Lent Devotions

I have written several Lent and Holy Week devotion e-books which are available for Kindle readers. Here is my current selection:


Lent


Holy Week

Lent Devotions: Always Around - Matthew 26:11

Matthew 26:11   The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me.

Years ago, when I first became a Christian, I attended a Youth Fellowship program at a church where most of my friends worshipped. It was at the other side of town which meant that I had to get two buses to travel there.

Most of the young people there belonged to the same mid-week evangelical Gospel club that I attended in the heart of Glasgow. There were a few who didn’t and they remained skeptical about giving your life to Jesus. One young guy always used today’s verse as his spiritual barrier from accepting Christ as his Savior. He argued that Jesus was being insensitive and uncaring when He stated that the poor would always be around.

“Instead of just healing the sick,” he often argued, “why couldn’t Jesus get rid of poverty? Helping the poor would have made Him my Savior in my life.”

It was hard to argue against that statement. We really didn’t know then that the Church is truly engaged in the world trying to alleviate poverty every day. We also didn’t understand what Jesus was really saying: ‘help the poor as much as you can because they’ll always be there, but also make and take time to honor me.’

I think Mother Theresa of Calcutta said it best when she talked about helping the poor and serving Christ. “Do something beautiful for God,” she often declared when she addressed church conferences in other countries. In other words, we can help the poor as much as we are able and feel good about ourselves, but when we do it for Christ, we have the added bonus of pleasing God.

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, each week You present us with opportunities to help people in need and to serve You. Enable us to do both of these together, as ministry and mission, as well as outreach and worship. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Today’s image is one of John’s latest Psalm drawings. It depicts Psalm 115 and features the verse where God is described as the Maker of Heaven and Earth. If you would like to view a larger version of the drawing, please click on the following link: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7057/6855709255_a7d20b81df_b.jpg

Lent Devotions: Lent Devotions e-book Kindle Your Spirit

A lot of Christians use devotional material to help prepare their hearts and minds for Easter during Lent. This year, I've written a new 40 day devotional e-book to help them through the sacred season.

Anyone who uses a Kindle will be able to download the e-book in seconds. PC people, Android users, and even Mac owners can download the free Kindle app from Amazon.com and then download the book too!

The e-book is full of personal reflections, challenging meditations, and scriptural devotions. Each day also contains one of my art images. Each devotion can be read within 5 minutes. The cost is only $1.99. Most devotional books cost around $9.99 these days.

Click on the box below and enjoy a sample of what the book has to offer...:)

Lent Devotions: Lacking Faith - Mark 6 v 6

Mark 6:6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith.

It is said that ‘familiarity breeds contempt,’ so Jesus must have experienced some of that in His hometown. His own community, made up of people He knew as neighbors and colleagues, just couldn’t accept Christ for what He had become. They knew enough about His family and His local history to let that information become a barrier. He had become more than they could accept. He was beyond their knowledge and control.

I think that the present generation of Christians is suffering from the same parochial mentality. We have grown up knowing about Christ since our days of Sunday School kindergarten. Jesus has been a part of our stories for as far as back as we can remember, so we think that we know who He really is.

But when we go out into the world, we meet up with other faiths, other religions, and other historical leaders. We begin to mesh our ideas about Jesus with other religious ways. Instead of uniquely calling Him Savior and Lord, we keep Him on an equal basis with the likes of Moses, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, and Gandhi. The Jesus that we know is kept under control and shaped into what we want Him to be. Rather than declare Him as Lord of the Universe and Savior of the World, we seek to be non-offensive to other religions by declaring that we all worship the same God. In other words, just like the people of Capernaum, we take offense at Christ’s uniqueness and dilute our beliefs so that we can be accepted by the religious world.

I firmly believe that if Christ were to walk into most mainline denominational churches, He would be amazed at our lack of real, sincere, and true faith in Him. We have become slaves to the culture instead of disciples of Christ’s Church.

That’s why I preach, teach, and write the way that I do – for me, there is no compromising Christ’s divinity; there is no diluting of His Lordship, and there is no belittling of His unique and holy status of being the Only Savior of the world. It’s all or nothing for me, and if people really read the Gospels, they would know that it’s all or nothing with Christ too.

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, You are not a Westernized Gandhi or Buddha. You are not equivalent to Moses or Muhammad. You are not the Krishna who appears at a time of crisis or the avatar who enters into the world to avert disaster. You are infinitely above and beyond all of them. You are Jesus Christ, the Living Son of God, the Only Savior of the World, and the Holy One who has the words, works, and way to everlasting life. In Your Holy Name, we uniquely pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.