All in Daily Devotion
In faith, like in our daily life... we move from dawn to dusk and back to dawn again as we move through our days. God created light in our lives, and thus separated it from the darkness. Are you currently walking in the light of day, or enduring a night? Both are natural, and although we are much more comfortable in the light, we learn to lean on the Lord in the dark, and we trust in His comfort and protection as we sleep.
When you have conversations with God, how do you pray? Do you have long and repetitive talks where you repeat yourself over and over again, do you concoct an ornate prayer, or perhaps you use demanding language as if trying to corner God by using His own word and promises as legal documents? My advice this morning is to be humble, considerate of who we are talking to, reverent, concise, and most of all do not turn your prayer into a show.
Have you conquered the bold sins in your life, but still have those little nagging sins that seem to fly under the radar? You know the ones... those seemingly insignificant habits like white lies, and occasional gossiping, that just don’t feel bad enough to be concerned about. Besides, you have come so far, and cast off such large sins! Well friend, the little or subtle sins can destroy all the progress you have made... they are the enemy within.
Do you make excuses for sin? Do you make room on the seat beside you for sinful people? Do you find it noble, or gracious, to greet sin with a smile and a handshake? So often today we hear excuses made for allowing ourselves to coexist, tolerate, or even fold sin into our everyday lives. How do we approach sin in our lives? At what point does it stop being tolerated, and begin to influence our lives?
Do you feel the tug of the Holy Spirit against your heart? Perhaps you think of it as a subtle yearning, or even a curiosity that you can’t resist. However it is that you initially experience it, this is God reaching out to you, and Jesus softly saying “Follow me.” It is the same for each of us, whether we are wealthy or poor, tall or short, thin or plump, sick or well, but it always finds us the same... as sinners, and the promises are the same also... salvation, righteousness, glorification, and eternity...
Today is Memorial Day, and is a federal holiday in the United States; it is a day in which we remember those who have fallen in military service to our country. It is appropriate on this day for us to read or recite Psalms 91 which is known commonly as the soldier’s prayer. On this day my mind wanders to a different kind of soldier as well, the Christian soldier, and the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers”. It is hard to separate soldiers from their faith in God... it is so deeply called upon in the heat of battle... both physical, and spiritual.
Do you carry around a heavy load of stress, and anxiety that comes from all the problems you have in your life? Do you keep repeating “The Lord won’t put any more on me than I can endure.” as if that were scripture? Yet, the problems keep mounting and you are about to break? Well that saying isn’t scripture, and the Lord never intended that we solve our own problems, but rather that we bring them to Him. We were not created self-sufficient; we were made to need God, to love Him, and be worshipful of Him.
Are you a driven person? Do you run at everything you do whether it is work, play, friendships, relationships, or even your faith? Are you known by monickers such as hard working, industrious, unrelenting, or other such descriptions? Being driven is a personality trait that often gets in the way of our faith. It is valued by society because we are creatures bound by time, and it lends well to works, but to God the true value is in perfection, purity, righteousness, and holiness. How do we reconcile these two ways of approaching life, faith, and eternity?
Did you awaken this morning and immediately thank God for this day? Perhaps you thought to yourself “I am not a morning person, I will pray once I get fully awake”, or then again, maybe everything was good in your life right now, so you didn’t think of praying at all. What if you knew someone that came to you only when they needed something from you, would you be glad to see them at your door? Probably not, and yet God welcomes each of our prayers as if it were our first. He wants to fill the time between disasters with relationship.
Who plans your life? Are you busy laying out the future details regarding where you are going, what you will accomplish, or the places you will rest and take sustenance? If these plans are being made by anyone other than God then you will lead an unfulfilled life indeed. His plan, and His will are more than an aside... they are the sole road through life which will lead us to a joyous eternity with Him.
We read scripture and it tells us that laying our life down for another is a singularly great act of love, but how do you go about doing this? Is it a life ending experience? I am going to surprise you by saying that there may be more to it. More often we give our life not in death, but in the unselfish and complete service of another, and if we are the recipients of this kind of love how are we to honor it?
The painful feeling of hunger insures that we will not neglect the nutritional needs of our body. The desire for intimacy with our spouse is a yearning that insures our love for one another will deepen, and that the species will be perpetuated, and just as certainly, the sweet taste of God’s love draws us to an abiding relationship... and our salvation. Have you tasted the sweetness of God’s love, felt the yearning for a deeper relationship with Jesus, and hungered for His Word? Day by day our spirit should long for that familiar longing... for an increase of faith.
How sweetly, and with what love does our Lord beckon us to come to Him. Do you hear Him, and yet ignore His invitation? Does the call and allure of the world drown out His loving words, and appear more enticing to us? Friend, there is no earthly love or passion that can equal those of God. His love is forever, and His passion for our lives is full to the brim with goodness and mercy... He never disappoints.
Do you get what you pray for? Does God answer you word for word in all those things that you would have Him do in your prayers? Our prayers and God’s will do more than just go hand in hand; their fingers are interwoven so tightly that these two hands are inseparable. This determines the success of our prayer lives. So how we pray should be exactly as we should live... in the will of God.
Who is ultimately responsible for your salvation? Who do you look to to guide you through faith and into eternity with God? It is so easy to lean on our religion, look to our individual churches, or denominations, and even some trusted persons of faith, to provide us with the truth, but when it comes right down to our faith and salvation we alone have the responsibility for believing, and what we have faith in must be discerned, and determined by us. No other man except the risen Christ can bring us to God. No other spirit than the Holy Spirit can guide us.