Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Devotional 211008

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. What a beautiful day it is to enjoy our Father’s creation! It is important to take control of our mood and submit to the Lord for His pleasure. It is like a piece of canvas surrendering in the hand of a great painter, will turn into a beautiful piece of artwork. The intention of our Creator God is to make our lives as beautiful as His First and only Son – Jesus Christ. All we need to do each day is to surrender our whole being to Him and focus on His ability and sovereignty. If you were amazed by what God did in our universe and in this planet earth, you should have full confidence that He is fully capable to turn your lives into something far more beautiful than you can imagine. The key is not to try harder to change your habit or lifestyle in the way you want to be, but to abide daily in His Word and focus to obey what the Holy Spirit may guide you to do and to be. Our spiritual discipline can be summarized in one verse in the Bible, “You, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit” (Judas 20).
There was nothing either of the nature of impulse or of cold-bloodedness about Our Lord, but only a calm strength that never got into panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the line of our temperament or personality, not along the line of God. Impulse is a trait in natural life, but Our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple. Watch how the Spirit of God deals with our impulse: He intervenes and brings to us a rush of self-conscious foolishness, which makes us instantly want to vindicate or justify ourselves. Impulse is all right in a child, but it is disastrous in a man or woman; an impulsive man is always a petted man or like a spoiled kid. Impulse has to be trained into intuition by inner discipline.
Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on the water is easy to impulsive pluck, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is a different thing. Peter walked impulsively on the water to go to Jesus, but he followed Him afar off on the land. We do not need the grace of God to stand in crises, human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the strain or pressure in life magnificently; but it does require the supernatural grace of God to live 24/7 as a saint, to go through chores and mundane of life as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is natural tendency for us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.
Sanctification is indeed a life-long training by God to become the kind of person He intended for us to be. We are not called to do great things for God, but to become an exceptionally ordinary person that the world may not know or even appreciate. Yet, God will use their existence to impact the world in a profound and significant way.
Let me encourage you to become this kind of person in your office today.
Love you in the name of Christ,
Lawrence

No comments: