Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a video of the group Phillips, Craig and Dean singing … He’ll Do Whatever It Takes, declaring the reality of what our God will do through His grace to transform any believer into the beauty of His image, no matter how rough we were. … And THEN TO THIS LINK for Crystal Lewis and Ron Kenoly singing Beauty for Ashes declaring how God turns us from the rough hewn ashes of our sinful souls into the beauty of Christlikeness.
Highlight Passage: 1st Thessalonians 5: 23-24 [NKJV] …
23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.
… Paul encouraging Christians that Christ will sanctify us for His return … to bring us to Himself completed in Glory.
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Highlight Context – 1st Thessalonians 5 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Paul’s exhortations for Christians in Asia Minor (and us) to allow God to refine [i.e., sanctify] us completely for His glory.
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Reference Passage #1 - Genesis 50:19-20 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Joseph shows how God had refined him into a forgiving, merciful dispenser of God’s love to his family and how, over the years his brothers had become repentant of what they had done to Joseph.
Reference Passage #2 - Malachi 3: 17 [NKJV] …
17 “They shall be Mine,” says the Lord of Hosts, … and on the day I make them My jewels (i.e., special treasure), … I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.
… God speaks to His chosen people, thru Malachi, of a day when God will make His chosen ones His own, made over as very precious jewels …
Reference Passage #3 - Philippians 1: 6 [NKJV] …
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; …
… Paul to beloved Christians in Philippi … encouragement that God’s Spirit will do a work of transformation (and completeness) in all Christians who patiently await His return.
My Journal for Today: Today’s Our Daily Bread author, David Roper, used a colorful word picture to illustrate His teaching. He wrote: Early 20th-century residents of Fort Bragg, California, disposed of their trash by throwing it over a cliff and onto a nearby beach. Cans, bottles, tableware, and household garbage accumulated in huge, disgusting piles. Even when residents stopped depositing trash on the beach, it remained an embarrassment—a dump seemingly beyond reclamation. … Over the years, however, wave action broke up the glass and pottery and washed the rubbish out to sea. The pounding surf rolled and tumbled the glass fragments in the sand on the ocean floor, frosting and smoothing the surface and creating gemlike “sea glass,” which it then deposited back onto the beach. The surf created a kaleidoscopic beauty at which visitors to Glass Beach now stare in wonder. [See also the attached photo which shows that transformed and beautiful colored glass. ]
And then Roper uses this image to remind his readers (me) that God is in the renewal, refinement, and restoration business, … making over those who come to Him as rough-hewn and ugly pieces of glass; … and over the years, with His sanctifying grace, polishing them [us] into beautiful jewels of Christlikeness. Remember what God did with/for Joseph and his brothers (see Genesis 50:20). …
Remember what God’s Prophet Malachi said (see Malachi 3: 17) as to how HE would one day make His chosen ones into precious jewels. … And also remember how the Apostle Paul exhorted persecuted Christians to be patient until the day Christ returns, where He has transformed them (us) into His own - Christlike and completed - image. (see 1st Thess. 5:23-24 and Phil. 1:6).
Perhaps you recognize, as I did years ago, that you are broken and shattered as the pieces of glass once were at one time on Glass Beach. But if we are truly IN CHRIST, i.e., saved and born-again, [as Phillips, Craig, and Dean sing in the song linked above], God will do whatever it takes through the sands of time to reshape our roughness into the beauty of Christlikeness. We just have to surrender and let God’s transforming grace and the time of our circumstances do that make-over in out lives.
My Prayer Today: Oh, dear Lord, … Turn me into Your beauty from my ugliness. … 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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