Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a You Tube video of the group 4Him singing … The Message, singing of our responsibility as Christ’s messengers to carry His message faithfully and clearly to this world.
Highlight Passage: Romans 12: 2 [NKJV] …
2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
… Paul exhorts Christians to be living sacrifices - not as the world would - but as Christ would.
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Highlight Passage - Repeated in Context … Romans 12:1-2 [ MSG] … USE THIS LINK …
… The Message paraphrase of Romans 12:1-2 showing God’s intent for the church in this world.
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Highlight Context – Romans 12:1-8 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Paul exhorted those in Christ’s body to unify and carry the message of redemption in all that we think, say, and do.
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Reference Passage #1 … Matthew 28:19-20 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Christ’s “Great Commission” for His church
Reference Passage #2 … Acts 1:8 [NKJV] …
8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
… Jesus’ charge for His Church to become His witness … i.e. His messengers.
My Journal for Today: … Our Daily Bread author, David McCasland, warns Christians, much the same way the Apostle Paul did in Romans 12 (see above) to avoid falling into the mind trap of Satan’s ways when we carry Christ’s good news to the world. He wrote: When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” in 1964, personal computers were unknown, mobile phones were science fiction, and the Internet didn’t exist. Today we understand what great foresight he had in predicting how our thinking is influenced in this digital age.
In Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, he writes, “[The media] supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”
When Christ ascended and returned to heaven after His resurrection, He commissioned His Church to go forth with His Spirit’s power and take the message of the gospel to the world (see Matt. 28:19-20 and Acts 1:8). But, unfortunately, satan has found a way to mute and distort the message of God by having Christians adopt the world’s way of messaging (i.e., the internet’s language system).
The Apostle Paul (in Romans 12:2) warned Christians to avoid the world’s way of doing business; and we should take heed of this warning as we do all we can to be Christ’s ambassadors in this world. So, fellow messenger, … let’s go forth today and take God’s truth, … i.e., HIS MESSAGE, … living it out and and proclaiming His word clearly to the world. That’s what I try to do - and pray that I’m doing - each day here.
My Prayer Today: O, Heavenly Father, … help me to witness and carry Your message clearly to the world every day in this place. 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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