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Reflect the character of Christ in all you say, do or think!
The Israelites were well aware of what a sacrifice was. It was a dead animal! For example, they would take a lamb and slaughter it. Then they would lay it on the fire and roast it before God. It was dead! Other than the food value, dead animals are worthless. God calls us to be a living sacrifice. That means, that like the lamb, we are sacrificed before him.The obvious difference, is we are not dead. The bad news to that? Living sacrifices have a tendency to crawl off the altar when the heat gets to be too much. We are called to be sacrifices to give our lives to God and to be dead to the heat of the worlds temptations.
Daily give your allegiance to Christ. Don’t be a crawling sacrifice!
It’s easier to blame others than to accept responsibility for our actions; to dwell on the mistakes made in the past than to build towards the future. Some look on the social, political and physical problems of today and blame God or others. Yet the evil of today isn’t because of divine action but due to the natural consequences of greed, lust, hatred and anger. Fire can’t be fought with fire. More darkness won’t defeat darkness. The smallest amount of light will penetrate the deepest darkness
For the Lord God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right. Psalm 84:11
One time I was being my father’s chauffeur to a speaking engagement. We decided to stop for lunch at a favorite chain restaurant of ours. Rather than order my ‘usual’ I decided to try something different. It was close to Thanksgiving and I decided to try the daily special, a Turkey Omelet. I’ve always been an omelet fan and I like turkey. Seemed like a winning combination. It wasn’t. While the picture looked good and the presentation was good, something in the recipe made it virtually inedible for my taste buds.
I’m sure we’ve all run into situations like that. It may be food, a different route, a new piece of clothing, a relationship or any number of other things. From a distance it looks good to us but once we’ve made the commitment we realize we’ve made a mistake.
David had that experience on night when he was relaxing on the roof of his castle when his eyes wandered to the house next door and a woman bathing. His mind wandered and his feet followed. What seemed like a good idea in a moment of carelessness, led to a series of actions that nearly destroyed his kingdom, badly tarnished his kingdom and caused life-long problems to his family.
The Psalmist writes “For the Lord God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.”(Psalm 84:11)
The sun offers us warmth, guidance, life and encouragement. A shield gives us security and protection from the enemy. David learned the secret to holy living in a human realm wasn’t perfection but confession and repentance
While our perception of what is good is finite; God’s perception of what is good is eternal. Like David, we make mistakes in life. Some of those mistakes lead to harsh consequences. Regardless of what we have done the warmth of the SON gives us new life through forgiveness. The SHIELD of the Holy Spirit protects us from the enemy, and sometimes the biggest enemy we face is ourselves.
God always gives us the way out. He always gives us something that we can use to get through the struggle we are in. He’s our strength and our shield when life gets hard. When we learn to give him all our secrets we find him more than faithful to bless us.
PRAYER: Father God, I thank you for the forgiveness we have in you through Jesus. So many times I find myself focusing on things that look good to me but aren’t best for me. Help me to see things through the light of your Son. Protect me from the schemes of the enemy. Amen.
When the Lord saw their change of heart, he gave this message to Shemaiah: “Since the people have humbled themselves, I will not completely destroy them and will soon give them some relief. I will not use Shishak to pour out my anger on Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles 12:7
“I know it’s wrong but God will forgive me and I’ll be okay.”
I freely admit, I’m guilty of it myself at times. Somehow though, when I hear other people say it, it’s more ominous than when I say it myself. Yeah, I know, that’s a pretty shabby defense. Somehow, those of us who call ourselves believers buy into the lie however. We give our allegiance to Jesus. We proclaim his love, grace and mercy. We ‘take a stand against evil’ in our world, yet think nothing of doing little, unimportant sins on a daily basis. You know the ones I mean. Our cursing, swearing, judgmental attitudes, the harboring of anger, bitterness or guilt and our greed are all displeasing to our heavenly Father.
Sometimes we assume that God’s forgiveness will remove us from the consequences of that sin, but nowhere in scripture is that the case. Israel, God’s chosen people, constantly strayed from his law and suffered the consequences for it. The story in 2 Chronicles is an example of that. King Rehoboam lived a sinful life and the people followed his example shamelessly right up until the Egyptian army was knocking on their door.
When the leadership saw that God’s punishment was imminent the repented of their sin. The Bible says they did more than ‘pray about it’. It was a change of heart. As a result God saved the nation from extinction. However, he didn’t completely remove the consequences of their behavior.
2 Chronicles 12:8 tells us that although God held back total destruction “… they will become his subjects, so they will know the difference between serving me and serving earthly rulers.”
God promises to forgive our guilt but sometimes He lets us endure consequences to teach us to rely on him. While we are blessed with the promise of forgiveness and eternity with Jesus, we should never take sin of any kind be taken lightly. Remember, the ground may be level under the cross, but there are no ‘little‘ sins. All sin should be taken very seriously in our lives.
PRAYER: Father God. My own words convict me as I’m aware of my tendency to diminish my sin in view of the sin of others. Forgive me for taking sin lightly and help me live in holiness before you by the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus name, Amen.
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