SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/24/2017
10:04 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Message”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 1:1-2
Message of the
verses: “1 The first account I
composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the
day when He was taken up to heaven, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles
whom He had chosen.”
We continue to look at the message, the message of
salvation that first of all the apostles would give out, and then those who
hear the message that are saved will give out, and this has continued since the
day that the church began as seen in Acts chapter two. MacArthur writes “Evangelism is telling
people that God saves from sin. What
adorns that message, or makes it believable, is a holy life that clearly
demonstrates God can save from sin. It
is self-defeating to proclaim the message of salvation from sin while living a
sinful life. The messenger must manifest
the power of the message he is proclaiming.
Jesus preached righteousness and lived it perfectly. We have to preach the same message and strive
to live it as perfectly as we can.”
When a person hears the message and the Spirit opens up
his eyes to receive the truth, that person will have a new life as Paul writes in
“2Co 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” I was almost 27 years old when the Spirit of
God gave me an effectual call for salvation, a call that I could not say no
to. The Holy Spirit is kind of like the “God-Father),
He gives you an offer you can’t say no to, and so once He gave me that call I
was saved as I accepted the salvation that Christ offered to me. God changed my life that January day in 1974
and it has not been the same since. The
desires that were sinful that I did up until that time seemed natural to me,
but once that call came for salvation those desires that I had up until that
time I knew then were sinful. I no lingered
to do those sinful things, even though Satan still temps me with them. If you go back to the OT book of Joshua you
read about how Israel under the leadership of Joshua conquered the Promised
Land, a land God promised to give to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. After they conquered the land
there was still pockets of the enemy in the land. Joshua told the children of Israel that they
had to get rid of them or these heathen people would end up causing the
children of Israel to fall into sin. It
is the same with believers today as God has saved us from sin and forgiven all
of our trespasses, past, present, and future, but we have to do our part when
we are tempted by the old desires and in the power of the Lord war against
them. Putting on the Spiritual Armor
that is described in Ephesians chapter six should be something we do daily. In Psalm 143 David writes the following in
verse 2 “And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, For in Your sight no
man living is righteous.” This Psalm
speaks of David’s physical battles with his enemies and as we look at it we can
think of the spiritual battles we go through once we have been saved. The good news is that those of us who have
been born again will always belong to the Lord.
I want to end this section with a quote from John
MacArthur who then gives a quote from Robert Murray McCheyne. “Two major factors contribute to the church’s
powerlessness today. First, many are
ignorant of biblical truth. Second,
those who may know biblical truth all too often fail to live up to it. Proclaiming an erroneous message is tragic,
yet so is proclaiming the truth but giving scant evidence that one’s life had
been transformed by it. Such people
cannot expect others to be moved by their proclamation. The exemplary nineteenth-century Scottish
preacher Robert Murray McCheyne gave the following words of advice to an
aspiring young minister:
‘Do not forget the culture
of the inner man—I mean of the heart.
How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his sabre clean and sharp;
every stain he rubs off with the greatest care.
Remember you are God’s sword, His instrument—I trust a chosen vessel
unto Him to bear His name. In great
measure, according to the purity and perfections of the instrument, will be the
success. It is not great talents God
blesses so much as great likeness to Jesus.
A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.’
“Those who would be
effective in preaching, teaching, and evangelism must give heed to those
words. Sound doctrine supported by
holiness of life is essential for all who would minister the Word.”
It looks like we will have one more SD on the subject of “The
Message.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Holiness means separated
from sin, something that all true believers will have happen to them once we
get to heaven. I am thankful for this
that one day I will be truly holy before God.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to guide me through what He
wants me to teach in our Sunday school class tomorrow. To give me peace that passes all
understanding.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Fifteen years” (2 Kings
20:6).
Today’s Bible
question: “From what did Paul instruct
Timothy to flee?”
Answer in our next SD.
6/24/2017 11:39 AM
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