All of us want at least two things in the Christian life; spiritual growth in Christ and fruitfulness for Christ. And I would say we all want it fast; like now, like instantaneous, like immediate, like no waiting time. Nothing wrong with these desires. In fact, something would be really wrong if these desires were lacking in our lives. But here is where we often struggle. When we are going through tough times in life and don’t understand what God is doing, we find great comfort in these familiar verses found in Isaiah 55:8-9. These verses also apply in the process of God refining us into the image of His Son or spiritually growing us.
Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ
Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ
Ministries
Proverbs 1:2-7 – To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth —
Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles.The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Today’s scripture was my portion of reading in my yearly Bible reading plan. It is familiar to all of us, but today, it jumped off the page with newness and clarity in its application. And the lessons are many and apply to all of us who are seeking to live for Christ. All of these lessons are in the context of “storms”, not a literal one as the disciples were encountering, but in the ones we face every day of life – emotional storms, spiritual storms, situational storms, relational storms . . . you may add a “personal storm” to the list. So, since these are realities in all our lives, let’s consider some valuable truths behind all our storms.
In today’s scripture, we see the deity of Jesus doing a miraculous work of feeding thousands of people with about enough for maybe a family of four, if they are not starving. But don’t allow the miraculous physically cause us to miss an important lesson spiritually. Jesus displays His power and the people displayed action to His power; they ate. The food would have meant nothing if they didn’t do their part in the miracle.
It might seem a bit odd to have an unsaved king be an example of living out the Christian life. I have not discovered a book titled, “The Christian Life” written by King Herod. Yet, in today’s scripture, we find this wicked ruler illustrating the reality of the Christian life. He does so, not by his personal experience of walking with Christ for he lacked faith in Him. He does so by showing us what occurs in the inner life of a Christian – conflict.
It may seem like a “no brainer” question – “Why walk with God?”, but the only people who would see this question as obvious are those in the minority who do strive to walk with Him. Look around the world, even our own little worlds. Most people don’t walk with Him. In fact, most people don’t even think about God. Now before we are tempted to think the answers are so obvious as to why walk with God, let’s allow a little humility to settle into our hearts and minds.
I like going through cemeteries. My calling as a pastor takes me into them often but I go there regardless. It is an interesting and helpful place for me to visit for two reasons. First, it reminds me of the brevity of life. Unless Christ returns, I, too, will soon occupy a place in the ground in a cemetery. Walking through one awakens me to reality that I am going to die and such awareness should move me to live each day to its fullest as if it were my last. It could be.