ANCHOR DEVOTIONS (FEBRUARY 04,2012)

Walking With God
Genesis 6-9





"This is the account of Noah. Noah was a 
righteous man, blameless among the people 
of his time, and he walked with God."
(Genesis 6:9)
Noah's life is an amazing story of one man's intimate fellowship with God. Imagine being described as one who walked with God! What did that look like? Did Noah spend long hours in prayer? Did he hear an audible voice? I would love to know the answers. What we do know is this: Noah walked with God; God spoke to Noah (Genesis 6:13); "Noah did according to all that the Lord had commanded him" (Genesis 7:5); God blessed Noah and his sons as a result (Genesis 9:1); and God promised to establish His covenant with him and his descendants (Genesis 9:9).
Noah walked so closely with his Creator that when God talked with him, he obeyed, even in the midst of being mocked and ridiculed for years.
We, too, can have that kind of intimacy with God through faith in His Son, Jesus whom Noah is pointing us to. Jesus walked with His Father in perfect obedience for us, enduring the mocking and ridicule that echoed the voices of Noah's day. Are we willing to walk with Him and find our safety in His sheltering love?
INSIGHT
Obedience to God and intimacy with God were both demonstrated in Noah's life; they are equally important and available for our faith walk, too.
READ THROUGH THE BIBLE IN A YEAR
Numbers 3-4
Psalm 62
John 2-3


WHERE JESUS WALKED
This week Charles Morris is teaching in Israel from the very spots in which many biblical events took place. Today Charles relates how the story of the blind man in John 9 can apply to our own lives!

ANCHOR DEVOTIONS (FEBRUARY 03,2012)

Listen, You Are Chosen
Psalm 139:13-18

"The word of the Lord came to me, saying, 
'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, 
before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.'"
(Jeremiah 1:4-5)
I used to dread team games in school. The best athletes were always chosen to be the captains and their task was to pick their team from the rest of us. Naturally they would begin with those they were confident would help them win. I was always at the end, desperately wondering who would have pity and choose me.
How deeply grateful I am that God isn't like that! His love for us is simply too great to cause us such shame. Throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, we read the life stories of ordinary men and women God chose and gifted for specific purposes: prophets, priests, kings, leaders, disciples, teachers, evangelists. They were ordinary, that is, until they listened to God's call. "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit," Jesus said in John 15:16. God is writing us, ordinary and sinful as we are, into His story, too. As we listen to His call, we can have hope and confidence that what He asks us to do, He will gift us to accomplish.

INSIGHT
Ephesians 1:4 says God chose us "before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight". We are His chosen!
READ THROUGH THE BIBLE IN A YEAR
Numbers 5-6
Psalm 63
John 4
Psalm 139:13-18

New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to[a] me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
Footnotes:
a. Psalm 139:17 Or concerning