Month: July 2015

The Desires of a New Man in Christ

Psalm 37:5
Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.
Jesus tells us to give Him our burdens and He will give us rest.  God promises to give us the desires of our hearts if we delight in Him.  The peace and joy of our Christian life will be determined by the constant application of our belief and faith in God’s Holy Word.
If we choose to involve God selectively in our lives, we can expect that the fulfillment of His promises will only be partial.  It is in the full submission to Jesus Christ’s lordship in our lives that we experience the fullness of God’s grace.  It is by putting God first in all things that we experience the joy that the world cannot provide.

To delight in God is as much a privilege as a duty.  He has not promised to gratify the appetites of our flesh, but the desires of our new spirit in Christ.  What are the desires of a new man in Christ?  They are to know, love and serve the Lord, to cast our burdens upon Him and to leave everything else to Him.  He will bring to pass all that He has in His will for us that we have committed to.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your loving kindness, Your mercy and Your grace in our lives.  We praise You with every breath because each breath is a gift from You.  We seek to turn over every decision in our lives to You.  We seek to leave every trial and concern at Your throne.  We pray that the Holy Spirit will instruct us in the ways of complete surrender to Our Savior, Jesus.  May the world around us be drawn to You by witnessing the joy in our lives as we place all of our trust in You.  We ask all these things in the name of Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord Our Provider, Jesus Christ. 

Until We Are Lacking in Nothing

James 1:4
And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
As parents, we stood by the side of our children as they learned to ride a bike.  We picked them up and consoled them each time they fell.  We brought attention to the errors of their ways and reminded them of the the right ways to ride.  We went out with them time and again, rejoicing in each moment of progress, until they had mastered the skill of riding.  The process required the patience of the parent and the child.  The reward certainly made the trials worth the effort.
Thank the Lord for His salvation promise to complete every good work that He starts in us.  He will let nothing in our lives escape His attention.  He will steadfastly stand by us even as we stumble over and over.  He will pick us up as many times as we fall, even though He knows that we will never get it completely right on this earth.  He will continue to show us the error in our ways and point out the path that He has set aside for us.  He will continue to pick us up until that glorious day when we stand before Him in the image of His Son and He welcomes us into heaven as good and faithful servants.

May we learn to be patient with the process of sanctification.  May we find joy in the constant grace that Our Father extends to us.  May we prepare ourselves for the perfection in glory that is coming.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, blessed be the name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.  Thank You for His steadfast work in our lives.  We pray that we will be quick to see the error in our ways and be even quicker to respond to Your correction.  May we completely surrender our lives to the perfect ways of Your Son.  As we rise and fall in our frailty, may we rejoice in knowing that Your presence is always with us and You will not leave us before Your perfecting work is done.  We ask all these things in the name of our Sure Foundation, Jesus Christ.

The Freedoms That We Celebrate

John 8:36
So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

We gather on Independence Day to celebrate with fervor and joy our freedom from Great Britain and our establishment as a sovereign nation.  We celebrate to recognize Our Creator who endowed us with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We celebrate with gratitude what America has become – a shining light on the hill – the most creative, productive and richest nation in the history of mankind.  And finally, we celebrate to let every other nation in the world (and every internal ideological group) know that we are not interested in and will not tolerate any other system of belief that they might wish to impose upon us.  
We can draw parallels in our own personal freedom in Christ.  When we accepted Jesus as Our Savior, we were overcome by joy as we declared our separation from a sin nature that condemned us.  With great fervor, we celebrated our rights as heirs to the kingdom of heaven.  We took our places as lamp stands on the hill, providing light to the world around us.  And finally, we proclaimed victory over Satan and every evil that he tries to impose upon us.

Even though the United States of America has been the standard for freedom around the world for over 200 years, as citizens of the United States, we are only partially free.  We only have the freedom extended to us in the land in which we live today.   But as those who are made free by Christ the Son of God, we are not free in part only, but are wholly free and have a right to all the privileges of the kingdom of God here on earth and in heaven.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for endowing us with the unalienable freedoms of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  We thank You for providing Your Son, Jesus, so that we may be endowed with eternal rights to the fullness of life in Your kingdom.  On this Independence Day, Father, we pray for our nation.  We ask, Father, for You to bring us leaders who will stand for our beliefs.  We pray that You bring us leaders who will uphold Our Constitution – the ingenious plan that was designed to make it impossible for any person or group to establish a despotic rule over our people or our nation.  Lord, we pray that the United States of America will remain for all future generations a beacon of liberty, an upholder of our God-given unalienable rights and a guardian of our independence.  May we personally proclaim freedom from life in the flesh as we live in the fullness of our lives in Christ.  We ask all these things in the name of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, in whose kingdom we reside.

A Vague Sense of Our Sin is not Enough

Isaiah 6:5
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
When we go into the presence of God, anything that is not pleasing to Him will come to mind.  We cannot get by with a general sense of sinfulness.  The Holy Spirit will not rest until we have been convicted of our particular sin.
When Isaiah came upon the vision of the Lord and saw His holiness, Isaiah immediately proclaimed that he was a man of unclean lips.  Isaiah knew that he would not be able to serve the Lord without cleansing himself from the sin that he had been shown.
God will work the same way with each of us.  Through His Holy Spirit, He will convict us of a single point of iniquity.  Then He will lead us to deeper revelation of the things in our lives that are displeasing to Him until we are properly prepared to serve Him.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the restlessness that the Holy Spirit brings upon us when we are walking in darkness.  We thank You for the absolute focus that You put on our sins, making it impossible for us to take on a vague sense of the sinfulness in our lives.  We pray the Holy Spirit will bring our every iniquity into the light so that we may repent and move forward in obedience to Your calling on our lives.  We ask all these things in the name of the Perfecter of Our Faith, Jesus Christ.

Imitating Jesus Christ

1 Corinthians 11:1
Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.
In Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, he exhorted them to pattern their lives after Jesus Christ.  Paul understood that obedience to a creed simply takes us to a proper and higher level of lifestyle.  Accepting Jesus Christ as Our Savior and patterning our lives after Him will move us toward a level of perfection, holiness and purity that only He could attain and we can begin to approach through Him.
In truth, it is not good enough to be good.  It is not good enough to do great works.  The only thing that we can do that is of any eternal value is to submit our lives to Jesus Christ as Our Savior, to die of self and to take on the spirit of the One who dwells within us.  Anything less than full submission to Our Lord and Master and anything less than becoming imitators of Jesus Christ as His disciples leaves us short of being true Christians.

What is the goal then?  The goal is to imitate Jesus Christ in our daily lives.  What is the challenge?  The challenge is that we are incapable of achieving our goal without the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.  What is the answer then?  The answer is to surrender all that we are and all that we have and all that we will ever be and all that we will ever have to Our Lord and Savior.  Then we must turn to the Holy Spirit daily to guide us and strengthen us as the natural man within us refuses to surrender.  Finally, we should rejoice and praise God for He has provided the unchanging, unfailing way, the truth and the life that will allow us to fulfill our stated goal.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing the Word to become flesh so that we could see the standard to which we are all called.  May we stand before You one day in the image of Your Son, washed clean by His blood and perfected by His presence within us.  Father God, we pray that the Holy Spirit will teach us how to become true disciples of Jesus as we spend our time on earth preparing for the glorious day of coming into Your presence.  We ask all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Most High God.  

Until You Have Paid the Last Penny

Matthew 5:25-26
Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.  Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
In Matthew, we are taught that when we have a debt that needs to be paid that we should try to reconcile with the one to whom we owe the debt.  We will always end up suffering the consequences of the unresolved debt if we do not try to come to terms with our accuser.  We should try to come to terms with the accuser prior to going before the judge.  This passage is generally regarded as a teaching about how to handle conflict concerning civil matters. 
The same perspective can very easily be applied to sin in our lives.  It was necessary for Jesus to redeem us from our sin debt for there is not a space in heaven where the slightest sin is allowed.  It is our responsibility to come to terms quickly with the sin in our lives.  We must confess and ask forgiveness for every act for which we deserve to be accused and judged before the Throne of God.
Once we received Jesus as Our Savior, we found it generally easy to turn away from obvious and grievous sin.  It is probable, however, that as we matured in Christ that we found out that there were areas of sin in our lives that had been hardened prior to our renewal in Christ.  It is even more likely that we found and continue to find areas in our lives that are not necessarily sinful, but are separating us from the perfection that we will reach in heaven.   Be certain that this revealing process will continue with us until we breath our last breath.  Thank God that He is so merciful for it is through these struggles the He reinforces our dependence on Our Savior and He draws us closer to Himself and to the time that we will spend eternity with Him.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for sending Your Son to spare us from our sin debt.  We thank You for Your mercy as You see us struggle against sin in our lives.  We thank You for Your grace as You provide Your Holy Spirit to aid us in departing from our errant ways.  May Your countenance shine upon as we turn away from our old lives and learn to live according to Your kingdom principles here on earth.  We ask all these things in the name of Our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.