The AMI QT Devotionals from October 23-29 are provided by Pastor Charles Choe of Tapestry Church, Los Angeles. Charles, a graduate of UC Riverside and Fuller Theological Seminary (M.Div.), is married to Grace, and they have three children: Chloe, Noah, and Camden.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
Genesis 16:5-11
Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.” 6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her. 7 The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” “I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered. 9 Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” 11 The angel of the Lord also said to her: “You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery.
In one of his books, author Gary Smalley says, “If a couple has been married for more than five years, any persistent disharmony in their marriage is usually attributable to the husband’s lack of understanding and applying genuine love.” He adds, “After five years of marriage if a husband has failed to understand or seek help for the major causes of disharmony, either he doesn’t understand what genuine love is, or has chosen to ignore God’s command to shepherd his family wisely.” In other words, initially, the wife can be responding and acting out of the way she was raised, but after some period of time, she is responding to how her husband treats her.
Abram and Sarai have been married a long time by now. After Hagar conceives, Sarai says, “My wrong be upon you! I gave my maid into your embrace; and when she saw that she had conceived, I became despised in her eyes. The Lord judge between you and me” (Genesis 16:5). She is essentially saying, “Why did you listen to me? Why didn’t you stop me?” In some respects, she is right. Abram should have known better. He is the leader in the home. He is the one who is hearing from God and following him. He knew deep down that God intended to bear a child through Sarai, not Hagar. But he didn’t stop his wife from making a horrible mistake.
This is strangely reminiscent of Adam and Eve: Eve may have eaten of the forbidden fruit first, but Adam was not helplessly standing by, unable to lead Eve. Likewise, Sarai did tempt Abram to this sin, but it was Abram who failed to lead his wife. Both are at fault, of course, but Abram’s failure to lead his wife prove to be disastrous, one in which humanity would have a difficult time recovering from, even now.
When sin comes knocking on our doors, we are capable of not opening that door. The Holy Spirit who lives in us gives us power to overcome sin. We are told by the apostle Paul, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).
And when we give into sin—whether it be lust, anger, or greed—we must not blame the tempter or the situation. Rather, we must own up to the sins we commit. We must stop blaming our bosses, our parents, our colleagues, our spouses, our kids, our roommates, and everyone else for the sins that we commit. Let us own up to our failures and turn them into acts of repentance. The Good News of Jesus Christ is that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). This is the path of freedom the Lord intends for us.
Prayer: Lord, thank You for your Son’s blood. By His blood, and not by my deeds or misdeeds, I am made righteous this day! Amen.
Bible Reading for Today: Acts 20-21
In a Saturday Night Live commercial spoof, a woman discusses taking Chantix to end her smoking addiction. While the benefits of the drug may have helped her to quit smoking, the unintended side effects— which is listed between nausea and her desire to kill her own husband— is rather comical. The spoof seems to be saying, “The goal to quit smoking is met, but at what price?”
Sometimes we can be become obsessive over something: Maybe it’s something that happened at work, or it’s something someone said that kind of irked you—you keep replaying the scene in your mind over and over again. You’re thinking about the perfect comeback you wish you had, or what you need to do next. Why do we sometimes let things bother us long after they happen, and why is it so difficult to stop the cycle of stressing, obsessing, and stressing and obsessing? Why is it so easy to fall into this negative cycle?
An early crush I had in the seventh grade was a young blond name Tammy. She, to my shock, reciprocated my feelings. So we started passing notes between classes and eventually started “dating.” (I had no idea what that meant; I just knew it meant we had feelings for each other.) Things were going well, until one day after school—on a public bus no less— I heard the crushing news that she was beginning to develop feelings for one of my closest friends. It was devastating; I had never felt so much heartache before. It wouldn’t be the last time I would be disappointed with unrequited “love,”— but this first one really stung.
Not too long ago, I thought we—as a family— would do something fun and healthy by taking a hike at a local park. I had visions of having so much fun climbing up to the peak, enjoying the view, talking and spending time as a family, while getting some much-needed exercise. And then, we started our climb—and everything was just about downhill from there. The weather was hotter than I had anticipated, and we were quickly running out of water. The kids were complaining no more than fifteen minutes into our ascent. It was clear to me that we were not going to make it to our destination—we didn’t even make it to the half way mark.
Recently, someone asked me, “Do you like the Gospels or Paul’s epistles more?” Of course, being a pastor, my answer was, “I like them both!” But if I had to choose between the two, although I like the precision of Paul’s propositions, I do love the power of stories in the Gospels. Stories have a way of capturing our imagination, our intuitive way of looking at the world; and that’s what Christianity does for us—it reconfigures our worldview. To live as a Christian means to have transformed perception, until more and more of the story of the Gospel becomes our own.
The AMI QT Devotionals from October 16-22 are provided by Pastor Shan Gian, who serves as the Fenway site pastor of Symphony Church in Boston. Shan, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania and Gordon Conwell Seminary (M.Div.), is married to Jenny; and they are the proud parents of their first baby Tyler.
When the king of Sodom says to Abram that he can “take the goods for yourself,” he’s basically saying “to the victor go the spoils,” that since Abram won, he gets to reap all of the benefits. Abram, though, does something that I’m sure would have been surprising to the king of Sodom and anyone else who was there; he refuses to take any of it.
Hall of Fame basketball coach Pat Riley talked about what he called “the disease of more.” He proposed that “success is often the first step towards disaster,” because once people ( a sports team especially) have experienced success, they start thinking selfishly and catching the disease of more—wanting more money, more playing time, more benefits, more recognition, etc. This is why sports dynasties are hard to come by because teams can so easily be infected by the disease of more and start clamoring for more.
I have always enjoyed movies where the good guys are few in number and facing impossible odds, with large and intimidating forces coming to destroy them. It’s inspiring to see how brave, resourceful, and cunning the underdogs are, as they repel their foes and beat the odds. I’m not fully sure why I like these kinds of stories so much, but maybe there’s something about them that makes me wonder if I would have what it takes to overcome in the face of overwhelming odds.
At the beginning of the movie The Lion King, Mufasa brings his son Simba to the top of a mountain at sunrise, and tells him that one day he would be king of all of the land that the light touches—it’s a majestic scene. Simba’s response is simply, “Wow,” for he is in awe of how great this promise is. The scene in Genesis 13 is uncannily similar to The Lion King, as God shows Abram (later Abraham) how great His promise is to him. Abram looks up at the land, and God says that “all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever.” Here was Abraham—just one man. And though he was already advanced in age and had yet to even have a son, God, the Creator and ruler of the world, comes to him promising him that he and his many offspring would rule over all of this land. We’re not told what Abram’s immediate response was, but I can just imagine that as he stood there, looking in all directions, seeing how vast and great God’s promise was, that he just said, “Wow.”