Precept Austin

Daily Devotionals

REDEEM THE TIME - Youtube Recording on Redeeming the Time given by myself (Bruce Hurt) to men's ministry -- Slides that go with talk  Related article on Redeem the Time. 

Below are links to several devotionals to aid your Quiet Time with the Lord. 

"And I (JESUS) say to you, make friends (aorist imperative see need to depend on the Holy Spirit to obey) for yourselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness (not that money is evil, but because it is often used for evil), so that (purpose or result) when (not "if") your earthly possessions are gone, you will be welcomed (dechomai = THEY WILL PUT THE "WELCOME MAT" OUT FOR YOU IN GLORY!) into the eternal homes." (Luke 16:9)

NLT Paraphrase - "I tell you, use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. In this way, your generosity stores up a reward for you in heaven".

Comment by John MacArthur - In relation to others, Jesus exhorted His hearers to make friends for themselves by means of the wealth of unrighteousness, so called because it belongs to this unrighteous, passing world. Unbelievers, like the unrighteous manager (Lk 16:1-8), often use money to buy earthly friends. Believers, on the other hand, are to use their money to evangelize and thus "purchase" heavenly friends. The wealth of unrighteousness, being an element of fallen society’s experience, cannot last past this present life (cf. Luke 12:20). When it fails, the friends believers have gained through investing in Gospel preaching will welcome them into the eternal dwellings of heaven. Those friends will be waiting to receive (ED: WITH "OPEN ARMS") them when they arrive in glory because through their financial sacrifice for reaching the unconverted they heard and believed the Gospel.The Lord calls for Christians to use their money for eternal purposes to produce a heavenly reward.

Why Should You Consider Interceding for the Hidden People Group Below? 

  1. Jesus taught us that "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." (Mt 9:37) - Will you be a worker for the Lord of the harvest? Will you obey His command to "beseech (aorist imperative) the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” (Mt 9:38)?
  2. You are in effect entering the mission field with your intercessory prayers. "With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints (including those of the hidden people groups who will become saints - see Rev 5:9 below) (Eph 6:18) 
  3. You are obeying Jesus' command to "Store up (thesaurizo in present imperative see need to depend on the Holy Spirit to obey) for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for (term of explanation) where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Mt 6:20-21) (Where is your [my] heart beloved?)
  4. You will rejoice with Paul for those precious souls in this hidden people group who accept Christ as their Savior for they will be your "hope or joy or crown of exultation...in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming. For you are our glory and joy." (1 Th 2:19, 20)
  5. You will shine like the stars for "those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever." (Da 12:3)
  6. You can be confident God will answer your prayer for Rev 5:9 says Jesus was "slain, and purchased for God with (His) blood men from EVERY tribe and tongue and people and nation."
  7. If these Biblical truths are not sufficient motivation to redeem the precious time then take a moment and Read the longer answer. 

RECOMMENDATION - HERE IS AN EXCELLENT PRAYER GUIDE FOR UNREACHED PEOPLES, RELATIVES, NEIGHBORS, FRIENDS, ENEMIES! -

"Prayer works! Prayer is work! Prayer leads to work! Prayer is the work!"

Scripture that you can pray for all the peoples of the world including the lost in your world, your sphere of influence! This is a wonderful Biblical tool. And the apostle John reminds us that our prayers in the present transcend time for he writes in Rev 8:3 that "the prayers of all the saints (ARE) on the golden altar which was before the throne!" Beloved, store up for yourself some treasure in Heaven! (Mt 6:20) The R.O.I. (Return On Investment) is "out of this world!" Below is a sample prayer from this guide...

Lord Most High, You are awesome. You are the great King over the ______. May the ______ sing praise to you for you are King of all the earth. You reign over the ______. You sit on Your holy throne. PSALM 47:2, 6-8

These devotionals are provided to encourage your daily devotional time reading the "pure milk  of the Word" (1 Peter 2:2 = a vital verse because intake of the pure word is an absolute essential for spiritual growth or progressive sanctification) and are not meant to replace your personal time reading God's "Word of Life" (Philippians 2:16) and "Word of Truth, the Gospel." (Colossians 1:5) Our prayer is that you would...

Let the word of Christ richly dwell (present imperative calling for dependence on the Holy Spirit to obey) within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)

Remember that letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you produces the same fruit as being continually filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:18 (See chart comparing effects). Be filled is also a present imperative command calling for reliance on the Holy Spirit to give you the desire and the power - Php 2:13NLT)

NOTE: For a short synopsis of the Hidden People Group of the day, click the picture to go to Joshua project entry for that group. 

 

 

Daily Light on the Daily Path

September 13

Morning

If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink

MY soul longed and even yearned for the courts of the LORD; My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God --O God, Thou art my God; I shall seek Thee earnestly; My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh yearns for Thee, In a dry and weary land where there is no water. Thus I have beheld Thee in the sanctuary

Ho. Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.--The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let the one who hears say, Come. And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.--Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.

--My blood is true drink.

Eat, friends; Drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers.

Jn. 7.37. Ps 84.2.--Ps. 63.1, 2.
Isa 55.1.--Rev 22.17.--Jn 4.14.--
Jn 6.55. Song 5.1.

Evening

You are the salt of the earth

THAT which is imperishable.--for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God.--He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies --They are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection --The incorruptible God.

If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you --It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another --Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Mt. 5.13. 1Pe 3.4.--1Pe 1.23.--
Jn 11.25.--Lk. 20.36.--Ro 1.23.
Ro. 8.9-11.--1Co 15.42. Mk. 9.50.--
Ep. 4.29.

Spurgeon's Morning and Evening

September 13

Morning

“Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well, the rain also filleth the pools.”

Psalm 84:6

This teaches us that the comfort obtained by a one may often prove serviceable to another; just as wells would be used by the company who came after. We read some book full of consolation, which is like Jonathan’s rod, dropping with honey. Ah! we think our brother has been here before

us, and digged this well for us as well as for himself. Many a “Night of Weeping,” “Midnight Harmonies,” an “Eternal Day,” “A Crook in the Lot,” a “Comfort for Mourners,” has been a well digged by a pilgrim for himself, but has proved quite as useful to others. Specially we notice this in the Psalms, such as that beginning, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” Travellers have been delighted to see the footprint of man on a barren shore, and we love to see the waymarks of pilgrims while passing through the vale of tears.

The pilgrims dig the well, but, strange enough, it fills from the top instead of the bottom. We use the means, but the blessing does not spring from the means. We dig a well, but heaven fills it with rain. The horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is of the Lord. The means are connected with the end, but they do not of themselves produce it. See here the rain fills the pools, so that the wells become useful as reservoirs for the water; labour is not lost, but yet it does not supersede divine help.

Grace may well be compared to rain for its purity, for its refreshing and vivifying influence, for its coming alone from above, and for the sovereignty with which it is given or withheld. May our readers have showers of blessing, and may the wells they have digged be filled with water! Oh, what are means and ordinances without the smile of heaven! They are as clouds without rain, and pools without water. O God of love, open the windows of heaven and pour us out a blessing!

Evening

“This man receiveth sinners.”

Luke 15:2

Observe the condescension of this fact. This Man, who towers above all other men, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners—this Man receiveth sinners. This Man, who is no other than the eternal God, before whom angels veil their faces—this Man receiveth sinners. It needs an angel’s tongue to describe such a mighty stoop of love. That any of us should be willing to seek after the lost is nothing wonderful— they are of our own race; but that he, the offended God, against whom the transgression has been committed, should take upon himself the form of a servant, and bear the sin of many, and should then be willing to receive the vilest of the vile, this is marvellous.

“This Man receiveth sinners”; not, however, that they may remain sinners, but he receives them that he may pardon their sins, justify their persons, cleanse their hearts by his purifying word, preserve their souls by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and enable them to serve him, to show forth his praise, and to have communion with him. Into his heart’s love he receives sinners, takes them from the dunghill, and wears them as jewels in his crown; plucks them as brands from the burning, and preserves them as costly monuments of his mercy. None are so precious in Jesus’ sight as the sinners for whom he died. When Jesus receives sinners, he has not some out-of-doors reception place, no casual ward where he charitably entertains them as men do passing beggars, but he opens the golden gates of his royal heart, and receives the sinner right into  himself—yea,

he admits the humble penitent into personal union and makes him a member of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. There was never such a reception as this! This fact is still most sure this evening, he is still receiving sinners: would to God sinners would receive him.

Faith's Checkbook by C. H. Spurgeon

September 13

The Dew of Heaven

His heavens shall drop down dew. (Deuteronomy 33:28)

What the dew in the East is to the world of nature, that is the influence of the Spirit in the realm of grace. How greatly do I need it! Without the Spirit of God I am a dry and withered thing. I droop, I fade, I die. How sweetly does this dew refresh me! When once favored with it I feel happy, lively, vigorous, elevated. I want nothing more. The Holy Spirit brings me life and all that life requires. All else without the dew of the Spirit is less than nothing to me: I hear, I read, I pray, I sing, I go to the table of Communion, and I find no blessing there until the Holy Ghost visits me. But when He bedews me, every means of grace is sweet and profitable.

What a promise is this for me! "His heavens shall drop down dew." I shall be visited with grace. I shall not be left to my natural drought, or to the world's burning heat, or to the sirocco of satanic temptation. Oh, that I may at this very hour feel the gentle, silent, saturating dew of the Lord! Why should I not! He who has made me to live as the grass lives in the meadow will treat me as He treats the grass; He will refresh me from above. Grass cannot call for dew as I do. Surely, the Lord who visits the unpraying plant will answer to His pleading child.

J.H. Jowett's Daily Meditation

September 13

THE CLEAN HEART

Psalm 51:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

WHAT will the Lord do with my sin, if in true humility I come into His Presence? Let me hear the music of the evangel.

He will “blot out my transgression.” He will so erase it that even His own holy eyes can see no stain or shame. He will blot it out, as I have seen a gloomy cloudlet blotted out, and there has been nothing left but radiant sky.

And He will “wash me throughly from mine iniquity.” Yes, and that not like the washing of the hands, but like the washing of clothes, not like the washing of a surface, but the removal of uncleanness from a fabric, the ousting of every germ lurking in the innermost cells of the stuff. When the Lord washes a soul it is “throughly” done, and every strand is white in holiness.

So will He give me “a clean heart”; so will He “renew a right spirit within me.” The very atmosphere of my life shall be as the air after deluges of cleansing rain. It shall be sweet, and clean, and clear! I shall walk in a new inspiration, and I shall “behold the land that is very far off.”

J.R. Miller's Year Book

September 13

"The child sat on her lap until noon and then died."
"Did I ask you for a son, my lord?" she said.
    2 Kings 4:20, 28

The woman's thought seems to have been, "It would have been better had I remained as I was, with no voice of love in my home, my heart unfilled with affection, than that I should know and experience the gladness of motherhood for this brief time, and then be robbed of the joy." No doubt similar thoughts ofttimes come to those who are bereft of friends. In their deep grief, it seems to them that it would have been better if they had never had their friends at all—than to have had them a little while, to have learned to love them so, and to find such blessing in them—and then to lose them!

But Tennyson's word is far more true:
'Tis better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all.

Loving itself blesses us. It opens our heart and enriches our life. It teaches us the true meaning of life; for to live truly—is to love.

The taking away of our dear one—does not rob us of the blessings which loving has wrought in us. These we keep forever, though the friend is with us no more. Even if this child had not been restored to the mother in this world, she would still have kept forever the impressions and the influences which the child in its brief, beautiful years had left upon her life.

Our Daily Walk by F. B. Meyer

September 13

FISHERS OF MEN

"Jesus saw two brethren, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And He saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."-- Mat 4:18-19.

IT IS thus that Christ adapts Himself to the understanding and the heart. He caught these fishermen with bait suited to them. Notice the undoubting certainty of His promise to make these two brothers fishers of men, casting their drag-net not into the waters of the sea of Galilee, but into the great ocean of humanity. How impossible it would have been to convince Peter then that within four years he would make the great haul of three thousand souls (Act 2:41). We never know what awaits us when we leave all to follow in obedience to the Master's Call!

"Follow Me!" Our Lord is always making this challenge (Joh 21:19-22). It means bearing the cross, but we must be willing to follow Christ until, like Him, we fall into the ground and die--die to our own ambitions, our love of power and influence, our own strength and gifts, that we may make way for God to work through us. We must learn not to obtrude ourselves, but to lie hidden. The first, the second, and the third condition of successful fishing is to be hidden from sight. The best line and bait for catching men are those where the human element is out of sight, and our one aim is to serve Christ's purpose, and to glorify Him.

There must be a leaving of our nets and boats, and even those who are nearest and dearest (Mat 4:20-23). It must have been something of a wrench for these brothers to leave their nets and fishing to follow Christ. But the attraction of His Personality prevailed. There is no difficulty in persuading men to surrender the lower and inferior article, if you can unfold to them the immense value of the Pearl of great price. Then they will gladly sell all that they have to buy it.

PRAYER

Jesus calls us: by Thy mercies,

Saviour, make us hear Thy call.

Give our hearts to Thine obedience,

Serve and love Thee best of all. AMEN.