Devotional 310810

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. Thank God for another wonderful day to be in His service. We are called to serve Him in wherever He places us. God uses each one of us in this world for one special agenda, which is to make disciples of all nations. The Great Commission, indeed, is our core value. If we sincerely want to seek Him first the Kingdom of God, then we know His Kingdom involve people who are willing to submit to His kingship. Do you really want to crown God as King in your life today?

The gospel introduces us to a life that begins by receiving the life of God. God pours out his love for us. He mercifully provides the access to forgiveness. All of that is very exhilarating. It is a clear and vast improvement over living on the basis of appetites and impulses, getting and grabbing. We embark on the way of faith. We become free. We are filled with hope. We live more intensely and more amply than ever before.

Now, having begun there, what is the next step? What is the next step after love? Is it cautious mistrust? That is silly. What is the next step after faith? Anxious attempts to avoid anything that might displease God? That is silly. What is the next step after grace? Cannily bargaining with God so that we can manipulate Him for our benefit? That is silly. That is like saying, “Having learned algebra, I will now go back to counting on my fingers.”

“Use your heads,” says Paul. Common sense ought to keep you from abandoning the gospel of grace. Only as we remain rooted in the gospel can we apply the great truths of love and forgiveness and grace to everyday affairs. “Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. “If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it,” said Paul, “how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!” (Galatians 3:3).

The claim of the gospel is that it puts us in touch with reality—all of it, not just a part. It puts us in touch with a God who creates and with the people and world he created. It puts us in touch with Christ who redeems and the people whom he loves. It puts us in touch with our feelings of hope and despair, with our thoughts, doubt and faith, with our acts of virtue and vice. It puts us in touch with everything, visible and invisible, right and wrong, good and evil. It puts us in touch and then trains us in mature ways of living.

We live in a world where people are going crazy. We have a gospel that sets us free to think, and in so doing it develops us in a rich and robust sanity. The sanity of the gospel is one of its most attractive features. Persons who truly live by faith are in touch with reality and become conspicuously sane.

The more I talked to pre-Christian friends, the more I realized what Peterson said here is true. On one hand people realize they are not God but on the other they try to play God. They become so confused at time that they really don’t know what we are thinking or arguing. They could not accept the existence of God. They prefer the existence of a big confusion. It takes the act of humility to receive the illumination of the God and the redemption of Christ to make use sane and whole again.

Love you in His mercy
Lawrence