Devotional Guide For the week of April 20, 2008
GETTING THROUGH
About Jesus extending His hand to us
To read the Bible in one year, today read Psalms 61-63
To Know:
³For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the
dividing wall of hostility, by aboli****ng in his flesh the law of
commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man
in
place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in
one
body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.² (Eph.
2:14-16)
Every night upon returning to the barracks, I walked down the corridor to
the squad bay and passed a picture with the caption, ³Through.² This World
War I scene showed a soldier who had crawled into no-man¹s land to
reestablish communications between the command post and the troops in the
trenches. An exploding shell had severed the wire leaving the soldiers on
the front without the means to hear from the leaders in the rear. The
painting depicted a doughboy dead on the ground with a wire in each hand.
The title ³Through² said it all.
It is Œthrough¹ the death of Jesus Christ that God gets ³through² to us.
Jesus¹ crucifixion is the instrument of our eternal salvation. In nature,
communication between God and sinners does not exist. The explosion that
severed our communication with our maker happened in Eden. Rebellion
against
the revealed will of God sent the human race seeking the imagined safety
of
darkness. By nature we distrust God. We fear that our maker is our enemy.
But we are self-deceived. Jeremiah wrote, ³The heart is deceitful above
all
thingsŠ² (17:9) In Jesus Christ, God the Father offers his hand to us.
To Do:
The gospel is the message that Christ, whose hand is in the hand of the
Father, extends a hand to us. Faith is the hand by which we take the hand
of
Christ, which is his promise. When God gets through to us we experience
peace, pray with assurance, and experience power for holy living.
To Ask:
Father, You revealed your law to prove that by ourselves we cannot get
through to you. Instead, by the law comes the knowledge of sin. Thank you
for Jesus Christ who satisfied the law¹s demands and sets us free to be in
fellow****p with you.
04218$-04218
<8{{{><
|
