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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

The Devotional – A Look at the Book #674



Meditate on this!
 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though He may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Your sole response to this question by Jesus Christ will determine your soul’s eternal destiny. John 11:25-26

One time in the past I had ambulance duty during the night and sometime just after midnight we received a call from a local nursing home. One of the men in the home was having difficulty breathing, it took me about four minutes to get to the station and along with two others we hopped into the ambulance and darted across the street to the nursing home all within ten minutes. The man in his mid fifties was complaining of heaviness in his chest and was breathing hard. We gave him oxygen and place him on the gurney. His three hundred plus pounds caused the gurney to creak and grown but it held him. Also and because of the man’s complaint, the paramedic arrived. Four technicians and well over one hundred thousand dollars of equipment darted down the highway to the local hospital. All of this took about forty five minutes. We took the man’s vitals every five minutes and all seemed unusually normal. After arriving at the hospital and getting the man settled into a bed with several nurses and attendants helping the man asked if he could have a coke. Someone asked him why? And with a rage that I have not witnessed before, he said. “I asked my brother to bring me a coke last evening and he refused and I got very angry at him. I also knew that if I could find someway to get the hospital I could get one. Because of his angered state of mind, he got the coke. It only cost the local tax payers just over one thousand dollars. In some ways, I see that this is not the state of the Union, but the condition of the country. Ecclesiastes 6:1-12

Various Scripture
I enjoy the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations; however I can bog myself down and become depressed when comparing our current state of affairs too those cycles of discipline that God uses on nations that forget Him. If one takes the time to look at our current events then you no doubt know that of the five recorded disciplines that God uses to correct an entire nation, this nation is well into the fourth cycle, yet we still like watching the “tap dancing” around this issue rather then actually going to God for help and restoration. 2 Chronicles 7:14

The apostle Paul states in Romans 1:16-17 that he is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, so why would he make such a statement? Some religions are ashamed and make the gospel a human effort to gain God’s favor. In other words these religions use human power and religious motivation to seek to gain favor from God. In doing so these councils fail in recognizing the grace of God, and so what is a good definition of grace.

The gospel does not come from man, it comes from God; fully equipped with His power to reveal the need of salvation to all mankind. First to the Jew and also to you and me; the righteousness of man cannot accomplish this work. The grace message of salvation belongs to God to give it too whosoever will receive it. This righteousness is not found in all “religious faiths” but it is past down from faith to faith. In other words the faith of someone who is justified by the righteousness of God, shares his or her faith with another and that faith comes alive in that person who carries it to another; thus the justified shall live by the grace of God through faith. Galatians 2:16.

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