SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/8/2021 8:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “A Disciple Confesses the Lord”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
10:32-33)
Message of the verse: “32 “Everyone
therefore who shall confess
Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who
is in heaven. 33 “But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him
before My Father who is in heaven.”
The
words “men” and “everyone” are universal.
As true disciples of Jesus Christ we must be ready and willingly to openly identify with Christ wherever we are, as it could be in front of fellow
believers, a group of those who are serious about hearing about Christ, or even
in front of a hostile crowd. When I
think about that I think of Tim Tebow and all that he has lost in this world
because of his stand for Christ. 1 John
4:15 tells us “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in
him, and he in God.” Jesus said the
following to the faithful church at Pergamum “‘I know where you dwell, where
Satan’s throne is; and you
hold fast My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days of
Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, who was killed among you, where Satan
dwells.”
The
following verses come from the pen of the Apostle Paul very near the end of his
life as he wrote to his son in the Lord, Timothy the following in 2 Tim. 4:6-7 “6
For I am already being poured out as a
drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good
fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith;” However a few verses later he speaks of Demas
in verse ten “10 for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me
and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to
Dalmatia.” Demas had been a faithful
helper of Paul, but when the persecution began he left Paul. John MacArthur writes “Hard times are the
test of faith. The church does not lack
for supporters when it is popular and respected, but when the world turns
against it, its fair-weather friends are not to be found.”
“Believers
can be silenced by much less than persecution.
Simply embarrassment or friendly ridicule has closed many Christian
mouths. It is sometimes easier to stand
up to vicious physical injury by a hostile government than to stand up to
unbelieving family and friends who would never do us physical harm.”
As
believers we all fall into lapses of faithfulness, and then when this happens I
try and think of two things: First I
think of 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The second thing that I think of comes from
reading Warren Wiersbe who in his many commentaries quoted an old Scottish
preacher who said “The successful Christian life is a series of new beginnings.” Being made of clay means we will fall, but
God has provided for us forgiveness through Jesus Christ if we acknowledge that
we have sinned against Him. When we
think about what happened to two of Jesus’ disciples we can get a good idea of
what forgiveness means when we confess our sins and the other what happened
when he was not a believer. Judas could
not stand doing what he did and tried to correct the problem on his own and
hung himself. Peter wanted to go back to
fishing until the Lord confronted him on the shore to bring him back into the
fold. Peter became a great man for the
cause of Christ and it is my belief that Judas will have the hottest place in
hell as he missed the greatest opportunity a person could ever have by walking
with the Living God for three years and then not accept the forgiveness that
was offered to him by Jesus Christ.
John
MacArthur writes “Peter and Timothy had lapses of faithfulness, but feeling
shame of the gospel and of the Lord was not their normal attitude. Those whose lives are characterized by
confessing Christ, in name and in obedience, are those whom Jesus ‘will also
confess…before’ [His] ‘Father who is in heaven.
What an incredibly wonderful thought, to know that all Christians will
stand before the ‘Father…in heaven’ and hear Jesus tell Him that they are His, that He claims them because
they have claimed Him!”
We
will end with a true story from John MacArthur’s commentary: “When Pliny was governor of the province of
Bithynia, in northern Asia Minor, he wrote a letter to the emperor Trajan
trying to explain why he had been unsuccessful in stamping out the sect called
Christians. He had tried arrest, fines,
imprisonment, beatings, torture, and various forms of execution in order to get
them to renounce Christ and to burn incense to Caesar as an act of worship, but
to no avail. In trying to excuse himself
before the emperor, he said, ‘None of these acts, those who are really
Christians can be compelled to do.’ Even
a pagan ruler knew that a person with such unflinching conviction must be a
true believer.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Perhaps the times in our country will go
the way of all countries of the past, which includes persecution of true
believers, and that means that I am to trust the Lord to give me strength to
stand up and be accounted for in the cause of Christ no matter what.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to give me the rest that I am
actually trying to teach about from the fourth chapter of Hebrews.
11/8/2021 9:26 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment