Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Devotional 131009

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. Hope you find your peaceful dwelling in Christ through this stormy day. Praise God for our needy rain, even though it causes a lot of inconvenience or possible dangers to some hillside homes. Pray that God will watch over you in wherever you are. Indeed we have nothing to boast because tomorrow is not within our control. It is a humbling experience to feel so helpless in the face of Mother Nature, not to mention our Creator God. As we look at the power of storm, we can’t imagine how powerful our God can be. Let’s walk with Him with a fearful and reverence heart.

"Moses went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens" (Exodus 2:11). Moses saw the oppression of his people and felt certain that he was the one to deliver them, and in the righteous indignation of his own spirit he started to right their wrongs. After the first strike for God and for the right, God allowed Moses to be driven into blank discouragement, He sent him into the desert to feed sheep for forty years. At the end of that time, God appeared and told Moses to go and bring forth His people, and Moses said - "Who am I, that I should go?" In the beginning Moses realized that he was the man to deliver the people, but he had to be trained and disciplined by God first. He was right in the individual aspect, but he was not the man for the work until he had learned communion with God.

We may have the vision of God and a very clear understanding of what God wants, and we start to do the thing, then comes something equivalent to the forty years in the wilderness, as if God had ignored the whole thing, and when we are thoroughly discouraged God comes back and revives the call, and we get the quaver in and say - "Oh, who am I?" We have to learn the first great pace of God - "I AM THAT I AM hath sent you." We have to learn that our individual effort for God is an arrogance; our individuality is to be empowered by a personal relationship to God, just like what our Lord had experienced, “A voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:17). We fix on the individual aspect of things; we have the vision - "This is what God wants me to do;" but we have not got into God's pace. If you are going through a time of discouragement, there is a big personal enlargement ahead from above.

Once again, we are reminded of this golden rule in Christian service – you don’t serve by your own might but by the empowerment of God. Without our closer walk with the Lord, whatever we do is ineffective in the spiritual realm. Your “ministry or mission” may look good and successful in the eyes of man. But in the spiritual realm, you hardly scratch the surface of satanic stronghold. We can’t convert a single soul without the power of God. The more we try to change a person, the more we are tempted to exercise our own strength and wisdom. We become very upset when other fails to change according to what we expect. That’s why Paul cautioned us, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted” (Gal 6:1). We will restore a person gently when we realize we don’t have strength and wisdom to do so, except through the intervention of God. And we just make ourselves available to God if He chooses to use us in the process. In this way, we have nothing to boast and no face to loose. Then we can really help others with gentleness and meek.

May God empower you in your walk with Him today!

Love you by His strength,
Lawrence

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