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Divine Imperatives August 10 Devotional

by David Joynt on August 10, 2023


LUKE 4:14 | 14 Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region.

 

The first words God personally spoke to the world were a reality check. Repent, from the Greek metanoia, meant to turn around and move in a new and different direction. Jesus’ first sermon was an assessment, a negative reading, of both the direction of the world and the lives of its inhabitants.

 

His first words, according to all three synoptic gospel writers, were not words of assurance or comfort, but words that confronted His listeners to their sorry plight. They were not walking paths of righteousness, they were not aligned with God’s purposes, and they are strangers to the truth about their own lives.

 

Why is the “good news” bad before it is good?

 

 

Gracious God,

Give me a reality check. Speak to the areas of my life that are inconsistent with Your will and ways.

Amen.

 

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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