A number of the devotions written up at VerticalDevotion.com have gotten me thinking about the life of Christ. Is Jesus Christ’s life a good example that we are should emulate?
I imagine that most Christians would agree that we should emulate His love and care for the poor, mistreated, overlooked, diseased, etc. But the story doesn’t stop there. Jesus isn’t just our example. he is our Savior and our Righteouness. That is the Good News of the Gospel!
I read notes on Mark Dever’s teaching on Luke 6 this week and he shared this great truth:
The most common misunderstanding of Christianity is that Jesus mainly is a good example for people to follow. While this is true in a secondary sense, it is not possible to understand Christianity if you do not understand that Jesus is mainly utterly unique. He is the Son of the eternal God who became man and lived the perfect life; He died on the cross, suffered and provided an atonement for our sins by taking upon Himself God’s wrath and the punishment for the sins of those who would trust in him and calls us now to respond to this claim; uniquely, he was raised from death, showing that his sacrifice was accepted and God’s wrath was exhausted. That is why this and every Sunday we gather to celebrate the resurrection – that Christ was raised from the dead. Christ alone is like that. That is why Christ alone is the Lord of religion.
Christian, the point of our religion and everything we do is Jesus. The goal of Christians is to know Him better, to have a more realistic and true relationship with Him. In the funeral sermon entitled “Christ is Best,” Richard Sibbes preached, “Heaven is not heaven without Christ… to be with Christ is to be at home.” This is our Sabbath rest, and Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath.
My devotion on Hebrews 5 is up today at FBCN’s The Summit site.
My lovely wife nursed both of our daughters, so there was not much of an opportunity for me to feed them. I looked forward to the days ahead when I would be able to feed them some “real” food. Unfortunately for me, the child development process takes time. As much as I wanted introduce solids, we knew that feeding a baby solid food too early would make them sick. On the other hand, keeping them on milk for too long would mean that they wouldn’t get the nourishment they need to grow healthy. We patiently waited for the right moment to introduced solids and gradually moved forward.
Like human development, spiritual growth is a process – a process that should be moving forward towards maturity. In Hebrews 5:11-14 we see that God’s design is for a new believer to become grounded in the elementary truths of the faith. Once grounded, they should be growing towards maturity. We should not become stagnant or worse, regress. No, we should mature, teaching righteousness and helping others distinguish between good and evil.
Just as we all look forward to the development of our children we should be mindful of our own spiritual growth. Take a look at your relationship with God. Are you enjoying solid food moving towards maturity? How about your spouse? Your children? Your fellow Life Group members?
Michael Gregory has a very encouraging devotion today in reflection upon Acts 23 at FBCN’s The Summit site. Amazing how God guides us through all the ups and downs even though we often fail to see him at the time.
Side note: Anyone know a way to link to individual days? Flash®, drives me nuts! I’m just going to paste it below.
This chapter in Acts reminds me of a similar place in my own spiritual journey. I was in a place for a year where I really didn’t want to be. At the time I had this feeling that everything would eventually be fine. Looking back at the situation now, I realize that at the time I was hearing the subtle voice of Jesus encouraging me to be strong, and that the time would pass for something better, just as Paul heard the encouraging words of Jesus during his time of trouble. Things for Paul went from bad to worse, when Paul’s life was later threatened. Although, he trusted the encouragement from Jesus and knew that everything would be OK. Paul’s eyes were set upon Jesus. Paul had faith.
Like Paul, my journey has had its up and downs. I had the rug pulled out from under me and my family. It made the low year look like a cake walk. This time I knew it would be alright and that everything would get better, because of the encouragement I was hearing from the comforting voice of Jesus. My faith was stronger. I kept my eyes upon Jesus and never took them off of Him.
I now look back over the past several years of my journey and have a sense of why God sent me on that part of my journey. I may not know all the reasons for what has happened. But I know this much: He built up my trust in Him and my ability to listen to His encouraging words. God has me just where He wants me and for that I am thankful. With the encouraging words from our Lord, we can boldly go through the valleys, plains, and to mountaintops, just as Paul did on his journey while taking in the encouraging words from our Lord. With faith and the encouraging words from God, we can go through various situations in our lives even when we don’t know why we’re there in the first place. With God, we can endure anything.
Praise God for all He has done, is doing, and is yet to do.
