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But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness Gal 5:22 |
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Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for collecting daily manna), make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Thursday, February 02, 2017
Today's Passage : Subject :How a Christian Should Live Bible Verse : Colossians 3:5-17 "Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things — anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Message:
When I was a youngster, I learned the secret to being a faithful Christian — not from a preacher or priest, and not in church or Sunday school, but from a grizzled old coach on a baseball field, who told us the secret to winning baseball games: “Basics and execution.” There are things we need to learn to play baseball, and there are things we need to learn to be true Christians, but they are not terribly complicated. Jesus did not come to earth to save smart people; He came to save all people. All we have to do is learn the basics and execute.
The wolf will live with the lamb
Today's lesson reminded me of that coach. There isn't any mystery to what Paul is saying and it really doesn't need a lot of commentary. There is no deep theological web of thought to untangle, no hidden meaning, nothing unclear. Is it hard to understand what fornication, slander, and lying are? Is there anyone who cannot comprehend what humility is, does not understand compassion, or know what it means to give thanks? If we want to follow the path of Christ, what we should do is fairly easy to state.
There is a third leg to the secret that every athlete understands: Practice. The commandments given to us in the Bible do not come naturally; if they did, we wouldn't need them! Let's take the hardest one, humility, which seems to be both the most basic and the most underutilized tool in the Christian skill set.
There is only one way that we are going to find humility, and that is practice. How humble should we try to be? Well, Jesus washed his apostles' feet. We are servants.
This takes practice. Every time we make a decision, we can ask ourselves “what would a truly humble person do?” We can think and pray about our actions at the end of the day, and ask ourselves if Jesus would have done what we did. A lot of times, the most worst braggarts are people with deep wounds, and we might suspect that a lot of our own pride is an attempt to heal some inner pain, especially a sense of inadequacy.
But if that is our problem, Christ is our answer. The more faith we develop in God, the less need we will have for the praise of others. Christ is going to take care of us; and the stronger our realization of Christ's love and power becomes in us, the weaker our need for status and praise in the eyes of other people.
Meditation : Prayer : May I go in peace, with God and with his other children, and may we love one another as Christ taught us. May I follow the example of good men of old, and may God comfort and help me and all who believe in Him, both in this world and in the world which is to come. Amen |
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