Be Still and Know Daily Bible Devotion

Mark 1:1 This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. When Mark put together his Gospel, he had a very clear purpose. You might have expected him to take us through Jesus’ life story, but he doesn’t. He totally disregards the first 30 years of Jesus’ life. He doesn’t tell us about Jesus’ birth, education, employment or relationships. We would be so fascinated to know about all of those things, but Mark wants to get to the heart of the matter: Jesus was nothing other than the Son of God. He was the Messiah, the one that the Jews had been anticipating for centuries. It is generally agreed that Mark was the first person to write a Gospel. Matthew, Luke and John’s Gospels were written in very different circumstances over the next 30 or 40 years, but it was Mark who was breaking the new ground. He was probably relying on Peter’s eye-witness account of Jesus’ ministry, and it is believed that he wrote it in Rome. Many scholars think he was writing around the year AD 60, a full generation after the earthly life of Jesus. Mark devoted himself to describing a short period of Jesus’ life, from the time he started his public ministry to the time, after his death and resurrection, when he ascended to his Father in heaven. Mark moved at breathtaking speed from one incident in Jesus’ life to another because of his fixed purpose to declare the good news and to reveal that Jesus was fully man and fully God. Mark knew that if Jesus was merely a human being, his life story might be interesting, but it wouldn’t be good news. It was precisely because Jesus was both man and God that he was able to open the way for people to find life in all its fulness. These days, Jesus is warmly spoken about by many people. They love that he was compassionate and radical, and happy to stand up to the authorities, but they don’t know how to cope with the fact that he was the Son of God. To our society, we have nothing less than good news to share as we declare, with Mark, that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. Question How do you relate to the fact that Jesus was both God and man? Prayer Loving God, I thank you for the good news. Help me to let it shape every part of my life. Amen

Psalm 96:1-3 Sing a new song to the LORD! Let the whole earth sing to the LORD! Sing to the LORD; praise his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does. Many people see life as divided into two categories: the sacred and the secular. The sacred is, for example, what we do when we go to church and worship God, and the secular is our normal daily routine of family life, working and relaxing. This way of looking at life is strongly Greek in origin and is very different from Hebrew thinking, which we see reflected in this psalm. The psalmist had no thought of confining his worship to his visits to the temple! He was eager to proclaim the good news of God’s salvation every day. Whatever he was doing, he wanted to declare the greatness of God and encourage other people to do the same. The idea of living in two separate compartments was completely unknown to him. When we see God at work in every aspect of our lives, it gives a new importance to everything we do. Work is no longer simply a way of making money to feed the family, but an opportunity to serve God and to extend his kingdom. Our sport is no longer something we do merely to keep fit and healthy, but an opportunity to live for God and to represent him to people who may not know him. Our finances are no longer our possession to use in ways that please us, but an exciting God-given opportunity to bless other people. I could go on – God’s desire is to bless every part of our lives. Nothing could be more exciting than to see God at work in every area of life. Dividing up the sacred and secular robs us of the joy that God wants us to experience. God is constantly working in new ways and leading us into new experiences, so the psalmist recognised the need to sing new songs to the Lord. Throughout history, God’s people have come up with new songs, and that continues to happen at an impressive rate! It’s not because there’s anything wrong with the old songs, but because God’s people are continually seeing him at work in new ways throughout all areas of life. Question In what new ways have you seen God at work recently? Prayer Thank you, Lord, that every day you give me new reasons to praise and worship you. Amen.

Psalm 95:6-7 Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the LORD our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. If only you would listen to his voice today! These words of invitation are often used at the beginning of church services to remind us of how wonderful God is, and how much he deserves our worship. However, although God is perfect and worthy of our complete devotion, he will never impose himself on us. It is up to us to respond, and listening is a crucial part of that response. The sad reality is that we often fail to listen. The psalmist reflects on a time when the people of Israel did just that. They were at the start of their wilderness wanderings and there was no water to drink. I don’t want to minimise the acute difficulty of such a dilemma, but the people’s response was to complain and not to listen to God. Although he had miraculously delivered them from slavery in Egypt, and provided regular food for them through the provision of quail and manna, they immediately blamed him. Happily, Moses did listen to God, and the result was that he struck the rock at Horeb and fresh water came gushing out. In his letter, James challenges his readers: “You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (James 1:19). James seems to have had an acute understanding of how people tick. He knew the grim truth that we are inclined to be quick to speak and get angry, and slow to listen. It’s easy to understand why: listening is hard work. It demands time and effort, and when we are facing a difficulty, we are inclined to want an instant response. Listening sounds like a very slow and unattractive option. The Bible is astonishingly honest about the repeated disasters of the people of Israel, which all occurred because they stopped listening. If only they had listened, things would have gone so very differently. It is the same for us today. We need to be quick to listen, knowing that God loves to speak with us and will be seeking to do so today through other people, the Bible, literature, music, art, nature and 1,000 other ways. Question How could you improve your ability to listen to God? Prayer Loving God, thank you that you love to speak to me. Help me to listen hard for your voice today. Amen

Psalm 94:18-19 I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O LORD, supported me. When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer. Sharing honestly and openly what God has done in our lives is incredibly powerful. The most wonderful thing about it is that nobody can deny it. Other people might choose to interpret our experiences differently from us, but the moment we declare our personal accounts of how we have seen God at work in our lives, they are bound to take note of what we have said. I draw the conclusion from this that we need to give one another generous opportunities to share what God has done. Sharing our personal testimonies is good at every level. In a large congregation, they can inspire faith and stimulate worship. When we share our experiences in small groups where we can be totally honest with one another, one person’s testimony can trigger other people to share what they have been through. Probably the best time to speak of what God has done is one-to-one. Within the intimacy of a private conversation, we can share our experiences and then explore them with one another. The most important thing is that we don’t keep our testimonies to ourselves. They need to be shared. In the New Testament, we often find the apostle Paul sharing the account of his conversion, but he also loved to speak of the new things that God was doing in his life. He travelled from church to church around the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing them up to date with the ways in which the Holy Spirit was blessing the Church. In his letters, he spoke openly and honestly about how God was using him, even when he was in prison and battling with his “thorn in [the] flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Whoever we are, and whatever experiences we may have, each of us has a unique account of what God has done in our lives – and we need to share it. Question What is your own testimony of God at work in your life? Prayer Dear Father, thank you that you are alive and at work in my life day by day. Give me courage and determination to share my testimony with others. Amen

Psalm 93:4 Mightier than the violent raging of the seas, mightier than the breakers on the shore – the Lord above is mightier than these! I was brought up by the sea and have always enjoyed the sight of waves breaking on the shore. I love the rhythm and the drama as they crash onto the beach. There is a timelessness about waves, and it is easy to understand why the psalmists often refer to them. But, however powerful and violent the sea might be, the psalmists insist that God is even more powerful. He is incomparably great. Whatever threat you are facing, God is more than able to cope. I wonder what challenges you are facing at the moment. They may be connected with your family, work, church, neighbours, community or something completely different. Life in our broken world inevitably produces a stream of challenges for all of us, and when we think beyond our immediate lives, we can see incredible problems engulfing our world. There are fires, floods and famine arising from climate change; huge numbers of people fleeing their home countries because of oppressive regimes; and Christians suffering persecution simply because of their faith. As we face these gigantic challenges, it is very easy for us to feel overwhelmed. So, with the psalmist, we need to fix our eyes on the incomparable greatness of God. God doesn’t always fix our problems immediately – the psalmists often complained about God’s apparently slow response – but we can be confident that he is incomparably powerful and, as we place our lives in his hands, we can be sure that he will be present with us in our times of difficulty. We all need to keep watching the waves, enjoying the drama of their power and thanking God that he is incomparably greater. Question What challenges are you facing at the moment? In what way does God’s strength give you confidence as you confront them? Prayer Lord God, help me to live today with a continual awareness of your mighty power. Amen