Devotionals

“Seeking Him Above All Else”

By Zach Wood

Matthew 6:33 NLT

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need.

We all seek a lot of different things in life, don’t we? 

We seek to find a good paying job.

We seek to find a good house to live in.

We seek to find a good school for our kids to attend.

We seek to find a church that we can call home.

We seek to find good deals on products that buy.

We seek attend a great college where we can further our education.

We seek to find a mate whom we can spend our lives with.

We also seek a lot of other things in life.  The list could go on and on as to what we seek to find each day of our lives.  Sometimes, we look and look for days, months or even years to find a good deal on whatever it is we are hunting for.  It always seems we are seeking something.  We are always on a hunt for either something better that we want or getting something we need.  We want to bargain shop and get the best deals for the lowest prices.  My wife and I are totally like that!  We thrive on finding great deals and good bargains!

I cannot help but to think about all the time and energy that we put into seeking different things in life and often how little time we really invest seeking the Kingdom of God.  I know in my own life I often find myself seeking after a lot of things that don’t really seem to benefit my walk with God.  Not that they are bad things, but they just don’t really benefit my spiritual growth and I waste time on them. 

Jesus teaches on the importance of seeking the Kingdom of God.  He not only teaches on the importance of seeking God, but rather seeking Him above all else.  That’s the clincher!  We need to ask ourselves what we are seeking most in life.  It isn’t that seeking things is bad, but if we are constantly seeking things and not ultimately seeking what pleases God, then we’ve got issues.  Do we find ourselves waking up in the morning and then spending our day seeking tons of different things that don’t benefit our spiritual growth?  I think we all do much more than we want to admit.

I want to seek God’s Kingdom more than anything.  I am trying each day to do this, in whatever ways I can.  I want to find ways that I can seek Him and praise Him in everything I do.  He gives me everything I need, so why wouldn’t I seek Him ultimately?  This is my heart’s desire.  Seeking Him above all else.  We all need to make it our desire to seek Him and His Kingdom above everything else that matters in our lives.  He needs to come first, always. 

Weekly Devotional Blog Site www.zwdevotions.com

“Loving God, Loving People”

By Zach Wood

Matthew 22:37-39 NIV

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Last week, I was reading a YouVersion Bible App devotional by Danny Gokey and he made a statement that was simple, yet so profound.  He shared, “So many times I think we overthink our calling and over complicate the Gospel, when really our purpose in this life comes down to two simple things; loving God and loving people.”

It was so powerful and spoke volumes to me!  The more I thought about this statement, I considered how we so often do over complicate things every day of our lives when it comes to being a light for God.  What if we put this concept into practice from the time we get up in the morning to the time we go to bed and focus on nothing else but this?  What would our lives really look like if we simply focused on loving God and loving people?  What if that became our sole mission every day?

This concept has challenged my thinking in the past week and I continue to consider how I simply need to put this into practice as I live my every day life.  Loving God is actually pretty easy for me to do.  Even though I often don’t understand Him, I love Him very much.  However, loving certain people is difficult for me.  It is easy for me to love people who are easy to love, but very hard at times to love people who are not nice and who have treated me badly. 

Think about this passage and how important it was for Jesus to share it.  We need to not only love God with all our heart, but we must also love others.  We cannot say that we love God and then treat others like trash.  It just doesn’t work that way.  We absolutely must do our best every day to love others, regardless of how they treat us.  And, that is hard!

What would our world look like if we made it our passion every day to love God and love others?  We don’t need a seminary degree to do this.  All we need is a willingness to love and respect not only our Father, but also others who we come into contact with.  Let us not over complicate the calling God has given to each of us.  We all have different abilities, gifts and talents for sure, however, we all have the ability to love God and love others.  This is something we can all do, regardless of our education. 

Loving God and loving others.  It is not a hard concept to grasp, but it is a challenging concept to live out.  Why don’t we make it our mission and passion to fully love God and love others as we live every day of our lives? 

Who is with me?

Weekly Devotional Blog Site www.zwdevotions.com

“Half-Lived: Don’t Leave Him Out”

By Zach Wood

Philippians 4:13 NLT

I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.

I have had this Scripture memorized for as long as I can remember.  I am sure I learned it in Sunday School when I was just a little guy.  I have used this Scripture in previous devotionals, in sermons and in Bible studies.  It is one of the most popular Scriptures quoted today.  Recently, I saw this verse in a new way and it really hit home with me. 

I thought about how so often we cut this passage off after “everything”.  We live out “I can do everything”, and then leave out “through Him who gives me strength.”   We live so much of our lives with the confidence that we can do most things all by ourselves and leave God on the back shelf telling Him that we will consult Him if things get a difficult.  We often think we can live life all by ourselves and in our own strength. 

We quote this passage so much and verbally proclaim that we can do always do all things through Christ, but then the actual ways we live out our lives shows the complete opposite.  We do our own thing and mentally convince ourselves to believe that we can do this life all on our own. 

I am so guilty of only living half of this verse.  I often live as though to leave God out of my life.  This is sadly true for so many of us.  We say that we can do all things through Him, but we only live half of the verse.  Jesus gives us a life to live that is unlike the life of our past.  He gives us true life. 

Is this verse half-lived in your life?  Are you trying to do everything all on your own?  Are you living solo?  We all know that we cannot live our lives without the strength of Christ.  We know we need Him.  We know He is the only One Who can get us through life.  However, each of our days is so often lived without us consulting Him and allowing Him to lead. 

We go to great lengths every day to make sure we have all we need to succeed through the day from the morning till the night.  Why not make certain that we go to great lengths to ensure that we are letting God lead our lives each day? 

My prayer is that we not only work to memorize great verses like these, but that we also remember to live them completely out, not leaving God out of what we do.  We can do all things, but we can only do them successfully through Christ Who gives us true lasting strength.

I can do everything…..through Christ…..Who gives me strength.

Weekly Devotional Blog Site www.zwdevotions.com

In Philippians 3:5-10, Paul gives expression to the fact that there is much that can be apprehended and experienced beyond that which he had previously known.
“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death…not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:10, 12

He has come to know that the Lord can be personally, intimately known. The Jews of his day did not have this concept, as they saw only the structured religious system which they sought to protect.
Paul said, “That I might know Him.” This is a “knowing” that transcends all religious doctrine and activities and finds its fulfillment in deep personal communion with the Lord. It includes not only information about Jesus, but an ongoing involvement with Him, as He leads and directs. We must first come to Jesus, before we can be sent.
“Come, My beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appears, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give you My love.” Song of Solomon 7:11-12

THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION

“The power of His resurrection” can only be experienced after we have surrendered the totality of our being to the Lord, and died to our self-life and ways. Only then can we identify ourselves with Jesus in the “power of His resurrection.”
This will lead us toward a place of identification with Jesus that few experience – “The fellowship of His sufferings.” Examples of this are the sufferings of the Lord over lost humanity, and the dullness of our spiritual hearing. He desires our fellowship and longs that we come to Him. He has a PURPOSE for each of our lives.
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10

UNDERSTANDING HIS CALLING ON OUR LIFE

We may not understand how the Lord becomes personally interested in us – as though we were the only person in the universe, and how He has a special PURPOSE and CALLING for each of us. It is not necessary that we understand these things, but it is vitally important that we respond to Him as He seeks to become personally involved in our lives.
When we are too dull of hearing to respond, and as a result, come short of all He intends, He suffers; for as a loving Father He longs for us to come into the best, just as we desire the best for our children.

When Paul became aware of the possibility of entering into an active relationship with the Lord in communion and fellowship, he counted all else as refuse and began to seek that for which he had been “apprehended” by the Lord. The desire for spiritual reality became the priority of his life.
“If by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead.” Philippians 3:11
Paul was not expressing a concern about losing his salvation. Rather, there is a much deeper meaning that speaks of an “OUT-RESURRECTION ” from the natural course of our life experience, into the realm where the Lord uniquely puts His hand upon us and lifts us into HIS PURPOSE FOR OUR LIFE through a cooperative relationship with Him.

“For many are called, but few are chosen.” Matthew 22:14
There is another way to say this. “Many are called, but few will pay the price in order to be chosen.” But if we are to come into that which He has reserved for us, we must submit to His dealings, and come His way.

OUT RESURRECTION

We may say, “This is not fair, others are being blessed and are prospering.” In our natural, self-centered life experience, this may be true. But once we have submitted all to Jesus, and made Him our personal Lord, we have no rights. There is an “out-resurrection” from all we had known into that which He has prepared for us (OUR DESTINY). Unless we first go down in death, there will be no rising. The extent to which we are willing to go down, will determine the distance we will be brought up.

It is so important that we allow the Lord to do all that He desires in the establishing of the foundation ( Matthew 7:24-27) of our spiritual experience. We must allow the Lord to bring us through even difficult things that neither we, nor others, seemingly understand.
But the Lord understands, and we must trust Him in all things, knowing that He knows what He is doing.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28

“Understanding What Really Matters”

By Zach Wood

Philippians 1:9-11 NLT

I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding.  For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.  May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation—the righteous character produced in your life by Jesus Christ—for this will bring much glory and praise to God.

I had many mentors throughout the years of my young life take the time to instill great advice and wisdom in me.  Whether it was my family, teachers at school, or youth sponsors at church, many took the time to teach me new and important things in life.  Their wisdom helped me to understand what really mattered in life.  When I would get off-course, they would lovingly nudge me to re-focus where I needed to be. 

We all have had people, whom we love and appreciate, take the time to steer us in the right direction.  We all need people who will care enough to help us understand what really matters.  We need proper instructions so that we don’t go off-course.  Understanding what really matters is vital to living a life of purpose. We don’t want to forget what matters and live the wrong way.  However, so many of us end up going a direction we shouldn’t.  Fortunately, we have loving friends and families who will see what’s happening and speak into our lives when we need it most. 

We have so many different situations in life where we need to understand what is important.  What should really matter to us?  This is a question we truly need to be faced with every single day.  We need to understand what really matters. 

Paul wanted to make sure that people understood what really mattered.  It was to love each other as Christ loved the church.  Wow!  What would be more important than that?  Nothing!  Loving one another is what is most important.  Jesus Christ gave His life for us so that we could understand what mattered most.  As we are celebrating Easter this weekend, we celebrate the greatest love to ever walk this earth.  Jesus wanted us to grasp what really matters…Love.  He gave us the greatest demonstration and lesson of love.  What could be greater?

I need to understand what matters most.  Every day, I need to be reminded that the way I love my family and others matters more than anything.  They need to see God’s love through me.  Jesus giving His life for us and being resurrected is the greatest story of love.  Do we really understand what matters most? 

May the love of Christ be all that truly matters in our lives as we seek to share His love with the world. 

Weekly Devotional Blog Site www.zwedevotions.com

“Beware Of Over Self-Confidence”

By Zach Wood

1 Corinthians 10:12 NLT

If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.

We have all had moments in our lives where things are going just fine and we think there is nothing that can ruin the moment.  We might sail on for days, weeks or even months without anything pulling us down.  Then, all of a sudden, “wham!”  We’re not too sure what happened or what exactly hit us, but all we know is that life came crashing down, so to speak. 

There is not one of us that has not experienced this in life.  Life seems to be plugging away and then some tragedy or temptation takes us down and we feel like we’re down for the count.  We ask ourselves, “what just happened???”  We often times cannot figure out what went wrong or why all of a sudden things just spiraled south.  And, most of us don’t usually react the best way to these sudden changes.  We feel a wide-range of emotions.  We wonder what we did wrong and how this all happened.  Sometimes life simply takes us by surprise.

It’s in these times that we do some deep thinking and examine our life choices.  Many people in these situations question God and His goodness.  I know in all my years of vocational ministry and volunteer ministry, this is one of the toughest situations to deal with.  This goes both for seeing people experience this and myself having dealt with it.  We get very frustrated and wonder why God allowed bad things to happen to us.

There are many times we need to realize in life that we do make bad choices.  We make decisions to follow temptations and we fall hard.  We don’t mean to, but we do and then life comes crashing down.  We must remember that we cannot do life on our own, period.  We need God 24/7/365.  Not a moment goes by each day that we don’t need Him.  We tend to get a little cockyin life, if you will, and we think we are doing pretty good.  We feel pretty good and can’t imagine anything spoiling our mood.  Before we know it, but something goes wrong and things seem to spiral out of control in one way or another.

As I study this verse, I think of all the times when I get to feeling pretty good in my life and how I wish things could just stay good and not go sour at any time.  As much as any one of us would like that, life just doesn’t work that way.  This is not to say we should live life expecting bad things to happen, but that we just need to be prepared at all times.  We need to strong in the Lord and be prepared, so when things do start spiraling down, we can remain confident, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.  God definitely wants us to have self-confidence in our lives, but not so much that we forget that He is in control and depend on our own strength.  Beware of over self-confidence because we always need Him!

Weekly Devotional Blog Site www.zwdevotions.com