Broken Bread 3

Week Four: Master Gardener    Day 27: Watering     April 22, 2016 
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Harvest image
"Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of
unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground;
for it is time to seek the LORD, until He comes
and showers righteousness upon you."
(Hosea 10:12) 
Day Twenty-Seven Devotions:
 
MORNING MEDITATION
 
Glean the Word:  John 15:7-8   
   
Glimpse of Glory: "And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.  You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it." (John 14:13-14)  
  
One of the great blessings of the abiding life is a fruitful prayer life.  The life of the branch is to remain in the vine and draw life-giving sap so that it can produce fruit - fruit that will nourish and bring His life to others.  It is by prayer that we become the channel through which God dispenses His blessings upon the world.  Our deep, abiding, union with Christ as the Vine and we as the branch protects that divine connection through which our prayers reach heaven and fall on the ears of omnipotence and we receive whatever we ask in His name.  It is only in the abiding that we are properly positioned for the blessings of heaven to freely flow to the earth. "If you remain in Me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you" (John 15:7).

We cannot pray as we ought without the Word of God being deeply rooted in our hearts.   For prayer and the Word are inseparable - the power of one is dependent upon the presence of the other.  "Let the word of  Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God" (Colossians 3:16).  As the branch, we are to live entirely dependent upon the Vine.  In obedience to His Word and in yielding to His Holy Spirit, we will receive wisdom and power to prevail in prayer and accomplish great things for His kingdom. Our heavenly Father is glorified when we become all that He has worked in us. "This is to My Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples" (John 15:8). All the skill and care of the Master Gardener should shine through us, and men should receive the benefit and blessing of His work being produced in us.  May we repent that we have robbed God of the glory due His name because we have been neglectful in prayer, causing us to lose necessary spiritual power, and leading men to reject Him rather than be saved.  May it be our fervent prayer to be a branch that bears as much fruit as possible so we can prove to the world that we are truly His disciples and reveal that we have His heart for the lost souls around us.
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AFTERNOON DEVOTION
 
Glean the Word: John 4:1-26 
 
Gift of Grace: "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." (John 7:37b, 38)  
 
Jesus wants us to take on His heart for the lost souls in this world.  It is this burden that should lead us to unceasing, fervent prayer; and it is in praying much that we are able to bear much fruit that will feed this spiritually starved world.  Everything hinges on the fruit of prayer, which is a product of the abiding life. Jesus demonstrated the importance of one soul won to Christ when He made a pitstop at a well in Samaria to share His living water with a woman that was there.  "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:13-14). The woman Jesus was talking to definitely had her share of the world and knew what it meant to be unsatisfied.  It was through His words of conviction that she was led to repentance, and her heart was opened to the truth that Jesus was offering her, and she was finally satisfied to the depths of her soul.

The testimony of this one woman opened the door for her community to come to Christ.  The disciples had gone to the village to find food to feed their hungry belly's, but Jesus stayed at the well to offer divine food to a spiritually starved soul. When the disciples returned they found their Teacher was fully satisfied, because He had been filled by doing the Father's will. "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work" (John 4:34).  The discipline of fasting enables us to understand this truth, for we have learned that nothing else the world has to offer can satisfy like the delight of spending time in God's presence and feeding on His life-giving Word, and the joy of knowing we have done the Father's will by being obedient and bearing much fruit as we spend more time with Him in prayer.  When we live on Christ alone we experience true lasting nourishment for our soul, and learn to worship Him in spirit and truth.  "Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth" (vv. 23-24).  When we are empty of all the flesh, self, and the world, we are able to relate on a deeply personal level to the true condition of the world - a world that is empty, desperate, weak, confused, angry, and starved without Christ.  Let us ask the Lord today to empty us of anything that may hinder us from being completely full of His abundant life, so that we can offer the world the only One who will satisfy.  May we be able to say of ourselves, that in Christ Jesus alone are we satisfied, and that our lives bring glory to the Father.
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EVENING PRAYER
 
Glean the Word: Galatians 5:22-23

Fruit of Repentance:  "The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who wins souls is wise." (Proverbs 11:30)


Evening prayer focus:  A prayer to fulfill our calling of bearing fruit by praying much to the glory of the Father (click on the image below for our evening prayer).

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ - to the glory and praise of God" (Philippians 1:9-11).


This evening, draw close to the fire and experience the warmth, love and light of Christ as we come boldly before the Throne of Grace and join our hearts together in prayer:

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(then click the Play button to listen to the evening prayer) 

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HARVEST The Kingdom of God - 
A 40 Day Prayer and Fasting Journey to The Throne of Grace 
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