Fakes!
The Second Sunday in Advent
I am the Lord ... I expose the false prophets as liars
and make fools of fortune-tellers. ~ Isaiah 44:24 (part), 25a (NLT)
My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world. ~ 1 John 4:1a (MSG)
KEY IDEA:
There is no shortage of fake God-talkers.
PRAYER:
Lord God, you are so true and so reliable. But there are so many people who talk about you who are total fakes. How can that be? I have a hard time trusting anyone who talks non-stop about you-or about themselves and their special relationship with you. I mean, having a relationship with you is important but so many of us use you to promote ourselves. Save me from becoming such a person and give me wisdom to discern between those sent with your message and those who are mostly interested in self-promotion. I am going to stick close to you and trust that you'll make everything clear. Amen.
*ABOUT THE
DAILY TEXTS
The Daily Texts have been published by the Moravian Church since 1731. In 2011 I started posting these Bible verses for my spiritual formation students at Pacific Islands University. In the process of responding to the verses, I found the rhythm of looking for a common thread and writing a prayer based on that key idea to be helpful for my own soul. The prayers are more or less modeled on the TRIP method, which is what I ask my students to do in their journaling. ~ Brad Boydston
TRANSLATIONS
ABP = Authorized Boydston Paraphrase -- a freestyle biblical adaptation -- somewhere between paraphrase, commentary, and sermon
CEB = Common English Bible (©2011, the Common English Bible)
CEV = Contemporary English Version (©1995, American Bible Society)
MSG = The Message (©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson)
NIRV = New International Reader's Version (©1996, 1998, Biblica)
NIV = New International Version (©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011, Biblica)
NLT = New Living Translation (©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, Tyndale House Foundation)
NRSV = New Revised Standard Version (© 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.) NTE = New Testament for Everyone (©2011 Nicolas Thomas Wright.)