The devotional - 1046 - Foot Steps in First Corinthians, ongoing

The Devotional – 1046 – Foot steps in First Corinthians, ongoing

For the safety of the crew, a submarine has what is called a “safe operational envelope” in short; as long as the submarine stays within the envelope, the crew is as safe as sitting in your living room watching “The Hunt for Red October” Some of the factors of this envelope are speed, weight, depth and angle of the submarine. Training for duty on a submarine would (in my day) be on a simulator where we could experience the results of taking the submarine outside this safe environment. The experience of these examples were designed to warn the non-qualified of the dangers associated with living life in an environment foreign to living life in your living room watching submarine movies.  

CHALLENGES & COMMENTS – 1 Corinthians 10:1-13

We ought not to be unaware of life as a believer in Jesus, we have the examples of the Jews and their journey from Egypt through the wilderness. We also have the exhortation of the apostle Paul in this passage that we are looking at today. In addition to this we have the LORD who states clearly that He is the True Vine (the Envelope) in John 15:4 “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fear fruit of itself, unless in abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me”.

Another thought that comes to my mind is that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and forever – Hebrews 13:8 and the thought of this directs us to the comments of the apostle in 1 Corinthians 10. All of the wilderness family passed through the cloud (Exodus 13:21-22), all ate the same spiritual food (Exodus 16:4) and these also drank from the same spiritual drink (Exodus 17:5-7). Then the apostle reveals to us that the CLOUD, the FOOD and the WATER was CHRIST.

Christ is all sufficient in meeting our needs too, He is; (the Cloud representing safety, the Food representing our daily spiritual nourishment and the Water representing of physical nourishment or refreshment), and we know we are abiding in Him as we ought. However if you have been saved from this idolatrous, evil and immoral world for very long you already know how difficult it is to stay SAFE. Like many submarine commanders, we like to step outside the safe operational envelope.

Many of us feel we can get away with a few trips to the idolatry warehouse, or one or two jaunts to the evil side of the tracks and if not careful the immoral world can grip the life in a very quick heartbeat if we allow your eyes to wander. Now truly I hate to even mention the ways we allow ourselves to step away from abiding in Christ, with this – we test Christ and tempt our spiritual well-being. So we have the examples, we even have firsthand experience. Therefore we need to take heed lest we FALL.

“No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man, but god is faithful, who will NOT allow you to be tempted BEYOND what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that your may be able to bear it”. (1 Corinthians 10:13). Abiding in Christ and bearing the fruit of the VINE is not only safe, but too, it is also the ONLY way to have the love and joy of God perfected in your daily life. John 15:9-17.