Devotionals for I AM CHOSEN (Ephesians 1:4)

Transcription

1 Devotionals for I AM CHOSEN (Ephesians 1:4) Monday Welcome to our second week in the series. As we continue to unpack all that we are in Christ and as we look at each spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm, let s focus on the key verse of the message last weekend. Ephesians 1:4 says, Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. There was a country song nearly 20 years ago by Clint Black and his wife Lisa Hartman entitled When I Said I Do. It has some great lyrics. The chorus simply says, When I said I do, I meant that I will, till the end of all time. Be faithful and true, devoted to you, that s what I had in mind when I said I do. Now, that s a great song about faithfulness in marriage. It s also a great indicator of expectation in marriage. This verse we focus on today says what God had in mind about you and me. Before God created the world, He had us in mind. And what He had in mind was that He would have a people, a group of people all throughout time would come to faith in Him because of His Son, Jesus. Notice in this verse how we are to be faithful and true to Him. We were loved and chosen by Him in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes. In other words, we are not holy and without fault on our own. But in Christ, we receive His holiness. And even though we re not blameless, but rather very imperfect in our humanness, in His eyes (because of His Son and our faith in Him) we are blameless as He is blameless. That s the good news of the Gospel. So today, Northside family, as we live out what God had in mind, may we realize that we are loved and have been chosen and are considered faultless in His eyes because of Jesus, the One who died in our place! Bless you guys today, gr

2 Tuesday Welcome back today! Let me remind you that you are chosen in Christ, loved by Him, and considered holy and faultless in His sight because of His Holy Spirit who lives within you! Now, the passage of Scripture for us to focus on today is a very powerful one that talks about the sovereignty of God. That s a word we don t use much. It has to do with not being accountable to anyone, but rather having complete and ultimate authority and say so, if you will. Let s look at this verse from Isaiah 46:9 10, Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me. Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish. But please understand this is a spiritual reality that we focus on today. God is high and lifted up, His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, and in 1 Corinthian s Paul says, The wisdom of man is foolishness to God. Now, I think this is where an atheist really begins to struggle. In their attempt to remove any authority above themselves, except for themselves, it would seem more efficient to try to remove the notion of God completely. But in all honesty, you can t remove the idea of God in my opinion. You either acknowledge Him, you substitute for Him with some other idea, or you decide to put yourself and humanity in the role of sovereignty. Welcome to our world, as we secularly know it. Today I want to encourage you to trust in the God of all creation. And not just acknowledge Him from a distance like we do sometimes with the busy lives we live. But when you acknowledge Him, there s nothing that you can t face, or even want to face, without Him by your side and without a strong trust and belief that He knows what He s doing! And today as you live in this trust of the God who is sovereign in the universe He created, remind yourself of the truth that s found in Romans 8:28, which says, And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. And while we re in the neighborhood, let s read the next verse, verse 29, which says, For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Let that phrase chose them to become like his Son stay in your mind today. The King James Version says, Conformed to the image of his Son. That s what He will be up to today, trust me. He always has been, and He always will be up to doing just that. The question is, will we cooperate with His efforts in helping us become more holy and blameless in His sight? Love you, Northside family,

3 Wednesday Alrighty then, here we are at the halfway point of the week. One of the questions that comes up quite often in biblical studies concerning this passage in Ephesians 1:4 is the thought of predestination versus our knowledge. I know for some this may not really matter a whole lot in your opinion in your spiritual walk, but it will affect your motivation and ministry, I believe. At least it does for me. Now to simplify the discussion, it will call for noticing one simple difference between these two thoughts. Both views acknowledge the sovereignty of God. But one group believes God predestined you personally and you did not have a choice in the matter of being saved or being lost, while the other group believes God had the knowledge of who would accept Him or reject Him and gave us that free will to personally choose. But the group would also be quick to acknowledge that God did predestine He would have a people, a group. He just left their free will in tact. Well, I land on the free will and for knowledge side of this discussion. I certainly want to respect other believers who see this a little bit differently. However, let me reiterate some verses of Scripture that have helped shape my thinking on this. John 3:16 says, that whoever believes in Jesus might have eternal life. In 2 Peter 3:9, it says that God is not willing that any should perish, but all would come to repentance. And 1 John 2:2 says that He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins and not only our sins but the sins of all the world. The way this debate got galvanized was through the teachings of John Calvin, who embraced predestination, versus the teachings of Jacobus Arminius, who embraced the free will of God is given us to choose. And so, the categorization of a person s systematic Christian theology will lean toward being Calvinistic or Arminian. (I know, do we have to make this so difficult?) But intensive study and healthy debate can be really good, as long as we understand we are chosen in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes! Whether we are separately chosen or collectively chosen, we still are chosen for the purpose of honoring the God who loves us and sent His Son for us! And while I will defend the teaching that we have a choice in the matter, I would much rather be concerned about encouraging you and the choices we make today, the choice to continue to honor God, striving to live a life that s pure and led by His Spirit! May we, as a Northside Family, do what we re called to do in Hebrews chapter 10, which is to spur one another on to love and good deeds, to prompt each others hearts towards honoring God and loving one another deeply from the heart! Here s to good choices in the Kingdom today, my friends,

4 Thursday Praying it s been a good week for you! As I write the devotion today, it s actually the previous Thursday. Sue Linn and I are waiting here at home to get the call from Nathan and Ruthie as to when to come to the hospital for their third baby to be born. I m absolutely amazed at the grace of God and the blessing of children and grandchildren! So, their daughter Lily, who is five now, will be preparing for her maternal instincts to surface even more, and her brother Carter, who just turned two this week, will lose his prominent status as the baby of the family and be promoted to a middle child, which he will one day wonder whether this truly was a promotion! The application point of the message this past weekend came down to three scenarios that I d like for us to consider once again today. Even if we know we ve been chosen by God, we may have some other situations in life that affect that identity. The first scenario is God has chosen you, even if your family hasn t. The second one is even if you don t feel like you ve been chosen by God. And the third is even if you re struggling in your behavior, which doesn t reflect that you confidently believe you belong to Him. Let s hit them one at a time. In a world where abandonment, neglect, and abuse are far too great, it s important to know that if those things happened within your earthly family, that God is not like that. Next week, we ll talk about how we have been adopted into God s family. I know even from our own experience with our family that when adoption becomes conscious, several things can happen. There can be great gratitude for the opportunity to have the family where the child has been placed, but there can also be a tremendous curiosity and a feeling of rejection that is hard to navigate through. Today, regardless of what has happened in your family, if you have faith in Christ or if you have chosen Him, He chooses you. You belong to Him. You were bought with the price of Jesus dying on the cross. Please let your spiritual identity overshadow whatever other earthly relational experience you have had! Now, the second scenario has to do with even if you don t feel like you ve been chosen by God. Spiritual feelings have a tendency to be heavily affected by things that go on around us, rather than foundational truth within the Scripture. Our feelings will come and go, and when they re based on insecurity, they can either head towards compensation and denial or towards feeling sorry for ourselves. If you re not feeling solid in your relationship with Jesus, I would encourage you to take a heavy dose of three things: 1. The Word of God 2. The Spirit of God 3. The People of God! What you will find from those resources I provided will be critical and will reaffirm how you see yourself in Christ and how you move and take next steps towards maturity and becoming holy and faultless in His sight! Now, the final setting would be the times in our life when we struggle with our behavior, and it seems to deny the love in the conviction we have about God. We know we re chosen and loved by Him, but we seem to be circling the wagons in sin and, perhaps, even caught like Chevy Chase on a European round-a-bout, unable to get off the circle in the movie, European Vacation. If you re struggling, God wants to interrupt the cycle. Let me prescribe one more time another heavy dose that I mentioned earlier: God s Word, God Spirit, God s people. And it might even be that we have to ask for help and maybe even professional Christian help. But the place to start if you re struggling with your behavior is you and God. Then bring in His People. Then be open to specific shepherding by an appropriate person or group, who may not meet every expectation on your new best friend list but will give you the truth in love as we all are called to do in Ephesians 4:15. God wants us to be kinda like Walgreen s, on the corner of healthy and holy! (Happy will come in time!) Praying for your weekend coming up, Northside family! And hey, we better get to the hospital and get this party started! Love you guys,

5 Friday There s always something neat about the last of anything, isn t there? Taking the last bite of your favorite food, shooting the last shot in a ball game, getting the last word in an intense conversation! And here we are, the last day of the week, with some thoughts that I hope will help us transition and us being chosen, to us doing some choosing! Take a moment to read John 15:16. It s a great reminder that Jesus gives to His disciples that He chose. Now, take a moment to read Luke 6: This is a closer look at how Jesus called them. Before He designated the 12 to be apostles, He spent the whole night awake praying to God on a mountaintop. In the selection of those 12, it was important for Him to completely align His heart with His Father in an intense experience like that. As we end the week, let me encourage you to realize that helping other people know how important it is for them to choose Him in faith is a great privilege. It s kind of like the role of a midwife in helping a new baby to come into this world. You and I get to do that. And we might just be there to encourage them along the gestational path. We may not be the ones right there for the delivery. But God has called us, and Jesus has shown us how to make disciples. I m praying that your joy and confidence in being chosen by Him will spill over to others, letting them know, perhaps for the first time, that God s love is the same for them as it is for us. His love is faithful, His love is life changing, and His love is overwhelming if we allow it to be! May we be the chosen people He s called us to be, Northside Family See you this weekend! gr