The Devotional - A Look at the Book #700

by Jesse Abel

We have been studying Spirituality as an absolute reality for the children of God. The apostle Paul makes it clear. “This I say then; Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh” Galatians 5:16. Since the Spirit of God dwells in the temple of every believer… walk in your temple. This is the glory of the New Covenant. 2 Corinthians 6:11-18

When I was on submarines I was the protestant lay-leader and I enjoyed the title of “Bible Thumper” and each Sunday morning when we held services someone would come by in the stealth mode and tape a sign on the outside of the door that said: “Bible Thumper Time, do not disturb”. Sometimes we would try to find out who the man was but he was very good at his game.

Anything can be a distraction from our relationship with God and as simple as a little sign, if given the room to grow can turn into a festering distraction. One of the men in service became irritated with the sign and would get up and check for it. He would remove it when found, not only did this distract him, but the rest of us as well. The crackling of the paper being wadded up along with the disturbing of chairs and noise of the door being opened and shut was soon an irritation that was not tolerated by the rest of us and the offensive remarks caused us to nearly lose that brother. In fact; that service would have been cut short, had we not prayed and ask the LORD to regain our Spiritual needs.

I was reminded of this event when reading 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 the other morning in our devotionals before going off to work. The apostle is warning us to be sensitive to the consciences of ourselves and others. In the chapter he uses food and idolatry, but the same issue can be applied to most anything we do as children of God. Like the sign… Bible Thumper, do not disturb. The sign means absolutely nothing to anyone, not even to the person who hung it, but in the hands of spiritual wickedness in high places, it is an effective tool to destroy the weaker believer and irritate the stronger one. Ephesians 6:10-18.

We are often distracted from the “Joy of the LORD” because people (knowingly and unknowingly) do things that rattle the weak believer and aggravate the mature one. In church we take a moment to cleanse our hearts before the LORD; this is a good thing to do. However and even before we go off to church we should take a moment and look to see if we are a distraction to others. In some cases the distraction is so obvious that the eyes of many are distracted and the message of the joy of the LORD (which is in every service) is lost.