AMI QT Devotionals for November 16-18 are provided by Pastor Paul Liu.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
“The Blessing of Rebuke”
Genesis 20:8-18
So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. 9 Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.” 10 And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?” 11 Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, ‘There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ 12 Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. 13 And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, “He is my brother.”’” 14 Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. 15 And Abimelech said, “Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.” 16 To Sarah he said, “Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.” 17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. 18 For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
No one likes to hear the words, “I told you so,” even when we know we’re wrong—it just sounds annoying and reeks of condescension. Yet for all the ways we don’t like to have our faults pointed out to us, we usually won’t grow without it. In fact, the apostle Paul tells us: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Notice the functions of Scripture in these verses: teaching, reproof, correction, equipping and training. Yes, there’s a cognitive aspect in teaching, but there is also correction and reproof (NIV says, ‘”rebuking”), which means, if we are to grow in faith, we need the rebuke of Scripture, as well as others to rebuke us according to Scripture. It’s part of our training in faith.
When Abraham moves his family to the Philistine town of Gerar—thinking that nobody fears God there—he acts out of disbelief and fear. He lies that Sarah is his sister and not his wife—which leads to a world of trouble when King Abimelech claims Sarah for himself. So God continues Abraham’s training by using the words of a pagan king to rebuke His own prophet. Abimelech doesn’t say, “I told you so,” but he does question Abraham’s integrity in misleading him and bringing God’s anger against his household. It’s correction. It’s reproof. And like many of us, Abraham doesn’t respond well, becoming defensive and making excuses. He cannot deny his fault, but he doesn’t fully take responsibility for his failures either. It’s a lesson half-hearted learned, which might be why we revisit this same scenario in the life of Abraham’s son in Genesis 26 (same place: Gerar; same problem: fear; same failure: lying that his wife is his sister).
The end result in today’s passage is that God’s prophet blesses his new neighbors from a position of humility and grace. God still uses the trouble-making prophet and humbles him through truthful rebuke.
Prayer: Lord, give me a teachable heart today, so that my pride would not keep me from facing the areas in my life that You want to change. Help me to recognize Your correction, no matter what form it comes in. And give me the strength to take responsibility for my sin so that I might experience the fullness of Your grace. Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: Jeremiah 16
Lunch Break Study
Read Ephesians 4:14-16: Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
Questions to Consider
- How might “teaching,” “cunning,” “craftiness,” and “deceitful scheming” undermine genuine faith?
- Why do you think “speaking the truth in love” is important for the church?
- Is there a person in your life who needs to hear the truth in love? Take a moment to write down biblical truths that need to be incorporated into their life. Begin to pray about how you might share this truth in love. Pray also for opportunities in which you might do so.
Notes
- Paul is telling us that maturity inevitably involves discernment—that is, being able to identify what is not true, only partially true, and distortions of the truth. Because until and unless we can do this, we will always be susceptible to manipulation, like children struggling to tread water in the sea; this means, we must nurture an inquisitive mindset when approaching Scripture and seek understanding rather than just taking the word of our spiritual leaders. This does not mean that we are to be skeptical or judgmental; rather, we are to be teachable, eager to learn, and able to study the Bible for ourselves.
- It is the means through which growth happens in the church. It’s truth in love; NOT JUST TRUTH: I’m sure we can all think of instances where someone “gave it to us straight,” and we could not stomach it because of how it was said. And NOT JUST LOVE: Most of us also know the “love” side, where we avoid telling the truth, even to the point of tolerating bad behavior—all in the name of being a good friend. Neither approaches are adequate in Jesus’ church. Telling the truth in love is a matter of attitude and care. Our goal is the growth of our brother and sister; our motive is caring concern; and our approach is truthful but gentle—not belligerent or vengeful. In truth, this approach is also a skill we need to develop, since so much of our previous experience emphasizes one to the neglect of the other (truth over love, or love over truth).
Evening Reflection
Quote: “Too often, we say we are defeated by this or that sin. No, we are not defeated. We are simply disobedient. It might be good if we stop using the terms victory and defeat to describe our progress in holiness. Rather, we should use the terms obedience and disobedience. When I say I am defeated by some sin, I am unconsciously slipping out from under my responsibility. I am saying something outside of me has defeated me. But when I say I am disobedient, that places the responsibility for my sin squarely on me. We may in fact be defeated, but the reason we are defeated is because we have chosen to disobey.
“We need to brace ourselves up and to realize that we are responsible for thoughts, attitudes, and actions. We need to reckon on the fact that we died to sin’s reign, that it no longer has any dominion over us, that God has united us with the risen Christ in all His power and has given us the Holy Spirit to work in us. Only as we accept our responsibility and appropriate God’s provisions will we make any progress in our pursuit of holiness.”
― Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness
We see in the life of Abraham that it’s one thing to be protected by God and another to be teachable. Abraham’s lying becomes a repeated pattern in his life and in the life of his descendants because he failed to receive the correction of God fully. What areas of weakness did the Holy Spirit bring to your awareness today? Pray that God may lead you in rejecting every impulse that comes from fear and insecurity. And ask for His strength to make you courageous, consistent and truthful.
I’m not sure about you, but if I could, I’d wear a t-shirt and jeans everyday. And not just any t-shirt and jeans—it has to be my favorite ones. Most people have clothes like that— comforting and comfortable—where you can’t wait to get out of your work clothes to put on these comfortable ones. That’s probably how Abraham felt about taking up his favorite defense mechanism for when the going got tough: he started lying. We see it happen in this text, as well as in Genesis 12:10-13: out of fear for his life, he tells Sarai to lie that she’s his sister and not his wife. It was like putting on a favorite t-shirt for Abraham—comfortable, even though it was a plan with holes all over it. Abraham panicked and chose deceit rather than truth.
The AMI QT Devotionals for November 15-16 are provided by Jennifer Kim, a staff of Church of Southland, Anaheim, California. Jennifer, a graduate of Biola University, is current finishing up her M.Div. at Talbot School of Theology.
Upon returning from our church retreat a couple months ago, I discovered that I had lost my car keys. Immediately, I went into a panic mode and began searching everything around me. I frantically checked all of my belongings, every vehicle I had entered, and every room I set my foot in. When some of the church members noticed my predicament, they quickly jumped in and helped me search for my keys as well. One of my friends even went as far as to call the retreat site and ask about any lost items. After a couple hours passed by, I came to the unfortunate reality that my keys were officially lost.
Jennifer Kim, a graduate of Boston University, spent a year in Shanghai as one-year intern from 2013-14. She is currently serving as a staff at Catalyst Agape Church (New Jersey) while attending Alliance Theological Seminary.
During my senior year in college, I started experiencing these awful “night terrors”, in which I would wake up in sheer panic and fear. It was a very bizarre experience, but as a result I actually became afraid to go to bed. After a few weeks of dealing with this, I became desperate for healing and I knew I had to share with my roommates. That very night, as I mustered up the courage to share, they decided to tuck me into bed and pray over me. In my exhaustion I fell asleep as they were praying, but in the middle of the night I startled myself awake, not out of fear or panic, but to use the restroom, completely unaware that I had gone almost the entire night without a single nightmare. But as I was getting out of bed I noticed all three of my roommates huddled together sleeping on the floor of my 80 square feet room. As a matter of fact, because they could not all fit in my room, one of them was sleeping in the hallway of our apartment. From that night on, I never woke up in panic or fear again—I was completely healed.
With the pumpkin spice lattes, cornucopia decorations, and colder weather upon us, it’s clear that the long awaited day of food coma and family get-togethers is approaching. But we all know that the reason for the season isn’t for the turkey or the cornbread, or even the pumpkin pie, but it’s to remember all that we should be thankful for this season. I’m sure you’ve heard countless messages and read dozens of devotionals explaining why we should be grateful and what we should be grateful for, but have you ever wondered what the cost of ingratitude is?
The AMI QT Devotionals for November 11-12 are provided by Christine Wang who, along with her husband Ulysses, recently planted the Renewal Church in Sunnyvale, California. A graduate of New York University, Christine is a proud mother of Audrey and Noah.
Yesterday, I shared how God didn’t relinquish my husband Ulysses and me from the call to China after we had run from it. Instead, He relentlessly pursued us and allowed us time in the “belly of the fish” to experience Him.
Run. Why is it that whenever God calls us to do something, our first reaction is to run in the opposite direction? I know for myself, it is always because of my feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and fear. Maybe you would fill in that blank with different things that only you struggle with. Whatever the case, we often find our lives filled with, “I can’t, Lord.” I heard a sermon once preached where the pastor said, “Call it for what it really is. Your ‘I can’t’ is really, ‘I won’t.’” For me, that was all too true. Thankfully, God wanted to change my “Nos” to “Yeses.” There are four things we experience during that process. I will share two today and the rest tomorrow.
Shocking! That’s not an unusual response to the content of the Bible, since the Bible is filled with realistic portrayals of sin and tragedy and failure: Abraham, the father of faith, lies through his teeth. Moses, the deliverer of his people, was a murderer. David, the man after God’s own heart, committed adultery, had the woman’s husband killed, and covered up the whole affair. None of it is softened or rationalized away. We’re just shown the ugly truth about sinful people so that we might see how awful sin is and its consequences.
An undeniable fact of contemporary life is that we live in a MULTI-TASKING world—we’re always doing multiple tasks at the same time. So the other day I was just being a product of my culture by doing two things at once: preparing pour over coffee while cooking ramen noodles. Neither of these things is that difficult by itself, but doing both at once was a bigger challenge than I anticipated. The pour over is done in measured pours over three and a half minutes, so you get an even extraction from the coffee beans. For ramen, you want to take the pot off the boil when the noodles have cooked for just the right amount of time—not too soggy and not too hard. But because I was doing both at once, time became my enemy and I ended up rushing the first thing and being late for the next—ending up with sour coffee and soggy noodles. I had ruined both (depending on your tastes).
As a man, I have to humbly admit that a lot of my own ‘self-talk’ involves these words, ‘Be a man!’ more often than I care to admit. When there’s a decision to be made and I’m feeling torn – ‘Be a man!’ When my feelings are hurt and I’m licking my wounds – ‘Be a man!’ When I have to say something hard but true to someone who I hope doesn’t reject me – ‘Be a man!’ Now, I’m not saying this is only for men. ‘Be a woman!’ is a great line as well! But it does tell us that it takes courage to live with integrity. ‘Be a man’ or ‘Be a woman’ means: Don’t let fear keep you from doing what you know you ought to do. ‘Be a man’ or ‘Be a woman’ means: Don’t put off the necessary for fear of the imaginary. We need courage to live for God – which is what we see in today’s passage.