Devotional Song: Go to this link … Please take the time to take in the lyrics and hear the poignant song, sung by Queen Latifah, Fix Me, Jesus. pleading with Jesus, through His Spirit, to bring us into a growing ability to rely on Him to help us deal with life’s challenges.
Highlight Passage - NKJV Hebrews 5: 14 … When we mature in Christ, our discipleship will grow in our need to surrender self to our Savior through His Spirit
14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
============
Highlight Context #1 - Hebrews 5: 5-14 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK … We must grow in knowing God through discipleship
============
Highlight Context #2 - Hebrews 5: 5-12 [NKJV] … We grow in Christ so that we can disciple others ...
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
============
Reference Passage #1 … Luke 9: 23 [NKJV] … Jesus lays out the principles of discipleship …
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 #1 … 1st Corinthians 2: 6-16 [NKJV] … GO TO THIS LINK … Paul lays out the reality of growing to rely on God’s Spirit for God’s wisdom rather than relenting to worldly wisdom
Reference Passage #2 … 1st Peter 2: 1-3 [NKJV] … GO TO THIS LINK … Note verse 2 which speaks of growing in Christ
My Journal for Today: Today’s Our Daily Bread devotional entry, authored by Jennifer Schuldt, opens with an illustration of how our choices change as we grow from babes, through childhood, on into adulthood. Certainly adults would be expected to make more mature choices than do toddlers in life.
But, do they?
God’s word [see above passages] speaks of disciples of Christ growing in maturity, using the word picture of babes requiring only milk early in their development until they must feed on the meat of life later to be able to handle the more rigorous choices of adulthood.
Jesus said (see Luke 9: 23 above) that this process involves coming to be able to deny self and to follow Him in handling the daily crosses of life. The Apostle Paul taught (see the 1st Corinthians 2 passage) that a disciple must grow in his/her ability to rely on God’s Spirit to be able to reflect Godly wisdom as opposed to relying on the world or self for our direction in life. And later Peter (see the 1st Peter 2 passage, linked above) also used the milk-to-meat word picture in describing our need, as Christians, to grow in maturity as followers of Christ.
So, today’s ODB challenges us to deepen our relationship with Christ … to be able to feed on deeper and deeper understanding of God’s truth, through His word, so that our decisions will be measured by deeper and deeper discernment of God’s will and His ways through His word. I’ll leave it to any reader here with me to do a self inventory of what we’re feeding on in our discipleship; but for me, I feel that I’ve grown a lot over the years since I came to know Christ as my Lord/Savior; and my following Christ has led me into some degree of leadership.
However, I’ve still got a lot of growing to do. So, you’ll see me back here tomorrow, feeding on the meat of God’s word and doing all I can to build my Spiritual muscle in Christ.
My Prayer for Today … Lord, help me to grow to be stronger in You tomorrow than I am today. 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment