Thursday, August 28, 2014

AD's September Devotional

Life is a journey not measured by landmarks of accomplishments as much as a deepening sense of who and whose we are and where we’re going. God has planted eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The sense that we’re not really home until we’re home with Jesus compels us to live as transients in this world in our journey of faith, traveling lightly, unencumbered. (Hebrews 11:8-16) It also gives us a sense of identity.
   In the 2001 movie, “A Knight’s Tale,” young William Thatcher sees a Knight riding through his medieval town and declares, “Someday, I’ll be a Knight.” A man locked up in the stocks, laughs and says, “A thatcher’s son becoming a Knight! You might as well try to change the stars!” William asks his father, “Can a man change the stars?” “Yes, William. If he believes enough, a man can do anything!”
   Young William gets a chance to be a Squire to a Knight. As he is leaving for his journey he says, “Father, I am afraid. I won’t know the way back home.” His father says, “Don’t be foolish, William, you just follow your feet home!”
   By a twist of fate, he gets a chance to prove that he is worthy of Knighthood. As a man, now back in his hometown, in the hearing audience of his father, he is declared to be “Sir William Thatcher."
   William would not settle for the status quo. He followed the destiny that was placed in his heart by his father. His journeys of faith led him in his quest for Knighthood and eventually back to his father. Our Heavenly Father puts eternity in our hearts and we must follow His sense of destiny for our lives as we follow our feet back home… to Him.

Friday, August 1, 2014

ADs August Devotional

The Day after Tomorrow 
the day after 
the Centennial Celebration


   One hundred years ago, a group of 300 delegates of a newly formed Spirit-empowered movement pledged themselves to do “the greatest work of evangelism the world has ever seen.”  
   In August, at the Centennial of that movement, the Assemblies of God will celebrate how God Sovereignly molded and shaped us with a clear and compelling mission to reach the lost. We’ll celebrate our miraculous growth from 300 members to 67 million members in 300,000 churches worldwide.  
   The day after that celebration, what will be our defining vision? Sure, times have changed. Methodologies have to adapt to those changes. But, in those changes, we must never forget that our reason for being must not change.  
   Humanity is still lost without Jesus. Our General Superintendent Dr. George Wood defines our ageless mission clothed in the contemporary vernacular as the “human right.” Former AGWM Executive Director Loren Triplett once said, 

“You don’t measure yourself by your success. 
You measure yourself against the unfinished task.”  

   The day after tomorrow’s celebration, I pray we will sense the urgency of the hour to thrust us into the next 100 years of evangelism should the Lord tarry. 
    John 4:35 (NASB)  
Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, 
and then comes the harvest’? 
Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes 
and look on the fields, 
that they are white for harvest.