Our devotional study this morning is on what our church should be called, and it is centered on the words Jesus spoke as He was throwing the money changers from the temple...
All tagged living
Our devotional study this morning is on what our church should be called, and it is centered on the words Jesus spoke as He was throwing the money changers from the temple...
While working on a lesson about “The Wings of Eagles and Valleys”, the Holy Spirit spoke to me regarding something unexpected. Scripture began to reveal to me that throughout time people have typically lived in valleys, but seldom atop mountains. It came to me that they would go to the mountain to meet with God as they sought out a quiet, private, and undisturbed, place to meet Him in prayer. I was captured by this concept because most sermons speak of valleys as hard places that are full of trials... but as I studied I found that they are so much more than that. Valleys are where we live. Valleys are where the lakes exist and rivers flow slowly to the sea as they carry and deposit the nutrients and silt washed from the mountains to fields of grain and grapes.
Living righteously through our prayers and faith every day, and taking care not to reduce our faith to a simple mental exercise. This is the subject of our contemplation this morning. Christ will return suddenly and at an unknown time; and, in the meantime, our lives can be recalled and death come to us at any time... Are we living lives that at a moment's notice we would be comfortable laying at the feet of God?
In the Bible story about Elijah and the seven times he prayed for rain to return to Israel we are reminded to pray and continue to pray for those things we desire of God... But most of all, we learn to pray for the things that are within the will of God, and to live out our lives as scripture teaches us to. Every story teaches us something about how we should live, but how often are we applying those lessons in our daily lives? Do we carry them with us when we close our bibles, and set them on our nightstands, or when we leave our secret places of prayer?
Are you a serious person? By this I mean, do you present yourself in faith as a stuffy, academically aloof, or “better than you” Christian? If you are like this or are more interested in appearing righteous than actually being righteous, then it is time to wake up. Jesus was born a carpenter’s son and lived a common life, despite being anything but common.
So many time I have felt the hands of Jesus as He washed my feet. I have come to Him for forgiveness only to find that His response would be “Sit down.”, and He would proceed to wash my feet as He spoke with me of life, death, forgiveness, and eternity.
Do I spend an inordinate amount of time studying and trying to be like Jesus and too little time just living like Him? Am I wrapped up in searching for some hidden treasure or meaning in His words at the expense of just living out the obvious things He teaches us? Our goal should be to follow Jesus and learn at His feet, but we can't do that unless we are walking with Him and making camp where He makes camp.
We share in the death and resurrection of Jesus to obtain salvation, but we also share in the life of Christ, and that gives us great joy, peace, and holiness in our everyday lives. How can we be Christian and not manifest the essence of His living?
On April ninth we concluded that we can, and should, find ourselves crucified with Jesus, so this morning we will ask ourselves another question... are we resurrected with Him as well, and what does that mean in our lives.
How parched are those who wander lost in the desert? How dry are their tongues, and how incredibly thirsty are they who pant, and thirst? What wouldn’t a man who is dying of thirst not do for a single drink of even rancid water from a stagnant pool? Well, it is similar for those of us who are lost in spiritual deserts, only here we find that although Satan tempts us with the filthy water of false gods, our soul longs for the righteous taste of living water. Jesus speaks to us of such amazing living water, and immediately we long for it, but how can we go about finding it? Where can we quench the deep thirst of our soul, and how can we resist the desperate temptation of a dying man to sip even the rancid water offered by the dark one? Well, only God can give us such water because living water flows from Jesus, His Son, and only His Word can help us fend off the temptation to drink from the poisoned pools that Satan offers us.
We suffer the ailments and troubles of the world, but we will overcome them in this place with the help of our Lord God. He is good, and He will show us the vastness of His goodness if we are willing to wait upon Him. Do we believe? Do we believe with all our heart so that we can know without a doubt that He is with us, and that we will see His goodness here in the land of the living? David believed in this way, and his faith encourages us to do the same.
Have we built a dam across our heart to hold back the flow of the Holy Spirit? Is our intention that the Spirit be made full in us by stopping its flow, and making it a deep lake of living water within us? Regardless of our intentions, this gift, this wonderful river, is meant to gush forth and water the world. Do we allow it to flow from us? Do we share this spiritual water with others so that it will bring them life… an eternal life that quenches their spiritual thirsts, and satisfies us as the cool water of our faith runs freely from within us to cleanse the world, and glorify God?
We are like the grain that becomes the bread, the body of Christ. We haven’t always been bread. We start as a seed, then a sprout, a seedling, a flowering stalk, a waving head, then the mature grain that is harvested, threshed, gathered, and finally ground by a mill into flour. Our life in the field might seem calm and glorious, but unless we are cut, threshed, and ground, we aren’t suitable for God’s purposes… to become the bread of life. Then, and only then, are we baked, and finally broken to be shared with the many… asking only that they remember all that has led us to this moment. Are we ready to be sowed in the field? How about ground by the mill?
We can easily get in the habit of doing things for ourselves, and only praying about the others that we think we can’t do alone, but is that really what the Lord expects of us? There are many small pebbles in life that we should be able to easily step over, and yet they often trip us up, or cause us to slip and fall. Sadly, they could have been avoided, but once we are on the ground it is too late to step round them, and we are left to deal with the consequences of the tumble. So we should raise all things up to God in constant prayer, and seek His council while offering thanksgiving for everything in life… the large and small alike. There is no substitute for prayer in our lives.
When we go about trying to earn our own way into Heaven, or win eternal life for ourselves by doing good deeds, it might temporarily make us feel better about who we are, but such efforts have little to no effect on our salvation. These are called dead works, and although all good deeds have some intrinsic value, these deeds are a hollow attempt at creating our own version of redemption. Only through Jesus Christ can we come to God, and truly be cleansed of the sin and guilt that has plagued mankind since his fall in the Garden of Eden.