Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Devotional 060109

Dear brothers and sisters,

Good morning. My schedule was fully packed this morning. There was so much to catch up with in the office when full staff returned to work. God is merciful to give us a role in His Kingdom. We certainly do not deserve to be on His team. Yet, He chooses to us each one of us to fulfill His salvation plan on earth. Our calling as His children is to worship and love Him with all our being. There is no better way than to summarize the whole Law (Divine standard for Godly living) into one word – LOVE. That’s why to our Lord Jesus, the Greatest Commandment is to “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:37, 39). And Jesus also said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34, 35).

Worship is giving God the best that He has given you. Be careful what you do with the best you have. Whenever you get a blessing from God, give it back to Him as a love gift. Take time to meditate before God and offer the blessing back to Him in a deliberate act of worship. If you hoard a thing for yourself, it will turn into spiritual dry rot, as the manna did when it was hoarded. God will never let you hold a spiritual thing for yourself, it has to be given back to Him that He may make it a blessing to others.

In the Old Testament, Bethel is the symbol of communion with God, while Ai is the symbol of the world. The Bible said, “From there Abraham went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the Lord.” Abraham built his tent and altar between the two. The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him. Rush is wrong every time, there is always plenty of time to worship God. Quiet days with God may be a snare. We have to build our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. There are not three stages in spiritual life - worship, waiting and work. Some of us go in jumps like spiritual frogs, we jump from worship to waiting, and from waiting to work. God's idea is that the three should go together simultaneously. They were always together in the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. He was never haste though he was busy (his schedule was always packed). It is a discipline of life; there is no shortcut to attain to this goal.

May your life is balanced by your communion with God and active service in the world. Amen!

Love you because of His new commandment,
Lawrence

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