From my inbox this morning….
"Acknowledging Sovereignty of God
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- this is your spiritual act of worship.
Romans 12:1
Paul writes, 'God is good. So…offer your bodies to him as a living sacrifice…Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to him' (vv. 1-2).
There are two ways to understand God's sovereignty: a) through His initiative, and b) through our response. In essence, Paul is saying this:
1) Resist the pressures of a world system that pulls you in the wrong direction.
2) Renew your mind every day through prayer and reading God's Word.
3) Recognize His will for you and live accordingly.
But Paul doesn't stop there. He writes: 'Hate everything that is evil and hold tight to everything that is good. Love each other as brothers and sisters and honor others more than you do yourself.
Never give up. Eagerly follow the Holy Spirit and serve the Lord. Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying. Take care of…needy people…Ask God to bless everyone who mistreats you…When others are happy, be happy with them, and when they are sad, be sad. Be friendly with everyone.
Don't be proud and feel that you are smarter than others. Make friends with ordinary people. Don't mistreat someone who has mistreated you. But try to earn the respect of others, and do your best to live at peace with everyone' (vv. 9-18 CEV).
God's sovereignty doesn't release us from personal responsibility. It doesn't mean we should lose interest in current affairs or in making informed decisions.
God still expects us to strive for excellence and show concern for a lost world. Acknowledging God's sovereignty sets you free from playing God and enables you to enjoy walking with Him.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, help me discern the good and bad and hold on to that which is good to further my walk with You. In Jesus' Name, Amen"
The above devotion was written/compiled from multiple sources by Tim Hetzner, Ambassador for Spiritual Growth at Lutheran Church Charities and author of WORD Bible Studies.
Do you want to get well?
From my reading this morning in “The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath" by Mark Buchanan.
“No wonder Jesus once asked a man he meant to heal, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6).
Maybe the man didn’t, strange as it sounds. Maybe his sickness had become his haven, his lover, his overlord. And no wonder Jesus was so responsive to any old beggar or leper or blind man who threw caution to the wind and outright begged for healing.
Not everyone wants to get well.
It’s the most natural thing to befriend your sickness, even, after long association, to depend upon it. Imagine any of the people Jesus heals. Their entire lives—their physical lives, for sure, but also their emotional and intellectual and relational lives—all have taken shape around their injuries or diseases. That man at the well.
Thirty-eight years of life without options. Thirty-eight years of life without obligations. He carries burdens, yes, but one he’s never carried is the weight of others’ expectations.
For thirty-eight years.
And then Jesus shows up one day and changes all that. One word from Jesus, and all thirty-eight years fall behind the man, vanish in a blink, and a future he stopped daring to imagine stands vivid and solid before him. He can do all the things he never could and ever wanted to do. He can do them here and now—for Jesus’s miracle joins healing and therapy in one terse command. Muscles spongy from years of idleness suddenly grow taut and supple. Bones spindly from never bearing the body’s full weight turn instantly thick and sturdy. Balance all topsy-turvy from chronic proneness immediately calibrates for walking, running, dancing, leaping.
Do you want to get well?
Restoration shocks the system. It alters not just our health—it alters our world. All that we establish to placate or indulge or accommodate our sickness disintegrates with those stark words, “Take up your mat, and go.”
Do I want to get well? That’s a question I’ve wrestled with on sabbatical. If I believe I’m to go back restored, in what ways am I sick now? And how have I grown content with that?
I try to control too much, is one. I know how this happened— there was a season when the church seemed to require it. There was a time it seemed that to be at the center of all decision making was the shape strong leadership took. But even if that’s so, explanation is no excuse, and the reality is that now I meddle in too many things. And there must be something in me, some flaw, some weakness, that rises to meet the challenge in just this way. Other pastors I know have, in the face of many demands, committed the opposite sin: they’ve become dangerously passive. My sickness manifests as control. So it’s one area where I seek restoration
I want to return to my work slow to speak, quick to listen, slow to become angry. I want to hide more things in my heart and ponder them there. I want to return with a sharper instinct to pray, to watch and wait, and with less impulsiveness to act straightaway. I want a stronger conviction that, though God welcomes my honest efforts, he manages quite fine without my Peterlike outbursts of ill-conceived enthusiasm and then sudden loss of nerve, my opinion swapping and bully tactics, my reckless volunteerism to fix things for God and then desperate evacuation when things go wrong.
Excerpt from: "The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath" by Mark Buchanan.
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