Walking the Way: A daily devotional

  Hosea 12:6 But you must return to your God. Maintain love and justice, and always put your hope in God.   Thought for the day – What God wants of us There is a wonderful image that has been created that shows the links between different Bible verses. Created by Chris Harrison and Pastor Christoph Romhild, it links every cross reference in the Bible. All 63779 of them. That’s a lot of cross references, but the one that stood out for me from today’s chapter was how similar today’s verse was to Michah 6:8 ‘Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.’ If we believe that God speaks to us through Scripture then to hear the same message a number of times, probably means we should pay attention. So what is God saying to us here. Firstly in the context of Hosea, it’s a message of how far they had slipped from how God wanted them to behave. This is what Micah...

  Consumers? Ever heard of the phrase ‘too much of a good thing?’ How much is too much for you? And how much of a good thing is too much? At what point do we say enough is enough? I’ve been thinking about this recently. A lot. I believe God has been challenging me to think about how much I consume. I feel like this one of those moments when I stand up in a support group and say ‘my name is Ray and I am a consumer.’ I’m not being flippant here either. I think we need to confess that we are consumers. God has given us an amazingly wild, diverse beautiful place to live. Our consumption is destroying it. And it’s because we have believed in the lie that more is better. The latest phone, the newest car, the most up to date fashion. The must have toy. More is better is what the world tells us. The Gospel is that we find our value, our purpose, and our satisfaction in Christ alone. Paul writes in Philippians 4:19 ‘And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his gl...

Mark 9:30-37 Sermon Let’s pray quickly before we look at God’s word. Lord Jesus, help us to move into a deeper understanding of your truth. We lay our lives down before you and ask that you would move amongst us. May we all feel safe; Safe to think and question, Safe to ask for help And safe to share our lives with you, our loving heavenly Father. I want to focus on the Mark passage for today’s sermon because I believe there is an important message for us in that passage. The context for this particular incident with Jesus is really important. This passage follows two really powerful experiences of Jesus. The first one is the transfiguration and shortly afterward, the incident with the demon-possessed boy. And it is in the middle of a whole list of things that point to the power and authority of Jesus and the source of Jesus’ power and authority. In the passage we see Jesus telling his disciples for a second time that he was going to be killed and rise again. The d...