Devotional Song: Go to this link … Please go this video link to hear Michael W Smith leading in worship and singing his powerful song Breathe, helping us to realize that what we all think, say, and do is from our Lord and for our Lord … just as we breathe in the oxygen we need to live.
=============
Highlight Passage – NKJV: Colossians 1:16 [NKJV] …
16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
=============
Highlight Passage [Context] #1 – NKJV: Colossians 1: 15-23 [NKJV] … Go to this link …
=============
Reference Passages #1 John 15: 5 [NKJV] …
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. …”
My Journal for Today: Philip Yancey, the rather well-known Christian writer, was the author of today’s Our Daily Bread devotional; and to make his key point, he used the picture of whales who must dive deeply into their domain of the deep to take in their food; but before they dive, they breathe enormously deeply, taking in as much oxygen as they can store in their prodigious lungs,often creating the spouts of water like that seen in the attached photo. Here’s what Yancey wrote about this …
" Despite having its own lively habitat of marine plants and sea creatures, the whale must surface for oxygen from time to time or it dies. Though it knows little about the world above, it needs vital contact with it to survive. … I sometimes feel like that whale, coming up for spiritual air at regular intervals to stay alive. But there is no neat division between the natural and the supernatural. The world we live in is not an either/or world. What I do as a Christian—praying, worshiping, demonstrating God’s love to the sick, needy, and imprisoned—is both supernatural and natural.”
What Yancey is getting at with his word picture, is that Christ has given all born-again Christians the ability to breathe spiritually, as Michael W Smith sings in the linked song today, anywhere and at any time. As with whales, we don’t need to surface to breathe in our relationship with Christ in some special place or at some specially needed time. As our Lord’s Spirit dwells within us as Christians, we are completely connected to Him (see today’s key passage as well as that in John 15); and we can breathe in His essence wherever we are and whenever we must.
So, join me today and let’s breathe in Christ and then go move and thrive in His being.
My Prayer for Today … Lord, I breathe in You. … 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment