DAILY, WEEKEND, AND HOLIDAY INTERNET EVANGELIZE TO THE WORLD MINISTRY

  May 23: Fear: The Fight against It 1 Chronicles 12:1–13:14 ; 1 Timothy 6:11–21; Psalm 81:1–82:8 Fear is poisonous. When it drives our decisions, it will slowly destroy us—causing us to make moves that are against God’s will and detrimental to ourselves and others. The antidote to fear is complete reliance on Yahweh, our God, and His work through the Spirit. David is the epitome of someone who sets aside fear in favor of God’s work. He surrounds himself with “feared” men, his “mighty men.” The descriptions of their skills show the caliber of these warriors and, by extension, the incredible character and skill it must have taken to lead them (1 Chr 12:1–15). It takes courage to be a leader and valor to be a leader of leaders. David was a man of valor—a man empowered by the Spirit’s work. It would have been easy for David to worry or be concerned as a leader, especially when the Spirit comes upon a smaller group of men who oppose him. People rise up around him, and they are bein...

  May 22: Motive Is Everything 1 Chronicles 11:1–47; 1 Timothy 6:3–10 ; Psalm 80:1–19 It’s not often that we take an honest look at our motivations. But it’s important to reevaluate them regularly. When our sight is not fixed on God, we might become entranced with goals that conflict with godliness. Even though we might initially be performing the right actions, our lives will start to reveal the motives of our hearts. Paul addresses this issue within the Ephesian community, where some people were spreading conflict to further their own gain. And this wasn’t just a problem with the perpetrators. This “constant wrangling by people of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who consider godliness to be a means of gain” was like poison, spreading envy and strife throughout the community (1 Tim 6:5). To counteract this, Paul states that “godliness with contentment is a great means of gain” (1 Tim 6:5–6), but the gain he talks about is not success as we traditionally define it. Rat...

  May 12: The Bible in the Developed World Ruth 1:1–2:23 ; 1 Timothy 1:1–11; Psalm 73:1–10 In our developed world, we don’t often think about famines. If there were a famine in our lands, we could navigate through it because of our importing infrastructure. This isn’t the case for the developing world: famines mean walking miles to find food and water, and often dying or suffering terrible violence just to stay alive. (Currently, there are two major famines in Africa bringing these desperate situations to life.) When I used to read about famines in the Bible, I thought of hunger, but I didn’t necessarily think of pain and persecution. Now that I’m more aware of what’s happening in the world, stories of famine in the Bible are very vivid for me. Consider Naomi, whose husband died during a famine, and the pain she must have felt over that loss and the loss of her two sons (Ruth 1:1–7). She was left with her daughters-in-law. As widows, they were completely desolate. Women were con...