July 21

“And hath raised us up together…” Ephesians 2:6

Our status as to our spiritual condition was officially ‘dead’! The wages of sin is death, and there is no human who is not affected by this tenebrous influence. The Bible proclaims that ‘..all have sinned and have come short of the glory of God”. This makes our human destiny a dark one indeed, were it not for the light of God’s love and grace! God has made a way to raise us from the dead! When we come to the salvation He has provided, that is, we accept the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary, and participate in His death, burial and resurrection, we pass from death to life! We are raised together with Christ! In His victory over sin and death, we find our victory also! We overcome death, sin and the world, because He overcame them. It is the only solution to the sin/death problem which plagues the human family.  This is the ‘good’ news of the gospel, that while in our natural state, we are the inheritors of death, Jesus made a way to give us life, and that more abundantly! It is strange how so few comparatively, choose to have life instead of settling for eternal death. Logic and wisdom would seem to make it a simple choice, but because it requires faith to believe that God means what He says (and for many to believe He even exists in the first place!), not so many choose life. Those who do believe and accept in faith what God has given discover the wonder and blessing of His truth! They become alive where they were spiritually dead, and awake to the reality of all that God has in store for His followers. Maybe some stumble at the simplicity of the gospel. They might feel that if God had demanded some difficult task, such as climbing a high mountain or killing a beast with their bare hands, in order to obtain salvation, it may be more credible. They miss the point that God wants to make salvation available to all, and that means all must be able to come to salvation the same way. The one thing that all humans can do, regardless of age, opportunity, ability or background, is believe! God has put in all humans ‘the measure of faith’, that is, the ability to believe. Ultimately man could not do anything of his own anyway, no matter how great the exploit, to purchase his personal salvation. Only Christ’s sinless life was an apt sacrifice for sin. Jesus gave His life freely; He did it for all humanity, and that is why faith and not our own provision, is essential! Why should we remain dead in trespasses and sins, when Jesus has made a way to resurrect us and give us life eternal? Let us allow God to work in us, and through the faith He has given us, accept the loving gift of salvation, that we may be born again, resurrected and inheritors with Christ of eternity.

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion

May 23

“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:” 2 Corinthians 4:3

The gospel is described here as ‘our gospel’, not because it belongs to us alone, but because it is entrusted by the Lord to all who believe. This message of God’s salvation has been made available and open for all. It is not hidden by God, nor should it ever be hidden by those who believe and have benefited from it. It has been given freely as an endowment of all mankind. The only limitation on it being appropriated as ‘ours’, is our own will and desire as individuals. We might say similarly that the sun shines and all can see it, unless they close their eyes to it and choose not to. The flow of a river is there for all to benefit and satisfy their thirst, unless they select not to drink from it. In context then, the gospel is not hid by divine mandate. If it remains hidden to some, the fault is not with God or with the gospel He has given, but rather with those that through their own pride, sinfulness, indulgence and self-centredness, remain blinded to the sight, beauty and power of it and therefore are deemed ‘lost’, without hope and without Christ. This however, is not a condition which must inevitably remain, as can be seen by so many of us who were indeed lost and yet are now found. What corrects our lost-ness is as simple as making a change in our will to ‘see’, give place to and accept that it is we who are blinded to the beauty of God’s gospel, and in need of spiritual surgery! Once that admission is made in our personal hearts and minds, we begin to find that which had been ‘hidden’ by our own doing or lack of! It is probably for this reason that many, when referring to their conversion say something like ‘when I found God’, as if God had been somehow lost! In reality what we mean by such statements, is that though God was in plain sight, like the light of the sun, we had our blinders on and could not see Him! We were the ones who were lost, and only when we finally and willingly removed the impediments from our eyes, did we begin to see God! In that sense then, we ‘found Him’. It was from that moment onwards that we became conscious and aware of Him, His plan for our lives, His salvation, His beauty and Majesty and at that point, we ceased to be lost and by accepting Jesus, we became found in Him! The glorious message of salvation, which powerfully presents the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the way by which we can identify with and make ours what He did for us, is plain and manifest; but if it remains veiled, hidden and out of sight, then it is so to those who are among the countless lost, and who so desperately and in spite of themselves need to found! The task and commission is left to those who believe, to make every effort and try every means, by which we may help someone else who may be willing, to see what is yet hidden to them!

http://www.pentecostalfamilychurch.com.au/devotion