Devotional Song: ... GO TO THIS LINK ... Please take the time to take in images, song and lyrics from Vicki Yohe singing, He Knows My Heart … poignantly singing of how we have a Lord and Savior Who, having walked this earth, knows the hearts of all His children.
Living Among the Homeless
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Highlight Verse[s]: Hebrews 2:18 [NLT] ... 18 Since He Himself has gone through suffering and testing, He is able to help us when we are being tested.
… Jesus walked on earth as God’s Son so that He could have divine empathy for mankind and so that we could follow a man Who was God.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Hebrews 2:14-18 [NLT] ... USE THIS LINK ...
… God’s word to the 1st century Jews (and to us now) related the reality that God had to become a man so that we could identify and see Him as God in the flesh.
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Reference Passage : … Luke :23 [NLT] … 23 Then He said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.
… Jesus called the people who were following Him to become true disciples and follow Him by sacrificing of our selves as He was to sacrifice all for Him.
Reference Passage : … Philippians 2:5-8 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… We are called by God, thru the Apostle Paul, to humble ourselves just as Jesus humbled Himself to become a man and even to be willing to suffer as He did for us.
Reference Passage : … Hebrews 5:7-9 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus came to become a man so that He could return to Heaven and become our eternal High Priest.
Reference Passage : … 1John 4:2-3 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… To be a true born-agains Christians, one must have enough faith and empathy to humble ourselves to recognize that Jesus was the God-Man.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Arthur Jackson, uses a story of a young many trying to empathize with the homeless by living among them. … The ODB author wrote: Joe’s eight-week “break” from his job as a crisis care worker at a New York City church was not a vacation. In his words, it was “to live again among the homeless, to become one of them, to remember what hungry, tired, and forgotten feel like.” [see photo] Joe’s first stint on the streets had come nine years earlier when he arrived from Pittsburgh without a job or a place to stay. For thirteen days he lived on the streets with little food or sleep. That’s how God had prepared him for decades of ministry to needy people.
Empathy: … defined as truly knowing how someone else feels and what they are going through. It’s a quality of human character we can only have when we’ve lived through what others have gone thru or are going thru. And that’s why the young man in the ODB story went to live among the homeless … so that he would KNOW what they dealt with, … what they were (and are) feeling; and in doing so to be able to serve them with more compassion.
And that, dear one, was exactly why God sent His Son, … Jesus setting aside His glory and humbling Himself to become a man, and even to suffer and die on a cross, to save mankind [see Phil. 2:5-8]. And now, the truth from the highlight passage (as well as Heb. 5:7-9) reaffirms that Jesus could call others to follow Him (see Luke 9:23) because, becoming a man (i.e., The God-Man), we could empathize with His suffering and be willing to lay down our lives to follow Him.
Our question today is simple: … Are we willing to humble ourselves and follow the One Who was willing to humble Himself and even to die on a cross for us?
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My THANKFULNESS: ... Oh Abba Father, ... thank You, Lord, … for becoming like me to die for me.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, ... King Jesus, ... I pray, Lord, that all reading here will humble ourselves to serve the One Who humbled Himself to serve us. Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.</ span>
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