Loving Those Closest To Us

I think most of us have had some family conflicts and this is a great post in regards to that. Please feel free to visit Bible.com and click on this 'plan.' It's a good one! 

LET GOD SHAPE YOUR RESPONSES, NOT YOUR REACTIONS

Family conflict often reveals what is truly governing our hearts. When words become sharp, attitudes grow defensive, or silence is used as a weapon, it is usually a sign that emotions have taken the lead rather than God.

When tension rises in your family, how does your response reflect your emotions or your walk with God? Scripture warns us to guard our inner life carefully: Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. (Proverbs 4:23). A guarded heart is not closed off from others. Rather, it is surrendered to God, allowing Him through the Holy Spirit to shape our responses.

Jesus modelled this dependence on the Father. Luke 5:16 tells us that He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. Jesus did not respond to pressure, misunderstanding, or opposition without first anchoring Himself in communion with God. If the Son of God needed regular withdrawal to remain aligned with the Father, how much more do we need time with God to respond wisely in difficult family situations?

Romans 12:18 challenges us with these words: If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Notice that peace is connected to personal responsibility. When we are at peace in our hearts and at rest in the Lord, it becomes easier to handle conflict. When our walk with Him is strong, we gain the self-control to pause, listen, and respond with grace.

God often uses family tension as a training ground for spiritual maturity. These moments reveal whether we are being led by the Holy Spirit or driven by emotion. Instead of asking God to change others first, He invites us to allow Him to change our inner responses. As we surrender our emotions to Him, He produces wisdom, restraint, and peace within us.

Pause and reflect

What recent family reaction revealed an area where you need God's guidance more deeply?

Practical application

Before responding in a tense family moment, pause and pray silently, inviting God to govern your words and tone.

Prayer

Lord, rule my heart by Your Spirit. Silence emotional reactions and shape my responses according to Your wisdom. Teach me to reflect my relationship with You in every family interaction. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Peace

Jesus spoke about peace to people who did not have peaceful lives.

They lived with fear, loss, occupation, and uncertainty woven into everyday life. So when Jesus talked about peace, He wasn’t offering comfort or escape. He was offering a way to remain faithful when nothing around them felt stable.

Jesus lived in that same reality. He knew violence, injustice, and division firsthand. Yet He consistently spoke about peace, not as denial of suffering, but as a way of living rooted in trust. “My peace I give you,” He said. “Not as the world gives” (John 14:27). The peace Jesus offered was different. It did not depend on circumstances improving or conflicts disappearing.

We often think peace comes after problems are solved. After things calm down. After life feels manageable again. But Jesus presents peace as something that sustains us while problems remain. His peace does not pretend everything is fine. It anchors us when everything feels uncertain.

Many of us struggle with peace because we live surrounded by noise. Fear-driven headlines. Endless opinions. Pressure to react quickly and choose sides. In that environment, peace can feel passive or even irresponsible. Anger feels more powerful. Outrage feels more justified.

But the peace of Jesus is not passive. It is active and costly. It requires restraint when anger feels earned. Humility when pride wants control. Trust when fear demands certainty. Choosing peace often means resisting the urge to mirror the hostility around us.

Jesus calls His followers to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers. Peacemaking does not avoid tension. It steps into it with wisdom and courage. It refuses to dehumanize others, even when disagreement is deep. It chooses love over retaliation and presence over withdrawal.

Sometimes peace looks like reconciliation. Other times it looks like holding your ground without hatred. Listening longer than feels comfortable. Refusing to let fear shape who you become.

In the way of Jesus, peace is not weakness. It is strength rooted in confidence that God is at work, even when the world feels broken. When we choose peace, we bear witness to a different Kingdom—one not built on fear, but on faith, hope, and love.

Copied from: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/67336/day/5?segment=0

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Resurrection People - Part 3

When I was in seminary, I hit a wall.

I was trying to crank through nearly thirty credits in nine months while also learning how to be married. Things at home were good. But spiritually, I was in a dark place.

I had stopped having a personal relationship with Jesus and started having a professional one. I read the Bible for my classes and my sermons, not for myself. I prayed because that's what pastors are supposed to do. I was burning out, going through the motions, and privately wondering if any of it was real.

One day, in a class designed to be a safe space for honesty, I decided to tell the truth. I described the burnout, the emptiness, and the fact that I was writing sermons for other people while feeling nothing myself.

I looked around the room as I talked. Every face looked like a computer that froze. My professor said, "Scott, this doesn't make sense." The rest of the conversation made it clear that this was not, in fact, a safe space for that kind of honesty.

That was the last day I was vulnerable in seminary. Not the last day I told the truth in general, just the last day I let those people in. I learned that day that what the people in that classroom wanted from me was the performance of faith, not real-life reality.

Act 5 tells a story that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and honestly, it should! The short version is that a couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of land, kept a portion for themselves, and told the church they had given everything. Peter confronted them. Both of them died.

This is not a story about money. It's a story about hypocrisy: the decision to present a version of yourself that isn't true to receive credit you haven't earned. As one pastor wrote, “they wanted the credit and prestige of sacrificial generosity without the inconvenience.”

In Matthew 23, Jesus called people like this “whitewashed tombs.” They were beautiful on the outside, full of death on the inside. The gap between who we present ourselves to be and who we actually are is something Jesus takes seriously.

After all, hypocrisy destroys community. A community where people perform rather than live, where image matters more than integrity, cannot sustain the kind of trust that resurrection requires. God can't heal our masks. He can only work with what's real.

One reason I share honestly on stages and pages (including stories that don't make me look good) is what I expected that day in seminary. I learned what happens when people sense they're not safe to be real. They go quiet. And the quiet isolation is worse than the mess.

Identity Statement:

“Because Jesus is alive, I don't have to protect an image. I am free to live with authenticity and integrity.”

Reflect:

Where are you managing perception instead of living honestly? Is there a gap between who you are in public and who you are in private? What would it cost to close it?

Prayer:

Jesus, free me from the exhausting work of protecting an image. You already know the real version of me, and You came for that person. Help me live like that's true. Amen.

All the above copied from: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/68058/day/6?segment=0

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Resurrection People - Part 2

Do something right now. Gently press two fingers against the inside of your wrist.

Feel that?

That rhythm is your pulse. Blood moves through your body, keeping you alive without you having to think about it, manage it, or earn it. It just pumps.

The early disciples believed something about that pulse that most of us have never seriously considered. Paul writes it in Romans 8:11 CSB: “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.”

The power that rolled the stone away from the tomb — the same power that reversed death itself — is the same power that is in you right now. Not a smaller version of it. Not a distant echo of it. The same power, alive in you, beating in you, and working through you.

Most of us move past that too quickly on our way to the practical application. We know the verse. We've heard it. But we don't live like it's true.

I've spent seasons of my life running on fumes. I've experienced burnout, disconnected and going through the motions of ministry while privately wondering if any of it was real. I was preaching about resurrection while quietly wondering if anything would actually change in my own life. I knew the theology. I had read the verses. But somewhere between my head and my daily experience, the power got lost.

What I've learned slowly and through some painful detours is that the problem wasn't the power. The problem was that I had stopped expecting it to show up! I had exchanged a living faith for a professional one. I was reading the Bible for other people, not for myself. I was praying because that's what pastors do, not because I actually believed anyone was listening.

The power didn't go anywhere. My expectations had just closed the door on it.

Paul describes this power in Ephesians 1 as "the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead." (Ephesians 1:19-20 NIV) Resurrection power is not reserved for spiritually impressive people. Nor does the right level of faith or the right track record unlock it. It lives in you because of what Jesus did, not because of what you've done.

The question isn't whether the power is there. The question is whether you've stopped expecting it to work.

Identity Statement:

“The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. I am running on Resurrection Power!”

Reflect:

Be honest: are you living like resurrection power is available to you, or like you're mostly on your own? What would change today if you took Romans 8:11 at face value?

Prayer:

Jesus, I confess that I often live like the power left when things get hard. Remind me what lives in me. I don't want to go through the motions of faith while the real thing is available. Amen.

One final quote: 

“And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭11‬ ‭NIV‬‬ 

https://bible.com/bible/111/rom.8.11.NIV

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Resurrection People - Part 1

Have you ever bought a new car, or seriously thought about buying one, and then suddenly noticed that same car everywhere you drove?

The parking lot is full of them. On the highway, every third vehicle matched. You started to wonder if there was some kind of sale you didn't know about. But those cars were there the whole time. You just weren't looking for them.

Scientists call it this “frequency illusion.” Your brain processes an enormous amount of information every day, and to manage that load, it creates patterns and writes stories. When something becomes important to you, your brain starts noticing it in places it always existed but previously ignored. The cars didn't multiply; your expectations did!

I want to tell you about something Jesus said that most of us don't actually believe, even if we'd never say that out loud. At his last meal with his disciples, he told them: “Truly I tell you, the one who believes in mewill also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12 CSB)

You may be thinking, "I will do greater works than Jesus?!" Think about what that claim means. The man who healed the blind and raised the dead is saying that you, through the power of his Spirit, are capable of more.

I told you that you probably don't believe it!

But the early disciples did. When they ran into persecution, when doors closed, and when people mocked them or threw them in prison, their response wasn't despair. It was: “Jesus was killed in the most violent way possible and came back from the dead. So anything is possible.” Their expectations had been permanently reset by what they had witnessed. Like the person who just bought a new car, they started noticing resurrection everywhere.

Your expectations are not neutral. They shape what you see and what you're willing to do. If you've decided a person will never change, you won't give them room to change relationally. If you've decided a situation is beyond hope, you'll stop praying and stop acting.

For the early followers of Jesus, resurrection wasn't a distant event they commemorated once a year. It was the pattern they expected daily. When they walked into a hard situation, their instinct was to ask: What would resurrection look like here? This seems impossible, but so did the sealed tomb.

Where have you stopped expecting the power of the Resurrection to change things? A relationship you've written off? A habit you've tried to break so many times you don't try anymore? A dream you buried because hoping felt worse than giving up?

Identity Statement:

“Because Jesus rose and sent His Spirit, I am not powerless. I will live today expecting resurrection.”

Reflect:

Where have your expectations become fixed at 'this will never change'? What would it mean to ask, 'What would resurrection look like here?'

Prayer:

Jesus, reset my expectations. Where I have accepted hopelessness as realism, show me the difference. I want to see the world the way You see it. Amen.

This is all copied from Bible.com, created by Scott Savage. 

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM