The Devotional - A resolution or a solution!

The Devotional

Comment: The gathering of wisdom and knowledge is impossible if one uses their emotions as a gathering tool to collectively use it for decision making. If we care to look back over the course of a month (or if our memory is good) over the course of the past year we can easily see that viewing life and making decisions from an emotional frame of reference is often soaked in tears, torment and trouble. Years of living emotionally drain the body of health, also this sort of living destroys friendships and isolates those we love causing an inner feeling of failure. To be honest – New Year resolutions are one or more emotional quips of those who live by the fat in their pants seeking to right all of the wrong. However the LORD, the Creator of the heavens and the earth has no resolution, He has the solution! 

Devotional: How often do we think of looking to the LORD for “right living?” Most of us would say, “What? I don’t have time for that! I have to solve this problem now!” Well the bottom line is… No! No you do not. In most cases the problem will resolve on its own and while we wait for that solution and not the resolution we might calm our heart with the Book of Proverbs. This book could also be titled the book of “Right Living.”

My focus this morning is not in Proverbs, but in Matthew’s gospel. Worry, it is an emotional SIN. The words of Jesus recorded by Matthew, reveal that the Sermon of the Messiah was to direct our life to the kingdom of God and His Righteousness. A direction that leads us away from the worries of the world. This Sermon on the Mount holds some of the most important aspects of right living too.

Beginning in chapter 5 the beatitudes, (right attitudes for living – 5:1-12), those who believe in God are to be the (salt and light of right living – 5:13-15). Christ is our righteousness, He fulfills right living in the (Law of God – 5:17-20). The model prayer, sixty six words that are literally (perfect for right living – 6:5-15) and the command to (stop worrying and live rightly – 6:25-34), lastly but certainly not totally the charge to live rightly by (the narrow way – 7:13-14).

We do not need resolutions for the New Year, we need the Righteousness given to us by Jesus Christ. At the present time we know Him as the Lamb/Servant of God who willingly laid aside His life for the selfish, emotional sins of living wrongly in darkness. And He by the Power of God picked His Life again, He destroyed the last enemy of life. 1 Corinthians 15:20- 28. He is risen from the dead, He is the firstfruits of all who have believed and died or will die. If you are in Him by faith, you will live again in Him by faith. This then is the solution to “right living!” Romans 13:14 – but put on the LORD Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.

The Devotional - A Heavenly Inheritance

The Devotional

Comment: Inheritance, how does that word fit in your frame of reference? I know that some folks look for that ship to moor in their harbor. You know some rich aunt, uncle or other person close to them ready to reward them for events in life that they personally feel is deserving of reward later in life. Honestly this sort of waiting around is a waste of time and more like a childhood dream or fairytale. There is so much overwhelming evidence that this sort of reward ends up (if one were to receive it) destroying life, crushing relationships and isolating life to nothing more than a rich old recluse. GOD HAS A BETTER PLAN FOR YOU! His Plan is perfect and it is immediate, also it is a Plan that never fades away. Notice if you will James 1:9-11 and 1 Peter 1:4.

Devotional: Our desire in life is to have everything in abundance, fortune, fame and food. We seek to upsize everything including our waistline. Have you not noticed the gluttonous lifestyles of many? People search, seek and end up destroying their lives for avenues that are nothing more than dead end streets. At the end of these foolish and vain avenues of life is nothing more that death. In dying they can only add these words… they did it their way, end of story.

Notice what the LORD God has to offer. He also offers abundance, a life of ‘abundance’, John 10:10. He offers an abundance of MERCY too. Now the apostle Peter is talking to God’s children in his first epistle and he is speaking as to remind us of what we already have in our relationship to the LORD, notice 1 Peter 1:3-11. All of God’s creation seeks mercy in abundance, look quickly at Romans 8:18-30.

Blessed be the God and Father of our LORD Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a “living hope” (a blessed future) through (by means of) the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What a wonderful hope we have in Christ, there is no dead end. Jesus is alive and He is the fulfilled promise of God to all who will receive His abundant mercy, this is an inheritance that does not fade away. Because Jesus lives and He is keeping that inheritance for you and me personally. 

One day soon He will reveal this inheritance, not as a reward for our works, but as a fulfilled promise of God to all who call upon God, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, a salvation in Jesus Christ who is ready, even at this moment to be revealed in the last time (the Day of the LORD) 2 Peter3:10-13. It is therefore foolish to take the way of life offered by the world since the world is full of death and decay. Job 23:10-11 says this: “But He (God) knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His WAY and not turned aside.”

I treasure the Word of God as one who has great wealth, I hope and pray that you do too.

The Devotional - And the Battle goes on

The Devotional

Comment: The battle rages does it not? If you were to look into your mind this morning and evaluate what it is that ticks you off, would you not see those desires that promote pleasure? Come on now and be honest… God forbid, not with me; but be honest with yourself. Do you not see the desire to be right almost without regard to the other person in that maybe they have that same desire burning within their mind too? The specifics of who is right and who is wrong is certainly not the issue since the list of things we might consider right in our own eyes is normally wrong in the eyes of another. We live with people, even within our own family who differ in thought and reason and if we fail to listen to their point of view and push our point we have not only failed with friends and loved ones, we have also failed with God. There is one simple word for this failure and it is PRIDE resulting from a love for the world, a lust from the eyes that perceive and a lust for the flesh to be satisfied. 1 John 2:15-17

Devotional: Pride promotes strife, if you are in a battle today with anyone, it is a battle that comes within you and comes from the desire in your heart to war with another simply because of the pleasure it brings to be right. Notice what the apostle James has to say about this.

James 4:1-12 – Where do wars (battles) and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war (rage) within you? You lust and do not have it your way. You murder (defame or slander) and you covet to be right but you cannot obtain it. So the fight begins and the battle rages.

Often in these events, we will cry out to the LORD for help, but we ask God to be on our side. This is a critical error on our part simply because of our desire to covet (claim as ours) what does not belong to us; what by the way does not belong to us? It is the desire of the other person involved in the rage! Our desire is to spend what God may offer as a solution on our self, without regard to the other person. Coveting to be right is already in God’s mind “wrong”. He will not allow His grace to bless the prideful, but He will allow and give more grace to the humble.

Now what if all of that raging, battling and fighting should continue and the other person seems graciously blest of God? Does the Scripture speak in vain? Absolutely NO! It does not speak in vain, the Spirit of God is jealously yearning for His saints to learn to be humble. Humble does not mean to give in or give up, also being humble does not mean to destroy the other brother or sister in Christ. You are not the lawgiver, nor are you the law maker. There is but one Judge who is able to save and destroy. So stop judging another and the LORD will lift you up.

These battles and fights REQUIRE prayer, a mutual coming together and a mutual understanding that God alone is the LORD of life and He alone is the One who can and does provide the answer to ALL of life’s troubles.