Your Three-Way Calling (and other devotionals)

Your Three-Way Calling

In Jude 1, we read the following greeting,   
      

Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ.

The Greek word for called here is used in three different ways.  As believers in Jesus Christ, this word tells us we are called to three things:

1. It is used for those who are summoned to an office, duty, or a responsibility.  Friend, every believer has been called.  You have a duty, you have an office, and you have a responsibility.  We have all been called to do something for Christ.  We are ambassadors for Christ, and we need to represent Him to a lost and dying world.

2. The word called is also used in the Greek language to summon someone to a feast or a festival.  And you know what?  You have been called to the marriage supper of the Lamb, and you will sit down one day to enjoy all the things God has planned for eternity.

3. Finally, the word translated called in this passage is used to summon someone into court to give an account for themselves, or to summon them to judgment.  One day we will have to give an account of our lives.  One day every one of us will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for the works done in the body.

You have a responsibility to represent Christ to our dying world, to someday celebrate the marriage supper of the Lamb, and to ultimately give an account of your life.

I pray you will embrace and fulfill your calling today!

~Bayless Conley~

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The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, to love the Lord thy God - Deuteronomy 30:6

Circumcision is the sign of separation. It was enjoined on Abraham and his children that they might be God's peculiar people, chosen from all the nations of the earth. Similarly, the circumcision of Christ, which is made without hands, of which the Apostle speaks, is a putting off, a separation from the sins of the flesh, a participation in the grave and burial of Christ (Col 2:12).

We must be separated from the spirit and temper of the world. Between us and its sins, ambitions, methods, there must be not only an outward, but a heart severance. We were separated in the purpose of God when Jesus was cast without the camp to die. But we must be separate in our personal behavior. Wouldst thou have this? Then claim that this promise should be fulfilled, and ask that God would circumcise thine heart - the seat of thine affections, the hearth of thy soul-life.

Then thou wilt love the Lord with all thine, heart. This is why we love God so little. The force of our love is spread over too wide a sur-face-it is like the river Orinoco, which is lost in swamps as it approaches the sea. If only we were really separated from all that is alien to God, and. given up to Him wholly, we should find all the capacity of our hearts becoming filled with His love. We should love all things and people with a tenderness and glow which were steeped in colors obtained from His.

You will never succeed in overthrowing the strongholds of Satan, Christian worker, till God has taken away your self-reliance, and has brought you down into the dust of death: then, when the sentence of death is in yourself you will begin to experience the energy of the Divine life, the glory of the Divine victory.

~F. B. Meyer~

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What Matters is Who God Is

by Max Lucado 

When God announced Moses was to deliver the Israelites, Moses wasn’t convinced! God demonstrated that who Moses was didn’t matter. What mattered was who God was.

“Moses,” spoke the voice from the bush, “throw down your staff” (Exodus 4:3).
God you may not know…well, you don’t go around throwing down your staff. You never know when. . .

“Throw it down.”

When the rod became a snake, Moses began to run.

“Moses! Pick it up by the tail.”

God, out here, well, you don’t pick up snakes too often and never by the tail.
“Moses!”

Yessir!

As Moses touched the squirmy scales, it hardened. Moses lifted up the rod—the same rod he would lift up to divide the water and guide two million people through the desert. If God can do something with stubborn hearts and a stiff-necked people. . .he can do something with the common!

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Shaking Hands or Saving Lives?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” John 3:36


DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

There was a preacher who kept a painting in his study of a shipwreck. There were sailors in lifeboats reaching out their hands to people floating on debris from the ship. A little boy looked at the painting and asked his daddy, “Are those in the lifeboats trying to save those people or are they just shaking hands?”

I wonder about us. It is all right to have friends; in fact, I encourage you to do that. But are you doing more than just socializing? Wouldn’t it be a shame if all you did was shake the hands of those around you, when you could be serving and showing them the way to God through Jesus Christ?

ACTION POINT:

We don’t pray, live, and witness as if people are dying and going to hell or heaven every day around us. May God have mercy on us. The need of the hour is for men and women to have a servant’s heart.

~Adrian Rogers~

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Numbers 14:11

How long will it be ere they believe me?

Strive with all diligence to keep out that monster unbelief. It so dishonors Christ, that He will withdraw His visible presence if we insult Him by indulging it. It is true it is a weed, the seeds of which we an never entirely extract from the soil, but we must aim at its root with zeal and perseverance. Among hateful things it is the most to be abhorred. Its injurious nature is so venomous that he that exerciseth it and he upon whom it is exercised are both hurt thereby. In thy case, O believer! it is most wicked, for the mercies of thy Lord in the past, increase thy guilt in doubting Him now. When thou dost distrust the Lord Jesus, He may well cry out, "Behold I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves." This is crowning His head with thorns of the sharpest kind. It is very cruel for a well-beloved wife to mistrust a kind and faithful husband. The sin is needless, foolish, and unwarranted. Jesus has never given the slightest ground for suspicion, and it is hard to be doubted by t hose to whom our conduct is uniformly affectionate and true. Jesus is the Son of the Highest, and has unbounded wealth; it is shameful to doubt Omnipotence and distrust all-sufficiency. The cattle on a thousand hills will suffice for our most hungry feeding, and the granaries of heaven are not likely to be emptied by our eating. If Christ were only a cistern, we might soon exhaust His fullness, but who can drain a fountain? Myriads of spirits have drawn their supplies from Him, and not one of them has murmured at the scantiness of His resources. Away, then, with this lying traitor unbelief, for his only errand is to cut the bonds of communion and make us mourn an absent Saviour. Bunyan tells us that unbelief has "as many lives as a cat:" if so, let us kill one life now, and continue the work till the whole nine are gone. Down with thee, thou traitor, my heart abhors thee.

~Charles Spurgeon~