Inside Out Devotionals

"See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?  I am making a way in the wilderness  and streams in the wasteland"  Isaiah 43:19 In a couple of days 2016 will be ending and a NEW YEAR is coming. For many people, shifting years has no special meaning, but just like shifting SEASONS has an external consequence (leaves fall, flowers bloom, etc.), when years shift, we should be aware and be ready for SOME NEW SEASON in our lives as well. The neat thing is all our life, all our days are already prepared before we even live any of them! Psalm 139:16 says   "all the days ordained for me were written in your book before any one of them came to be".  That means: God knows EVERYTHING that is going to happen in 2017 in your life! And He says that He has GOOD PLANS for you (Jer 29:11)! So a smart way to start off this next year is simply asking the Lord about His plans for you. He knows everything and it is his desi...

"... and you will be a blessing."  Genesis 12:2 God made a promise to Abram: He would make him a great nation and bless him; He would make his name great and Abram would be a blessing.  Abram was already a prosperous man when He heard the Lord´s voice and obeyed his instructions. But even when things are going well in our lives, there is always room for them to get EVEN BETTER! That was the case with Abram! Things were going well, but whatever the Lord speaks over, it WILL get so much better!  Now the point is: once our lives are touched by God, the natural result is: BLESSED! and once we are blessed, it will be NATURAL to be a BLESSING. The Amplied bible speaks of blessing as a source of great good to others.   We cannot become that which is not potencially in us already. For example, an apple tree could never bear apples if that wasn´t potencially IN IT already! Even though there are times when we won´t see a single apple on the tree, that...

"But rejoice inasmuch as you participate  in the sufferings of Christ..." 1 Peter 4:13 I used to read passages like this one and I couldn´t really picture myself DESIRING to partake of Jesus´ sufferings. I would often think of suffering as aflictions, pain, illness, injury, loss, etc. One day when reading the passage above I decided to look up the word "suffering" in the original greek as it was first written and WOW! Now the invitation that Paul makes to Timothy started to make sense: "Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ" (2 Tim 2:3) The greek word for suffering is pathema  meaning the " capacity to feel strong emotion, like suffering" - properly, the capacity and privilege of experiencing strong feeling, deep emotion (like agony, suffering). Therefore,  pathema  is not inherently negative; indeed, it is only negative when experienced outside of faith , which would be described as pasxo.    Whenever...

"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.  (...) Your  rod and Your staff, they comfort me"  Psalm 23:1; 4 This week I heard someone say that the Lord uses his rod to hit, and therefore, discipline his sheep (meaning us, His children). That caused me to think about the scripture mentioned above that says that his rod and his staff comfort us. I started to imagine a sheep that went astray and a shepherd desiring to find it and then rescue it. Let´s keep this scenario in mind.  The staff is a device used to RESCUE  the sheep as seen in the picture above.  The ROD instead has a particular use as well. But, unlike many people think, the rod is NOT used to PUNISH the sheep that has gone astray. The rod is used to chase way dangerous animals (wolves, for example) that could threat the sheep. It simply makes NO SENSE to think that, JESUS, our GOOD SHEPHERD (John 10:11), after rescuing us, he would HARM us with a rod. I can´t se...