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The Today devotional reflects this morning on the tension that Jesus experienced because he was both human and divine. In Luke 4:28-30, Jesus returns to Nazareth where he grew up only to find outright hatred rather than acceptance:

Imagine what you would think if someone you had grown up with came to your town and claimed he was there to fulfill an ancient prophecy. Of course you would dismiss him; the notion is outrageous. But thats what happened in Nazareth. Jesus, the son of a local carpenter, came and announced one Sabbath day that he was the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 61.

He claimed to be the Messiah when he said, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. It seemed outrageouseven blasphemous, because he claimed to be God (which was true). No ordinary human being had the right to make that kind of claim. No wonder the elders of his town were so upset that they were ready to put him to death! (See Luke 4:28-30.)

As we spend time this Advent thinking about what Jesus’ birth, it’s important to remember that even before his last days on earth He wasn’t universally loved during His time on this earth. It’s a sobering fact that the savior of Humanity was almost stoned by the people he grew up with.

Does the fact that Jesus experienced heartache and hatred change your perception of Him? How does hearing the story of Jesus’ nearly being stoned make you feel?

When we consider Jesus’ life, it’s easy to gloss over his birth and jump straight to his death and resurrection. But it’s worth remembering that his journey to bring us salvation began in an extraordinary way.

Dennis Fisher writes in today’s Our Daily Bread devotional of the remarkable itinerary Jesus followed during his earthly mission:

Imagine this itinerary of our Savior, Jesus Christ: Place of originthe heavenly places; Initial destinationBethlehem; Mode of travelthe virgin birth; Reason for travelthe redemption of sinners; Return destinationthe right hand of the Father.

Philippians 2:5-11 eloquently describes Christs coming to earth to provide our redemption. One Bible commentator considers this passage a hymn of praise to the glory of the Suffering Servant who became exalted for His obedience: Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, . . . humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death . . . . Therefore God also has highly exalted Him (vv.5-9).

Our Lords extraordinary itinerary of redemption should fill our hearts with gratitude and praise!

Read the rest of the devotional at odb.org.

If you’re anything like me, you find it hard to love someone if they don’t reciprocate your love. That’s not to say you don’t try, but it’s just hard to love someone who has given you no evidence that they’ll love you back.

When it comes to loving Jesus though it’s important to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he first loves us. Luckily, as Spurgeon reminds us in this devotional from Morning and Evening, the authors of the Bible have given us ample reasons to trust in Jesus’ love:

True love to Christ is in every case the Holy Spirits work, and must be wrought in the heart by him. He is the efficient cause of it; but the logical reason why we love Jesus lies in himself. Why do we love Jesus? Because he first loved us. Why do we love Jesus? Because he gave himself for us. We have life through his death; we have peace through his blood. Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor. Why do we love Jesus? Because of the excellency of his person. We are filled with a sense of his beauty! an admiration of his charms! a consciousness of his infinite perfection! His greatness, goodness, and loveliness, in one resplendent ray, combine to enchant the soul till it is so ravished that it exclaims, Yea, he is altogether lovely. Blessed love thisa love which binds the heart with chains more soft than silk, and yet more firm than adamant!

Read the entire devotional at ccel.org.

What aspect of Jesus’ love for humanity helps you the most when it comes to loving him back?

Even though our devotional today from Our Daily Bread is short, it’s an excellent reminder of why studying the Bible is such a spiritually valuable use of our time. Reading the Bible forces us to respond to Jesus. Without investing the time to open our hearts and read about his life and ministry, we have a hard time ever really make a decision on whether or not to follow him:

Jesus told a group of religious leaders, who were well acquainted with the Old Testament but violently opposed to Him, You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life (John 5:39-40).

It requires an open heart as well as an inquiring mind to study the Bible. When we discover Jesus as the Person to whom the entire Bible points, we must then decide how to respond to Him.

There is great joy for all who will open their hearts to Christ and find life in Him.

Read the entire devotional at odb.org.

When did you make the jump from intellectually knowing about Jesus to actively following Him?

Despite their close association with Jesus, the twelve disciples were not models of spiritual maturity. On the contrary—it’s hard to read many New Testament passages without rolling our eyes at their short-sightedness or wondering how they could possibly have failed to grasp Jesus’ teachings.

It is, of course, unfair to judge the disciples from our vantage point two thousand years later. If we were in their position, following a radical teacher whose teachings routinely overturned their long-held religious beliefs, we’d make the same mistakes they did. But it’s still instructive to examine the disciples’ weaknesses, and to ask ourselves if we are doing any better today. That’s what this devotional from Today does:

Perhaps more than anything, the disciples were lacking in prayer. They often were not able to act wisely when there was a crisis. When Jesus needed them to keep watch and pray while he searched out the Father’s will that night on the Mount of Olives, he found them asleep. How frustrating this must have been for Jesus when he was in anguish!

Jesus has shown us how important a life of prayer is. In prayer he connected with his Father in heaven, finding renewed energy and courage to keep on with his mission. And on this night, as Jesus prayed before his arrest and crucifixion, he needed the Father’s assurance that his death on the cross was the only way to save us from our sins. We needed Jesus to do this for us, and he found the strength and the will to do it by connecting with God through prayer.

Many of the disciples’ stumbling points can be traced back to this one thing: a lack of prayer. How about you—is prayer a central part of your everyday life, informing your decisions and guiding your actions? If you had been on the Mount of Olives that night, would Jesus have found you deep in prayer… or dozing off with the disciples?

Have you ever been called a “Pharisee”? I hope not—it’s a term deeply associated with arrogance, legalism, and hypocrisy. It’s one of the harshest insults you can throw at a Christian, because it implies that in their obsession with being holy, they’ve failed to grasp Christianity’s most basic teachings.

But at one time in history, the word “Pharisee” wasn’t an insult; it was high praise! When Jesus criticized the Pharisees, he was challenging people’s core concept of what holiness and faithfulness looked like. In this devotional from Slice of Infinity, Jill Carattini imagines how Jesus’ words about hypocrisy might play out in the modern world:

Ironically, the description “pharisaical” would once have been a great compliment. The Pharisees were highly regarded guardians of the strict interpretation and application of Jewish Law. They were known for their zeal and for their uncompromising ways of following the God of their fathers. It is likely that the apostle Paul was a Pharisee, and it is suggested that much of his Christian theology owes something to the shape and content of this earlier training. In other words, to be a Pharisee was not an easy life riddled with loopholes and duplicities, like we might assume. The Pharisees were so certain there was a right way to follow God that they sought to follow Him to that very letter with all of their lives.

In this light, Jesus’s words seem a little harsher, his tone a little crueler, and perhaps his warnings a little closer to home. In the Pharisees, Jesus scolded the very best of the religious crowd, those who dedicated everything, and cared the deepest about following God. If Jesus came today into churches and singled out the ministers who work the hardest, the youth who are most involved, and the families who serve most consistently and called them a brood of vipers, we would be hurt and confused and even defensive. This is exactly what happened amongst the Pharisees.

Imagine the jarring effect Jesus’ words must have had—it would be like seeing the most dedicated and earnest members of your church criticized for being hypocrites! But Jesus’ message was not just a condemnation—it was a call to change. While most of the Pharisees resisted that call, at least one of them—Nicodemus—realized that even a life lived in pursuit of holiness could go astray, and sought out Jesus.

Have you ever felt convicted of being a modern-day Pharisee, finding yourself spiritually astray despite your devotion to church and religion? How did God deliver that message to you, and how did you respond?

Much has been written in recent years about “Generation Me,” a generation of people obsessed with themselves. Our thoughts and activities, the argument goes, have come to revolve completely around our own wants and needs. Our plans are built around what we want to do. Technology makes it easier than ever to filter out any news, data, politics, or entertainment that we don’t want to see.

If narcissism has come to define our personal lives and social relationships, it’s impossible that it wouldn’t also have an effect on our spiritual lives. It’s tempting to think that people today are more self-absorbed than ever, but Charles Spurgeon—writing over 100 years ago—sharply described the danger of letting your Christian faith get pulled into orbit around your own ego:

It is ever the Holy Spirit’s work to turn our eyes away from self to Jesus; but Satan’s work is just the opposite of this, for he is constantly trying to make us regard ourselves instead of Christ. He insinuates, “Your sins are too great for pardon; you have no faith; you do not repent enough; you will never be able to continue to the end; you have not the joy of his children; you have such a wavering hold of Jesus.” All these are thoughts about self, and we shall never find comfort or assurance by looking within. But the Holy Spirit turns our eyes entirely away from self: he tells us that we are nothing, but that “Christ is all in all.” Remember, therefore, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee—it is Christ…. let not thy hopes or fears come between thee and Jesus; follow hard after him, and he will never fail thee.

One of the most basic tenets of Christianity is that we cannot make ourselves right with God through our own efforts. Narcissism tempts us to think that we can—and when we inevitably fail, it tells us that there’s no hope for us. But when we focus our eyes on Jesus, we are saved from our sin… and from the weight of a hollow, self-obsessed life.

While it’s not always easy to get a group of people to agree on something, it usually can be done. After all, agreements are mutually beneficial. You might not get everything you want, but you’ll probably get a lot closer than you would have on your own.

Unity, however, is an entirely different beast. I might have found an amicable agreement with you, but it doesn’t mean we’re unified. Merriam-Webster defines unity as “the quality or state of not being multiple : oneness.” To be unified we would have to agree on more than just one or two issues. No, for us to be truly unified our vision for everything would have to be aligned.

This morning Jon Brown of Word of Life discusses how Christ’s mission was to bring unity to humanity. Christian unity can only be had when we decide to put others before ourselves:

Unity is more than agreement. Agreement is nice. It makes life much easier when people agree on things like the style of worship, or the Sunday school curriculum, or what to look for in the next pastor. But Christian unity is more than just reaching agreement. It comes only when we are willing to put others before ourselves. In this we follow Jesus’ example. He prayed for it, died for it, and rose from the dead to accomplish it. He will come again to usher in full unity. Until that great day, we affirm in the words of the Belhar Confession that God’s heart for unity “must be manifested and be active in a variety of ways.” We must work toward the unity we know is coming.

Have you ever experienced unity with a group of people? What was it like? How does your church work towards unity?

Four years ago the World Cup turned me into a raving soccer fan for a month. I found myself watching matches on the local Spanish stations just to keep up with the day-to-day action. Anyone who would listen to me was hit with a barrage of facts and animated play-by-plays. After the Cup ended, my interest in the sport dwindled until it started up again this summer with the 2010 World Cup.

Looking back, those hot summer days four years ago feel like they happened just yesterday. In the interim I’ve been through life-changing events and circumstances, but despite the weight of those events when they were happening, life continued to go on. The same sensation comes over me when I look at my nieces and nephews and realize that they can now talk in full sentences, or in some cases have stopped laughing so hard at their goofy uncle.

And when I look forward, the only thing I can really conclude is that I have no idea what’s going to happen.

When we look back on our past, we see how quickly life moves along; and when we look forward, the only thing we can conclude is that life is full of the unexpected. Today’s devotional from Chuck Swindoll’s Day by Day discusses how we should view the present in light of this knowledge:

I suggest there are three words that adequately and accurately describe the present. They do not contradict either lesson we have learned from time, nor do they require rose-colored glasses. Neither do they agree with philosophy’s futile meanderings. For as we look at the present, we discover: LIFE IS CHALLENGING.

Because it is short, life is packed with challenging possibilities. Because it is uncertain, it’s filled with challenging adjustments. I’m convinced that’s much of what Jesus meant when He promised us an abundant life. Abundant with challenges, running over with possibilities, filled with opportunities to adapt, shift, alter, and change. Come to think of it, that’s the secret of staying young. It is also the path that leads to optimism and motivation.

With each new dawn, life delivers a package to your front door. When you hear that ring tomorrow morning, try something new. Have Jesus Christ answer the door for you.

Life’s most challenging opportunities are often brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.

Can you relate? What unexpected circumstances have come into your life over the last year, and looking at them in retrospect, can you see that they were opportunities for growth?

After Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples had a choice: they could either return to their old ways or continue on the path that Jesus set before them. It was like leaving a kid at home for the first time: would they honor what they had been told, or immediately start bending and breaking the rules?

This devotional from Words of Hope points out that as followers of Christ we are to faithfully obey Jesus’ teachings even in his absence:

Christ has ascended and is no longer physically with us. We cannot see him. We cannot hear his words or feel his comforting touch. It would easy enough for us to tell ourselves that we have many years left on earth and that we should “relax, eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19). But his followers still obey out of faith. They know that there are reasons Jesus tells them to do certain things that go beyond immediate perception or instant satisfaction.

Faith gets followers looking up, not around. Faith finds in the ascension obedience, not excuses.

Do you find it hard to stay obedient when you know no one is watching?