Chillin’ By the Waters

Read: Psalm 1

Reflect: Take a few minutes and think about how you can be the “Blessed” person this Psalm is talking about. Write down your thoughts.

Request (Prayer): Jesus, teach me to follow after Your ways so that I can be blessed.

The “blessed” man is the one who does not hang out with the non-believer, but is the one who finds peace and satisfaction in Christ alone. The word, “blessed” could be translated as, “happy”. Happy is the man who does not walk in the path of sinners, who stands in the path of sinners or who doesn’t sit in the seat of scoffers, the happy man is the one who delights in God, for his way will be made straight.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hang out with a group of people I know I shouldn’t, the Lord always reveals to me that I should cut ties with those friends and pursue friends that will lift me up in the Lord, rather than bringing me down. Have you noticed that too? When I am with friends who are not believers, I always tend to stumble a lot quicker with them. When I am with friends who can encourage me in my walk with Christ, I tend to be strengthened by them.

As a Christian, we have the opportunity to commune with God on a very personal level. So much so, that He wants to have a relationship with us! How cool is that? To know that the Creator of the universe wants to hang out with me is a pretty big deal. The God of this world wants to spend time with us! And we should in turn want to spend time with God.
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All Power, All God

Read: Genesis 1 & 2

Reflect: Take a few minutes and reflect on the ways that God’s power is displayed in creation. Write down your thoughts.

Request (Prayer): Thank You Lord for Your creation!

When you look at the account of creation, and all that God had created at that time, you cannot, and should not be able to help but stand in awe of who God is. Why? Because of how God created the universe and everything in it! How did He create it? He SPOKE it into existence! He didn’t have to come up with blueprints or mock-ups of what He thought it should look like, He knew exactly what He wanted it to be, and He just said “Let there be light,” and there it was, after He spoke everything into existence.

Because of who God is and because of what He has done and is doing for us, we should want to worship Him because of that. His only Son, Jesus, died in our place so that we didn’t have to be tortured and killed for our sins, He put that upon Himself to do. That alone should cause us to worship.
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Attention Getter!

Read: Isaiah 6:1-7

Reflect: Worship is defined as the object of adoring reverence or regard. God is the one who should receive our attention and reverence. Think of different passages of Scripture that point to how awesome and holy God is.

Request (Prayer): God, show me how great You are!

Isaiah had a vision of being before the throne of God. In this vision he realized 2 things.

1. He saw how holy, majestic and amazing God is. His power, His royalty and Kingship were all on display.

2. As he saw God seated upon the throne, he realized the severity of his own sin.

When we see God, we don’t see Him as we want Him to be, whether that be keeping a few things out, maybe not liking a part of God, i.e. His judgment or His all-knowing, but regardless of what we want to see, we see how perfect He is, and we see our own sin magnified by 1,000 times! Our sin should cause us to see how much we need God, and when we see God, we should see how offensive our sin is to God.
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CRUX Daily: Give It Up!

Read: Luke 14:25-35

Reflect: The most important relationship that you will ever have is with Jesus. What does Luke say here about where needs to be in your life? Where does Jesus rank in your life now? In order for you to be the best husband or wife is by loving Jesus now!

Request (Prayer): Jesus, help me to give You my undivided attention and to make You number one in my life.

Have you ever had to give up something that was so hard to let go of? Just recently, I made a bet that I would not eat sweets for 2 weeks. And it killed me! I had to let go of eating any sweets at all, so that I could win. I couldn’t have any ice cream, brownies, cookies, candy, nothing! It was devastating, I felt as though part of my life had been thrown away…ok not really, I’m just being dramatic.

Giving up something is not easy to do but it is necessary at times. Why? It helps us evaluate whether that thing is an idol or if we can really go on without that thing.

Think about something in your life that you like to do or that you like to have. Now think about taking that thing out of your life and see whether or not you can live without it. Maybe it’s video games, texting, television or the Internet? Can you live without any of those things?
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CRUX Daily: Purity is the Best Policy

Read: 1 Corinthians 6:18-19; Psalm 119:9

Reflect: Another way to be prepared for marriage now is by committing to purity. Purity is not just in action but also in the mind. In your own words write down what purity means. Discuss that with your parents and pray with them for help in being committed to purity.

Probably an uncommon word in the world is purity and modesty. What we see through the media and read about through peoples Facebook is not promoting purity. Purity is staying away from anything that would defile or stain you. One of the hardest pressures you may face as a young person will be purity. One of the best gifts you can offer your future spouse is being pure. How does one do that?
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CRUX Daily: Looking for Your Future Spouse

Read: Ephesians 5:26-27

Reflect: Marriage is an awesome and serious commitment that the Lord established with Adam & Eve. One of the ways you can be prepared for marriage now is by praying for your future spouse. In what ways can you pray for your future spouse?

Request (Prayer): Pray for your future spouse.

We, as humans, long and desire to be in a relationship. That’s how we were designed, that’s how we were created. We were created to share this special bond between, one man and one woman, known as marriage.

Marriage is a sacred thing. It is not suppose to be taken lightly either. God established marriage to an eternal covenant, and the world thinks that marriage is just something you do, and when you don’t love that person anymore, you move on to the next one, and so on and so forth.

As a believer of Jesus Christ, we need to understand the importance of who we marry and what our marriage, in due time, should look like.

God has designed marriage as a forever relationship, which means that the person you marry the first time should be the person you marry for the last time as well. We should only be married once, because God hates divorce. We should work through the problems, after all, the vows people make say, “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health,” because regardless of the circumstance, marriage is suppose to be a joint effort at glorifying God through the relationship.
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