch. Jesus isn’t just throwing Himself at us like some sort of Santa Claus. He wants to give us the desires of our heart, but the catch is that He wants the desires of our heart to be in line with the desires of His heart.

Yes, He does say, “ask and it shall be given to you, seek and ye shall find.” But what else ought we to be seeking? Well, in the Sermon on the Mount that served as today’s reading, before Jesus tells us that He’s going to give us what we seek, He tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God. He explains that “where our treasure is there our heart will be also.” The heart, as Jesus goes onto explain, is the source of our entire selves. All of our thoughts, desires, and actions stem from there. If our heart is in line with God, then everything will fall into place as well. But if our heart isn’t in the right place, then we’re going to treat God like a genie and feed Him our wish list.

The point our Rabbi is making is the Lord is looking to bless people that are seeking after Him. He’s not a reckless God who’s going to give us anything and everything we want just because we want it. If we’re not in line with Him, chances are we’re going to be asking for material possessions and for all the wrong reasons. No, He wants to give us what He wants. But first He wants us to want it.

God knows that we will never have second-thoughts if we follow Him. No one who has tasted the true glory and goodness of God and walked in step with the Master has ever said, “I wish I hadn’t done that.” But on the other hand, we have had plenty of occasions where we’ve gone our own way and now live with those regrets.

God is a gentleman. He doesn’t want to force His desires on our hearts, and so He is patient. He waits for us to want to follow Him, to taste and see that He and His will are good. It reminds me of a story I heard recently about a very successful businessman who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and eventually take over. The son at first had no desire, and so the father did not press the issue any further. But when the son realized how successful and wise his father was, he began to work with him, spend time with him. The more he got to see the business side of his father, the more he understood why he was so successful. The more he experienced the life his father wanted to give to him, the more he desired to live that life and take on that career.

At first, we may stand on the outside and think God’s ways are boring or not fulfilling. But walk with Him for a while, and watch your heart change. Watch yourself be transformed to the likeness of Your Father. That’s when you begin to see His will, and that is when you’ll see how good, pleasing, and perfect of a will it is.

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Living Sacrifice Day 23 – Knowing the Will of God

Justin Hibbard


Prefer to listen to today’s devotional? Click here.

Begin by reading John 4:4-26

I remember back to my senior year of high school, as I prepared to go to college. I struggled with trying to figure out where God wanted me to go to school and what major he wanted me to have. I thought it was the biggest decision of my life, and I desperately needed to hear the audible voice of the Lord.

We all want to know the will of God. Like the GPS system that sits on our dashboard, we want God to give us turn-by-turn directions. Sometimes He makes it pretty clear for us; sometimes He doesn’t. But the beginning place to knowing the will of God is actually revealed to us in today’s reading.

Once again we find ourselves looking at the story of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. In this story, we find a woman trying to strike up conversation with Jesus about the differences between Jews and Samaritans and where they worshiped. But Jesus wasn’t interested in talking about that; He wanted to get at the heart of the matter. He wanted to examine her heart. The fact is, she was living in sin. She was a woman who had been married five times and was living with someone who wasn’t her husband. Most likely her reputation proceeded her, which is probably why she was drawing water at a time when no one else would be at the well. She wanted to avoid everyone, and they most likely didn’t want anything to do with her.

What does this story have to do with knowing the will of God? The answer is that knowing the will of God begins with obedience. We will not recognize the Lord’s voice if we are tangled up in sin. If you’re fooling around with someone who isn’t your spouse, don’t think that you’ll be able to hear the Lord giving direction on how to lead your family. Obedience is the key first step. In a sense, Jesus is saying, “Forget about where you worship. God desires people who worship in spirit and truth. Let’s begin with the problem of sin that’s paralyzing your heart.” This was a message from the Lord that we hear in Jeremiah 29:13 and Matthew 15:8, “these are people who honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; they worship Me in vain.”

The Lord is personal. Often times we forget that His relationship is, in a sense, no different than a relationship with a friend. If we want to know what our friend is saying, we need to spend time with them. If we’re hurting them in some way, we’re going to avoid getting closer in our friendship. If we’re holding a grudge against them, we’re not going to want to hear what they have to say. Likewise, our friend probably isn’t going to reveal their secrets to us because we haven’t earned their trust.

Do you want to know the will of God? Is there something in your life where you are anxious to hear from Him? Maybe it’s a big decision and you’re not sure what to do. Maybe He’s silent because He’s waiting for you to draw closer. Don’t just seek Him with your lips. Seek Him with your heart.

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Living Sacrifice Day 2 – Know Your Worth

Justin Hibbard

My bank has a neat online feature that shows all my debt, all the money in savings and investments, and it spits out what’s called my net worth.  For me, looking at that number keeps me pretty humble.

What’s your worth?  How are you going to calculate that worth?  Are you going to weigh in what you look like, your personality traits, your features, your degrees, your resume, what you own?  Well, that’s how the world may determine your worth in society, but it’s certainly not how God does.  In 1 Corinthians 6:20, Paul says, “You were bought at a price.”

That price was expensive.  It cost Jesus to get you.  One life was given for another.  God gave up His best to save you from the perils of hell.  Hopefully, you are not numb to those words, even though you may have heard them a thousand times.  You are worth so much to God, and He proved it by what He did for you.  Let’s also be sure to realize that God did not do this because we had some merit worthy of salvation.  No, Romans 5:8 says, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

It isn’t prideful to understand your worth, because your worth doesn’t come from who you are, what you look like, or what you’ve done.  Your worth is found in Christ Jesus.  The day you decided to follow Christ was the day you inherited riches beyond your wildest imagination.

Today, and every morning from now on, look in the mirror and say, “I am a child of the Most High God.”  By doing this you are identifying yourself as a citizen of another world and seeing the great and awesome mercy of God that He has freely given to you. Knowing whose we are is one of the first steps we can take towards being living sacrifices.

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