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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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| Archived Manna: | |
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. Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Submission to the Authorities Bible Verse:Romans 13:1-7 (ESV) "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed." Message:
In a participatory democracy, today’s passage creates complexities unknown at the time of Paul. We choose the government; they (at least theoretically) answer to us, not vice versa. And, egged on by the media who will excoriate government officials for many reasons—some fully justified, some rather petty, and some just wrong—we develop an attitude of disrespect.
Yet, Paul’s message still stands, and it reflects the teaching of Christ. Keep in mind, first of all, that it is addressed to Christians; it is written in the context of the sacrifice of our body that we have made to God. God’s grace is not a part-time blessing.
There is nothing in the Bible that tells us not to vote or support a political candidate. In fact, one could argue in good faith that voting is a duty. Not to vote actually smacks slightly of disobedience to the governing authority; follow Paul’s admonitions would therefore tell us we should vote, as an act of obedience.
But becoming involved in politics is a slippery slope and it is easy to fall into a trap where earthly power takes the forefront and Christ takes second seat. Where churches or church leaders do it, their Christian beliefs are always warped by their politics. Their credibility is damaged in the eyes of others and their ability to bring people to Christ is lessened. Our lives have one crucial truth and one crucial aim; our salvation by the grace of God, brought about by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Shall we then spend our time vociferously fighting about divisive earthly conflicts?
We seek and know perfect truth, and there is no perfect truth in politics. We seek to love and live in harmony with all, and politics quickly becomes angry and divisive. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.”
Our duty as Christians is to obey and respect, not to control and attack, the government. So let us always pray for humility and remember, when we set out to change the world, that God is in charge. His will is going to be done.
We also see some tension between Paul’s teaching here and the implied teaching in Acts 5, where Peter and the apostles refuse to obey the high priests’ order to stop teaching about Jesus. “We must obey God rather than men,” they say, and continue to teach. Since we are only a few days away from studying Chapter 5 of Acts, we will leave further discussion of this issue until then.
Meditation : Prayer : Now to him who by his power within us is able to do far more than we ever dare to ask or imagine — to him be glory in the Church through Jesus Christ for ever and ever,..........Amen |
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