All in Life
Are you distraught today? Is your life filled with disappointment, and are the things you once placed great value in being drawn away from you? If you feel morose in this way then you are losing hope in life, and perhaps your faith is under attack as well. Hope in our earthly life, and hope in faith, walk arm in arm with one another, and together they give us an abundance of life. So think on those things that give you hope, and take refreshment in your faith, and life, from them.
We go to our knees, and accept Jesus Christ as our savior, and in so doing we acknowledge God as our Father, and thus we have taken the single greatest step in our lives. We immediately feel the exhilaration, and the joy, as we lift our arms towards heaven, and feeling the Holy Spirit as He surrounds us we think “it is done”, when in fact it has just begun. Now that we are standing atop the mountain we find that we must struggle mightily to remain there. We must keep ourselves in the love of God despite the efforts of Satan, and the sin that desires to blow us from the summit of Mt. Zion.
How do we live out our lives, are we bitter, and often unhappy, or does the peace and joy of Jesus flow through, and from us? As Christians we should seek Christ in each hard time that confronts us, and not allow those who would separate us from the joy of God to have dominion over us by baiting us into seeking vengeance against them, or by withholding forgiveness from them.
Loving God, and loving one another go hand in hand, both of these originate in God, and neither can exist in us without His love having first been given to us. Do you have trouble expressing love? Do you consider yourself a tough and worldly person? Perhaps you have confessed your faith with your mind, but your heart and soul are yet to experience Him.
Let’s ask ourselves an honest question today: “who do I live for?” We profess to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and we go to the altar giving our lives to Christ, then we walk from that place and begin living once again for ourselves, our family, or something/one other that God, and Jesus. Why were we left here after our conversion? Why didn’t God transform us completely at that moment and take us to Himself?
Are you anxious to get to heaven? If you were on the verge of death would you just throw in the towel and give into it? Well, although heaven is our goal, our reward, and our wonderful anticipation, getting there prematurely isn’t what God desires for us to do. We have a purpose here just as Jesus did, so we are to serve that purpose until we take that last breath.
Are you born again in the hope and resurrection of Jesus Christ? If so do you go through periods when you are vexed by suffering and calamity in your life? Does this cause you to confront your faith, and if so does it challenge it, or strengthen it? Many of us seem to believe that when Jesus steps into our lives we cease to feel the pain and suffering of living in the natural world, but is that really the promise?
Have you been working hard to perfect yourself, and to make yourself righteous and even holy? Well, there is only one way to overcome sin, to stand before God a righteous person, and to live eternally with The Father in heaven... a belief and faith in Jesus Christ. Only by our yielding to Him, and His abiding in us, can we be changed, and made acceptable. Only in this way can we conquer Satan, and restore life to dead eyes.
Is the church we attend living in the full power of Christ, and the Holy Spirit, or have we let our own humanity take it captive? That is a very big question, and one which Paul asked the church in Galatia, but let’s make it a bit more manageable by asking ourselves... “am I living in the full power of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, or is my flesh determining the direction of my faith?”
This morning’s message is unlike anything I have written previously. I had a dream last night about a woman with ovarian cancer who was fighting for her life. Then I awoke from this dream to find that I was late this morning, so I opened my devotional reading and the subject was “Waiting for God in Humble Fear and Hope.” Are you or a loved one facing death in some way this morning?
When you look at Jesus, do you see Him sitting at the right hand of God radiating light, do you see Him hanging on the cross at Calvary, or do you see Him carrying, and dragging that Cross down the Via Dolorosa? What is the Cross of Jesus Christ to you? If you really don’t know then you had best decide because it is by the Cross that we follow Jesus.
Do you complain to God during the times of hardship in your life, or cry out in anguish to Him in the times of pain and suffering as if they were meant to punish you? Perhaps we need to take a lesson from the fruit bearing trees and vines that grow gangly unattended, and don’t produce fruit in quality or quantity. The times we find the hardest are those that benefit us the most.
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?
Once we have received the Holy Spirit into ourselves what can we expect to occur? What is it that we find within ourselves from that point forward? It is of course accompanied by the obvious gifts that were promised like wisdom and comfort, but it is much more... we are going to know the fullness of God. We are going to receive an amazing spark.
How does your life fit together with your faith? Does your life contain your faith, or does your faith contain your life? The answer to this question dictates how you will approach the Holy Spirit, and even more than that, what your perception of faith is. Will there joy flowing from your faith, or will you study its details looking for perfection, and fail. Perhaps you have solved the mystery... that by living within our faith we find perfection and joy through Jesus alone. We are imperfect yet live encapsulated by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, and surrounded in grace by the will of God.