SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/2/2024 8:18 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Renew Your Gift”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
2 Timothy 1:6
Message of the verses: “And for this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands” (1 Timothy 1:6).
I think that it is possible that one of the reasons
that the Holy Spirit caused me to start a study on 2 Timothy is because there
are some things that are going on in my life that seemed to be going on in the
life of Timothy and so that being the case I can learn what Paul writes to
Timothy in order to correct those things in Timothy’s life to work on similar
things that are going on in my life. I
realize that the age of Timothy when Paul wrote to him was probably at least 40
years younger than I am now, but if the issues are similar then I don’t think
that age means that much.
I have mentioned that it seems likely that Timothy’s fervor
and devotion had cooled to some degree.
Paul’s first admonition, therefore, was for this young friend and fellow
minister to him would be to renew his divinely inspired commitment to proclaim
and defend the gospel and to faithfully shepherd the believers that God had
entrusted to his care, which as mentioned also was in Ephesus.
MacArthur writes “For this reason refers to the ‘sincere
faith within’ Timothy commended to the previous verse. The product of sincere faith is faithful
service, and the heart of faithful service is ministering our gift unreservedly
for the Lord, the gift which He distributes ‘to each one individually just as
He wills’ (1 Cor. 12:11). Apart from ministering our gift
in the service of the Lord, our life on earth is worthless. Our sole purpose as Christians is to obey and
serve the Lord through the gift with which He has uniquely blessed each of us,
so that the body may be built up to be effective in evangelism.”
Now Timothy’s gift from the Lord was obviously teaching
and preaching the gospel as he was a Pastor in Ephesus as mentioned. Personally it is my belief that the gift that
the Lord has given to me when I became a believer is to teach, and although I
do teach a Sunday school class it seems to me that my heart has been and still
is in writing the Spiritual Diaries that I write each day. I began to seriously studying the Word of God
after visiting a Missionary doctor who is now with the Lord. I went to him for physical issues and the
first thing that he taught me to do was to write Spiritual Diaries. This godly man was a Missionary doctor in
India and had to leave there because of political issues and so he came back to
the United States and because the doctor for Baptist Mid Missions, but still
had a practice to which I went to see him.
There was a lady working at BMM who went to our church in Westlake, Ohio
and she would bring booklets to my wife and I which was in the format of how I
do my Spiritual Diaries each day, but I chose to do them on my computer. I did these for a long time and then when our
daughter and her husband went to Kirgizstan to adopt their son they started a
blog about their experience in going there.
I picked up on the blog idea and then while living in Hawaii in 2004 I
began to put my devotionals onto the internet using blogs. I was very new at this and accidently started
two different blogs, and so I decided to put my older devotionals onto one blog
and the newer ones, beginning with Nehemiah onto my other blog. So all of this began in August of 2004 right
before my wife and I moved back home to Ohio and I have been putting them onto
my blogs ever since. In the beginning I
was not nearly as faithful in doing this but in the last ten or so years I have
only missed a few days in putting my Spiritual Diaries onto my blogs. God has certainly blessed this effort and
that is why I said that I truly enjoy studying His Word and sharing it to those
around the world who look at it. I
realize that for the most part that I will never on this earth meet those who
read these Spiritual Diaries, but my hope is to meet them when we get to heaven
and my great hope is to meet people who that the Holy Spirit has given them an
effectual call for salvation after reading my Spiritual Diaries to which I pray
about each day.
OK I realize that I got off the track here this morning,
but it was important for me to talk about what the Lord has called me to do and
so I will now end this first SD about renewing the gift that God had given to
Timothy and pick it up in the next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Trust that
the Lord will be with me as I desire to continue to fight off some problems
that I face each day, so that my life will count for the work of the Lord.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to
trust the Lord to accomplish the things that he has gifted me to accomplish.
12/2/2024 8:52 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment