SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/1/2020
7:24 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Calling James and John”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
4:21-22
Message of the verses: “21 And going on from there He saw two other
brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat
with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and He called them. 22 And they
immediately left the boat and their father, and followed Him.”
In
our last SD we mentioned that none of the original apostles were from the
Jewish “religious” leaders, and then we mentioned later on Paul was called to
be and apostle. Paul stated of his
calling that he was “one untimely born.”
Paul knew that his own calling was exceptional and reflected God’s
exceeding grace as seen in 1 Corinthians 15:8-10 “8 and last of all, as to one untimely born, He
appeared to me also. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be
called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace
of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I
labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Paul states the following about this in 1
Cor. 1:26-29 “26 For consider your
calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the
wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which
are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has
chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, 29
so that no man may boast before God.”
I
think that sometimes as we read over this section from Matthew that we may have
the wrong idea of the calling of these men.
Jesus said “I will make you fishers of men.” Jesus was saying that He would make
evangelists out of these men, and by doing this He, through them would change
the world, and that is exactly what He did.
Jesus can make me and you a fisher of men as He through the Holy Spirit
will do the work of making you a fisher of men too. There is a difference between making one a
fisher of men and one becoming a fisher of men.
To God be the glory, great things He has done. John MacArthur writes “As he later would make
clear on more than one occasion, that promise was also a caution. Not only was He willing to make them into
disciplers, but they could never be effective disciplers—or effective disciples
in any way—without His power. ‘I am the
vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much
fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5).”
I
apologize for the shortness of this Spiritual Diary, but it is Sunday morning
and I have to get ready to go to Sunday school.
This section that we are in at this time will take a fairly long time to
go over and Lord willing, in our next SD we will describe some of the qualities
that make a good fisherman which can also help make a good evangelist. I suppose looking ahead and a good fisherman
has to be patient, something that is difficult for most people including me,
but that is what I do need to more effectively serve the Lord in being an
evangelist.
3/1/2020 7:48 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment