Devotional Guide For the week of March 2, 2008
FREEDOMıS HOLY LIGHT
Where are we headed?
To read the Bible in one year, today read Ezra 1-3
To Know:
³For one is approved if, mindful of God, he endures pain while suffering
unjustly. For what credit is it, if when you do wrong and are beaten for
it
you take it patiently? But if when you do right and suffer for it you take
it patiently, you have Godıs approval. For to this you have been called,
because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you
should follow in his steps.² (1 Pet.2: 19-21)
A quarter of a century ago, Albert Outler delivered the Beecher Lectures
at
Yale. Outler challenged the thinking of the divinity students with this
question: ³If you are not heading toward holiness, where are you heading?²
All of us are heading somewhere. Do we really want to arrive at the
destination toward which we are presently heading? If our course is
unholy,
it is cursed. Christ was the only holy man ever to live on the earth. He
was
what it means to be a holy human being?
The Old Testament says, ³You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am
holy.² (Lev. 19:2) The New Testament says, ³Therefore be imitators of
God...² (Ephesians 5:1) These commands are one. We are under orders to
live
godly lives. How can that happen?
True Christianity is union with Christ. Jesusı most im****tant sermon may
not
be the Sermon on the Mount; it may be the message delivered to the
disciples
less than twenty-four hours before he was nailed on a cross. In the Upper
Room, Jesus promised his followers to return to them in the person of his
Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit generates a holy life. Holy living is to walk
through life stepping in the footprints left for us by Jesus Christ.
To Do:
God made the world and therefore he is not in its power. The holy God is
different than his created order. The world p***** away but the Lord does
not. The unholy will perish with the world. Only the man or woman who is
in
Christ by faith is holy. Such a one will never perish, but have eternal
life. Only the holy are heading for the life of the age to come.
03058$-03058
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