DayBreaks for 3/26/24 – Take the Time

I know that I’ve only been doing one devotion a week for the past few years due to the increased responsibility and workload I’ve taken on. But this week – often referred to as Holy Week – was always my favorite week of the year to preach when I was still a full-time pastor. As a result, I’m going to do a few more devotions this week.

Have you ever wondered why God left Jesus on the cross for hours before relieving his suffering? Clearly, God could have had Jesus crucified, shed blood, and ended it within a minute. But he didn’t. God is that way. He seems to never be in a rush about anything – not even when it comes to the crucifixion. I’m sure He has great reasons that maybe someday I’ll understand, but for now, I don’t understand it. All I know is that when God is doing something great, it takes time, and He doesn’t rush it.

Perhaps I don’t understand because we live in a break-neck speed world. News travels around the world in less than a second. We rush around like chickens with their heads cut off (and yes, chickens with their heads cut off can do that!) just trying to get to the next thing we have to do and then we repeat that cycle again.

If there was ever a time to slow down and take things in, it is this week. Not only was time changed by what happened this week 2000 years ago, but eternity itself changed.

Still, we rush through the familiar routines from Lent, through Palm Sunday, through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, silent Saturday, and we barge right into Easter Sunday at full speed. What a waste of the precious time God has given us if we fail to think deeply about the events of Holy Week.

Ann Voskamp recently wrote the following: “A person who is looking for something doesn’t travel very fast.  

“And I pause here. And my soul stills.  

“Those who aren’t looking for anything worthwhile, think it’s only worthwhile to travel fast.

“And that wide way beckons to the fast and the furious, to the hustlers and fear-mongers, to the big and loud, to the angry and soul-hungry and joy-malnourished. 

“But there is another way.

“Those looking for something sacred travel slow.

“Those looking for the holy linger.

“The way of genuine spiritual formation is slow. Taking the Way of Jesus takes time.” 

I beg of you to please take the time to look for something worthwhile in the historical events of this week. Look for the sacred. Look for the holy. Let it transform your heart and free your soul from the prison bars that hold you. Be free – free to take time to ponder the events of this amazing, wonderful week.

God is present in the events of this week. What a shame if we miss him because we don’t take the time to see His most majestic work on display.

PRAYER: Let us look for, and find, the Holy One this week. Keep us from hurry that we may linger at the foot of the cross and then at the empty tomb, awestruck. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 3/25/25 – The Lesson of the Thief

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”^[1] – Luke 23:39-43

I don’t know about you, but in this verse, I find great reason for hope. Here was a man who had lived a criminal life. What his explicit crimes were are not mentioned in Luke, though some think he may have also been a murderer. Suffice it to say that he was not a good man and had not lived a good life.

Yet still, at the end of that day, the man’s soul was in Paradise with Jesus.

What did this man have to recommend himself to the Judge of all the earth? Nothing. He could not point to righteous deeds. He could not, it would seem, even point to a life lived while trying to be righteous and pious. He had nothing in his hands with which to stand before his Maker.

But he had two things, and two things only, going for him. Firstly, Jesus had given his word to the man about his destiny. And this is the Jesus who has never broken a promise.

Secondly, even as Jesus spoke the words of comfort, he blood was paying for that man’s sins – every single one of them. And with that, the man’s forgiveness was purchased.

I suppose that being Jesus, he had the right to save the man without shedding of his blood. After all, he had the right to dictate the terms of salvation, did he not? But he didn’t do that. He knew that forgiveness of sin required blood – His blood.

Maybe you are sitting there smugly, thinking to yourself, “But I’m a good man”, or “I’m a good woman.” Not you are not. You are not good. Romans 3:10b-12 puts it as bluntly as possible: None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.

You are not good. I am not good. Not a one of us is. Jesus would himself refuse to be called good, saying only the Father was good. How dare we think we are good when Christ had to die for us!

I am a believer – have been for many, many years. But I know in my heart that I am still not good. There are too many kindnesses I have failed to show. I’ve been too selfish. I’m too prideful. My thoughts are filled with evil. I have not been kind when I should have. I am, bluntly, a sinner. But thank God, I’m like the criminal on the cross – an evil man forgiven by a gracious God who died for my every sin. That is the lesson of the thief on the cross: it is not good men or women who go to heaven, but forgiven men and women.

PRAYER: Holy Father, thank you for this lesson in humility and for your great forgiveness and grace that also saves us. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

 

DayBreaks for the Week of 3/18/24 – Living in the Resurrection

From the DayBreaks archive, 2015:

John 11:17-25 – When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. Bethany was only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem, and many of the people had come to pay their respects and console Martha and Mary on their loss. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed at home. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.”  Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”  “Yes,” Martha said, “when everyone else rises, on resurrection day.”  Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again.”

This past week was not a really good one for several members of our church.  Two families lost loved ones from their extended family.  The cold, bony fingers of death were a little too close to home this past week.  I pray that they’ll be gone for some period of time.  Both deaths were rather sudden, and relatively unexpected.  But, when the Lord decides that our time is up, we must answer and we must go – no matter whether we are male or female, young or old, rich or poor, happy or sad – believer or unbeliever alike. 

I think that John 11 is my favorite chapter in the Bible.  The theological truths are profound, the human drama unrivaled, the full gamut of human experience, from life, to death, to resurrection, and the surprise of new life are on display.  Jesus’ compassion and his fury at death are equally visceral.  Jesus had already raised other people from the dead by the time the story of Lazarus takes place.  But Martha, bless her heart, still somewhat rebukes the Lord for dilly-dallying around instead of coming at first word of Lazarus’ illness, and then she confesses, when asked, that she believes he will rise again in the resurrection.  Was she being coy – perhaps hoping that Jesus would raise him?  I don’t think so.  I think she had no such expectation.  When confronted with death we are forced to become realists.  Death is as real as real as it gets.  That is, unless Jesus is there.

Jesus tells her an amazing truth: I AM the resurrection and the life….  He doesn’t say, “I will be responsible for bringing the resurrection someday.”  No, He’s far more than the power behind the resurrection.  He IS the resurrection.  The Resurrection was standing in their midst, eating with them, laughing with them, weeping with them, teaching them, living for them, dying for them, and then living again.

F. B. Maurice said that this story made him very sad.  How sad it is, he observed, that after 2000 years, the church has gotten most Christians only to the point to which the Pharisees got Martha: resurrection in the future, resurrection a week from some Tuesday.  Only a handful have ever gotten past that point and made the leap of faith that Jesus got Martha to make: the leap to resurrection now – to resurrection as the fundamental mystery of creation finally manifest in his own flesh.

Will we live in the resurrected body in the future?  Yes.  All, Jesus says, who believe in him, will live again.  But will we live in the power of the resurrection NOW?  Will we continue to be afraid, fearful and timid creatures with no power, or will we live in Jesus now?  (It’s the same as living in the Resurrection, since He is the resurrection!)  Jesus had no fear – he feared nothing and no one because He knew what it meant to be the Resurrection.  Nothing could hold him, nothing could stop him, nothing can ever diminish him.  May we learn the secret of living in the resurrection each day for the rest of our lives!

PRAYER: Fill us, Lord, with Your glorious resurrection power today and every day throughout eternity!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 3/11/24: Stuck Between John and Jonah

Psalm 73:23 (NIV) – Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.

In his book, Your God is Too Safe, Mark Buchanan writes about practicing the presence of God, and how it is so important as a spiritual discipline to help us get out of living in the “borderland” (where we have one foot in heaven and the other on earth – never really committing to God and living the adventure with Him).  Here’s his reasoning: “…we need to practice the presence of God: not just to acknowledge in some philosophical way that God is present, but to rehearse, to repeat, to work and rework our knowledge that even though we don’t see Him and sometimes don’t feel Him, He is there.  He is here.  When we practice the presence of God, we train ourselves to desire His presence – to resist our temptation to flee Him.  We also train ourselves to experience His presence – to resist our temptation to think that He flees us.  In other words, the practice of the presence of God  helps us to live between the temptations of Jonah bound for Tarshish and John bound in prison.  Jonah is the prophet who wants to abandon God.  John is the prophet who feels abandoned by God.”

Are you more often like Jonah or John?  What is your tendency?  Do you run from God because you don’t want to do what He’s asking of you?  Or, are you like John, and now that you’ve done what He asked, it seems like maybe He’s discarded you in favor of a new “favorite”?  Either tendency can be deadly.  And either one is wrong.  Either way, we’re in trouble, because we either think, or feel, that we’ve gotten away from God.

God is working at your work today.  God is studying with you in school.  God is driving with you on the road.  God is playing where you play today.  God is cooking where you cook.  “The secret remedy for almost all our slow heartedness is to practice the presence of God.  This one thing has the power to break borderland’s gravitational hold.  Jesus walks the road to Emmaus with those disciples, if only they noticed.  Jesus is in the midst of our days and our events, our weeks and our weaknesses, our rising up and our lying down.  If only we noticed.” – Mark Buchanan, Your God is Too Safe

Don’t spend another day stuck between John and Jonah.  God wants so much more for us – He has so much more to give to us.  And He’s right there beside you as you read this DayBreaks, waiting to give it to you.  And He’ll be beside you all day long.  Will you notice?

PRAYER: How very foolish we are, Lord, to yield to Satan’s trap for us! Give us eyes to see the destiny to which Satan would lead us and help us not to be stupid any longer! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 3/3/24 – A Failure for the Ages

John 6:66-71 (NLT) – At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him. Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you going to leave, too?” Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You alone have the words that give eternal life. We believe them, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”  Then Jesus said, “I chose the twelve of you, but one is a devil.” He was speaking of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, one of the Twelve, who would betray him.   

Sometimes it is easy to know why things go haywire.  But at other times, it is a great mystery.  Why do people who seem to have everything going for them (like the leaders of Enron, sports or entertainment big-wigs, or even people like the Bakker’s or Jimmy Swaggart) sometimes seem to go terribly wrong?  Children from families where they are loved and cared for are still subject to going off the deep end in rebellion, drug or alcohol abuse, or a life of crime. 

But perhaps the greatest “failure” of all time can be found in the life of Judas.  This man spent something like 3 years with Jesus.  He saw miracle after miracle and heard sermon after sermon from the greatest teacher who ever lived.  He saw the blind receive sight, saw the lame walk, saw the lepers healed – and saw the dead rise (several times).  So how could he have wound up being the betrayer of the Lamb of God?

It is hard to understand.  Was it merely greed that led him to this despicable action?  Was it disillusionment when it became clear that Jesus’ kingdom wasn’t one that was destined to overthrow Rome, but rather to overthrow the dark rule of evil in the hearts of women and men?  I don’t know.  There is another possibility, too, that should not be overlooked.  Perhaps Judas never was a true follower.  Perhaps he was one of those people, like many today, who work under the “grace by association” principle.  He may have thought that he was in good standing with God because he was one of the 12 – the handpicked few.  It had to be a pretty heady thing to be hand-picked personally by Jesus. 

Many people today suffer from this “grace by association” principle, believing that because they go to church, they have a relationship with God.  What they don’t understand is that it is the other way around: we have a relationship with God, therefore we go to church to worship Him and glorify Him as a family of believers.  Judas may have had it backward.  Just being in Jesus’ presence isn’t enough.  We need to have Jesus alive and breathing the breath of life into our being, in short, we need Jesus’ presence within us.

PRAYER: Lord, save us from being prideful at having been chosen by you, and help us to do things for all the right reasons. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/25/24 – The Lone Ranger Christian

I’ve heard it and I’m sure you’ve heard it, too: “You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian.”  Someone from our church shared this fairly typical example: “I remember asking a guy (a professed Christian) where he went to church, and he told me he had church every Sunday on the first tee of a golf course.  For him, church was about being in nature and it was him and God.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with being out in nature, but if you look at the Bible, Christianity is not just about me and God, it’s about us and God.  That is, it’s about relationship with God, but it’s also about a relationship one to another.

“Maybe you’re not being constantly tempted with a drink or to take pills…However, maybe you do have this lone ranger mentality that says, “I don’t need people…I don’t need church…I can do it on my own. 

“All I can say from many years serving in ministry and working with people, if you try to ‘battle’ sin on your own, you’re ‘toast.’”

Can someone be a Christian without going to church?  I suppose it is possible.  After all, someone in solitary confinement may not be able to go to church, but they could still be a Christian.  That kind of situation, however, is the exception, not the rule. 

Bottom line: I need you.  And, as hard as it may be to believe, you need me, too.  That’s how God planned it.  And He’s wiser than we are. 

Let’s not go to the tee next Sunday morning, or into the woods as a matter of practice on a Sunday.  We can do better than that!  There was only one Lone Ranger…and he had nothing to do with Christianity.

Perhaps if we do our part, our churches will be better able to fulfill this command and more people will find being in church irresistible: Romans 12:10 (KJV) – Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another…

PRAYER: Keep us from foolishness and foolish ideas that we don’t need the fellowship, accountability, and encouragement that only the church can provide!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/18/24 – The Nature of Fear and Sin

Did you know that, according to John Ortberg, there are 366 verses in Scripture that essentially say, “Fear not!”?  That’s one verse for every day of the year, including leap years!  God must have known something, eh?  We should note that more often than not, it is stated as a direct command, and usually at the point God is asking someone to do something that will take them so far out of their comfort zone that they’d be nuts not to be at least a little afraid.  Yet He tells His servants over and over “Fear not!”, “Don’t be afraid!”

I remember how my little kids would stand on the edge of the pool and I’d encourage them to jump into the pool while I caught them.  Their little bodies stood on the edge, their arms held tightly to their little, shivering bodies, often with their fingers near their mouth so they could chew on their fingernails while they debated the invitation.  They were shivering – but not because it was cold.  It was because they were afraid.  There was a titanic struggle going on inside their little hearts and minds, a struggle between the will and the want.  You see, they wanted to jump.  They wanted to be brave.  They figured that it must be kind of fun or people wouldn’t be jumping into pools all the time.  They wanted to believe that I’d not drop them or miss catching them if they left terra firma behind.  But the will, oh, the will – it surrenders hard when fear comes around the corner! 

In If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat, John Ortberg argues that fear is the #1 thing that keeps us from obedience to God.  It may be fear that we will be dropped, fear of failure, fear of success, fear that we’ll be revealed as something other than what we’ve pretended to be for so long – it could also be fear of the unknown. 

In sin, I think one of two things happens.  Either the want says, “God, I want to take the leap with You!”, but the will isn’t ready to jump, or both the want and the will are refusing to go with God.  Either way, when fear wins, we lose – but more important than that, God loses, too.  When we fail to do what He wants, we have made ourselves unavailable to Him as a servant.  And then what happens to what God wants to accomplish?  Oh, He’ll probably find a way to accomplish what He wants in the lives of others, but as long as we are blocked by fear, He is blocked in accomplishing what He wants to accomplish within us. 

Are you letting fear make you unavailable to God?  Consider the Father who is asking you to jump into His arms and see if He isn’t trustworthy!

PRAYER: God, help us to will and to want to leap out with You in faith!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/11/24 – The Breeding Ground of Fear

Darkness.  Not only does the nightfall with darkness, but it seems as if fear falls along with the dark.  We’re more afraid in the dark than we are in the light (which, all by itself, should be sufficient to run to the Light of the world!), and with good reason.  Perhaps, if we had eyes like an owl or a dog, we’d not fear the darkness as much, either.  But I think we’d still be more frightened than in the daylight because it is in the time of no shadows that great evil happens.  But perhaps we are more frightened in the dark because that is when we tend to feel most alone.  Don’t you feel more alone in a strange city when it’s night than in the broad daylight?  When it is dark, every sound is magnified and is attributed to dark and sinister forces.  The darkness disorients us.

In C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the ship by that name has sailed into a place called the Dark Island, and predictably, everyone on board is terrified.  Lucy, one of the visitors on the ship, starts to whisper, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.”  Lewis went on to state: “The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little – a very, very little – better.”  Then what happens?  A tiny, ever so tiny, speck of light becomes visible ahead.  Lewis put it this way: “…(it) did not alter the surrounding darkness” but it did light up the ship. 

What’s the point?  As Mike Yaconelli noted in Dangerous Wonder, “Notice that the darkness did not diminish.  God does not always rid us of the darkness; He joins us in the darkness.”

There are some things that people can only do when it is light outside, or when there is sufficient light to dispel enough of the darkness that blankets itself around us.  Jesus is the Lord of the daylight.  But he is also the Lord when it is dark.  And sometimes, that’s when we can best recognize Him.

1 Tim. 6:16 (NLT) – He alone can never die, and he lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach him. No one has ever seen him, nor ever will. To him be honor and power forever. Amen.

PRAYER: Thank you for being Lord of both the light and the darkness, but most of all, for joining us when it is dark and walking with us!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 2/04/24 – As the World is Unraveling

Note from Galen: This is a post from the DayBreaks archives, but it seemed especially relevant to what is happening in our world.

Last week was a hard week.  As Christians, we are people who claim to live by faith, with hope, knowing that Jesus is Sovereign – not only is He Sovereign, He is a caring shepherd, not someone who doesn’t care.

And that knowledge is what makes it a bit harder to be people of hope when we saw something this past week that I think none of us could have anticipated: a captive being placed in a cage, doused with gasoline, and lit aflame.  That didn’t happen to me, but I had some moments of doubt and did some second-guessing – just like I’d thrown an interception on the one-yard line.  At times I know he loves me relentlessly…but at other times my emotions race to the edge of a cliff somewhere, my anxieties spike and I wonder how he could.  Feelings don’t always gibe with facts, or vice versa.

There is a wonderful word: shalom.  Put simply, it means the peace of God that brings about flourishing, restoration, and joy.  It is what God desires for His creation but especially for His children.  Clearly, shalom has not arrived in full force yet.  For whatever reason, God has not mandated shalom throughout the universe.  Shalom, like the curtain in the temple, has been ripped and torn.  While we have peace with God through the cross of Christ, the world and creation as a whole is not experiencing anything like shalom. 

What, then, are we to think and do about this?  Part of His plan, as crazy as it may seem to us, is that we are to participate in bringing that peace to earth…not fully, not perfectly, but in tiny, incremental ways.

How?  As we turn our eyes on Him, as we let Him change us in the inner person bit by tiny bit, we mend.  Not only has shalom been ripped, we have all been ripped and torn asunder.  When someone mends an article of clothing, it is not like it was when it was brand new, but it is once again useful.  The mending takes time, patience, thread, a needle, and a good eye.  Certainly, we are secondary in the mending process – His is the prime work.  We cannot make anything brand new, while He is the One who will one day “make all things new.”   We won’t just be made mended on that day but will be made new.  And so will all things…hope will no longer be necessary, nor blind faith.  Hope will give way to certainty, faith will yield to sight. And shalom will come to pass.

PRAYER: God, I pray that You will continue Your unique work of mending me, and in so doing, help me to do what little I can to mend this unraveling world.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.

DayBreaks for the Week of 1/29/24 – Getting to the Heart of the Matter

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way. – Psalm 139:23-24

John chapter 4 tells the story of the woman at the well and her encounter with the Messiah. It is a fascinating story on so many fronts, especially given the religious and cultural norms of the time.

After a small bit of chit-chat about water and thirst, the discussion suddenly gets very serious when Jesus tells her to go get her husband. Admitting that she didn’t have a husband, Jesus seems to get rather brutal and appears insensitive when he reveals her marital status and history.

Couldn’t Jesus have been more tactful? Why be so blunt about it? If it had been me, I would have approached it more gracefully, I think.

But Jesus knew this woman, and he loved her. So, he did what was best for her: he went straight to the source of her thirst. Her life had been filled with inconsistencies, rejection, loss of hope and love, perhaps betrayal, a life filled with shame and probably no small helping of guilt. She was thirsty, but all the things she had tried have been disappointments.

You see, we have to be made to confront ourselves and our need honestly. It isn’t until we recognize the truth about our thirst that Jesus can help us. He gave the woman dignity and something that could fill the aching hole in her soul.

Here’s another beautiful truth: not only did it help her, but many in the village found their thirst cured, too.

If it seems that Jesus is being too hard and insensitive with you, it could be because you’ve not yet honestly been forced to confront the truth about yourself yet. Let me encourage you to pray for the Spirit to search your heart to reveal what is unclean and needs to be confessed and forgiven. It is only then that you can find the Living Water that can quench your thirst forever.

PRAYER: Lord, open our hearts and reveal to us the truth that we need to acknowledge so that which we so long for can be found!  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Copyright 2024 by Galen C. Dalrymple.