The Devotional - USA07

The Devotional

Comment: Looking through some of my saved documents I can determine that I began writing devotionals in December of 2007, I suppose I am reaching the 8^th year. Many changes have occurred along the way. To start, I received permission from “Turning Point”, Dr. David Jeremiah’s devotional, to ride piggy back on his daily messages and with that okay I began. This morning a brother in Christ and wonderful friend whom I have known since 1975 reminded me that we were both saved in 1975, which directed my thoughts to look back to one of my first devotionals. The title of that message was. “How connected to Jesus are we days?”

Challenge: Of course this will not be verbatim from that message, excerpts of the message itself will be in italics.

“In May of 1975 I accepted the message of the gospel and Jesus rescued me from a terrible life of sin and despair. He took me out of the quicksand of sin and death, cleansed me and for the first time in life I felt peace with God and experienced His Love, He gave me a brand new life. All of us “children of God” have a similar experience to tell”.

Religion teaches a person how to walk, talk and pretend godliness but all the while that person in their heart of hearts knows that something is missing in their god talk; that is, if they chose to talk of God, as their life apart from a Sunday church event knowingly stinks of sin.

The devotional of the past goes on about God’s children ought to be about growing and abiding in the vine, as the Vine is Jesus Christ, John 15:1-27. We will break from the comments of the past at this point, but continue the thought of abiding in Christ and being separated from the worldly religions that appear as beautiful places of worship, yet as Jesus points out in Matthew 23:27 that these are nothing more than “white washed tombs” in side those sepulchers (burial tombs) you will find nothing but dead bones.

If the scripture of the Holy Bible is true, and it IS! Then Matthew chapter 23 teaches us that God (Jesus is God) that God rejects the practices of religious worship. Following this discourse of Jesus in Matthew 23 and beginning in verse 13 through 23 we see the rejection of God toward those practicing righteousness apart from faith. Eight times Jesus calls this practice hypocritical, twice He refers to those who participate in religion, fools. He calls the leadership of these religions, serpents and vipers which is a direct connection to Satan himself, Revelation 12:9.

Satan’s main course of action is deceiving the world, he is doing a good job and with religion he is able to take the peoples of this world away from the True and Living God. A personal relationship with the Creator God is unthinkable and unheard of in all religions. Being a friend, brother, bond servant and personal believer in God is not popular in religion. Religions believe that God needs to be convinced that the righteousness practiced by the religious conduct of people are good enough and therefore deserve to be with Him. Bah! Humbug!

Isaiah 64:6 reads like this – But we are all like and unclean thing and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rages (garments). We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind have carried us away (from God). Thus if salvation of the soul is to happen, it must be provided, not by the religion of man, but by the gift of God. John 1:29 and John 3:16 is the gift, Ephesians 2:8-9 is how it happens and Ephesians 2:10 is why it happens. Receiving this gift opens the gate of heaven, faith in Jesus Christ becomes a relationship with God that never fades away. Abiding in the Vine is simply allowing God to teach us to discard all of the religion by setting us apart from it.

Becoming Christ-like is a personal relationship with God Himself and we learn that the religious garments are to be discarded as filth, (do not put them in the Goodwill bin at the corner market) burn them. We also learned that God replaces these garments with clothing of His own. Romans 13:14 and Ephesians 6:10-17 provide ample clothing giving us the ability to fend off the works of the world and religion. With this powerful apparel we will learn to pray in the Spirit and observe that all of our needs are fulfilled, just as our other brothers and sisters in Christ. So ours in Christ is a personal relationship with God, not a religion striving to gain favor with God.