Daily devotional jesus calling pdf

1 Continue Daily devotional jesus calling pdf Keep your eyes on Me! Waves of adversity are washing over you, and you feel tempted to give up. As your circumstances consume more and more of your attention, you are losing sight of Me. Yet I am with you always, holding you by your right hand. I am fully aware of your situation, and I will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to bear. Your gravest danger is worrying about tomorrow. If you try to carry tomorrow's burdens today, you will stagger under the load and eventually fall flat. You must discipline yourself to live within the boundaries of today. It is in the present moment that I walk close to you, helping you carry your burdens. Keep your focus on My Presence in the present. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. Psalm 73:23 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

2 1 Corinthians 10:13 * I am able to do far beyond all that you ask or imagine. Come to Me with positive expectations, knowing that there is no limit to what I can accomplish. Ask My Spirit to control your mind, so that you can think great thoughts of Me. Do not be discouraged by the fact that many of your prayers are yet unanswered. Time is a trainer, teaching you to wait upon Me, to trust Me in the dark. The more extreme your circumstances, the more likely you are to see My Power and Glory at work in the situation. Instead of letting difficulties draw you into worrying, try to view them as setting the scene for My glorious intervention. Keep your eyes and your mind wide open to all that I am doing in your life. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21 The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.

3 Romans 8:6 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:30-31 NKJV Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, singing: To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever! Revelation 5:13 Excerpted with permission from jesus calling by Sarah Young, copyright Sarah Young. * * * Your Turn Has worry weighed you down? Are you spinning about tomorrow and all the possible things that may go wrong? Let's keep our eyes fixed on jesus and trust that He is in control! Come share your thoughts with us on our blog. We want to hear from you! ~ Laurie McClure, Like the article? Share it! By Randy Alcorn June 18, 2018. Few Christian books have sold as well and been shared as widely as Sarah Young's devotional jesus calling .

4 It has inspired a number of spinoffs, including jesus Lives, Dear jesus , jesus calling for Little Ones, jesus calling Bible Storybook, jesus calling : 365 Devotions for Kids, and Peace in His Presence. Altogether, they've sold more than 25 million books worldwide. Recently the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association named jesus Always, Sarah's follow up to jesus calling , as its 2018 Christian Book of the Year. Given the widespread influence of her books, which is only growing, it seemed time to address some concerns directly on my own blog. (This blog is way longer than my normal posts. If you wish to leave a Facebook comment or send an email, please read the post in its entirety first so you have the full content.) First Some Clarifications I've hesitated a long time to write about jesus calling , because I don't want to send the wrong message. I'm not saying God doesn't or can't speak to you or others through it. He can speak through whomever He wants to, however and whenever.

5 For example, many people have told me they learned about God's love for them for the first time while reading The Shack. The author puts words in God's mouth, is a universalist, and effectively denies Hell, and yet I believe God can use a book in people's lives despite serious errors. (See my lengthy article on The Shack and my shorter blog on Paul Young's book Lies We Believe About God.) But how can I argue with my friends who say God used The Shack to deepen their walk with Christ? All I can say is, there are things in the book I don't believe are true to God's Word and there are things in Lies We Believe About God that definitely contradict Scripture. Now, my reservations with jesus calling are NOT that I believe the book is full of heresies. No doubt, there's much that is valid and true. But I think there are still cautions that need to be shared. What concerns me is the basic premise of someone actually recording words of jesus that they believe God has spoken to them, but which don't appear in Scripture (even if most of them don't contradict Scripture).

6 That's what I'll focus on in this blog. The Most Troubling Issue with jesus calling For those not familiar with the format of the book, each entry of the devotional has a message written as though jesus is speaking directly to the reader, followed by a list of related Scripture references. (Some recent versions include the actual biblical text, which is definitely an improvement.) In the introduction to jesus calling Sarah Young writes, I began to wonder if I could change my prayer times from monologue to dialogue. I had been writing in prayer journals for years, but that was one-way communication: I did all the talking. I knew that God communicated with me through the Bible, but I yearned for more. Increasingly, I wanted to hear what God had to say to me personally on a given day. I decided to listen to God with pen in hand, writing down whatever I believed He was saying. I felt awkward the first time I tried this, but I received a message. It was short, biblical, and appropriate.

7 It addressed topics that were current in my life: trust, fear, and closeness to God. I responded by writing in my prayer journal. My journaling had changed from monologue to dialogue. Soon, messages began to flow more freely, and I bought a special notebook to record these words. This new way of communicating with God became the high point of my day. I knew these writings were not inspired as Scripture is, but they were helping me grow closer to God. I have continued to receive personal messages from God as I meditate on Him. The biggest problem with jesus calling is very simple: jesus did not speak these words. If these were His words, then jesus calling would be Scripture, which is by definition the words of God. So if it's not (and it isn't) on an inspired and trustworthy level like Scripture itself, then it's making a false claim. In fact, regardless of whether it's biblically sound, it's an entire book built on falsehood. The Influence of God calling Tim Challies addresses the fact that in the early printings of jesus calling , Sarah Young acknowledged her profound debt to the Two Listeners who wrote the book God calling .

8 That has now been removed from the introduction, but it doesn't change the fact that God calling influenced her deeply. Here's one of many troubling passages from God calling : How often mortals rush to earthly friends who can serve them in so limited a way, when the friends who are freed from the limitations of humanity can serve them so much better, understand better, protect better, plan better, and even plead better their cause with Me. In other words, look to dead people for guidance and help. I remember vividly the negative effect God calling had in churches. As Tim notes, This book [God calling ] was unorthodox both in its writing and in its content and in many ways more closely resembles the New Age movement than orthodox Christianity. Still, Young says it became a treasure to me.' The fact that this book had such a profound impact on her is concerning. Speaking Words from God When Sarah writes, I decided to listen' with pen in hand, writing down whatever I heard' in my mind, she is taking her subjective sense of God speaking to her and trusting that her words to readers are actually, in some sense, God's Words.

9 This is putting words in His mouth, and incredibly dangerous. It's like The Shack in that regard, where different members of the trinity are quoted as saying specific words. But while Paul Young at least acknowledged he was writing fiction, Sarah Young appears to claim that her words are given to her by jesus . She goes on to explain, I have written from the perspective of jesus speaking, to help readers feel more personally connected with Him. So the first person singular ( I,' Me,' My,' Mine') always refers to Christ; you' refers to you, the reader. Now, Sarah tries to balance this by writing, The Bible is, of course, the only inerrant Word of God; my writings must be consistent with that unchanging standard. I appreciate that, and of course I agree that's true for any author, me included. We should all be like the Bereans, evaluating what we read against Scripture (Acts 17:11). So we write what we think honors God and is in keeping with His word. However, we should always know that inevitably we will say some things that are not what God would actually say.

10 Why? Because we are flawed and imperfect and our words are not God-breathed, as Scripture is. I'm certainly in favor of Sarah or anyone else journaling what they believe God is speaking to them as they read Scripture. But I'm not in favor of publishing it for others to believe these are words God is speaking to them. If someone wrote a book attributing their own words to Bill Gates, Tom Brady, Chuck Norris, or Julia Roberts, what would happen? In addition to the lawsuits, no one would trust the author. If personal pronouns attributing the author's words to jesus weren't used, and instead Sarah said These are thoughts God brought to my mind, then you could evaluate what she has written in light of Scripture. But jesus calling is simply written from jesus ' perspective, as if they're direct quotations from Him, which is radically different. And when people read it, many of them actually respond, even if subconsciously, as if these ARE the words of jesus . I have a friend who loves jesus calling and says she reads it just as she would read a book by me or anyone else, realizing the words are Sarah Young's, not the perfect words of jesus .