CONTENTS
- Monday – Be lifted by Learning from others
- Tuesday – Be lifted by what the Spirit reveals
- Wednesday – Be lifted by boasting
- Thursday – Be lifted from your past
- Friday – Be lifted seeing God’s righteousness
- Saturday – Be lifted by the hope of glory
For links to the message and our blog which contains all of our studies, go to our website,
www.communitychurchputney.com
COME TO JESUS DAILY DEVOTIONAL
One of our goals as a church is to spend at least 20 minutes every day in prayer and worship out of the bible. I hope you find this devotional helpful toward that end.
This series, LIFT…
…is different to our usual practice for working through a book of the bible. I felt thought that, for this season, it would be refreshing to seek God for what He wants to say and to simply share that.
I trust that such an approach will help remind all of us to be prophetic - to listen to what God wants to say as a lifestyle.
These daily studies, likewise, are from my, and other church member’s devotions. I will also include devotionals derived from the various contributions that you share, as a church, in various settings.
Matt Beaney June 2019
MONDAY – BE LIFTED BY LEARNING FROM OTHERS
BASED ON BEN VIRGO’S MESSAGE
This city (London) and nation has a great heritage of leaders from whom we can learn. Hebrews 13:7-8 tells us,
‘Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’ (Heb. 13:7-8)
Great leaders, and anyone seeking to see transformation, have certain priorities that we can all have:
1. The gospel
Anyone seeking to change situations and other people must first let their own heart and lives be transformed by the true gospel that brings us connection to God and a new power by the Spirit.
Read 2 Corinthians 5:1-7 and see how the gospel gives us hope for now and the hope of eternal glory.
We see in the lives of people like John Wesley, those who are very religious and strict, that it’s only as the light of grace dawns can one be truly effective and persevere.
2. Faith (Feeding on and delighting in Christ)
"No man ... can persist from the beginning of his life to the end of it in a course of generosity, [or] in a course of virtue ... unless he is drawing from the fountain of our Lord himself.” - Shaftesbury
3. The bible
Exemplary leaders fed on Christ in His word.They know that the bible is God’s powerful word. Likewise, only as we learn to delight, trust and feed on the whole bible will we flourish.
5. The church
Those who have done great things for God have been strengthened by their brothers and sisters in the church, and have sought to build the local church.
6. Prayer.
Finally, prayer - connecting with God and asking Him to act - is the natural overflow of each of the traits we have been considering. Any great leader is a lover of prayer because he or she is a lover of God.
RESPONSE
Think and pray through each of these five attributes. Which are your strongest and which your weakest?
Meditate and pray out of 2 Corinthians 5:1-7. Spend some time thanking God for the great gospel - He has saved you freely in Jesus! Now, in light of His grace, how does He want you to change?
TUESDAY – BE LIFTED BY WHAT THE SPIRIT REVEALS
1 Corinthians 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
How do we know that the Holy Spirit has is working in us? We confess and love Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Believing is not simply a choice that we made having considered the facts. Faith in Christ is a supernatural gift of the Spirit that overcame our inability and hostility. Paul also writes,
‘As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.’ (Eph. 2:1-2)
Whilst we were in rebellion to God, under the domination of the devil, God broke in with loving kindness,
‘But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. (Eph. 2:4-5)
RESPONSE
Do you see that your salvation is a choice that you made, but was a choice that was enabled by the working of the Holy Spirit? He did not give you new life and faith because of anything in you, but because He had great love for you; and why did He love you? Well I simply respond in Paul’s words as he quoted Hosea,
“I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,” (Rom. 9:25)
The Holy Spirit has given you eyes to see the wisdom and power of the cross; the Holy Spirit, today, wants to keep glorifying God’s grace (free gift) through the cross in your heart and mind.
WEDNESDAY– BE LIFTED BY BOASTING
Romans 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.
Paul could say “I’m not ashamed of the gospel” which is another way of saying, “I’m boasting in the gospel”. Although he had been devoted to religion, he came to realise that he was a wretched sinner who deserved nothing but God’s wrath and judgement. To such a man, the good news that Jesus has taken our sin and judgment, and has given us righteousness, adoption and eternal hope, comes like the relief after waking from a nightmare in which we had lost what was most dear - such a person ‘boasts’!
Martin Luther was a man who, although he was a monk and devoted all his time to God, he still knew himself to have fallen short of God’s perfection - He knew himself condemned. However whilst whilst teaching on the Psalms and studying Romans during 1513-15:14, revelation of the gospel broke in,
"At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I ... began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith… Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open."
RESPONSE
The gospel reveals the righteousness of God - namely, how one is given perfect righteousness apart from works. Are you trusting in God’s gift? Does your joy depend on your mood or your performance? Let’s confess again that we are helpless and that Jesus has done it all! Let’s hear the invitation to rejoice - to boast in Jesus, ‘The gates have been flung open’!
THURSDAY – BE LIFTED FROM YOUR PAST
Romans 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.
John Newton, best known for his having written the words to the hymn, Amazing Grace, was a slave trader who, by God’s grace, became a church leader and lover of Jesus. If he had access to our modern communications, I can only imagine what his social media history would show, and how he and his enemies would use his past to lash him. His conversion began whilst on a ship in a storm in 1748. After battling all night, Newton said to the captain: ‘If this will not do, the Lord have mercy on us.’ Commenting on the affect of this apparent ‘throw away’ comment he said, ‘I was instantly struck by my own words… this was the first desire I had breathed for mercy for many years.’ As the storm, continued he reflected on his blasphemous life; he was to ask, ‘What mercy can there be for me?’
Today’s text tells us that that the gospel (what Jesus did on the cross) is ‘the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes’. None of us have the power to save ourselves. We are in a ship, in a storm, listing under the weight of our transgressions. However, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (Romans 10:13)
RESPONSE
How is your relationship with your past? Maybe you replay your past sins and feel condemned. Alternatively, you may replay your past and hanker after your past! Let’s allow the past to drive us back to the cross; where we see perfect love purchasing our forgiveness, and showing us the truth of the ugliness of sin.
FRIDAY – BE LIFTED SEEING GOD’S RIGHTEOUSNESS
Romans 1:16-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.
What is the ‘the righteousness of God’? This is His moral perfection. Anybody who has any revelation of God holiness (another way of saying this) realises their own sinfulness before such beauty. Isaiah, on having a vision of God said, “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:5)
God’s righteousness is a standard to which no person can ever attain. None have loved God or others for a moment God requires. But hope breaks in as we read on in today’s text, ‘For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith…’ Wonder of wonders, all of us can have God’s righteousness credited to us by faith in Jesus!
RESPONSE
What Paul writes can often be said of us on their worst days,
‘They did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.’ (Rom. 10:3)
John Calvin wrote, ‘The first step to obtaining the righteousness of God is to renounce our own righteousness’. Every morning, begin the day by throwing off your own righteousness. Exult in ‘the righteousness of God’ given to you through faith in Jesus. The miracle is that any beauty that we see in God is now a mirror of the beauty that is ours through Jesus!
SATURDAY – BE LIFTED BY THE HOPE OF GLORY
Romans 8:29-30 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Foreknown – God’s ‘foreknowledge’ means to love us in eternity past. This foreknowledge being by God’s unsearchable grace.
Predestined – Because God loved us before we were ever born, He has a destiny for us that surpasses anything we could imagine –to be ‘conformed to the image of His Son’! That is to be renewed in every way and to live eternally in a new heavens and earth.
Called – Because God loves us and has this great purpose in mind, He ‘called’ us. This is the supernatural work of the Spirit making us alive and able to respond to the message of Jesus.
Justified – The work of the Spirit in us enables us to see the wisdom and power of the cross and so turn to Him in faith. By faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are justified - the judgment on our sin has been paid for by Jesus for us!
Glorified – This leads to the final stage - if we have been justified, if our sins have been paid for in full by Jesus, there is nothing that will stop us enjoying glory with God and being glorified - Being renewed in every way so as to be like Jesus.
RESPONSE
The point of this passage is to assure us that God will certainly complete His work in us! God began the work without our help, and He will complete it without any contribution from us!
‘Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.’ (Phil.1:6 )
John Piper wrote about this,
‘What’s the point of a chain of statements like this? The point is certainty and confidence and assurance and security. The point is that God is the one who saves his people, really saves them. He does not just offer salvation, he saves them. From beginning to end he is the One who decisively and infallibly acts so that not one of his own is lost. The point is that the chain cannot be broken: all the foreknown are predestined; all the predestined are called; all the called are justified; and all the justified are glorified. The point is to guarantee that everyone in the chain will reach the goal of glory!’
0 comments:
Post a Comment