Devotional Song: Go to this link – Please take your time to see a video of a poignant song, performed by Steve Green … Find Us Faithful, calling all Christians to faithfully wear the Robes of Righteousness which Christ gave us to wear, covering our rags of sin.
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Highlight Passage #1 – NKJV: Jude 1: 24 …
24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, …
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Highlight Context - NKJV: Jude, Chapter 1 … GO TO THIS LINK for the entire text of Jude …
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Reference Passage #1: Luke 9: 23 … [NKJV] … [Receiving His robes; and then wearing them for all to see.] …
23 Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. … "
Reference Passage #2: Philippians 1: 6 … [NKJV] … [Letting the Lord dress us for success.] …
6 … being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;. …
Reference Passage #3: Ephesians 5: 26-27 … [NKJV] … [Jesus will come for His bride, to be dressed in the fine linens of His righteousness] …
26 … that He might sanctify and cleanse her [i.e., His Bride, the Church] with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.
Reference Passage #4: Revelation 9: 7-8 … [NKJV] … [At the wedding feast of the Lamb, Jesus will come for His bride; and she must be prepared and ready, wearing the fine linens in which she has dressed herself for Him in glory.] …
7 Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” 8 And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
My Journal for Today: Today in the Our Daily Bread devotional segment, I really identify with the word picture presented by the author, where he described getting his kids all spruced up for church on Sunday morning; and then just a few minutes after dropping them off for child-care, they looked like little rag-a-muffins, no where near the gorgeous little angels who had been dressed by their parents for their “Sunday-go-to-meetin” experience. And isn’t that the picture of how we, as Christians, often look after Jesus, freely offering us His robes of righteousness to wear, will find us casting His garments aside and displaying the rags of sin which are the undergarments of our sin nature?
And that really was the theme behind the letter written by Jesus’ other half-brother [i.e., besides James], Jude, who observed the church’s sins of apostasy in first century. Oh how he, and other faithful Christians, grieved to see those who had professed early faith in Christ, i.e., those who had the opportunity of putting on and wearing the Robes of Christ and displaying His glory, but they (as we often do today) chose to set Jesus’ Robes aside and to display the rags of sin which are so apparent when we don’t choose to wear Christ’s Robes.
Please take the time to mediate on all that I’ve studied this morning, especially the attached photo, the song by Steve Green, and the scriptures which bubbled up from my memory banks today, reminding me that everyday I can choose to wear Christ’s best, i.e., the linens of purity which I should be preparing to wear at the wedding feast of the Lamb (described in Rev 19: 7-8). Everyday, Jesus is prepared to dress me (or us) for “success,” and that is a life where we can display our Sunday best for all to see the glory of Christ rather than to see our natural rags of sin.
So, … which will it be today, … our rags or His robes?
My Prayer for Today … Lord, I choose to put on Your robes of righteousness so that others will see Your glory rather than my gory. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread [TGIF], distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you’ll find a link to read the Our Daily Bread blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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