Month: March 2022

The Kitchen Table

Day 49

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Hebrews 10:23

What we believe in determines what we believe for in this life.  The promise is only as good as the person making it.  And our faith is only as good as our profession.  Faith shows up in our professions in life.  If it’s real, it will be revealed in what we see and what we say.  God is faithful; we can be too if we let our faith be our face in this world.

The Kitchen Table

Day 48

let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water                          Hebrews 10:22

What we believe in determines what we believe for in this life.  Let your faith rule your feelings, not your feelings rule your faith.  It’s so easy to feel like we don’t deserve the privilege of God’s presence, but it’s not based on what we’ve done but on what He has done for us.  We are clean because He was crucified and have life because He rose from the dead.  Let your faith lead your feelings today and live in the assurance of His word and His work.

The Kitchen Table

Day 47

But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.

Hebrews 10:39

What we believe in determines what we believe for in life.  Faith in God brings the favor of God with it.  God takes pleasure in those who believe Him and that same faith protects and prospers the soul.  Thinking and treasuring God’s way by faith pleases, prospers, and protects the soul while the promiscuous soul is defiled and destroyed by disbelief.

The Kitchen Table

Day 46

And, “But my righteous one will live by faith.   And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.

Hebrews 10:38

We were made for His pleasure of pleasing us and that is all done by faith.  Faith is the avenue through which the passion and pleasure of God are loosed into our lives.  It’s all there, we just have to believe and receive.  Without faith, it is impossible to please God and it is impossible to live in His pleasure. 

The Kitchen Table

Day 45

All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.                1 John 3:3

Hope lives on the outside if it lives on the inside.  We can’t hide hope.  It has a way of showing up on us if it lives in us and we are changed by it.  Those who have the hope of Jesus in them have the hope of Jesus on them.  Making Jesus Lord of my life means letting Jesus live through my life.

The Kitchen Table

Day 44

but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and  reverence                                            1 Peter 3:15

Hope lives in the heart.  We cannot hope without the heart being involved.  Anything else is something that is liked or fantasized about in our heads.  But hope, it lives in the heart like a precious treasure.  We find that hope in a person and so Peter writes, “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.”  The heart hungers for what it hopes for in love.  Jesus isn’t just a nice idea of a nice man; He is the precious promise of God for an eternal life of love.  Consecrate your heart for your hope. 

The Kitchen Table

Day 43

For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you²¹ who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.                                                      1 Peter 1:20-21

It’s not what you hope for but who you hope in that matters.  Hope is only as good as the person who holds it.  Our hope is always “in” someone or something.  Those who hope in the people and things that are here have a hope in what’s here but those who hope in Him, have the hope of heaven.  We hope for all that God has and is and can do and that hope holds a totally different hope than anything here.

The Kitchen Table

Day 42

Therefore,  prepare your minds for action,  keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.                                          1 Peter 1:13

Love creates hope!  Fix your hope on that love.  No one loves you and I like Jesus loves us.  The secret to experiencing the power of His love is to fix our hope on the purpose of His love and what His love can and will do in our lives.  Here’s the thing, love not only creates hope but it empowers us to hope.  People who hope are people who are loved but we don’t always hope for what we’re loved for.  So, the Holy Spirit tells us to hope for what we’re loved for and prepare our minds by fixing our hope on the love God has for us.

The Kitchen Table

Day 41

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,                                     1 Peter 1:3

Love creates hope!  And everyone who runs into Jesus runs into hope.  The thing about this hope is that it never ends and never dies, it’s living.  Because of His great mercy, we have His great miracle-working power every day of our lives.  Don’t give up or give in, give thanks, bless God; because He loves us we can live with hope every day and in every dilemma.

The Kitchen Table

Day 40

For we know in part and we prophesy in part; ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. ^{12, For now,} we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. ¹³ But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:9-13

It’s love that turns on the lights.  When we know we’re loved we can look at things as they really are in this world.  When we know love we don’t have to be afraid,  Perfect love casts out fear.  In His love, we know who we are and whose we are.  We can see evil.  We can grow up in truth.  We can live free.  That’s what love does for us.  That is why we must let God’s love create hope that inspires faith in Him and His great love for us.