Devotional 121108

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. The overcast weather gave me a calm and serene feeling. It is like wrapping myself with a warm blanket at home, and meditating on God’s word with a cup of hot coffee...But I am actually meditating God’s words in my office right now. I already had my coffee and a prayer session with my coworkers. I just enjoy myself to be in His loving arms while I work.
"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). What idea do you have concerning the salvation of your soul? The experience of salvation means that in your real life things are really altered, you no longer look at things as you used to (attitude change and paradigm shift); your desires are new, old things have lost their power. One of the touchstones of experience is - Has God altered the thing that matters to you? If you still crave after the old things, it is absurd to talk about being born from above; you are juggling with yourself. If you are born again, the Spirit of God makes the alteration manifest in your daily life and reasoning, and when the crisis comes you are the most amazed person on earth at the wonderful difference there is in you. There is no possibility of imagining that you did it. It is this complete and amazing alteration that is the evidence that you are a saved soul.
What difference has my salvation and sanctification made in my life? For instance, can I stand in the light of 1 Corinthians 13 in regards to love, or do I have to shuffle? The salvation that is worked out in me by the Holy Spirit emancipates me entirely, and as long as I walk in the light as God is in the light, He sees nothing to censure because His life is working out in every particular aspect of my life, not to my consciousness, but deeper than my consciousness.
I fully agree with Brother Chambers that God is constantly at work in our lives, when we choose to walk in the light as He is in the light. We don’t consciously change our mindset but simply focus on Christ and His teachings daily. When crisis knocks on our door, our reaction will amaze us how we have grown in our new creature in Christ. Jesus made it clear at the end of His Sermon on the Mount, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matt 7:24-27). Testing will come upon our lives in different size and shape. But God uses them to accomplish one very important goal, which is to nurture us into a new creature in Christ.
I hope you and I will continue to abide in Him and seek to obey His words, so that whatever beat against our house, we will still stand firm in our ground.
Love you in according to 1 Corinthians 13,
Lawrence