Devotional 041109

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. Hope you rise and shine for the Lord today. Being alive means being the witness of God’s abundant grace and mercy upon us each day. I look forward to many challenges that may come my way each day. There are endless readings and preparation for either my work or study. Deadlines after deadlines just put my life on the edge from time to time. I rejoice for all these challenges that I can utilize my time and potential to handle and grow. It makes me feel vibrant and young all the time.

"Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you" (James 4:8). It is essential to give people a chance of acting on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual, you cannot act for him, it must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message ought always to lead a man to act. The paralysis of refusing to act leaves a man exactly where he was before; when once he acts, he is never the same. It is the foolishness of it that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Immediately I hurried myself over into an act, that second I live; all the rest is existence. The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will.

Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it, not necessarily physically, but in will. Record it, with ink or with blood. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts; all the almighty power of God is on his behalf. We come up to the truth of God, we confess we are wrong, but go back again; then we come up to it again, and go back; until we learn that we have no business to go back. We have to go clean over on some word of our redeeming Lord and transact business with Him. His word "come" means "transact." "Come unto Me." The last thing we do is to come; but everyone who does come knows that that second the supernatural rush of the life of God invades him instantly. The dominating power of the world, the flesh and the devil is paralyzed, not by your act, but because your act has linked you on to God and His redemptive power.

Procrastination is a common problem for many Christians who live in a complacent environment like America. There are too many options or alternatives that we have to consider before we act. We would always wait to see or consider if there are more options for us to choose from; sometimes there are just too many choices before us that we don’t know what to choose. A lot of time, Christians wait until the last minute before they choose to attend a certain function in church. Not that they are too busy. They just don’t want to commit too soon that tie them down by their commitment. So they would rather wait and see until the last minute.

In a post-modern culture that we are in today, we will not submit to “absolute authority” of God easily. When there is no absolute, there is no “highest” priority in life. There may be three to five equally “important” priorities in a Christian’s life; God, spouse, family, work, entertainments, friends and so forth. When all these priorities are equally important in a Christian, he or she will surely have problem to choose. If there is no clear sense of priority in life, a person will have difficulty to say no to many options that knock on his or her door fromt time to time. Unless you can passionately say YES to God as the “highest priority” in life, you cannot say NO to all the good things that will detour you from the main purpose of life.

We have been reading this devotional classic: My utmost for His highest, which signify the author’s commitment in putting God as the highest priority in life. I hope that the sharing of this devotional will help you refocus your priority in life, so that your life will be more energetic, passionate and fulfilled. Indeed, when you put God first in life, you enter into His glory and abundance, just as Christ promises to offer. Have a very blessed day to enjoy your service in Him.

Love you for His glory and abundance,
Lawrence