SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/2/2022 9:27 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Kingdom of
Heaven may be entered from different Circumstances”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt.
13:44-46
Message of the verses: “44 "The
kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and
hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and
buys that field. 45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant
seeking fine pearls, 46 and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and
sold all that he had and bought it.”
I
mentioned in our last SD how happy I was to read about how the circumstances
that the Lord used to bring me to Him are actually found in this 44th
verse of Matthew 13. Today as I look at
the fact that the Apostle Paul had similar circumstances that are found in
verse 44 that puts me in pretty good company.
Paul (the former Saul) experience was unique in that it was a dramatic,
awesome, and audible encounter with the risen Christ and in that he was called
to be an apostle. Well that is where the
similarities are much different than when the Lord called me. I can say that there certainly was no audible
voice, and I certainly am not called to be an Apostle, but Paul was walking
along to Damascus in order to put believers in jail for the cause of Christ
when Christ appeared to him on that road.
I was in Florida visiting a high school friend, and probably up to no
good when the Lord called me, so those circumstances were similar with Paul as
he was surely up to no good.
There
is another story in the 4th chapter of John’s gospel and that has to
do with the woman at the well and how she was getting water from a well when
the Lord began to talk to her showing her that she needed to become a
believer. She was at the well in the
afternoon because the women in Sychar would have nothing to do with her because
she had been married five times and was now living with a man whom she was not
married to. What is most interesting
about this story is that this is the first person in the gospel that became a
believer. She was a woman, she was a
half breed Samaritan, and she was married and divorced five times, yet Jesus
sought her out in order to bring her into the kingdom of God.
John
MacArthur writes “Charles Haddon Spurgeon grew up in a Christian home, but as a
boy he attended church only because it was the proper thing to do. He was not immoral or rebellious but was
basically satisfied with his life and was not seeking any more religion than he
had. One New Year’s morning, when he was
fifteen years old, he decided he ought to attend the service at his
church. When the snow and cold wind
became too fierce for him, he ducked into a little storefront type of church,
as much to get out of the cold as anything.
“When
I could go no further, ‘he writes on the event, ‘I turned down a court and came
to a little Primitive Methodist church.
The preacher who was to have conducted the service never got there
because he was held up by the weather, and quickly one of the officers had to
be brought forward to conduct the service with the congregation of perhaps
fifteen people. The man was really
stupid. His text was, ‘Look unto Me and
be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’
And he just kept repeating it because he had nothing else to say.’ But something about Spurgeon caught the man’s
eye, and he said, ‘Young man, you look very miserable. And miserable in life and miserable in death
you will be if you don’t obey my text.’
He then shouted, ‘Young man, look to Jesus! Look, look, look!’ ‘I looked,’ said Spurgeon,
‘and then and there the cloud was gone and the darkness rolled away and that
moment I saw the Son.’ Like Paul, the woman of Sychar, the beggar in Jerusalem,
and countless others,’ (including myself) ‘Spurgeon was looking for nothing but
found everything.”
In
our SD for tomorrow, Lord willing I want to look at the second parable and we
will see a difference in that one from this one.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Yesterday our Pastor was talking about
baptism, and the meaning of it as he was preaching from the 3rd
chapter of Luke where we see John the Baptist baptizing, and then He baptized
Jesus. He was talking about how after
Jesus was baptized that there was a voice from heaven, and the Holy Spirit came
down on Him like a
dove and so all of the trinity was there.
He then stated that this kind of thing does not happen when a person is
baptized now. I was thinking back to
when I was baptized in April of 1978 and while I was being baptized I saw
myself in a coffin lying dead and then I was brought up out of the water to new
life. A few months later I told the
Pastor about that and his reply was “Well I didn’t see anything like that.” Well I did, and I guess the Lord was showing
me that this is part of what baptism pictures that you go down into the water
dying and come up a new person in Christ.
My Steps of Faith for Today: It is my desire to live like the new person
in Christ that I am.
5/2/2022 9:58 AM
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