SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/7/2018
8:12 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 Paul’s Ministry “Toward Serving God”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
20:17-19
Message of the
verses: : 17 From Miletus he sent to
Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. 18 And when they had come to him, he said to
them, "You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia,
how I was with you the whole time, 19 serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials
which came upon me through the plots of the Jews;”
We will focus in on verse nineteen in our SD for today
and probably tomorrow. I have included verses
17-18 in order to see the flow as we move into verse nineteen. In our SD from a couple of days ago we looked
at how Paul was serving God in his ministry, something that he will go over
with the Ephesian elders as he meets with them for the last time that we know
of, although we know that he continually prayed for them as he did for all the
churches that he helped to begin.
As we see from the book of Acts and some of the letters
that he wrote to the different churches and people that at the height of what
Paul wanted to do was to serve the Lord.
We have seen that he has called himself a “bond-servant” of the Lord in
places like Romans 1:1, and we can also compare this by looking at Galatians
1:10; Col. 1:7; 4:7; and Titus 1:1).
This is what Paul sought to do, as his desire was to please God and not
men. Paul spoke of serving God later on
in Acts 27:23 “"For this very night an angel of the God to whom I belong and
whom I serve stood before me.” Then to
the Galatians Paul wrote “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of
God? Or am I striving to please
men? If I were still trying to please
men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” (Gal. 1:10). Next we look at 1 Thessalonians 2:4 where he
declared “Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel,
so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.” As we next look at an OT verse from the book
of Proverbs we realize that this verse was something that Paul knew a lot
about: “The fear of man brings a snare, But he who trusts in the LORD
will be exalted.”
This verse from Proverbs is something that all of us as
believers in Jesus Christ are to fulfill in our walk with the Lord, and we can
surely get an example from our Lord Jesus Christ whose desire was to obey His
Father while He was on earth all the way to dying on the cross for our
sins. It can also be seen in the life of
the man we are studying, that is the apostle Paul as we have seen it is his
desire to serve the Lord. As believers
we are first of all to do everything to please and serve the Lord, rather than
men. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).” “34 “Then the King will say to those on His
right, ’Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world. 35
’For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and
you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in;
36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was
sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37 "Then the righteous will answer Him,
’Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You
something to drink? 38 ’And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in,
or naked, and clothe You? 39 ’When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come
to You?’ 40 “The King will
answer and say to them, ’Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to
one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me’
(Matthew 25:34-40).” We will conclude
with a quote from John MacArthur: “Serving
God defines the motive for doing what is right in His sight above every other
consideration. It means a preacher does
not serve the will and desires of the congregation or even the leaders of the
church, but God. It means an employee
does not merely serve an employer, but God (Eph. 6:5-7). As Paul expressed it to the Colossians, ‘It
is the Lord Christ whom you serve’ (Col. 3:24).”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I have to believe
that serving the Lord means doing something that is hard to do as I have
learned from my Lord Jesus Christ while He was in the garden praying that the
Lord would take the cup from Him, and yet He went on to say “Not My Will, but
Yours be done.” Today my wife and I must
go to a service for our neighbor who died three weeks ago and doing these kind
of things makes me nervous and yet I must overcome that by the Spirit of God
and do this as a testimony to my neighbor, something I feel very strongly is
the right thing to do.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Trust the Lord to see me through this.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “The saints” (1 Corinthians
6:2).
Today’s Bible
question: “How is the day of the Lord
described as coming in First Thessalonians 5:2?”
Answer in our next SD.
7/7/2018 8:52 AM
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