Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube with images and lyrics from Steve Green singing … People Need the Lord … poignantly singing of how we need to be used for Christ’s rescue mission … to save the lives of lost souls in this world.
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Highlight Verse[s]: Luke 19:9-10 [NLT] … 9 And Jesus said to [Zaccheaus], “Today salvation has come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham; 10 for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
… Jesus’ rescue mission was to seek/save all who would receive His saving grace.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Luke 19:1-10 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… God teaches, thru Moses, the essence of the Law which is loving others as ourselves.
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Reference Passage : … Matthew 28:19-10 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… We are called in to be rescuers in/for the Name of Christ in this world of lost and drowning souls.
Reference Passage : … John 3:16-17 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus loves lost ones so much that He was willing to die to save us.
Reference Passage : … Romans 10:9-13 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… ANYONE of the lost in the world who is willing to openly repent of sin and receive God’s saving grace will be saved.
Reference Passage : … 2 Corinthians 5:17 [NLT] … 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
… If you’re one of those Jesus has saved, you are a new creation and have a new life in Christ.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Bill Crowder, uses a true story about the greatest rescue mission in Coast Guard history to illustrate God’s mission to save lost souls in this world. The ODB author wrote … On February 18, 1952, a massive storm split the SS Pendleton, a tanker ship, into two pieces about ten miles off the Massachusetts coast. More than forty sailors were trapped inside the ship’s sinking stern in the midst of fierce winds and violent waves.
When word of the disaster reached the Coast Guard station in Chatham, Massachusetts, Boatswain’s Mate First Class Bernie Webber took three men on a lifeboat to try to save the stranded crew against nearly impossible odds—and brought thirty-two of the seemingly doomed sailors to safety [see photo]. Their courageous feat was deemed one of the greatest rescues in United States Coast Guard history and was the subject of the 2016 film The Finest Hours.
But in my self-serving mind, God sought out and saved an even more miraculous lost ship; … and that was “the USS Willie B.” Yeah, … that was me in 1983, … an angry atheist who had already drowned in the waters of habitual sin. And my Lord reached down into those waters and pulled up my already drowned soul and gave me the new life Paul describes in 2Cor. 5:17. It was much like that rescue of one lost soul, Zacchaeus, in the highlight passaged described in Luke 19:1-10.
And perhaps it is like the story that others reading my words here have as well. Because, … after we, who were lost, are pulled and saved from the rough waters of this world, it becomes our mission [see Matt. 28:19-10] to do all we can to go out and be rescuers in the Name of and for the glory of our Lord.
Yes, as the linked song describes, “People Need the Lord,” … for sure. And perhaps today we can set out to be a rescue vessel in the turbulent and sinful waters of this world.
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for being my Rescuer.
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My Prayer Today: Oh Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I pray, Lord, that all reading here can, and will, join me and do all we can to be vessels of rescue in Your Name. … 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,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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