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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 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. Monday, May 23, 2022
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me Bible Verse:Matthew 16:24-28 (ESV) "Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”" Message:
In the preceding verses, we saw that when Christ told the apostles that he would allow the Sanhedrin to arrest and execute him, Peter’s reaction was strongly and instinctively negative; not understanding the lesson of self-sacrifice, he vowed to defend Christ, which Christ vehemently corrected, saying, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”
Now he speaks a hard lesson to extend his announcement of self-sacrifice; a similar sacrifice is to become a duty of the apostles, and by extension, all Christians. It is the very hard lesson of Christianity; in essence, He informs both them and us that we are expected to follow him.
Having full confidence once we see him overcome death, we must be willing to give up all the things of this world, up to and including our very lives, to follow the Word. The early teaching, “You cannot serve both God and mammon,” is taken to the ultimate conclusion. We must choose between our life on earth and our life in heaven; between our body and our soul.
Few of us are called to be martyrs, but implicit in the notion of denying ourselves and taking up Jesus’ cross, is that we will destroy the pride and self-centeredness that saturates every moment of our earthly existence. Self-centeredness is Rule 1 of our natural instinct; Christ tells us to make it Rule 0. Many early Christians actually were martyred and came very close to following this commandment; on the other hand, however, we see throughout the epistles, especially Paul’s epistles to the various churches, how much pride interfered with Christian growth even in the churches of the first century.
Jesus washing feet
Church politics is especially difficult to watch. Has there ever been a priest who did not want to be a bishop, and take steps to advance his cause? There have been and still are a few, but they are a minority. Has there ever been a pastor who did not want to see his church become larger and more influential, not only because of increase in glory to God, but also for his personal satisfaction? Same answer. They exist but you tend not to hear about them, because people who become great in the public eye are most generally those who are ambitious for their own ego.
Living entirely for the glory of God takes a degree of faith and commitment possessed by few; we are ego-driven by nature. We must remember that Christ has mercy upon us all, because we all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. He was one of a kind, the only human being without sin. (Actually, among the founders of all major religions, Jesus is the only one who even claimed to be without sin.)
So, in practical terms, we must do the best we can; but the “best we can” is surprisingly good, in human terms, if we are sincere in our faith. It is often a matter of slow growth; a specific sin may be difficult to give up, but if we manage to do it for a while, we are almost always surprised at how well it turns out for us, at how little we suffer and how much we gain.
And in terms of our ego, Harry Truman echoed the quote from Indira Gandhi (above) when he said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” So let us paraphrase: It is amazing what you can accomplish if you give God the credit.
Meditation : Prayer : “We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking only to learn that it is God shaking them.” ~ Charles West ..........Amen |
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