All in Daily Devotion
Yesterday I listened as one of my Pastors delivered a sermon on the subject of interruptions, and during it he talked about a section of scripture comprised of a story within a story... one story that interrupted another. As he continued to preach, my mind left on a different route, and the complexity of God’s word dominated my thoughts.
One of the most frequent responses I receive from readers of my morning devotionals is a request for prayer. More often than not it is to join them in a specific prayer that they have been praying for some time without receiving an answer. Do you have prayers like this? Well if so, don’t be discouraged because the disciples failed in prayer too, and Jesus taught them a powerful lesson in it.
Are you really the free person who Christ redeemed? Did Jesus pay your ransom only to find that you could not separate yourself from the sin from which he had saved you? Or, perhaps you are like the Galatians who found themselves tempted to leave the freedom Jesus had secured for them in order to chain themselves to the Law of an old faithfulness. My word for you this morning is to claim and accept the freedom whose cost was so dearly paid for you.
This morning I contemplate the body of Christ as taken at Communion. This gift that is more than a passing thought, but something which becomes part and parcel of us mentally, spiritually, and yes, physically. When at the Lord’s Table, do you realize how perfect the remembrance of Christ should be to you? This is an act in which our being is joined perfectly with His through His blessing, and by His hand.
Faith, do you desire it, do you seek it, do you accept it? Can you recognize faith when you see it in others? At its inception faith is ethereal in nature and we can’t hold it in our hand, but when we have a touch of it within ourselves we suddenly begin to see evidence of it all around us. When we have accepted faith it can suddenly be measured. So I ask... do you hold a mustard seed in your hand?
How do you smell today? Are you fragrant like a flower, sweet like honey, have the smell of sweat and toil, or are you rancid like death? The Bible speaks about smell in many ways, but none more powerful than when it speaks of the fragrance of life, and death on us. When we think of scent we most often think of the smells that surround us, but we are one of those odors... how do you smell spiritually today?
Do we look to Jesus to heal us? Do we depend upon Him to come to us in our times of illness and to lay His healing hand upon our head? Do we wait for Him to say rise and walk, or return our eyesight, or restore our hearing with a bold touch? Well sometimes the healing comes when we go to Him. He is more than a healer... He is the healing itself, and all that needs to happen is for us to come into contact with Him.
How do we come to understand the Word of God, and His will for us? Is it by our own intellect, and through diligent study that we are able to piece it together like a puzzle? Do we somehow find the hidden key within it that allows everything to fall into place so that we can stand back from it and marvel at our ingenuity? No, we understand with our hearts, and not our minds. Our minds barely scratch the surface, but our hearts use them like a scalpel.
Do you feel like you aren’t working hard enough at becoming holy? Do you believe that by your efforts you can become sanctified? Well as much as we might like to think this is possible, it is not. If we depend solely on our own efforts to win holiness then we are certainly lost. So let’s look at how sanctification is possible. How am I ever to become Holy?
Do you bless your family? Are you more than a sire, or a dame who brought forth children from the womb? There is so much to raising a family, and all of our children are as different as Jacob’s; each needing a special blessing. Not all of them are presently good, but each one needs to know the Lord, and that necessitates our prayers, our attention, and our blessing as we wait upon God to call and save them. This is our calling, the will of a God for us, but in the end we can’t save them ourselves.
Do we forgive others so that God can forgive us? Do we believe in God so that we open the way for his belief in us? Do we trust in God’s Word which allows Him to trust ours? So often we say “God did not answer my prayer”, but I ask you... did you believe, forgive, answer “yes” to His will, that He might respond in kind to you?
Are you enjoying being in the temple of God today? Are the floors sparkling clean, the windows washed, and the altar shiny and bright? Are all the candles lit, and the scent of incense fresh and pleasing? Can you hear chanting, and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit there with you? Well, it sounds like I am talking about a building, but in reality I am alluding to your own body.
If you are a Christian, and a true believer, then those in the world will hate you. They will dislike you because you are different... because you are a new creation, but most of all because you are like Jesus Christ, and by that I mean “not of this world.” We know this to be the case because we hear it in a conversation (prayer) between Jesus and God Himself.
Have you ever been to heaven? Perhaps you don’t feel that you have walked it’s streets, but have you ever stood on an adjoining hill and looked out over it, and heard the sounds of life there? Right now you are probably thinking that I have lost my mind, but more than likely you have been closer than you think, and in some moments of realized faith, actually stood there. The problem with most of us is that we don’t look around, hear the singing, smell the fragrance, and understand where we are.
Jesus said that whatever we asked in His name He would do, so why is it that you are praying and He isn’t doing what you are asking of Him? This is a common question asked about prayer, and one that causes many pastors to begin making excuses for Jesus and God. The inability to understand prayer based on one verse of scripture, taken out of context, leads to the downfall of many.