RENEWAL: A 100 Day Spiritual Mindset Journey

By Mario Quezada

This is the devotional I wish I had when I was a young Christian boy growing in the faith. As a young teenager, I was unsure what this new life was supposed to be. I struggled between the two worlds of wanting to be accepted by my peers and this new idea of being a Christian.

At only 13 I desperately wanted to know Jesus, the real Jesus of the Bible. I read feverishly through the Word. Memorizing and highlighting. But with no mentor, and no older Christian brothers, I lost my zeal. I still wanted to know Jesus, but I was easily pulled into the world because of my desire to have others accept me.

The world left me empty and disillusioned, every time. And every time I would limp back to the loving arms of my Father. All I wanted was for someone to take an interest in me, to love me, to mentor me, to show me what manhood was all about, and to know the Biblical view of who God created me to be.

This devotional was born out of years of mentoring youth, teenagers, and young adults. I believe this is what God has called me to do: To help the next generation of men live the supernatural lives God intended them to live. Many of the entries end with a prayer. These prayers are designed to encourage, exhort, and or activate your faith. Please feel free to take the spirit of each prayer to inform a prayer of your own. Are you ready?

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385005536

Mario Quezada

Mario Quezada is a Brand Strategist, Creative Director, Mindset Coach, CrossFit Nerd, Amateur Baker and former Young Adult Pastor. He lives in Honolulu, Hawaii with his beautiful wife Tatiana and two amazing kids, Aila and Aiden.

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Copyright © 2023 Mario Quezada.

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Edited by Daniel Hubbard

All Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, The ESV® Bible

(The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®). ESV® Permanent Text

Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry

of Good News Publishers. The ESV® text has been reproduced in

cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers. Unauthorized

reproduction of this publication is prohibited. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0554-3 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0555-0 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0553-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023916272

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/07/2023

CONTENTS

INTRO

DAY 1: THE RECKONING

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 05

DAY 6

DAY 7

DAY 08

DAY 9

DAY 10

DAY 11

DAY 12

DAY 13

DAY 14

DAY 15

DAY 16

DAY 17

DAY 18

DAY 19

DAY 20

DAY 21

DAY 22

DAY 23

DAY 24

DAY 25

DAY 26

DAY 27

DAY 28

DAY 29

DAY 30

DAY 31

DAY 32

DAY 33

DAY 34

DAY 35

DAY 36

DAY 37

DAY 38

DAY 39

DAY 40

DAY 41

DAY 42

DAY 43

DAY 44

DAY 45

DAY 46

DAY 47

DAY 48

DAY 49

DAY 50

DAY 51

DAY 52

DAY 53

DAY 54

DAY 55

DAY 56

DAY 57

DAY 58

DAY 59

DAY 60

DAY 61

DAY 62

DAY 63

DAY 64

DAY 65

DAY 66

DAY 67

DAY 68

DAY 69

(DUPLICATE SCRIPTURE)

DAY 70

DAY 71

DAY 72

DAY 73

DAY 74

DAY 75

DAY 76

DAY 77

DAY 78

DAY 79

DAY 80

DAY 81

DAY 82

DAY 83

DAY 84

DAY 85

DAY 86

DAY 87

DAY 88

DAY 89

DAY 90

DAY 91

DAY 92

DAY 93

DAY 94

DAY 95

DAY 96

DAY 97

DAY 98

DAY 99

DAY 100

DAY 101

DAY 102

DAY 103

DAY 104

INTRO

This is the devotional I wish I had when I was a young Christian boy growing in the faith.

As a young teenager, I was unsure what this new life was supposed to be. I struggled between the two worlds of wanting to be accepted by my peers and this new idea of being a Christian.

At only 13 I desperately wanted to know Jesus, the real Jesus of the Bible. I read feverishly through the Word. Memorizing and highlighting …

But with no mentor, and no older Christian brothers, I lost my zeal. I still wanted to know Jesus, but I was easily pulled into the world because of my desire to have others accept me.

The world left me empty and disillusioned, every time. And every time I would limp back to the loving arms of my Father.

All I wanted was for someone to take an interest in me, to love me, to mentor me, to show me what manhood was all about, and to know the Biblical view of who God created me to be.

This devotional was born out of years of mentoring youth, teenagers, and young adults. I believe this is what God has called me to do: To help the next generation of men live the supernatural lives God intended them to live.

Many of the entries end with a prayer. These prayers are designed to encourage, exhort, and/or activate your faith. Please feel free to take the spirit of each prayer to inform a prayer of your own.

Are you ready?

Yesterday is no more.

Tomorrow may never come.

Today is the day

The day that Man becomes.

—Mario Quezada

DAY 1: THE RECKONING

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

— 1 Corinthians 13:11

Today is a day of reckoning. You started by opening this devotional. Maybe your wife or someone gave it to you, and that’s all well and good. But you need to know that this isn’t some feel-good, kumbaya, cry-until-it-hurts, let’s-sugarcoat-everything devotional. You will cry, but hopefully from repentance. You will laugh, but hopefully because that one joke is funny. But the number one thing I want you to do is commit to reading it and the Bible every day.

This is a call to men to be men. And yes, I start with myself. Who do you think this was written for in the first place?

As I grew up, I was intent on being the most ridiculous person in the room. I wanted to be wild, free, loud, obnoxious. My family may argue that I am still this way.

The day I learned my parents were separating was when I first started compartmentalizing what I was feeling. I pushed down my feelings and told myself I needed to grow up. Be a man, I told myself at the ripe old age of eleven. I became a hard, moody, stoic, grumpy, and most of all, angry kid.

In my mind I was acting like a man, but I was simply a frightened boy who needed to be loved. A boy who desperately needed a father to talk to him, not at him. A frightened son looking for his mother to speak with him, but I was too afraid to take the walls down because for the time being, I was the man of the house.

I thought I was acting like an adult because I had rage and anger brewing in my heart. Darkness and fear directed my personality. But it was all a lie. I was still a child, long into my teens and early adulthood.

Even though Jesus plucked me out of obscurity at 13, even though Jesus miraculously brought my parents back together and saved us all, I held onto my pain like a child with a toy they don’t want to surrender. It brought me comfort. As I leaned into Jesus, my savior and my rock, I heard the Holy Spirit speak to me verses like: Draw unto me and I will give you strength, Lean not on your understanding, and Do not fear for I am with you.

As I have grown and God has gifted me my own family, I have battled daily with allowing my childish thoughts to pull me back in. As a Bible teacher, mentor, and former pastor, I know all the things I need to do to fight the mental battle raging inside me at times.

But it comes down to understanding the dichotomy of being a child. You see, as a child I spoke, thought, and reasoned like one, just as Paul referenced in 1 Corinthians, but I also had the faith of one. Jesus says that we must have the faith of a child but rebukes speaking, thinking, and reasoning as one. Men, we must have the mind of Christ — and in the case of true believers of Jesus Christ and the Gospel, we have been gifted His mind!

It’s time for a reckoning. It’s time to determine today whether you will continue to be the child or step out and be a man after the Lord’s own heart. Commit these one hundred days to your own renewal.

Let’s grow up and stop acting like children. Let’s grab hold of the banner of the Most High and seek after purity and righteousness. Our God is holy and just and has called us after His name. Let’s rise up and cleanse our hearts and minds. Let’s think about purity, righteousness, and justice, and do them! Our thoughts lead to feelings, and they lead to action. Take out the trash, Christian. For the Lord dwells in the midst of His people.

Renewal Challenge

What is that trash in your life or heart that you have been hiding? Confront it and confess it. Now here’s the hard part: confess to your wife, or if you’re not married, tell your mentor, spiritual advisor, or accountability partner.

DAY 2

And Peter had followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. And he was sitting with the guards and warming himself at the fire.

— Mark 14:54

The time had come. It was the hour Jesus was betrayed into the hands of the chief Jewish priests. They captured him and took him to a midnight judging. The disciples scattered. Peter, who had just earlier said he would die for Jesus, followed at a distance and warmed himself at the enemies’ campsite.

Tribulations will overtake us. Things in our lives will shake us to our very cores. These times of hardship don’t build up our character; they reveal it. Time and time again Peter opened his mouth and put his foot in it. I wonder how he would have reacted to the happenings this night had he been focused on what Jesus was saying rather than his own ideas of who he felt Jesus should be.

Sometimes we have a wrong idea of who Jesus is. We read the Bible. We pray. We go to church. But somehow, we miss the point. Somehow, we spent time with a Jesus we have concocted from bits here and there and not with the Jesus of the Bible. And when trials, tribulations, hurts, and troubles come, our character is revealed. We see that we were following at a distance.

Like Peter, we end up warming ourselves at the enemies’ fire and soon we start denying the lordship of our Savior. The one who made us walk on water. The one who called us to follow Him. The one who put the Holy Spirit in us. The one who saved us from our sins by dying a brutal death to pay a price we could never pay.

Are you following at a distance? Are you putting your time in at church? Are you doing the basic amount to still call yourself a follower of Jesus, or are you clinging tight to His robe and going where He goes and doing what He does? I guarantee if we follow Jesus so close that we can smell the heavenly detergent He uses on His robe, when the storms come, we won’t cry out, Where are you Lord? But rather, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

— Psalm 23:4

Renewal Challenge

Write down when you have followed Jesus at a distance. Where have you made up a Jesus of your own as opposed to the true Jesus of the Bible? Read through the Gospel of John for further study.

DAY 3

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

— 1 Corinthians 1:9

God is faithful. Paul reminds the Corinthians that they have been called by Him to Him and the Lord has enriched them with His wisdom. God is faithful.

Often, I forget that even when I am faithless, He is faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). This road I’m on to Him is narrow and straight. Although I veer off it sometimes, the road remains there. The same is true of His Word. It doesn’t change and neither does the Lord. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

That gives me hope beyond hope. Not that I desire to ever jump off the road, but if I ever find myself in the muck and mire on either side of the path, I know that Jesus is still there, walking alongside me, ready to pull me back up, just like Peter from the sea.

God is faithful. He is true and merciful and loving, even when I am none of those things. I tend to forget that at times. The amount He loves me has nothing to do with the amount of love I show Him. He can’t love me anymore or any less.

Our relationship with and faith