SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/12/2021 9:33 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-4 “Differences”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
7:24-27
Message of the verses: 24 “Therefore
everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a
wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 “And the rain fell, and the floods
came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did
not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. 26 “Everyone who hears these
words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built
his house on the sand. 27 “The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds
blew and slammed against that house; and it fell — and great was its
fall.’”
I
promised that we would begin this SD by talking about the sand and so I want to
write that the sand is actually composed of human opinions, attitudes, and
wills, which are always shifting and they are always unstable. As we look at this definition of “the sand
people” we can see that they actually are like sand as it is unstable and it
shifts at the blowing of the winds. Now
to build on the sand “spiritually” is to be unteachable, to be “always learning
and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” written in 2 Timothy
3:17.
MacArthur writes “To build the ‘house’ of
one’s life on the ‘sand’ is to follow the ultimate deception of Satan, which is
to make a person believe he is saved when he is not. Because that person is under the delusion
that he is safe, he sees no reason either to resist Satan or to seek God.” A true believer surely has to resist the
devil, and can do this by faith putting on the spiritual armor each morning,
and one has to do the prayerfully. In
his book “Strategy of Satan” Warren Wiersbe gives an example of how one can do
this. He states that he is not writing
this for people to just follow this specific prayer that he writes but to speaks
to the Lord in your own way. I for one
have to believe that if Dr. Wiersbe wrote this it is good enough for me. “Father, thank you for the provision You have
made for victory over Satan. Now, by
faith, I put on the girdle of truth. May
my life today be motivated by truth.
Help me to maintain integrity. By
faith, I put on the breastplate of righteousness. May my heart love that which is righteous and
refuse what is sinful. Thank you for the
imputed righteousness of Christ. By faith,
I put on the shoes of peace. Help me to
stand in Christ’s victory today. Help me
to be a peacemaker and not a troublemaker.
By faith, I take the shield of faith.
May I trust you and Your Word today and not add fuel to any of Satan’s
darts. Thank you that I can go into this
day without fear. By faith, I put on the
helmet of salvation. May I remember
today that Jesus is coming again. Help
me to live in the future tense. Protect
my mind from discouragement and despair.
By faith, I take the sword of the Spirit. Help me to remember Your Word and to use it
today. Father, by faith I have put on
the armor. May this be a day of
victory.”
Now
we have already written about the differences in the foundations that are used
in each house that are put in, as the wise man builds his house the hard way,
however the foolish man builds his the easy way. This is similar to what Jesus spoke of
earlier in this sermon as one chooses the narrow gate and the other the broad
gate. The one searches carefully for a
solid foundation of rock on which he is to build; however the other simply
finds a section of sand in what to him is a desirable location and starts to
build.
There
are several reasons to chose the attractive way, and the first is that it is
quick. A person wants to have some sort
of “religion” in his life and so he chooses a church to attend that in his mind
is good enough for him, as he does not do any research on the church, but
simply takes the easy way and begins to attend, because he is in a hurry. He does this because his first desire is to
please him as he is for easy evangelism, easy believism, and easy discipleship,
because they bring quick results and are simple to see and to measure. He has no
time to search the Scriptures daily for what the truth really is. He cares little for soul-searching or sound
conviction. He sees a verbal profession,
a card signed, or a prayer prayed as being sufficient to bring a person to
Christ. So he is perfectly willing to
declare a person saved without his having any awareness that he is lost. It is a true statement that a person has to
realize that he is lost before he desires salvation.
We
will look more into the foolish person in our next SD from our subject of
“differences.”
3/12/2021 10:03 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment