Devotional 170209

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. I thank God for a very fruitful weekend; celebrated the wedding ceremony of Cary and Stephanie, preached at the Indonesian Evangelical Church, and translated a song for Easter. Of course, I also relaxed and enjoyed the Sabbath with Christ. I always found it difficult to rest without feeling guilty. I felt like there were tones of work waiting for me to finish; and they seemed to complain against me saying, “why did you rest? You have not finished us yet. Come on…go back to work! If not, you will be in trouble. There woulf be bad consequence if you rest.” It is true that I am doing several people’s job in my office. But I have the freedom to determine the pace. No one gave me deadline other than myself. It is me who is the slave master for myself. I needed to slow down and don’t drive myself nut.

The Bible gives us a beautiful picture in terms of how God ministered unto Elijah. His own servant, when he was tired and depressed. All at once an angel touched him and said, "Get up and eat" (1 Kings 19:5). The angel did not give Elijah a vision, or explain the Scriptures to him, or do anything remarkable; he told Elijah to do the most ordinary thing, which is to get up and eat. If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed. A human being is capable of depression; otherwise there would be no capacity for exaltation. There are things that are calculated to depress; things that are of the nature of death; and in taking an estimate of yourself, always take into account the capacity for depression.

When the Spirit of God comes He does not give us visions, He tells us to do the most ordinary things conceivable. Depression is apt to turn us away from the ordinary commonplace things of God's creation, but whenever God comes, the inspiration is to do the most natural simple thing - the things we would never have imagined God was in, and as we do them we find He is there. The inspiration that comes to us in this way is an initiative against depression; we have to do the next thing and do it in the inspiration of God. If we do a thing in order to overcome depression, we deepen the depression; but if the Spirit of God makes us feel intuitively that we must do the thing, and we do it, the depression is gone. Immediately we arise and obey, we enter on a higher plane of life.

Our Creator God designs a biological cycle for our integrated body that requires rest and eating. The Bible described a balanced growth of our Lord Jesus as a human being in this way: “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). It means Jesus grew mentally (wisdom), physically (stature), spiritually (favor with God) and socially (favor with men). In His divine design, God expects us to be a balanced individual. As a good steward of Christ, we are supposed to take good care of our body, which is the Temple of God (the dwelling of the Holy Spirit), in these 4 aspects. Our body will not be effect according to the will of God, if we do not grow in all 4 aspects. Heal us and strengthen us in all these area of our lives. Help us to be faithful, O Lord, in taking good care of this body that you have entrusted to our management only for a short period of time on earth. Amen.

Love you (grow in favor with you) in Christ,
Lawrence