The Chosen Devotionals 1-5

Written to accompany The Chosen-. the hit multi-season series about the life of Christ-each of these devotional books contain forty devotions. Within each devotion, you'll find a Scripture, a unique look into a Gospel story, suggestions for prayer, and questions that lead you further in your relationship with Christ. You are called by name. Every follower of Jesus in the Gospels had a not-so-great "before. " But God's love reached beyond the brokenness and called them His own. He's still doing that today. Encounter Jesus the way His followers did. Identify with their recklessness, rough pasts, religious piety, desperation for life change, and, ultimately, their redemption. Experience the transformative love and power of the One who sees past your "before" to the "after" He can redeem you to be. You are called to be different. As important as it is to know about and relate to key characters in the Bible, it's more important to understand the lengths to which Jesus has gone to relate to you. What does it mean to really follow Him. To place your identity in Him. To be surrendered to His will and His way. To be different in all the wonderful ways He was different. He is perfect love, which means when life causes your soul to faint and your faith to fail, Jesus will not. You are called to passionate pursuit. Jesus doesn't want passive followers. He wants you to pursue Him, to seek understanding, to pray for more faith, to know and hold fast to what is true and reject what isn't, to obey God's Word, and to persevere through hard things. Of which there will be many. You can't stay in the boat and walk on the water. So, get out of the boat. Because when you're out of your depth, wholly depending on God, awesome things happen. You are called to Truth. Jesus came to fulfill Scripture, to seek and save the lost, and to testify to the truth. Once He collides with our lives-our deepest needs, cultural biases, personal motivations, even prideful objections-the outcome can be infuriating. Or exhilarating. Or anything in between. Explore the angles from which you can better see Jesus and the things He taught. Learn from His followers. Welcome His rebuke and testify to the Truth who is ever working within you. You are called to surrender. We live in a world that values personal feelings and desires more. than objective truth. When it comes to following Jesus-the One who called Himself the Truth-we don't get to curate our beliefs about who He is or what He taught based on what we're comfortable with. Let's surrender to the harder teachings of Jesus. Together, may we endure His words with ears that hear. May we be soberminded. And may we hold fast to the Truth, no matter how unpopular His teachings have become.