Devotional 150410

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. The traffic was sluggish but my heart was filled with the joy of His presence. “What a gorgeous day!” I said to myself. When my heart was filled with the spirit of thanksgiving and praise, it drove away negativism and complains. Yes the traffic was still slow, impatient drivers still cut in front of you. They might give you a mean look as they past by. But they could not take away the joy of the presence of God. You could even wave back and said, “Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God's Spirit is doing, and can't be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah's question, ‘Is there anyone around who knows God's Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?’ has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ's Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:15-16 The Message).

Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Go away from me, you evildoers!' (Matt 7:22-23) Christian spirituality is not impressed with the supernatural. Supernatural is neither here nor there for those of us who are standing at Square One, getting ourselves oriented, coming to terms with our human finitude, getting a glimpse of God’s infinitude.

We are immersed in a world of Spirit, and so why wouldn’t we have spiritual experience? But such experience does not confer authority upon our counsel or our character. The return to Square One is not only a return to God, but to God Said. For not only is there God, there is God’s Word.

Christian spirituality does not begin with us talking about our experience; it begins with listening to God call us, heal us, forgive us.

This is hard to get into our heads. We talk habitually to ourselves and about ourselves. We don’t listen. If we do listen to each other is almost always with the purpose of getting something we can use in our turn. Much of our listening is a form of politeness, courteously waiting our turn to talk about ourselves. But in relation to God especially we must break the habit and let him speak to us. God not only is; God says.

Christian spirituality, in addition to being an attentive spirituality, is a listening spirituality. This is the area that we are weak in. We are too eager to talk or assert ourselves. We want to show others how spiritual we are. We want to demonstrate to the world that we have power like god. We want to be in control. We desire to be served and listened to. We want to be esteemed as being in, being right, being good, being insightful, being welcomed and being the authority. This is the temptation since day one. And Satan can still use it to detour us from the Truth.

Many found the truth but not necessarily grew in the truth. The more you we grow in the truth, the more we realize how little we know about the truth. In another word, the more knowledgeable a person is in spirituality, the more he or she is humbled by the Spirit. God will only reveal more to those who are humble and meek. The more we stand before God with an open heart to listen, the more we are ready to put down our agenda and assumption to listen to others. Your spiritual habit will affect your interpersonal habit and vice versa. The more we experience the unconditional love of God in Square One, the more we can love others unconditionally. Just as Apostle John said, “if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us…If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:12, 20).

For some of you who would like to pray for our missionaries, I will post one mission field on Facebook on every Wednesday for you to learn more about our missionaries there and how you can pray for them. Check out GOI on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/GOI-shen-zhou-hua-chuan/116618455019750?ref=ts

Love you because I love Jesus,
Lawrence