Need to be refreshed?

Psalm 23:1-3

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

Last week, there were many in my area that were without power, some up to 5 days.  During times like this, people can get wore down quickly.  I know for my family, we certainly were.  We were without power for 3 days and ended up staying at my in-laws for 2 of those days. 

Yet through this cold, dark period, literally, we didn’t truly lack anything as the Lord was always watching over us. 

We all face times in our lives where we feel down and drained of life.  It is during these times, that we need to allow God to lead us beside the quiet waters and refresh our souls. 

Are you looking for opportunities in your life to have those moments with God?  Today I encourage you to find them as we all need to be refreshed and God can do that for us.

Our Journey to Adoption, Part XIV - Instructions

When James and Sarah came to live with us, we all had many adjustments to make. They also had lots of new house rules to learn!

Remember to take your shoes off.

Only eat at the kitchen table.

Wash your hands before and after meals.

Wash your hands before playing the piano.

Be quiet while the pastor talks.

Keep the water in the tub.

Keep your hands off the widows and mirrors.

Only play with toys.

We tried to remember to word as many things as possible in a positive way. Instead of always saying “don’t take your drink out of the kitchen” we would sometimes ask something like “where does your drink belong?” However, we were still constantly giving them instructions and wondered what was too much! They hadn’t grown up in our house to learn all these things gradually along the way over the past 2-3 years.

As Jesus prepared to leave His disciples He had lots of instructions for them (see John chapters 13-17). Unlike us, He is all wise. He knew how much the disciples could handle at once and what instructions He would wait to give them via the Holy Spirit later.

John 16:12-14         ¹² “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. ¹³ But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.

We now have access to the entire Bible filled with God’s instructions! The Holy Spirit guided the prophets and apostles to write down God’s love story for us so we could know how to have and enjoy an intimate relationship with our Creator.

How well do you and I value God’s instructions? Do we pick and choose which ones we think are important? Or, do we seek to understand them all, knowing they are for our benefit and protection?

Psalm 25:8-10         Good and upright is the Lord;
    therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
⁹ He guides the humble in what is right
    and teaches them his way.
¹⁰ All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
    toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.

Alice

Whose You Are

 For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes.  There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.  And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.  Galatians 3:26-29

Do you ever lose confidence in your faith?  As someone who finds himself humbled by the level of grace God has shown me,  I teeter between that place of blessed child of God and unworthy of the grace I have received.  If we are a mature Christian, we recognize we are both leaning more toward the former than the latter, but every so often, we fall more deeply into the latter category.  It is that which I find myself losing confidence if I stay there too long mentally.  You see, it is ok to remind ourselves that we have been given this amazing gift from God that we are undeserving of.  However if we stay too deeply in that area, it could move us from feeling unworthy of God’s grace to feeling simply unworthy, period.  What I have learned is that when I feel that way, I remember whose I am.  Sometimes, it is through a simple scripture, and other times, a pastor will remind me.  The importance is that when I lose confidence, I always go back to remembering whose I am; a child of the one true King.

It is always important to remember whose we are in addition to who we are.  We all come from different backgrounds and have different paths to God.  Some have followed God all their life, and others did not even know who God was and found them through someone who did.  If you were like me, you were much like the song Amazing Grace having known God, lost sight of Him, and then finding Him again.  No matter where you came from, realize that in our journey of faith, we all lose sight sometimes.  Some will lose it longer than others.  However, once we believe that Jesus is Lord of our lives, we are saved for all eternity.  I was reminded that we may at times feel unworthy of God’s grace.  The thing we must remember is that only Jesus is flawless.  Furthermore, we are not the only ones who knows are flaws.  He does!  It is not as a reminder of who we are.  It is to remind us of whose we are; a child of God who is made flawless through His love and grace.  We need not focus on our failings.  Rather, we must focus on the truth that through Christ, we are indeed valued.

We are always Christ’s children.  We cannot be pulled away by sin, and we are more valued to God than we can possibly imagine.  Paul said it best in Romans 8, saying:

 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:37-38

So do not let the world tell you that you’re somehow less than worthy.  Be confident that you are indeed a valued and cherished child of God.  What doubt can you cast onto Christ today?  How can you move beyond unworthiness to confidence in God’s love for you?  My prayer is that we gain confidence in knowing that God knows who we are and we know whose we are.  Amen.

Tues Devo: The starting line

1 John 4:1-6 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” (NASB)

Hello,

Think with me to the last big household project you worked on. At some point you picked your head up in exhaustion and doubted if it was ever going to end. You don’t see progress, you see what is left. But then, you look back and realize how far you have come. Then, you tell yourself that you no longer have to do the whole thing – you just have to do what is presently undone. Effectively, you re-draw the starting line. You don’t think about starting from where you were, but starting where you are. I think sometimes in our spiritual lives this is an important reminder. In verse 4 John reminds us that we have already overcome, because of who Jesus is – and our belief in Him has us in a position where we have the greater power in our corner.

I hope that as we all battle daily, we remember that with Jesus, we are starting from a position of victory.

Have a blessed day,

Will Hill