Bible Focus                                

Bible Focus started as a brief daily devotion in mid-2012. I found I was soon sharing the thoughts the Lord was giving me, with an increasing number of brethren via sms phone messages. The task and number of messages became too large to pursue every day, which gave rise to this blog of daily devotions linked to  our church website: http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au  

Here, all those who wanted to access the daily portion and make it part of their personal devotional time of prayer and study, could do so at any time it suited them.

Over the past year, 356 plus devotionals on various parts of the Scriptures, have resulted. These offer a full year of daily spiritual servings for contemplation and discipline in the Word. I do not profess to have the greatest or best content, but have prayerfully tried to offer a focus and brief look into portions of God’s Word and verses not usually visited for devotional purposes, or in fact in some cases hardly read at all! While providing some comments and thoughts, the brief messages contained in each entry have been intended as primers or starting points for further personal meditation, study and development, or maybe as seed for sharing and discussion.

Some have suggested that an audio version would be useful and in some cases desirable. As requested, I intend to make this endeavour available in audio format also for those who may prefer or be more inclined or limited to listen rather than actually read.

With God’s help I will in time return to Bible Focus and attempt to produce a second year of brief notes on various scripture passages, so that they may be used either as an am/pm devotional focus in the Bible, or as a means of alternating the daily devotional from one year to the next, so that the material offered may remain fresh to the reader.

I covet the prayers of those who have participated by reading these simple offerings, and pray with all humility of heart that some benefit to the soul, help in the Christian walk and encouragement to study God’s Word further and deeper, may ensue from them. I know I have personally benefited from the prayer, study, research and meditation which have gone in each brief article every day for the past year.

I glorify the Lord Jesus for all He has supplied: all inspiration, understanding, thought and word, for without Him and the help of His Holy Spirit, there would be no spiritual understanding, strength or growth.

May the Lord richly bless every faithful believer who daily builds relationship with Jesus by fervent prayer, and drinking deeply from the everlasting, fresh and restorative fountain of His Holy Word.

Apr 26

“The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us…” Deuteronomy 5:3

God had made covenant with the forefathers of Israel also. Moses here reminds the people that the covenant God made, did not apply just to their forefathers, but that it was current, standing and binding for the present generation. These reminders are essential for us humans, because we tend to easily forget, casually amend and thoughtlessly put aside valuable things. The mindset which easily dismisses the biblical principles that have applied to other generations and times may be guilty of being selective in obedience, or at least lacking in poised and careful consideration. There may be some very specific things, which God may have meant only for an individual or a limited group of people, but we would be wrong in automatically discharging ourselves from the responsibility of any of God’s commands, without due study, prayer and consideration. The very least that can arise from this more careful approach is instruction, learning and understanding, which is always beneficial to anyone intent in serving God from a pure heart. In our progressive and contemporary minds, we can often too quickly do away with principles and practices that have stood for many generations, and have reaped the blessings of God. Some driving forces behind these ‘modern’ dismissals are a belief that if something is ‘old-fashioned’, it should be replaced, and the questionable desire to distance ourselves from previous generations, in most things. We somehow believe and act to say that we are naturally wiser and know better than they did ‘back then’. Some modern innovations have improved lifestyle and perhaps make ‘more sense’ than the practices of the past. The problem arises however when this thinking is applied wholesale to God’s Word and His eternal principles. This all too often results in the proverbial ‘baby being thrown out with the dirty water’! In other words, the preciousness and value of God’s directives, purposes and ways, established in the covenant of His Word, are wrongly and summarily ejected, discarded and swept out with the broom of modern change. The feeling that because we are the ‘present’ generation, we owe it to ourselves to ‘spring clean’ all things we deem passé, can procure more trouble and heartache for us than we might imagine. God’s principles and purposes cannot be so dismissed, without repercussion. We would do well to remember the ancient covenant He made with fathers of our faith, made permanent in His Word, and see how it applies to us in our present and contemporary generation.

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion