The gospel of John isn’t exactly known for being easy to understand (if you want that, read Mark’s gospel), but rather for what seems like a conscious attempt to be cryptic and difficult to understand. Today’s reading is quite typical of John in that sense!
The central word for this passage is ’light’; Jesus tells the people that the light will only be with them a little longer and to keep walking while the light is with them, because whoever walks in darkness doesn’t know where they’re going. Jesus then tells the people to believe in the light because that’s how you become children of light. But what is this light and why is it so important? The light in this passage is a symbol for Jesus. Jesus is the one who will soon be going away (this was when Jesus was talking about His crucifixion and resurrection), and it’s with him we can find our way around, without him we are lost. And if we believe in Jesus, we can become children of God. Pretty amazing! Lets take some time to thank Jesus for bring our light, and for always being stronger than the darkness, however dark it might be.
This verse is probably one of my favourite verses in the whole bible. It tells us so many amazing things; God wants to be so close to you that next to you simply isn’t close enough. So God decided to moved inside of you. And he is delighting in you, even if you are struggling to see any positives with yourself, like we were talking about a couple of days ago, God does not struggle with that, when he sees you he likes what he’s seeing, it makes him happy, he delights in you!
The bible even adds that God will rejoice over you with singing, that’s how pleased he is with you, that’s how much he loves you and wants to be close to you! The verse just before tells us not to let our hands sink in hopelessness, and how could we, when we have a God that loves so much?
How are you getting on with your bible readings? You are now just over 1/3 in to the month of December, so if you’ve done all of the readings you’ve done really well, and of you’ve only done some – well done to you too! Some questions to reflect on today; how have you found reading the bible on a more regular basis? Have you found out something new about yourself or God?
Today’s verse talks about God’s word being a light that shows us the way forward, if you flick through all the devotionals you’ve got this far, what’s the main thing you are bringing with you this far? Also, think about the situations you are struggling with at the moment, pray that God’s light will help guide you through that situation.
Today’s reading is another New Testament classic. Here Jesus is asked the greatest commandment in the Jewish law. Jesus replies by quoting Deut. 6:4, a passage that is sometimes described as the Jewish creed (summary of beliefs). Then he adds something of his own; ’love your neighbour as yourself’. As a conclusion we have two very basic and important commands here!
Today we are going to focus on the second statement, but maybe not the way we might naturally think (loving other people) but on the fact that in order to love others we also have to love ourselves. Being human, and maybe especially a human teenager, loving yourself can be very difficult! In my early teens I used to really hate everything about myself, I couldn’t see any positives with my personality or my looks. But what Jesus says here is that loving ourself is just as important as loving other people, intact it’s even more important because until we start loving ourselves we are unable to love other people.
So today, if you are struggling with loving yourself, take some time to ask God to show you all the amazing things he has put in you; in your personality and in your physical appearance. And if you are really struggling, drop me a text, because I’m sure I can come up with at least 10 for each and every one of you – you are amazing young people with so much to give the world!
This term I’ve been studying New Testament Greek, which means I’ve learnt words such as ’false prophet’, ’kingdom’ and ’arch-liar’ in Greek but still don’t know what ’hello’ is or how to tell someone my name (things like that isn’t on my list with the 200 most common words in the New Testament…). The past few weeks my homework has been to translate the whole first letter of John from Greek to Swedish. It’s been (surprisingly) fun, but also quite difficult.
One of the themes that keep popping up throughout the letter is love, just like in today’s verses. Love is also one of the themes for Christmas, with songs like ’All I want for Christmas is you’ as one of the recurring hits on the radio.
In today’s verses John wants to encourage us to love each other, something that isn’t always easy, especially if you are as stubborn as I am! But maybe this Christmas we could make an effort to forgive someone who has hurt us – or to ask someone who we have hurt to forgive us?
Reading today’s two texts together you realise the greatness of Gods plan. The part of Isaiah that todays text comes from was written sometime after 740 BC, when the prophets ministry started. That means, that God had at least 740 years (or since the fall) of planning before putting his big plan into action!
That’s a pretty long time…
I believe there are two reasons planning something takes long;
The thing you’re planning isn’t very important to you, so you procrastinate for as long as you can (like planning a school project in your least favourite subject)
The thing you’re planning is so extremely important you want to get every detail exactly right and make sure that nothing can go wrong (like planing your wedding)
I believe the reason it took so long for God to get his plan going was the second reason, the people on this earth, you, were so important to him. If you compare it to planing a wedding, we might need a year to plan our big day. But for God it wasn’t just one day in two people’s life that was at stake – it was the future of all his beloved children on earth throughout history! No wonder he needed a bit more time!
So we are now back to the Christmas story, and we jump straight to the birth of Jesus. Pretty soon I know, but lets focus on some of the events in this passage. One of the miracles about this whole story is how Mary and Joseph were probably still planning to give birth in Nazareth around their friends and family, but because of a new law passed by the Roman Emperor, Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem where Joseph was from. This brought everything back in line with the story set out in the prophesies of the Old Testament.
So many times we make plans for our lives only for something to get in the way, and life doesn’t go as we planned. But through that change of plan something happens where God can work, in your life and other peoples lives. God gives us free will, but He can still lead us in the right direction. Just because things don’t go your way in your eyes, it doesn’t mean they aren’t going your way in the big picture of things. This is where we need to trust God.
I certainly never planned to live in Sweden 4 years ago, and growing up I didn’t expect to be a missionary, but it can be scary when I start missing friends and family. But I need to trust God with His plan. I am around a lot of people who have been a part of His plan. Think about the some of the big changes in your life, and thank God for him being in control. Then look forwards, and choose to trust Him.
One of the common problems people have in 2014 is anxiety and worry. The world is a stressful place at the moment and it is hard to find a sense of hope when we look at the news on TV.
However our verses today talk of a hope, joy and peace that Jesus brought with Him. Coming to the end of term, a lot of you will be starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel of assignments, essays and projects, and that might bring with it a sense of peace in your own lives. Hope is something that we look forward too, a time of peace, when the craziness of life can give you a break.
Think today about what kind of things you hope for in the future? God wants us to look forwards and hope for the future, and even more, trust him with our future. It can be hard to not look back, but the message of the Cross is one of hope and grace, that allows us to forget the past and look forwards and hope for a better future.
Try looking in your bibles at where else it talks about ‘Hope’. After all, it’s one of the 3 things that will remain in the end.
So reading todays verses we see Isaiah talking about a time when we won’t need the sun or the moon to provide us light, and he is talking about heaven here. There will be light the whole time, and in verse 20 we read that all your days of sorrow will end. Thats no more pain and suffering in the world.
One of the biggest questions people ask is why is there so much suffering in the world if God loves us so much. But He still has a plan and is promising to stop that, and when He does we will suffer no more. No one will. And Jesus’ return to us is the centre point of that plan. So as we remember the world expecting Jesus this Christmas, we can be expectant of an everlasting light that will actually take our sorrows away when Jesus comes again.
This is what we can expect from heaven, but what else can we expect in heaven. We spend some time thinking about what you want to see in heaven. If you have time, also look in the back of your bibles to see what else we can learn about heaven. One thing I do know is that it will be way better that we can ever imagine, beyond our wildest dreams.
Today is our first Old Testament text for our preparation for Christmas. As I mentioned in my last few talks, we can see Jesus all through the Old Testament, and here is one of the promises of the coming of the Messiah, the arrival of the one who will solve the biggest problem mankind has.
‘The days are coming … when I will fulfill the good promise I made…’ says the Lord. Have you ever made a promise that you didn’t fulfill straight away, but you know you will still do what you said? God was promising Jesus’ arrival for long time (in the eyes of Israel), but fulfilled when the time was right. Only He knew when it would be.
Are you waiting on a promise that hasn’t been fulfilled yet? Are you still waiting on unanswered prayers? Don’t give up, but keep expecting, and keep persisting in prayers. God fulfills His promises, and has a big reason for when He does, and we only see it when it happens. Jesus was the fulfillment of many of God’s promises, so today and this Christmas we can be reminded of that, and look forwards to those prayers still being answered.
