Opening Devotion

GOD IS PREPARING PEOPLE TO RECEIVE

YOUR TESTIMONY

OF RESTORED TRUTH. HE REQUIRES YOUR

FAITH

AND THEN YOUR

ACTION

TO SHARE FEARLESSLY WHAT HAS BECOME SO PRECIOUS TO YOU AND

THOSE YOU LOVE.

02 Pure Faith Walking in HIS footsteps

Observations:

The path of purpose (to our promised land of destiny) is the path to finding God’s favor manifesting in our lives.

God is calling us to go to Israel but before we can go we must make him known and the text that came to me is:

Matthew 28:19-20“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and surely, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. God asks us to trust the miracle of His living water within us, more powerful than wine, but also the fruit of the Vine we cling to. God trusts us! Let us honor this by trusting Him so that we can be ready for His transformational miracles that will change our lives.

You are here today because:

JESUS CHOSE YOU...

The Exodus is prophetic. It symbolically describes God delivering you from sin, taking you through the wilderness, and leading you into the Promised Land (becoming one with God, Jesus putting His character in us, and living with Christ forever). He was going to illustrate that “only by grace can we enter” into the promised land.

Throughout the Bible we see several key events of character shaping that take place in the wilderness. God wanted those people, in the same way He is going to work with you, out in the desert to turn them into the kind of community that represents Him, the way He wants to be represented to the whole world, to carry out the mission, NOT carrying the message, but BEing the message.

Do you see the desert as good or bad? Jeremiah 2 describes it as your honeymoon with God. Treat the desert as this ideal wonderful time when you and God fell in love.From the founding fathers of the faith to Christ Himself, we see the desert as a backdrop for meetings with God. First, Abraham is subject

to a life wandering in a nomadic style, we see also Moses (often, referred to as the humblest of men), running to the wilderness to escape Egyptian grudge and there finding God in a burning bush. In that wilderness God gave Moses his assignment to free His people. Then there is David. After the famous victory over Goliath, David struggled with Saul and was driven to flee to the desert, where he no doubt experienced a deeper connection to God and inspiration for following. Then we have Elijah. The prophet made powerful enemies from his messages, and spent time hidden in deserts and caves. And it was in one of these cave hideouts that God came to Elijah, not in an earthquake or wind but as a gentle whisper.

Abraham, Moses and David where all Shepard’s, so God started them in the desert and there is a reason He did that. The wilderness is God’s plan for our lives.

And then in the New Testament, we see the ultimate wilderness experience, as Jesus is led out to fast and be tempted. This was not an accidental or punitive move, but a departure that was driven and directed by God. Jesus spent this time of solitude and challenge to prepare for His ministry on earth. He had to go through this period to contemplate His upcoming work and dedication to the Father.Their examples were meant to guide us as we also pass through the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:11)

Deuteronomy 8:2“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”

In Hebrew, the word for wilderness is midbar. It is surely interesting that the root of midbar has the meaning of “speak” or “word.” God speaks to us in the wilderness. God also humbles and proves us in the wilderness (Deut. 8:2).

The wilderness period can last days, or years, depending on how quickly we learn its lessons.

03 Pure Faith Walking in HIS footsteps

Our Father who art in heaven,hallowed be Thy name.

Thy kingdom come.Thy will be done on earth as it is in

heaven.Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts,as we forgive our debtors.

Lead us not into temptation,but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power,

and the glory, for ever.Amen.

Matthew 6: 9-13 (KJV)

The desert teaches you many things...

The desert teaches you many things, the desert is a great equalizer, it teaches you humility and hospitality. Humility is that you cannot do anything on your own in the desert, you will need guidance, you will need water, protection from animals, heat the cold, you need God, total dependence on God, and the desert humbles you. What better place to start the life of a leader?

In the desert you will need each other. The Bedouin is a great example of hospitality. Culture has not changed that much for the Bedouin, tents are all the same, measurements are the same, interiors are the same, they are expected to be hospitable. Even to their enemies, they will open their doors.

What about the testing, there is a certain point at which God expects his people to be willing to absolutely give everything, it is a time of determining, is my heart in this a hundred percent or not.

So God put them in a position, for example, He walked them until they were literally ready to die of thirst, to see how far they could go. Trusting that God wouldn’t take them beyond what they could bear and he put them in a position where they were so hungry, that they struggled to keep going; to find out how far they would go just to learn what He wanted to teach them.

Trusting that if you get far enough He will give you what you need to live. How far will you go to follow God, One who leads His people like a Shepherd?

The whole purpose of testing is to teach obedience, did the test teach me, show me where I am at this point and through it learn how to increase my commitment and increase my obedience to what God expects me to be.

Pray for obedience because that is what

testing teaches. The desert is a place of testing for the simple reason, one cannot make it there without complete dependence on God.

In the position of testing, it is always an opportunity to say, this is painful, I don’t like it, but I am going to show you though action, what is in my heart. Because the test that you and I will all face, there will be moments that we will shake our fist and complain if we have to go a little bit longer in that pain before He speaks the word.

The emphasis of the test in the desert is to be a community, care for each other, help one another, don’t leave the poor and the weak out. Matthew 4: You do not live by water alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, so we will walk no matter how thirsty and how tired until his word tells us it is time for water, and if you can face life’s test like that, truth as they may be and no one is suggesting they aren’t, that was painful, you will come away increasingly the person in the community God wants you to be and that is what testing is about.

This life of ours is not our own, we are His own. So what if we suffer, here is not our home. Suffering is a gift that He has given in trust and He can be trusted to turn that suffering into a gift. Live it like there is no other way. Stay in the moment, the grace in this moment is your manna. Stay in this moment and you eat the manna needed for now. Whish for the past and you drink poison, worry about the future you eat fire, stay in this moment and you eat the manna He means for you right now.

In the desert there is a flower called the Jericho Rose, it is very special and I think it speaks to what the lessons in the desert are. You wait in the desert and the desert can be painful, it can be a dry experience and sometimes you can even wonder if God is even there, and you cry out would you

The desert teaches you many things...

please help me, maybe there aren’t answers that you can hear but we know He is there and eventually there will be rain. The rains will come and this Jericho Rose sits there, for years, which is sometimes how our life seems, and could wait for years, but once this Rose gets a drop of rain, it immediately starts to bloom. It takes its crumped self and opens up and it starts to bloom. It just waits for the rain and I think with God we know that the rains will come. His love will come, that He is there with us, we can wait, we sometimes have to wait a while, but it doesn’t mean He is not with us and teaching us lessons, and it will rain. Alone with God, totally depended on Him.

Lessons from the wilderness, desert, God’s

classroom. Perhaps you never consider that the dry times in your life might just be God’s plan for you, but if you and I are willing to cooperate, God wants to teach us lessons in our desert that will help us to bloom wherever we planted no matter where that location happens to be.

Jesus we want to know you more; we want You to become real to us. Here is the good news of the Gospel, there has never been a tomb created that God cannot open and there has never been a heart to cold or dark that the love of Jesus can’t resuscitate. That is my prayer for this trip to Israel, that those

who take part will encounter a living loving God and maybe at the end of this study we will be a little bit more alive.

I’m so excited about the opportunities and experiences that lie ahead. In order for the group to continue on this journey, we need to share our faith in Christ openly while raising funds to help cover our travel expenses.

I have always been told if I visited Israel I will never read the bible the same, while true it has also affected my life in other ways, especially in the way I see my Savior. Jesus became more alive to me and more real than ever before. It is my prayer as we study these 40 devotions called “Pure Faith” You will experience the same when Jesus leads you into the promise land.

For the next 40 months we will do one devotion each month, to explore the land of the bible, a place which people called the fifth Gospel. It stated that five Gospels recorded the life of Jesus, four you will find in the scriptures, the fifth you will find in the land that is called Holy.

Open the fifth and the land will open up to you.

What it means is going to the land and study the land, the culture and literacy opens up the other four gospels so enormously. As I was walking and seeing this land, Jesus comes to be so real, it’s been a prayer that I’ve had Lord, I don’t just want to know about you, I want to know you.

Israel is so significant, as that is where significant events happen, it is where the Exodus accord, it is where Jesus rose again, and its location and history is important, you get Mesopotamia to the North, Egypt to the South, Mediterranean to the West and the Desert in the East with a major trade route running through it.

05 Pure Faith Walking in HIS footsteps04 Pure Faith Walking in HIS footsteps

06 Pure Faith Walking in HIS footsteps

We need to let Him prepare us...

07 Pure Faith Walking in HIS footsteps

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank You for spiritual wisdom. I thank you for creating me for a purpose. When I am tempted to give up or give in, uphold me with your right hand of righteousness. Help me to hear your voice and pray according to your will. Help us to understand what You are calling us to do. Lord, I pray for your strength to be renewed in me, a boost of faith to overcome my fears and a splurge of power in my state of powerlessness. I take comfort in knowing that you are my Rock and I put my trust in you to protect and shield me from the perils of today. Let every aspect of our lives bring honor to Your name. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

It’s ALL about Learning to Trust God

We hope you were blessed by this devotion

When our Father prepares His chosen for His work on earth, He repeatedly uses forty days to perform the task. We encourage you to take this Israel trip and the forty-month devotional journey with God. We need to escape from our pressures, schedules and distractions. We need to let Him prepare us for whatever use He has in mind. We need to allow new, God-honoring habits to take root in our lives. God’s Word speaks of the fruit of some forty-day encounters with God.

I hope that somehow through these devotions you get a sense of this amazing place, but more importantly a better understanding of the amazing Man that walked here, for it is Jesus I want you to meet in Israel, for it is Jesus that we need.

“This is what the Lord says… ‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland… I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.” Isaiah 43:16, 18-20

Hebrews 13:20-21 - Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Israel Tour 2019Every journey starts with a plan and that plan

often has it’s trials. Much like Moses leading the

Israelites out of Egypt, a trial that took 40 years.

So will we face a trial, that will test our faith. Only,

this time we will face 40 months. grain of sand

on a beach in compirson to what Moses endured.

come and join us on this journey...

Pure Faith