Devotional 100309

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. Though the temperature is cold, it is such a calm, sunny and beautiful day. I always enjoy driving by the Bay on Airport Blvd to my office. It is such a treat to enjoy the beauty of the Bay at the waterfront. God never ceases to work and create in the Nature. Each day is a brand new day, and God is doing His work in and through our lives too. Just as Paul said, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:17-19). God is making new creation throughout the world. And He will also use us in this ministry of reconciliation if we allow Him to. Therefore, our everyday contacts with people are part of His work. It is not by coincidence that you are in that office today. The people whom you meet are God’s target of love and reconciliation. You may not have opportunity to preach the gospel. But you can always build relationship with them by the agape love of God. Once you live out your life of grace each day, God will prepare people’s heart to listen to what He has to say through you.

"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction" (2 Timothy 4:2). We are not saved to be "channels only," but to be sons and daughters of God. We are not turned into spiritual mediums, but into spiritual messengers; the message must be part of ourselves. The Son of God was His own message, His words were spirit and life; and as His disciples our lives must be the sacrament of our message. The natural heart will do any amount of serving, but it takes the heart broken by conviction of sin, and baptized by the Holy Spirit, and crumpled into the purpose of God before the life becomes the sacrament of its message.

There is a difference between giving a testimony and preaching. A preacher is one who has realized the call of God and is determined to use his every power to proclaim God's truth. God takes us out of our own ideas for our lives and we are being shaped and used, as the disciples were after Pentecost. Pentecost did not teach the disciples any thing; it made them the incarnation of what they preached - "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8).

Let God have perfect liberty when you speak. Before God's message can liberate other souls, the liberation must be real in you first. Gather your material, and set it on fire for the Lord when you speak.

Chamber's word is so true that we are not speaking out of theory but experience. We don’t tell others about a philosophy but our encounter with a living God. God is at work while we speak. He continues to work and empower our lives while we bear witness for Him.

The way to give liberty to God to speak through us is to submit to His Word for us each day. The more we submit to obey His word in everyday of our lives, the more we are delivered from the bondage of sins and Satan’s lie within us. This kind of transformation is taking place as we speak. We may not see the ‘changes’ right away, but the molding and deliverance are taking place in the spiritual realm within our soul. Once our soul is renewed, the behavior follows. The change is from inside out. Let's encourage each other to abide in His words.

Love you with my renewed soul,
Lawrence