Category: Devotions

Micah 4

In the last days …

Many are experiencing their last days right now.
Yesterday I sat in the reception of a hospital and I looked around at people in their last days.
Today I think of the girls in India found hanging from trees, killed by men who are not men but animals, supposedly for honour but as despicable as it can get. They were in their last days.
Tomorrow ISIS may invade Baghdad, I pray they don’t and yet in some other place ordinary people like you and me will experience their last days at the hands of the wicked who are so deceived they think they have a holy cause.
Some people know it’s their last days and others haven’t got a clue.
The prophet says God has last days too. Not for himself but for His story that Is being played out here on earth.
Are we in those last days? Micah doesn’t say. But he does tell us what God will be doing and if we are able we could join Him today doing those exact things for some people who may be facing their own last days.
We can be involved in:-
Restoration.
Peace.
Rescue.
Redeem.
Gathering of people.

Micah 3

But as for me ….

We need people who know when to say BUT. When enough is enough and who can in an environment of oppression press the pause button to announce they are different.
The need is great BUT
The injustices are many BUT
There is more cursing than blessing BUT
Visionaries are bringing blindness BUT
The prophets are becoming rich BUT
The future is bleak BUT
AS FOR ME …
So long as there is YOU we have hope.
You who has God
You who is filled with God
You whose power is from God
You who stands for the justice of God
You who is not afraid to speak out for God.

Micah 2

I am certainly not the worlds expert on Israel and don’t claim to be. There are many crazy interpretations of the Bible from groups pursuing some cause or another for the Jews. It puts me off to be honest and I end up not focusing as I should.
What I do know is that from 70AD to 1948 there was no nation of Israel. But on 12th May 1948 the Israeli Declaration of Independence was made.

In a prophetic fulfilment of v12 God is restoring the nation of Israel by the return of the Jews. This has not been just a few Jews, this has been many and Jerusalem when I was there a few years ago was a loud city full of people, “the place will throng with people”.
Since the 1980s hundreds of Russians have moved to Israel.
In 1991 14,500 Ethiopian Jews were flown to Israel.
Jews from China, the U.S, Scandinavia, Australia, South America have moved back home.
But the best is yet to happen as Jesus will soon physically return to the land He once walked in, v13

For those of us who are not Jews we watch in amazement and we wait for his return.
However we also rejoice in these prophecies:
He who restores Israel also restores our lives.
He who breaks open the way is the one who clears the path for us. He is our leader who will overcome every obstacle to lead us forward.

Micah 1

In the early years of my work as a Pastor I would attend many conferences to become better at what I was trying to do.
During the 90’s I remember sitting listening to one leader suggest that we need to understand what kind of leader we are. Are we a city Pastor or a town Pastor? Should we focus on the agricultural people or the business people? Are we the right people in the right place?
To be honest, I didn’t know what I was. I only knew God had called me to Dewsbury, which at the time was a church of 55,000 people. Not exactly a city.
There were times when I wondered if being a city Pastor you had ‘arrived’ but as a town Pastor well, who wants to hear from a town Pastor?
I knew Pastors who longed to be city Pastors and did everything they could to be one. They got their dream, they had become someone, now people would notice them.
I knew city Pastors who looked at town Pastors and would have done anything to swap.
Why do I mention all this under Micah chapter 1.
Moresheth where Micah came from was about 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem on the border lands between Judah and the Philistines. Micah was from the country but was sent to bring the word of The Lord in the city.

There are times when God asks you to move outside of your experience and speak for Him.
Doing so does not guarantee you a greater degree of success.
What the ‘city’ needs may be found in the ‘country’. Micah would prophecy that out of the smallest, Bethlehem, the Messiah would come. Therefore the city is of no greater importance than the country. You haven’t arrived when you arrive in the city.
Don’t let anyone look down on you where you are serving God.
Be ready to return to the place of the unknown after you have done what God has required. That’s what Micah did.
Understand what the application is for what is your ‘country’ and ‘city’ and resist the temptation to be or do what God is not asking of you.

Jonah 4

Be careful where you go when you are angry.
Jonah went out to the place east of the city.
He became detached from what God was doing.

Be careful what becomes your comfort when you are angry.
Jonah fell in love with the vine.
He became a lover of self.

Be careful what justifies your anger.
God continues to ask the same question: Have you the right to be angry?
The answer was YES but it should have been NO.

Jonah 3

The time it took to get through the city of Nineveh is the time taken inside the fish, v3
By the time the third day came inside the dark and smelly prison Jonah must have been thinking he would have nearly completed preaching in the city.
The time, energy and resources you use avoiding certain tasks God asks of you is at times the same if you had gone and done it in the first place.

The third day is completed often because of the impact of the first day. On the first day Jonah started to preach and the message spread like a fire, to the people, then to the king who through a decree then reached the whole city. Today is the first day. What you do today impacts your third day.
Let the first day, today, be all that it can be. Give, think of others, lay down your life and the powerful third day will come.

We are people of the third day, just like Jesus.

Jonah 2

No matter where you find yourself God can be reached if you will simply call.

Trapped in a situation that people will struggle to believe long after you were freed from it. (The fish)
Distressed because many who find themselves in your place never recover, death is the only result, death of relationships, of dreams, of hope, of life, v2
Many describe a sinking feeling but it feels like only you are experiencing one door closing after another until your description of the situation is found in the word ‘impossible’. v6 (message)

If this is you, let me ask you some questions:

Will you look again to God? v4
Will you believe there is no depth that God cannot reach you? v6
Will you accept the only way out is by prayer? v7
Will you say YES with gratefulness for who He is? v9

If you say YES to these questions then maybe God will do something so unusually miraculous with you and save you in such a shocking way that people generations later will read your story and say it cannot be possible, it could not have happened in that way, it was not literal.
God being God can do in you what man being man cannot believe.
If you will simply call.

Jonah 1

Sometimes the only way to still a storm is to offer a sacrifice v15
Jesus and Jonah both fell asleep on a boat during a storm.
Jesus stilled the storm because He has the ultimate power.
Jonah stilled the storm because he let go of his own strength and power.
Both knew sacrifice.

This sacrifice wants the best for your enemies v1-2
Jesus said love your enemies (the Assyrians were a genuine enemy of Gods people), we cannot love from a distance. Jonah GO.
Jesus said pray for those who persecute you (the Assyrians had spread suffering and death to Israel), we cannot pray with barriers of pain in our hearts. Jonah PRAY.

The sacrifice that realises activity is not enough, obedience is everything v3.
Jonah rose up as God asked him to.
He went on a journey, many know where they are going but all this activity is a smoke screen.
Jesus said love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you and you will be known as a child of the Father. Jonah was a child of Amittai v1. Who do you want people to know you by? Whose child do you belong to? A child of a man or a child of the Father?

The answer is in the sacrifice.

Obadiah

The shortest book in the Old Testament is written by a man whose name simply means “servant of Jehovah”. By name by nature. He comes into the story of a bigger picture, serves His God by obediently saying what He was told to say, then leaves. He is not there for the limelight, not there to create a name for himself, it’s not about him but about his God.

Servants do not think they are beyond failure, v3. They realise there is only who is all-powerful and they lean on Him not their own strength.

Servants do not plot against others nor carry out the schemes to harm. They lift up not bring down, v10,

Servants get involved. They do not distance themselves from injustice. They get involved with those who suffer and experience loss, v11.

Servants do not gloat. They do not look down on those less fortunate, those who suffer with the attitude that they deserved it in someway, v12.

Servants are not opportunists waiting to pounce on the misfortune of others in order to better their own lives. They do not live for themselves but for others, v13,14.

Oh that we had more servants of God.

Amos 9

At the end of quite another heavy prophetical book, though smaller in size, we have the most beautiful of images, v11.
God is still doing this today.
He will do it in your life and through your life in the lives of others. If you let Him.
He lifts those who are fallen.
He mends the broken-hearted.
He takes what has been destroyed and recreates.
He brings things into place what should have always been there.
This is our hope today.
Oh but there is more!
The sin that robbed us of all this will no longer be able to do so.
Because of Jesus!
They will never be uprooted.
Just as the land of Israel will be their forever, v15, so will our inheritance of grace be forever ours.
This is our hope and our certainty today.
Amen!

(No more days, the run is tomorrow, please help me, find me on http://www.elimmissions.co.uk or Elim missions Facebook)