Week Four: Master Gardener Day 28: Blooming April 23, 2016

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"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-Eight Devotions:

MORNING MEDITATION

AFTERNOON DEVOTION

EVENING PRAYER

MORNING MEDITATION

Glean the Word: John 15:9-17

Glimpse of Glory: "But if anyone obeys His Word, God's love is truly made complete in Him. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did." (1 John 2:5-6)

Jesus, the heavenly Vine, calls us to experience the fullness of the abiding life of the branch, because He wants us to partake of His divine nature. Jesus took on our human nature and demonstrated how to walk a life of obedience and sacrifice, and now He wants us to take on His nature and walk as He walked. "If you obey My commands, you will remain in My love, just as I have obeyed the Father's commands and remain in His love" (v. 10). The secret of the abiding life is obedience. Jesus modeled this for us, and if we give ourselves to Him in loving obedience, then He will keep us in His abiding love. He asks nothing of the branch other than to yield itself to the life of the Vine and allow the Vine to do all for the branch. He wants His nature to take completely over so that we will bear the fruit of the abiding life.

Jesus gave His life for us so that we might have His life in us. He wants to possess all of us. He wants our lives to be given fully over to Himself so that He can live in us and through us by His Holy Spirit. He chose us for the purpose of conforming us to His likeness (Romans 8:28-29). "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in My name" (John 15:16). The mark that we are truly His is shown in obedience to His will and walking in His love. As we daily learn to abide in Jesus, the Vine, the more we experience the joy and blessing found in intimate friendship with Him. One of the great proofs of our fellowship and friendship with the Lord is our desire to join our Mediator in His great work of intercession. The Father has given us the key to the storehouse of heaven through His Son, and we can ask for anything in Jesus' name because we have been given intimate access to God. May we use this heavenly privilege to lay hold of God's saving power to bless and heal the people around us.
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AFTERNOON DEVOTION

Glean the Word: Mark 5:24b-34

Gift of Grace: "And the people all tried to touch Him, because power was coming from Him and healing them all" (Luke 6:19)

Jesus wants us to experience the fullness of the abiding life - the abundant life of close and intimate fellowship with Him. He wants us to move inward from the crowds that gather to simply observe at distance, to become one of His dearest and intimate friends. The Lord invites us to experience the life He experiences with the Father - one of intense, personal love and affection. "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you" (John 15:9a). Jesus wants us to know Him as more than just Savior, provider, healer, deliverer - He desires that we come to know Him as friend. He wants to take us into the inner sanctuary, the holy of holies of deepening intimacy with Himself, where He can share His heart and reveal "deep and hidden things we do not know" (Jeremiah 33:3).

One day while Jesus was ministering in Capernaum, an anonymous woman decided to get up close and personal with the Lord. She was a poor woman who had spent all that she had on doctors to find a cure for the bleeding she had been experiencing for twelve years. She endured not only the debilitating pain and suffering of her affliction, but also the isolation from the community that the law demanded for her ceremonial uncleanness. But on that day, with nothing left in her possession but a few fragments of faith, she reached out and touched Jesus' garment, and immediately she was set free from all her suffering. "At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from Him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched My clothes?" (Mark 5:30). God responds to faith, and faith lays hold of God's power. He rewards those who seek Him. Jesus honored the faith of this woman by calling her out from among the crowd to experience a deeper relationship with Himself. "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering" (v. 34). Jesus invites us, as His intimate friends, to lay hold of His healing and saving power for the perishing world around us. All around us are people who are bleeding and bankrupt, who desperately need the tender touch of Christ upon their lives. Let us spend a little longer at the feet of Jesus today to pray for those around us who need His touch today. May He turn His face towards us with delight because we have touched Him and grabbed hold of His power today.
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EVENING PRAYER

Glean the Word: James 4:13-18

Fruit of Repentance: "Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we obey His commands and do what pleases Him." (1 John 3:21-22)

Evening prayer focus: Prayer that prevails (click on the image below for our evening prayer).

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 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 14:12-14)

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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