Tearing Down Walls
First15 Devotional
First15
4.9 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2021
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today’s devotional, we’re continuing our focus on honesty by looking at how we can tear down walls we’ve built up in God’s presence every day. There is true life in vulnerability. And if we can trust God to be our shield, living with openness and love towards him, ourselves, and others, we’ll experience a greater abundance of life than we thought was possible. Let’s come before God today with courage, trust, and humility.
Our Scripture for today comes from Acts 24:16, and today's worship is Waste My Life by Craig and Rachel Denison.
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Do you ever feel like life just happens to you?
Instead of choosing the things that fill your day, does life always somehow sweep you up into its endless flow of expectations and obligations?
If so, there’s a better way! It’s called a Rule of Life, and Craig Denison has written a new book about creating your own Rule of Life called Living Intentionally. We’d love to put a copy in your hands to say thanks for your donation to help more people experience God the first 15 minutes of their day.
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First15 is a daily devotional written and recorded by Craig Denison. If you would like to learn more about the First15 app, books, blogs, videos and our other resources, please visit first15.org. You can always reach out to us on our contact page on the website.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In today's devotional, we're continuing our focus on honesty by looking at how we can tear down walls we've built up in God's presence every day. |
| 0:14.0 | There is true life and vulnerability, and if we can trust God to be our shield, living with openness and love towards him, ourselves, and others, |
| 0:24.7 | we'll experience a greater abundance of life than we thought was possible. |
| 0:29.8 | Let's come before God today with courage, trust, and humility. |
| 0:34.4 | Welcome to the First of Teen podcast. |
| 0:58.6 | Thank you. humility. Welcome to the first of teen podcast. Our verse for today comes from Acts 24, verse 16, where Scripture says, I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man. |
| 1:08.7 | In order to protect our hearts from the pain and wounds of the world, |
| 1:13.6 | we both consciously and subconsciously build walls. |
| 1:17.6 | And these walls take all sorts of forms. |
| 1:21.6 | Some walls are built for appearance, so that outward beauty covers up inward brokenness. |
| 1:28.3 | Some walls are built to be strong and tough, so that pride and strength cover up inward vulnerability and self-consciousness. |
| 1:38.3 | Some walls are built in order to blend in so that people pass us by all together |
| 1:44.8 | and never try to know us. |
| 1:47.8 | Whatever wall we choose to build, one thing is for certain. |
| 1:52.2 | The walls might guard us from harm, |
| 1:54.6 | but they also keep us from ever experiencing true life. |
| 2:00.3 | Abundant life comes from being both fully known and then fully loved. |
| 2:05.8 | We can't experience the love of God in others if we don't allow ourselves to be known. |
| 2:12.8 | We can't experience God's grace and affection for us if we shield ourselves from him out of fear that |
| 2:19.8 | he will see us and reject us. And whenever someone tries to love us fully, we will always reject |
| 2:27.3 | their love by saying, if you truly knew me, you wouldn't love me. Living with walls up isn't really living, it's surviving. |
| 2:39.3 | But God knows our pains. He knows our wounds. Psalm 3418 says, the Lord is near to the broken |
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