2013-09-27
Good Morning Dear Ones,
We’ve seen ways that God strengthens us in the last devotion. He gives believers in Christ His full armor, as seen in EPH 6: 10-18, and He imparts to us the same strength He used to raise Christ from death to eternal life, in EPH 1: 18-20. The latter is there for us to use in gaining victory over the evil one in spiritual warfare. Ezra remarked on this imparted strength. EZRA 7: 28, “I was strengthened, as the hand of the Lord was upon me.” God strengthens us through the encouragement we receive in IS 40: 29, 31. God never encourages us to be lazy, but instead gives us the strength to do work to build His Kingdom during our time on earth. He makes this notion clear in DT 6: 4-5 and MK 12: 30. We are reminded in the seven-fold Doxology of REV 5: 17 what our God deserves.
The Holy Spirit directs me to begin a new segment of these “Our Covenant” messages about “Our Covenant Bond.” We are to hover over a tough question: All we want is unconditional love, but are we willing to give it? We must begin with comparing the knowledge from man, which is from the world around him, with the knowledge that we can get only from the Holy Spirit-the knowledge God imparts. Take a minute now to read 1 COR 2: 9-16 in your Bible. God has not told us exactly what He has prepared for those who love Him, but He has given just enough knowledge (through the Holy Spirit) to know it is so good as to be better than our lives here on earth. (10) “The Holy Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” No human being can know all God’s thoughts, but the Holy Spirit does. That’s why it’s so important for us to keep in close contact at all times with God, through study of the word and prayer. The Holy Spirit helps us gain God’s perspective on these things. The Father knows exactly when an individual is ready in his path to eternal life for particular information. It’s not a matter of keeping secrets, but of maximizing a man’s understanding and forwarding his travel along the path to eternal life.
Let’s look at (14-16) in this passage. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they were spiritually discerned. (15) The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment. (16) For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” It must be explained that spiritual man is not subject to the judgment of one who doesn’t believe, because the latter is not qualified to judge the former. The latter doesn’t have an understanding of matters that only come from the Holy Spirit [15]. A man without access to the Holy Spirit certainly can’t teach others the knowledge that comes from God. What is required of the unbeliever is to come to faith in Christ and to receive the Holy Spirit. The very last phrase of [16] is the great blessing that comes from entering into a covenant relationship with God, and it bears repeating-“…but we have the mind of Christ.” And to think, that’s only one blessing of many we have!
It’s appropriate that we look at some of the others we are given by our covenant bond with Him. I remember the kind of person I was in the past, so I’ll use that as a description of an unbeliever. Selfishness, a victim of giving in to temptations of the nature, believing no one really cared about me, always being pragmatic without concern for its impact on others, are all traits that would describe one who feels God is a myth. I had been raised to reject Jesus Christ as a divine being, only a human one. The latter is the belief of traditional Judaism. Since I didn’t feel God blessed me or cared about me, it was easy to fall into the lie that He doesn’t really exist. Materialism was a huge part of my past life, and I can’t say I’ve entirely conquered this idol, although I’m making some progress in that area of my life. But the other traits mentioned were most definitely in my past. This needs saying, because of the great contrast of my experience after I awoke to God’s presence and accepted Christ as my personal Savior. While we haven’t directly addressed the italicized question above, we will as this segment continues. The important thing for each of us to do is to consider how we were before we came to faith in Christ and how we are now. This kind of introspection is to be carried out without evoking guilt, for guilt itself is a sin. The object of this exercise is clearly for us to not only know ourselves better, but to be motivated to see what God has done in our lives. Nothing we ever do for God’s sake is a waste of time. Even if we have done this before, it’s necessary as we mature to do it again from time to time. While I’ll save how God blessed me for next week, I’ll tell you that it’s hard not to see how He heaps blessing upon blessing in the earthly and heavenly lives of believers. I will testify that we all want unconditional love, and that if my experience is a teacher, our Lord is the only Source from which it can be received. This doesn’t mean that other humans won’t love us. It means that we are here to undergo sanctification (the process by which God perfects us), and the process isn’t complete yet. No human on earth can give the kind of agape (unconditional love) that God gives.
PRAYER: O Lord, You are our Abba [Father], Who works every day to recreate us in Your image so that we might have a greater knowledge of You [COL 3: 10]. We come before Your throne in great reverence and awe, knowing that You desire to bless and spiritually mature us. There is no evil in You [2 TIM 2: 13]. You love it when we rehearse our experience with You, and we aim to do this in thought and prayer this week. You are a God Who has brought the Jews out of Egyptian slavery in the past and has sacrificed the physical life of Your only Son on the cross, so that the ransom has been paid to remove us from the marketplace of sin [EX 12: 13; JN 3: 16; MT 20: 28; 1 TIM 2: 6]. We understand that this doesn’t mean we can’t sin, only that it means we have the choice not to sin. For a lifestyle of sinning leads people to certain spiritual death. RO 3: 23 and 6: 23, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God…For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” GAL 6: 8, “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.” What great reconnaissance You give us! And that is not all, because You also give us encouragement through Paul’s inspired words in PHIL 4: 13, “I can do everything through Him Who gives me strength.” While it may be painful for us to recall things in our “pre-Christ” life, it is useful in giving us a view of all You have given us to bless us. We offer You our heartfelt thanks and praise for all You have done and will do for us in the future. In the holy/mighty name of Jesus Christ, we offer this prayer. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: We won’t forget the question above and will take some time to examine some blessings that come from our covenant relationship with the Lord. I’ll share some of my experiences. God has the power “to transform us through the complete renewal of our mind” [RO 12: 2]. That can mean a massive change in our attitude, our paradigm, our goals, and many other facets of our lives. One huge change comes in our relationships with God and with other human beings. Our old selves are gone and our new selves come to us in so many ways, it’s impossible to enumerate them all here. We need to understand what a complete renewal of one’s mind means. So that will be what the Holy Spirit has for us then. For now, we must remember that our salvation and God’s bringing us back to Him in His perfect time and way to heaven are His goals and that of His Son [JN 6: 39-40; EPH 1: 4-5]. This is so important that it’s the main reason Christ was sent to earth to go through what He did [1 PET 1: 20-21]. Transforming a sinful human isn’t an easy job. Our sinning gets in the way often. But our Lord loves us enough not to abandon us [PS 9: 9-10]. We all know there have been times when people like Moses or Job expressed anger toward God; we may have even done this ourselves. But God stays with the task at hand, unless He comes to the conclusion that a person is serially rejecting Him. The kindest and best thing we can do for God is to cooperate with His efforts to perfect us. To do this, we go against our sinful nature and are first-hand participants in the raging conflict between the flesh and the Holy Spirit that Paul discussed in RO 7: 14-25. Our release from this pain can only come in Christ. While we have important introspection to do this week, we can remember that it is made easier when we keep our eyes upon Him. Our Lord loves us and cares for us. 1 PET 5: 6-7, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” Praise and thanks to the Lord!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24:15
© Lynn Johnson 2013. All Rights Reserved.
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