Posts by Rev. Steve Holm (Page 180)
Daily Devotions: April 26, 2018
April 26, 2018 1 John 4:7-16…“No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” vs. 12 Many of us have profound questions about God and do all we can to find satisfactory answers. Inevitably, that search will be frustrated–God is beyond space and time and inaccessible to our mortal minds. As John tells us clearly, no one has ever seen God. But that doesn’t mean we have…
Daily Devotions: April 25, 2018
April 25, 2018 Psalm 22:25-31…“Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.” vss. 30-31 It’s not unusual in these days of rapid technological advancement to read about the future benefits of artificial intelligence, robotics, cancer vaccines, immunotherapy–the list goes on and on. But rarely is there ever any mention of God in such articles. The message seems to be that future…
Daily Devotions: April 24, 2018
April 24, 2018 Acts 8:32-40…“Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.” vs. 35 If we were to share the good news about Jesus with someone, we probably wouldn’t start with a passage from Isaiah. It would be a lot easier to go straight to one of the gospels. But Philip didn’t have a New Testament–the gospels hadn’t been written yet. But he firmly believed that the Hebrew scriptures…
Daily Devotions: April 23, 2018
April 23, 2018 Acts 8:32-40…“He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ 31He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.” vss. 30b-31 Visitors to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, are sometimes surprised to see that there is an Ethiopian Orthodox Chapel and Monastery included in the complex. It’s been easy for mainline Christians to forget that the gospel took root in Ethiopia hundreds of…
Daily Devotions: April 22, 2018
April 22, 2018 John 10:16-18…“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” vs. 16 John knew that Jesus was more than a tribal Christ with negligible interest in people outside of Judaism. Even though his mission had begun among the Jews and was initially directed to them, the divine intention had always been universal. John reports that…
Daily Devotions: April 21, 2018
April 21, 2018 John 10:11-15…“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” vss. 14-15 As John recounted the words of Jesus, he often used the words “I AM” to remind his readers that Jesus was the one in whom the great “I AM” had become incarnate. Jesus was YHWH or I AM in human…
Daily Devotions: April 20, 2018
April 20, 2018 1 John 3:21-24…“All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.” vs. 24 Scripture teaches us that God is…beyond that there is little that we can know. We can assign attributes based on our highest human values, but those assignments usually say more about us than about God. God is inscrutable and unknowable, a frustrating…
Daily Devotions: April 19, 2018
April 19, 2018 1 John 3:16-20…“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” vs. 17 As early Christians began to live together in community, one basic truth became apparent to them, a truth that came directly from the teachings of Jesus. They were convinced that a disciple’s actions and deeds revealed the state of their hearts. They could not believe that God’s love could…
Daily Devotions: April 18, 2018
April 18, 2018 Psalm 23…“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” vs. 1 Wow, just repeating this simple verse brings a sense of calm and peace. No wonder so many people have claimed it as their mantra and use it regularly in meditation. Even unbelievers and non-churchgoers are familiar with it–and perhaps even turn to it for support in the unavoidable stresses of daily existence. Shepherds have a 24/7 relationship with their flocks…they travel with them during the…
Daily Devotions: April 17, 2018
April 17, 2018 Acts 4:8-12…“There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” vs. 12 The disciples were ecstatic! They had such good news for their leaders…and for the entire world. Through the Holy Spirit they had come to believe that Jesus was the Christ and that through him God’s salvation had come to humanity. As they traveled about proclaiming that audacious message it seemed…
Daily Devotions: April 16, 2018
April 16, 2018 Acts 4:5-7…“When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, ‘By what power or by what name did you do this?’” vs. 7 When the religious authorities in Jerusalem heard that the disciples were preaching that Jesus had been raised from the dead and were actually healing the sick, they ordered them to be arrested. They weren’t an impressive group–just a few Galilean fishermen and some hangers-on. When the wealthy, well-educated priestly types saw…
Daily Devotions: April 15, 2018
April 15, 2018 Luke 24:44-48…“Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,” vs. 45 Being familiar with the scriptures wasn’t enough for the disciples to have a clue about what had happened in Jesus. Nowhere was there a straightforward indication that the promised messiah would suffer, be crucified as a criminal, and then die. One option would have been for them to completely abandon the Hebrew scriptures and focus on building a new faith tradition–something no one ever seriously…