Blogger Note: Posted on July 30 due to travel schedule
Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of lyrics from the group Third Day singing … Blessed Assurance … poignantly singing of the glory those of us will experience one day … transformed in the newness Christ has brought thru His blood for those who believe in Him as Lord and Savior.
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Highlight Verse[s]: Colossians 1:23a [NLT] …
23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. …
… Once saved by the truth of the Gospel, Paul charges all Christians to remain steadfast in the faith which allowed them to receive God’s saving grace.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Colossians 1:3-14, 23 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Paul preaches God’s truth about the newness all Christians find in their relationship with our Lord and Savior.
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Reference Passage #1 [NKJV] : … 1st Corinthians 15:35-58 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… The Apostle Paul gives all Christians the assurance of the newness they will find in their relationship with Christ in glory, … including a new and transformed body.
Reference Passage #2 [NKJV] : … 2nd Corinthians 5:16-21 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Again, the Apostle teaching of the newness of life we find in our faith and relationship with Christ.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Dave Branon, used a poignant story of a young person witnessing the Gospel truth to a broken old man who was lost in self pity and suffering. The ODB author wrote: As a group of teenagers visited a home for the elderly in Montego Bay, Jamaica, one young woman noticed a lonely looking man at the end of the room. He appeared to have little left in this world but a bed to sleep on—a bed from which he could not move because of his disability. The teen began right away to share the story of God’s love for us and read some Bible passages to him. “As I shared with him,” she would say later, “I started to feel his eagerness to hear more.” …
She told him more about Jesus—and then about the promise of heaven (including a new body) for all who believe. He asked her, “Will you dance with me up there?” She saw him begin to imagine himself free of his worn-out body and crippling limitations. When he said he wanted to trust Jesus as his Savior, she helped him pray a prayer of forgiveness and faith. When she asked him if she could get a picture with him, he replied, “If you help me sit up. I’m a new man.”
I somewhat identify with this lovely story of God’s good news changing the perspective of someone in their brokenness and suffering. I had the privilege of leading my dad to Christ well into his 70s; but later when his old body was failing, he was in a nursing care facility in his later days. When I came to visit him, he used to ask me to read the passage in 1st Corinthians (see verses 35-58 above), where Paul teaches all Christians about the newness of body we’ll experience in heaven. In all the pain and suffering my dad was experiencing, he loved to hear about what he would experience in heaven; and the newness which he is now experiencing in glory.
I pray that all who read this hold onto the reality and glory of God’s wonderful GOOD NEWS, the Gospel reality which transforms us all from broken sinners to transformed saints from the shed blood of Jesus.
And so, today, know that we who are in Christ are new creations who will be resurrected to share glory with our Savior.
My Prayer Today: Abba Father, … King Jesus, … I so look forward to the newness I will experience in Your glory. … 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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