I think we have been seduced into thinking that it doesn’t matter if we have strong affections for God “because emotions are only the caboose”
While out walking this morning I thought about the problem we have in the Church with being people in real community, people who really care for one another,
I once heard someone say that the Good Samaritan “was a man willing to part” with two day’s wages in order to help a fellow in trouble.
O how we should labor to use words that befit God’s reality and the excellence of His ways.
“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind . . .” Romans 12:2
The pull toward conformity to the world and its ways is a given; it will call you, not “might call some of you once in a blue moon.”
Note that the success in resisting this call stems from saying yes to another call, once more proof that “just say no” doesn’t work. We have to “just say no” by saying “yes” to something of superior value. The only one of infinite value is Jesus Christ, and the something is His ways for us, so let us again narrow the focus and pursue Him with all of our mind, soul, strength and spirit, keeping our eyes on the horizon to see those good works that He has laid out for us to walk in. (Ephesians 2:10)
Have recently begun reading a book I picked up 10 years ago, John Piper’s The Pleasures of God.
On the gravestone of William Borden, a financially wealthy Yale graduate, whose desire for Christ led him to sell all he had to pursue his quest to bring Christ to Muslims in China. Borden died at age 25 of cerebral meningitis while in Egypt.
“Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation for such a life.”
Father, would you so ravish our hearts?!
A tree branch hangs several feet above a heavy and sizeable rock half-submerged in the lake’s water. When it rains, the end of the branch becomes the exit point for the rain, as it drip, drip, drips onto the same spot on the rock. Eventually, in due time the drops begin to make an indentation on the rock.
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Galatians 6:9
Great things are possible, big transformation is possible in us and in others as the living water, Jesus Christ continues to fall on us.
“…their minds are set on earthly things. But your citizenship is in heaven.” Philippians 3:19,20
What an awful thing the untransformed, or little transformed Christian life says about Jesus. May we not thus profane You Lord by our worldliness; make us far more ascetic and strip us of the dross in and on us. Grant Father that we would think, speak and act as easy-to-spot citizens of heaven, giving glad glory and praise to You and and Your Son, Jesus Christ, and may we seek our delight in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit with renewed hunger and thirst and vigor today.