Giving the Lord’s way makes everything you give a seed. Just as a seed becomes greater when sown, so is your giving of yourself. Talents, resources, time, etc. are seeds that become fruit for others and increased spiritual abundance for you. Nothing is lost when you give with love.

Taste the energy, the joy, the cheerfulness of Paul. Reflect on those ways that you, perhaps still bound in fear, hold back from being self-giving. Pray in a surrendered way, then rise to live in a surrendered way. Recall the words of Jesus in Luke 6:38: “With the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”

2 Corinthians 9

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Thursdays are dedicated to the letters of Paul, other letters,
the Book of Acts, and the Book of Revelation.
In this season of Pentecost this year,
we read 2 Corinthians.

For the next several weeks, the Firestarters will be from the original version of this program. For these Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

Tap the image for a video-meditation on Psalm 77.

This Psalm has ten verses of anguish, ten of hope. The psalmist will teach you about how to deal with your own pains of the heart. No matter how strong the suffering, he is praying.

Share your heartaches with the Lord. When you have poured yourself out, a fresh, new space expands in your heart to listen to the Lord who brings you remembrance of God’s gracious presence to you throughout your life. Jesus was there for you on the cross. He unleashed the power of healing love there; it is all that you have ever needed or will ever need. The Lord is with you. Pour out your heart and listen to Jesus. He loves you. He will comfort you in his out-poured Spirit, filling your pain and emptiness with his sweet presence.

Psalm 77

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We follow a reading of the Psalms in numerical order.

For the next several weeks, the Firestarters will be from the original version of this program. For these Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.

On July 18 of this year, Jewish people celebrate the Ninth of Av, the date in the Jewish calendar, which recalls the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem. It is a day of mourning and sadness for all of us, for the way in which the forces of darkness seek to reduce God’s presence to rubble in the world.

For Christians, the various attempts to eradicate the temple of the living God in the members of Christ’s body, the New Temple, is our way of sharing in the losses of our ancestors. Yet what martyr is celebrated with sadness! They live on in the temple in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The flow of mourning in this chapter is suddenly interrupted by verses 22–23. The late Thomas Chisholm, a former member of The First United Methodist Church in Vineland, N.J. (where I serve as pastor from 2000 to 2008), composed the famous hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” He beautifully expresses the profound feelings of the writer of Lamentations.

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Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.
In this season we read Hosea; in the 9th week, we read Lamentations 3.

For the next several weeks, the Firestarters will be from the original version of this program. For these Firestarters I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet. Check the menu options at the site for more information.