Scripture for the week: Luke 10:25-27
Instructions
Read the Scripture above and live with it for the week. The devotion may either be done by yourself or with someone else. Good conversations will almost certainly come from sharing this with someone else.
Devotion
This week’s theme is one of the more challenging of this Lenten series. Last week, we focused on “Listening to the Holy Spirit.” We all know we should listen to the Holy Spirit – that we should discern the Spirit’s call, but it can be challenging. It’s the how to listen to the Spirit that gives us trouble.
This week, our focus is “Listening to and understanding ourselves”. We’re taking up this theme early in Lent because there is no way to listen, whether to the Holy Spirit or to others, without bringing our past, our philosophy, and our biases to the table. There’s no way to eliminate our bias, but it helps to be aware that there is a bias.
This week, I encourage you to read the Scripture for the week, and the Scriptures listed below. Ask yourself what each Scripture passage has to do with listening to or understanding yourself. If you journal, these would be good questions to include in your journaling.
Resources
- Exodus 4 – Moses knows himself and the people – uses these as an excuse
- Romans 7:15-24 – “for I do not do what I want…”
- Romans 3:23 – “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
- Romans 1 – “Therefore, God gave them over to the desires of their heart…”
- Psalm 139:23-24 – “search me and know me…”
- 1 Corinthians 11:28 – “Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup.”
- 2 Corinthians 13:5 – “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test!”
- The Lord’s Prayer: Thy kingdom come; thy will be done
- 1 Peter 4:10-11 – “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.”
- 1 Corinthians 12 – spiritual gifts
- Who do you say that I am? (Matt 16:15; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20)
- Matt 6:21 (Luke 12:34) – “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”
- Rom 8:26-27 – “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
- Matt 7:3-5 – take the log out of your own eye; splinter out of your neighbor
Epicurious Lutheran 