Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video with images and lyrics from the group Selah singing … Be Thou My Vision … poignantly singing of how we, having been born-again in Christ, are to find our vision in our faith, not what we see with our own eyes.
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Highlight Verse[s]: 2 Corinthians 4:18 [NLT] … 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.
… Paul exhorts us to be able to see past the cloudiness or fogginess of this world with eyes of faith to see what lies ahead in glory.
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Highlight Passage [context]: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… Paul, trying to get other Christians to be able to see the world more clearly thru eyes of faith.
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Reference Passage : … Proverbs 3:5-6 [NLT] … 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. 6 Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.
… Trusting in His will and ways, thru His word, gives us eyes of faith so that we don’t have to rely on the eyes of our own feelings/senses, … which can so often trick us.
Reference Passage : … Matthew 28:20b [NLT] … 20b “… And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
… Jesus, at His ascension, promising His disciples (that’s us!) that He would ALWAYS be with us.
Reference Passage : … Luke 9:23 [NLT] … 23 Then He said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow Me.
… As followers of Christ, we are to avoid following our own way and do all we can to follow Him, … even if He’s difficult to see at times.
Reference Passage : … Hebrews 11:1, 6 [NLT] … USE THIS LINK …
… We, as Christians, are exhorted to follow Jesus with the eyes of faith, not the eyes of our own senses.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Amy Boucher Pye, uses a personal reflection to illustrate how we must have eyes of faith to help us see past the cloudiness and confusion of this world which we see with our own eyes. The ODB author wrote … A rare supermoon appeared in November 2016—the moon in its orbit reached its closest point to the earth in over sixty years and so appeared bigger and brighter than at other times. But for me that day the skies were shrouded in gray [see photo]. Although I saw photos of this wonder from friends in other places, as I gazed upward I had to trust that the supermoon was lurking behind the clouds.
It is not uncommon for us Christians to have trouble seeing the path God wants us to take because of the cloudiness and confusion of our circumstances and our world, … where God often seems far away and maybe even not there. … But He is!
And in those moments we need to use the light of truth given to us clearly by God’s Spirit thru His word, to follow our Lord with eyes of faith rather than groping thru the dark with our own feelings or senses (see the Scriptures above). In those moments of cloudiness, that’s the time when must pray, as the group Selah sings in the attached song, for the Lord to be our vision to keep following Him, even tho it can be so difficult to find His way at times.
And that’s why you find me here, starting each day, by picking up His torch of light - to have His truth to light my way (go meditate on Ps. 119:105 and memorize it!).
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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Abba Father, … thank You, Lord, … for giving us the light of Your truth to follow when the way clouds of circumstances seem to make it difficult to follow You.
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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 to set aside any feelings of confusion or cloudy vision to seek Your way with eyes of faith. … 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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