Today’s word:
“You…have neglected the weightier matters of the law; justice and mercy and faith” Matthew 23:23

“You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God, in order to observe your own traditions”
Mark 7:9

How many times have we, tried to use God’s word just for our benefit, and not for the benefit of the spirit and for the glory of God? How about those times which we chose to observe man made traditions instead of what the word actually says? Lets ask ourselves have we ever prayed to our father, with an empty prayer, just going through the motions? Be careful how we use the word of God!

Today’s daily bread comes from the books of Matthew, and Mark., and it’s a very interesting point to make. One that few people stress, and we here at Zionreborn.com believe that those words less spoken are the ones that we should cry out from the top of a mountain. It is often these words left unsaid which we neglect and will become the most important in the long run. Now, don’t get bummed, we aren’t here to bust you bubble, but instead to put a little more air in it, not the kind of air that suffocates you with false hope, but rather a good and faithful word.

The word for today gives of an example of scribes and Pharisees who rationalized their abuse of the word of God, in order that they may be found favorable in the eyes of the people. This is an attempt to save face! The Pharisees were justifying keeping money they did not deserves, money which they should have used to take care of their aging parents they called “a gift from God” which they could keep for themselves. Jesus exposed them for who they really are in the book of Mark (7:10-13). As we can clearly see, God is no respecter of persons, and he will expose us if we are using his word as a way to get over on his people. He will prove you a liar and deceiver just when you think you have conned everyone and have gotten away Scot-free.

Do not neglect those things which you know are upright because you don’t feel like following them. Don’t be like the Pharisees who only did what the word says if they felt it would be a benefit to them. In doing so you will wrongfully neglect the important matter of the word of God. We must strive to live above the fray.

The bible is not a tool that we can simply use to get what we want, when we want it, instead it is a tool to get what is promised to us through the blood of Jesus Christ. We must learn that we can expect all things and do all things, not because we can manipulate the word of God to fool others, but because Christ Jesus is faithful and will do what he has promised. Allow God to work in you so that he can work through you!

“I die daily…”1 Corinthians 15:31

I was sitting down and was thinking about those words today and I thought it would be a great though to mention part of our devotional for this morning!

Those words were uttered by paul in a moment of clarity not just from paul but from the spirit which guided him to this place of discernment, in order that we today can pick a part what this means on our own life. This statement gives us insight on what we need to do each day. The apostle paul said this in order to illustrate that we are to die to the flesh each day. The flesh meaning the things of this world that can stick to your spiritual garment. The things in the world that leaves us feeling guilty and low in the depths of sin. For example, I use to have quite a problem with cursing a bit too frequently and without proper thought, and we all know what it feels like to do something that we did not intend to do, but due to the over emotionality of the situation we do not exercise proper judgment.

Its really easy to say, “you know what, I was angry and there is nothing wrong with being angry”..but do we really believe that? Is there truly nothing wrong with anger? Take for instance, you and your significant other are in an embroiled argument, one of you spews out something that you said “I didn’t mean it, it was just spoken out of anger”..Remember the key words here are “Spoken out of anger” And now remember the Word says “…Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks..” {Luke 6:45} So, think again, do we really want ourselves to believe that what we say in times of anger is what and who we really are?

I submit to you a fundamental truth that we all sometimes try to ignore (myself included), the above statement is exactly true; what we spew out of our mouths is that which is in our hearts, this is why it is necessary to die to these things such as this, and this is what paul is illustrating here with this prophetic statement. We need to die to the indulgences of the flesh such as overt anger, because if we fill ourselves with anger, hatred and any other sins of the flesh then this is the fruit that we will produce (fruits of anger), meaning this is what we will speak from our mouths, these corrupt things that we have purposely and inadvertently allowed to seep into our hearts. Guard against it!

So we encourage you today, and every day hence forth, to die to the desires, and corruption of the flesh, because it’s just not worth it, aren’t you tired of feeling guilty when you absolutely know the right course of action to take in a situation? I am, and this is why the Holy Spirit pushed me to write this today, because I am weary of my groaning and guilt. So today I implore you to make a conscious effort to avoid the sins of the flesh, and believe me they will arise, but the question remains, what will you do? I encourage you to pray and let’s fight the good fight, for we have the victory, it’s just a matter of speaking the right things into existence and not the bad! Let’s help each other be free of the drudgery which the flesh can inflict upon us, in order that we may be made strong in the spirit and made whole to stave off the fangs of this world.

Today, we want to encourage you to keep the fire burning! No, we’re not here to give you a false sense of hope or a false sense of regality. Instead I’m here to say to you don’t let the fire inside you be extinguished with the worlds outside perspectives. Many of us would be lulled to sleep thinking that once we accept Christ the fire just stays a-blaze without proper maintenance, well contrary to popular “religious” belief I am here to tell you that it is not so! Modern day religion would have us believe that if we wake up every day and just go about our business the spiritual fire inside will keep itelf burning strong. This school of though can be attributed to the fact that in today’s world everyone is so use to this microwave philosophy which suggest that we can “set it and forget it”, we’ve become all about a quick fix, and funny enough when that “fix” breaks down, we expect it to fix it self autonomously. Take for example a physical parody to this; modern furnaces have completely slashed the work out of keeping warm in extremely cold climates, we can simply press a button and make ourselves warmer and actually set the temperature at which we desire this warmth to top off. Once we do this there is never a need to check and see if the fire is still burning, it will just turn itself off when it reaches the temperature you desired.

Now let’s roll the timeline back to days past when people would have to make sure there was enough wood around to keep the fire burning, some one had to the fire and monitor the fuel supplies. As an otherwise miscalculation in the amount of wood, would be certain death.

The same is true with our “SPIRITUAL FIRE “. If we think that we can simply ignore it and continue about our daily lives and it will somehow keep itself burning then we have made a mistake that would in effect cost us that which we have fought so hard to attain; which is the relationship and fellowship with the Lord.

Alarmed? You should be, because if you didn’t know accepting; Christ is the easy part, after this now comes the trials and the tests which will mold you into the rugged soldier of life that you need to be. Romans 12:11 tells us that we are to be “fervent in spirit”, which when analytically surmised basically means to keep the fire burning.

How do we do that? I’m glad you asked!

1: pray each day don’t let it slip even when you are so physically tired that you just want to lay down and shut down. Remember the “effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, availeth much”.

2: Guard against the influxes of the enemy. Remember none is going to come into your house in a red suit and decorated with horns and a pitch fork. These challenges are presented to you in the form of a friend saying “lets go get hammered tonight” or someone you meet on the way home from work gives you a hard time. And the Achilles heel of every American !ROAD RAGE! These are just some of the things we should guard our hearts from.

3: Look out for those so called ”well wishers” who would in your face be perceived as wanting the best for you and in the meanwhile they are speaking negative things into your spirit and about you behind your back. So be carful the things that you see and hear, because you cannot undo them and you are responsible for them. What you do with the information good or bad is how we measure our strength in our walk with the lord.

So we encourage you today to check up one your spiritual fire, remember it is not on auto-pilot and there are shortcuts around this. The best way to make sure you have a real grip on this life is to make sure that we tend to the important aspects that govern our reality. Keeping a close watch on the items we listed above (numbers 1-3) and take care of this life that you are given. Remember, this is it, you’ve got one physical life to live and what we do with it echoes into eternity, where will you spend yours?