Finding Joy in All the Right Places (and other devotionals)

Finding Joy in All the Right Places

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.” Psalm 34:8

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A Christian should be filled with joy. But we can’t take any credit for it. It is Jesus who gives us joy and satisfaction. We couldn’t have found it had we been searching for it, but by finding, knowing, and growing in Christ, He has filled us with an overflowing joy.

Do you know what the devil will tell you? That holiness and happiness don’t go together. He will tell you that if you make up your mind to live a holy life, then you won’t have any fun. Friend, the devil is a liar.

ACTION POINT:

You’ll never know satisfaction and joy until you find it in the right place. You’ll never enjoy the good things of life until you know Jesus. Oh, how sweet to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Is the hunger of your heart met in Christ?

~Adrian Rogers~

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I will lay thy stones with fair colors (Isa. 54:11).

The stones from the wall said, "We come from the mountains far away, from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water have worked on us for ages, but made us only crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling where the children of your immortal race are born, and suffer, and rejoice, and find rest and shelter, and learn the lessons set them by our Maker and yours. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us, it seemed to us often with out design or meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry; but gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiseled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now, and are in our places, and are of service.

"You are in the quarry still, and not complete, and therefore to you, as once to us, much is inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building, and one day you will be placed in it by hands not human, a living stone in a heavenly temple."

In the still air the music lies unheard;In the rough marble beauty hides unseen;
To make the music and the beauty needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.
Great Master, touch us with Thy skillful hands;
Let not the music that is in us die!
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let,
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie!

~L. B. Cowman~

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Thou shall cause them to inherit it - Deuteronomy 31:7

Joshua is ever the type of our blessed Jesus. Joshua not only won Canaan for his people by his faith in the gift of God, coupled with his strenuous efforts, but he caused them to inherit it. Jesus not only won the wealth of the heavenlies for His Church by His death and resurrection, but He waits to cause us to inherit it through the Holy Spirit which He gives.

How great is our heritage! Heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ! All things that pertain to life and godliness await our appropriation! All spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus! There is no conceivable grace or virtue, no fabric of the Divine looms for the soul's dress, no ornament of heavenly jewellery for the soul's adorning, no weapon of celestial temper for the soul's equipment, no salve or balm of Divine comfort for the soul's healing, which is not ours in Jesus. The Father has given Him to have life in Himself that He might give us life more abundantly. He is full of grace and truth, that out of His fullness we all may receive. He received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, that He might pour Him forth in Pentecostal fullness. But we do not possess our possessions. We are like people who have sent all their valuables to the strong-room of a bank, and never by any chance make use of them.

This is a lack which Jesus can also supply. He can cause us to inherit: first, by His Spirit He reveals the lavishness of the Divine possession; next He excites an appetite of desire; next, He begets the expectant faith that claims; and, lastly, He becomes to us each one of these things, so that we are enriched in Him, and possessing Him, find that all things are really ours.

~F. B. Meyer~

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Are You Listening?

Yesterday we began a series of devotionals focusing on how you can regain your spiritual edge.  As we think about how to do that, it is important to consider those things that would indicate we have become spiritually dull.

I believe the number one characteristic you find in someone who has lost their cutting edge spiritually is that the voice of the Holy Spirit is no longer recognized.  Those impressions that the Spirit makes upon your heart, through which He guides you, are no longer clear.

In Matthew 13:14-15, Jesus talks about this in a pretty plain way,

"And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:  ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull.  Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.'"

This concern is echoed in Hebrews 5:11, where the writer, in talking about the priesthood of Christ, says,

Of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

Have you lost the edge?  Have you lost that sensitivity to the voice of God?  Hearing with the physical ears, but not understanding in the heart; seeing with the physical eyes, but not perceiving what God is doing?

Jesus said that happens when the heart becomes dull.  When someone loses that edge spiritually, it results is an insensitivity to the voice of God.

If this describes you today, ask God to open your eyes to see and your ears to hear.  Begin now to regain your spiritual edge.

~Bayless Conley~

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Jeremiah 17:14

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed.

"I have seen His ways, and will heal him."-Isaiah 57:18 It is the sole prerogative of God to remove spiritual disease. Natural disease may be instrumentally healed by men, but even then the honour is to be given to God who giveth virtue unto medicine, and bestoweth power unto the human frame to cast off disease. As for spiritual sicknesses, these remain with the great Physician alone; He claims it as His prerogative, "I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal"; and one of the Lord's choice titles is Jehovah-Rophi, the Lord that healeth thee. "I will heal thee of thy wounds," is a promise which could not come from the lip of man, but only from the mouth of the eternal God. On this account the psalmist cried unto the Lord, "O Lord, heal me, for my bones are sore vexed," and again, "Heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee." For this, also, the godly praise the name of the Lord, saying, "He healeth all our diseases." He who made man can restore man; He who was at first the creator of our nature can new create it. What a transcendent comfort it is that in the person of Jesus "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily!" My soul, whatever thy disease may be, this great Physician can heal thee. If He be God, there can be no limit to His power. Come then with the blind eye of darkened understanding, come with the limping foot of wasted energy, come with the maimed hand of weak faith, the fever of an angry temper, or the ague of shivering despondency, come just as thou art, for He who is God can certainly restore thee of thy plague. None shall restrain the healing virtue which proceeds from Jesus our Lord. Legions of devils have been made to own the power of the beloved Physician, and never once has He been baffled. All His patients have been cured in the past and shall be in the future, and thou shalt be one among them, my friend, if thou wilt but rest thyself in Him this night.

~Charles Spurgeon~