Re: Verse reading–Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day seven)
Preparing for worship today, I came across Luke 24:46-47. “Thus it written, that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead. . .and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.” The words of the Lord speak to my heart, remind me of His unchanging message. Forgiveness is predicated on repentance! For sexual sin or any other kind, repentance is the condition of God’s offered mercy. “What strange kind of salvation do they desire who care not for holiness. . .They would be saved by Christ and yet be out of Christ in a fleshly state. . .They would have their sins forgiven, not that they may walk with God in love, in time to come, but they may practice their enmity against Him without any fear of punishment”–Walter Marshall. I am praying for the Spirit of God to help us this morning as we seek Him together.
Protecting the Brand
Re: Verse reading–Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day six)
“Do not let immorality or any impurity or greed be NAMED among you.” (Ephesians 5:3) Does Paul seem concerned with the reputation of the Ephesian church? Do Christians have some responsibility to manage how we are perceived? When the subject is sin, the answer is yes. Immorality and impurity and greed (three words describing the same subject) in the lives of individual believers it is a bad thing. The hurtful rumor in the community that the church is tolerant of it or afraid to confront it is worse. All of us have been baptized “in the NAME of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” When His Name is at stake, we must act with intelligence and courage. “But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who . . .leads people astray, so that they commit acts of immorality.” (Revelation 2:20) Lord, make us tender with sinners but fierce defenders of your Name.
Freedom
Re: Verse reading- Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day five) Ephesians 5:1 “Therefore be imitators of God… walk in love, just as Christ ”
Spiritual Disciplines- What’s the point? What’s the goal? What’s the “payoff'”? Answer… FREEDOM
Skilled musicians, world-class athletes, expert carpenters, and well-prepared students all demonstrate the “freedom thru discipline” principle. They have a freedom to entertain, exhibit, and excel that others do not.
What about the Freedoms in the Disciplined Christian Life? Freedom to understand and apply Biblical Principles- by memorizing and studying Scripture. Freedom from spiritual insensitivity- by fasting. Freedom from self-centeredness- by service and worship. Freedom from guilt, anger, and consequences- by practicing purity.
The Freedom found in a spiritually disciplined life is: The capacity to recognize and accomplish what God calls us to do, and the opportunity to imitate and display the character qualities of Christ and to glorify God through our own personalities.
Be Wise
Re: Verse reading- Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day four) Salvation is not passive…we do not accept God’s gift of grace and then sit back to enjoy the fruits. We surrender our lives. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) As a result of our surrender, we seek to live a life that imitates Christ. Imitation means that we look like Him. There are things we do…walk in love, keep clean hands, maintain a pure heart, give thanks. There are things we don’t do…no immoral behavior, no filthiness or coarse jesting, no idolatry, no deceitfulness or disobedience. When we are imitators of Christ, His life shines through us to a lost world. Walk like Christ and be wise!
Waking
Re: Verse reading – Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day three)
“Wake up, sleeper.” As a sleeping person knows life only in a dream instead of as it actually is, so a person untaught by Jesus Christ knows only fleeting images of good and love and beauty, and not those things as they actually are. Consider the words of C.S. Lewis: “Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Visible
Re: Verse reading – Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day two)
But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.
Just having returned from the land of the midnight sun, I certainly have a new appreciation for light. If you have ever spent time in the far north where you get 16, 18, 20 or more hours of sunlight a day, it changes you. I saw a child’s birthday party happening in a city park…at 9:45 at night!! But there it made sense. The sun was up, and you wanted to be out and in it. I couldn’t believe the amount of energy I had at 11:00 PM, simply because there was light.
When things are visible and seen they have energy from the light that shines on them. This is the same for us. When Jesus’ light shines on us, the darkness is driven away and we are made visible. Be in the light!
Purity – The road less traveled
Re: Verse reading – Psalm 24:1-6; Ephesians 5:1-16 (day one)
“For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”–Jesus (Matthew 7:14)
In Ephesians 4 and 5, the Bible gives moral instructions. Spiritual requirements. These two chapters (with other portions of God’s word) point to a path of purity from sin and issue a call for every believer to walk this path in obedience and blessing. Many subjects are addressed. Honesty–v 25. Anger–v 26. Stealing–v 28. Hurtful language–v 29. Sexual immorality–5:3ff. All component parts of the “new life” that God gives us in Christ by the Spirit, and all difficult to teach in an age of moral ambiguity. Many in this generation resist this teaching as “legalistic” or “rule-focused”. I imagine the same was true in Paul’s day. More to say as the week comes. “Two roads diverged in a narrow wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”–Robert Frost
A glorious death
RE Verse reading–Luke 11:1-13; Luke 18:1-8 (day seven)
“Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who CRY to him day and night?” (18:7) “And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down on the ground.” (Luke 22:44) Prayer, for Jesus, was a kind of death. Painful. Physically exhausting. It will be the same for us, I believe. A death to impatience as we wait on God, a death to pride as we depend on His power, a death to dishonesty as we openly confess our sins. I labor, sometimes, under the false expectation that the spiritual life should be convenient and easy, accessible even to the most casually interested applicant. It was not so for Jesus and unlikely to be so for those of us who love Him and want to share His Spirit. Easy? No. Powerful? Yes. “It is in dying that we are born to eternal life”–St. Francis
Acceptance and assertion
RE Verse reading–Luke 11:1-13; Luke 18:1-8 (day six)
“Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they always pray and not give up.” (18:1) It is not an easy balance to find. When do I ACCEPT God’s will, resign myself to things I cannot control, and when do I ASSERT my needs, persevere and not give up? The answer lies in the ability of the Father to communicate with my spirit. As Jesus prayed in the garden He gradually “knew” that the cross was the Father’s will. With the story of the widow, however, Jesus made clear that sometimes persistence is required and that the believer will hear the Spirit whispering, “do not give up, keep going.” Neither posture is correct in every situation. Sometimes I accept an answer I do not want, and other times I continue to press with the confidence that an answer will eventually come. Only God can help me know which path is right.
Asking the Right Question
Re: Verse reading – Luke 11:1-13; 18:1-8 (Day Five) Luke 11:1 It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples.”
Of all the questions the disciples could have asked, they chose prayer as the topic of this request. Why not miracles? Why not wisdom? Why not prophesy or the future? The disciples made the connection between the life of Jesus (power, peace, wisdom, hope, and joy) and the discipline of prayer that He faithfully demonstrated. They saw in the Savior, a life they wanted to imitate. They believed that this kind of approach to prayer was both possible and beneficial. Do we?
Richard Foster says, “Prayer catapults us onto the frontier of spiritual life. Of all the Spiritual Disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.”