Zechariah 8:7-8

Thus says the Lord Almighty: ‘Behold, I shall deliver My people from the land of the east and from the land of the west. I shall bring them in and settle them in the midst of Jerusalem. They shall be to Me a people and I will be to them a God in truth and in righteousness.’

Encouraging Words…

Christ is typified here as the One who will bring the people of Go’s creation back into His holy presence. We have been scattered and separated from His presence and now because of the work of Christ and the love of the Father, we are being brought back into His city of Jerusalem.

Luke 23:34

Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

Encouraging Words…

Once again I am reminded how much of an example Jesus was for me. He has been reviled, treated with contempt, and persecuted even though He had done no wrong. And yet He still asked His Father to forgive the persecutors. Am I to do any less? Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

Joel 2:17-18

Between the porch and the altar, the priests of the altar, ministering to the Lord, will each be weeping and will say, O Lord, spare Your people; do not give Your inheritance to reproach, that the Gentiles should rule over them, lest they should say among the Gentiles, Where is their God? But the Lord was zealous for His land and spared His people.

Encouraging Words…

Joel prophecies that Jesus, our great High Priest will stand between the alter, where sacrifices are given for our sins, and the porch, where we all stand seeking the love and forgiveness of the Lord. There He will represent us before God. Jesus will petition for us to be spared and to be brought into the kingdom of God. And through Him and His work we will be spared and receive the grace fo God poured out upon us.

1 Corinthians 8:8

But food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse.

Encouraging words…

Today we observed Meatfare Sunday in the Orthodox Church. We are one week from the beginning of Great Lent and starting today we started limiting meat in our diet as we begin our preparation for the observance of the Lenten season. We do not enter into Lent because it is some legalistic rubric that we must follow in order to obtain favor with God. In our church and throughout the history of the Christian church Easter has been the high point of the calendar year. We celebrate all that Christ did for His creation and mankind every year at Easter. It is our most holy celebration and feast. “Lent is a spiritual journey and its destination is Easter, ‘the Feast of Feasts.’” (taken from Great Lent, Journey to Pascha, by Alexander Schmemann). By progressing into Lent we begin that journey of unloading our worldly desires and taking up that work of Christ. It is a period of reflection, growth and hopefulness.

1 John 2:17

And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

Encouraging Words…

No matter what happens to this world, no matter what happens to me as a sojourner in this world…my God abides forever and if I strive to do His will then I will abide in Him forever. Praise be unto God.

2 John 1:6

This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.

Encouraging Words…

It seems so easy to build a whole set of rules around what it takes to live a righteous, Christian life. But it all keeps coming back to one basic commandment that can be summed up in one word…LOVE!

1 John 14:20

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?

Personal Challenge…

I can sure tell that we are heading into the season of Great Lent. It seems like every one of my daily readings points out another area in my life where I must go to my Father and confess another sinful state of my heart. It is easy to love a stranger, someone on the mission field, someone out there, but what about those whom God has placed in my life that I am around every day. Is it a coworker, someone at church, a family member, a clerk where I shop that just drives me crazy? That is the one that I must love. It is through them that I can learn to love God. Lord have mercy.

Mark 14:72

A second time the rooster crowed. Then Peter called to mind the word that Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny Me three times.” And when he thought about it, he wept.

Personal Challenge…

Oh how much of my own life can I recognize in this verse about Peter. How many times have I denied Christ…that unkind word spoken to another, that impure thought, that unbridled desire, and the list goes on and on. All of these are choices to feed my own pride or desire. All of these are denials of Christ. The real question is what do I do after these denials. Do I do like Peter Do I think about them and weep? Lord have mercy!

Mark 14:10

Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them.

Personal Challenge…

The early church fathers (1st century) taught that Judas chose to betray Jesus on his own initiative. It could have been greed, or jealousy, or a desire to force Christ to step up as the King. The bottom line though was that he did this by his own free will. How often do I betray my Lord through my own free will? One of the things that I like about the Orthodox Church is that much, if not most, of what we do has a reason and a purpose. The early church fathers established our tradition of practicing fasting on Wednesday because that would have been the day of the week that Judas betrayed Jesus. So we fast on that day to remind us that we too, like Judas, betray our Lord and need to seek His forgiveness.

1 John 3:1

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

Encouraging Words…

It is no surprise that I find it hard fitting into the world. I can go to work, go to parties and events, just about anywhere outside of the church and I find that I don’t fit in. This verse reminds me why this is so. If I am truly trying to live my life like Christ would thenI will not fit into the world. However, this does not mean that I remove myself from the world for this is where God wants me to shine His light. A dichotomy indeed, but a calling nonetheless.