I have not written a devotional or a sermon today. What I’ve written really isn’t for you, though I invite you to read it. Instead, what I’ve written is a simple declaration of my faith and joy in Jesus. I felt the need to put a metaphorical stake in the ground.
There is one thing I know for sure and it’s this: The best thing that ever happened to me was to hear God call me, for the Holy Spirit to show me my ugly, rebelliousness, to know that I had a hope, my only hope, and that hope was in the living person of Jesus; to be reborn through Jesus, by hearing the good news of Jesus, and to be released from my death sentence by Jesus.
Nothing in my life compares to what Jesus has done for me. And He continues to work in and through me; He has not abandoned me. He has not left me an orphan. He has not moved on to others at the cost of forgetting me. He can save and abide with everyone that calls to Him.
For me, I was as one of the ten lepers that called out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” Hallelujah, I did turn back to Jesus, and Jesus made me whole. Not only that but He sealed me with the Holy Spirit, and later Jesus baptized me in the Holy Spirit.
I have prayed to the Father with understanding, and I’ve prayed to the Father by the Holy Spirit things that I knew not how to pray. There are marvelous things God has done for me, in me, and through me, that I only share with Him. I treasure them more than anything this world can offer.
How can I deny Him? How can I lay down the yoke He made for me? How can I trivialize His sacrifice for me? How can I alter, abridge, or abrogate even a letter of the Word of God?
My faith in Jesus alters me, making me different from those of the world. I must not, and I can not choose anything or anyone in place of even the least of Christ’s commands.
I live as an old sojourner in this world; a relic it seems; perhaps an oddity but I hope I am a living testimony to a few of what is available to all through Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Acts 17:26-28Â (ESV)
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,Â
for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring...'”
Photo by Jeff Rodgers on Unsplash
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