Polish the Gold and Let it Shine!

The Dallas Seminary Devotional from April 2004 quoted this, “Chuck Swindoll says, ‘Several years ago a man told me that his first contact with a Christian was so offensive he ‘never wanted to hear about Jesus again.’ He said the person who witnessed to him had bad breath and body odor, never once smiled, was dressed in clothing completely out of date, and angrily closed his remarks with, ‘Don’t blame Jesus if you go to hell.’”  Sometimes as Christians we don’t take care of ourselves very well and don’t represent God well as a result.  We get so busy serving God that we forget that we are His living temple.  Read I Corinthians 3:16.

Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s sanctuary and that the Spirit of God lives in you?

When we don’t take care of ourselves well, then we hurt our witness to the lost, and to fellow believers. We also can end up hurting our own self-esteem.  We begin to lose confidence in ourselves.  We begin to not have energy or feel good.  Our health goes down.  We don’t accomplish as much for the Lord.  People don’t respond to us well.  God’s Holy Spirit is living in us and we are representing God.  Therefore, it is important to balance our lives and take care of our bodies.  We need to eat right, keep our bodies in shape and get rest.  It is just good common sense that you can do a lot more for God when you feel good.  You will feel better about yourself and be able to witness more effectively.  You don’t have to look like a Super Model or Body Builder.  You just need to do your best to be healthy.  We need to take care of our bodies like the Jewish people took care of Solomon’s Temple.  They made that place glorifying to God and it drew the people in.  So polish the gold in God’s Temple and let it shine!

Simply Wise

Don’t you just love it when things are simple and easy.  God seems to have designed that in to so many of the things He created or the things that He wanted us to do.  For example, He created all the perfect and simple food we as humans needed to eat to stay healthy and strong.  He gave us vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and proteins to eat in a balanced fashion to help us to thrive physically.  Yet, in our sinful nature we come along and make things more complicated and we decide to mass produce foods that require genetic engineering, preservatives, additives and other processing to make it.  All of which is turning out to be very fattening and unhealthy for us.  When it comes to food, simple is better.  He even made salvation a simple matter.  We just simply need to believe that Jesus is God in the flesh and that He died for our sins and that He rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the Father.  Then we come along as humans and complicate the message.  Some groups make works a requirement to be saved.  Some make a religious belief system the requirements for being saved.  All these religious groups have complicated what God made so simple.

These things we do as humans to complicate matters really show we are very simple minded.  In other words as humans as the online dictionary puts it we are “Lacking in subtlety or sophistication; artless or naïve, stupid or silly; foolish.”  We are foolish when we make things more complicated than need be.  Yet, even God knows our simple mindedness and provides us with s simple solution to make us wise.  He gave us His word to make the simple wise.  Read Psalm 19: 7-

“The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;”

Jesus is the Word.  He gave us Jesus as the first step to becoming wise.  Then just learning the Word through the studying of the Bible will further the process of becoming wise.  What an easy system.  God makes things so simple for us.  Wisdom can be simple and can make wise the simple.

Polish the Gold and Let it Shine!

The Dallas Seminary Devotional from April 2004 quoted this, “Chuck Swindoll says, ‘Several years ago a man told me that his first contact with a Christian was so offensive he ‘never wanted to hear about Jesus again.’ He said the person who witnessed to him had bad breath and body odor, never once smiled, was dressed in clothing completely out of date, and angrily closed his remarks with, ‘Don’t blame Jesus if you go to hell.’”  Sometimes as Christians we don’t take care of ourselves very well and don’t represent God well as a result.  We get so busy serving God that we forget that we are His living temple.  Read I Corinthians 3:16.

Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s sanctuary and that the Spirit of God lives in you?

When we don’t take care of ourselves well, then we hurt our witness to the lost, and to fellow believers. We also can end up hurting our own self-esteem.  We begin to lose confidence in ourselves.  We begin to not have energy or feel good.  Our health goes down.  We don’t accomplish as much for the Lord.  People don’t respond to us well.  God’s Holy Spirit is living in us and we are representing God.  Therefore, it is important to balance our lives and take care of our bodies.  We need to eat right, keep our bodies in shape and get rest.  It is just good common sense that you can do a lot more for God when you feel good.  You will feel better about yourself and be able to witness more effectively.  You don’t have to look like a Super Model or Body Builder.  You just need to do your best to be healthy.  We need to take care of our bodies like the Jewish people took care of Solomon’s Temple.  They made that place glorifying to God and it drew the people in.  So polish the gold in God’s Temple and let it shine!

Face to Face Fear

There is good fear and there is bad fear.  In one of our previous devotionals (Fear?) we spoke of the bad kind of fear.  This time I would like to talk about a healthy fear.  A healthy fear is that kind of fear that protects us from harm or pushes us in to action.  For example, the fear of falling off a ledge is a healthy thing.  It can keep us from standing to close to the edge and slipping and falling.  That healthy fear of heights or falling can keep us from harm.  Or perhaps a fear about the bad things that are going on in the World can be a healthy fear.  It jumps us in to action.  We want to spread God’s morals and His love further in to the World to help deter or remove the evil that is going on.  Or we join the neighborhood watch and become more active in protecting our neighbors.  A little healthy fear can go a long ways.  Gideon and Peter are two examples of followers of God that had healthy fear that worked the purposes of God.  Read the following passages:

Judges 6: 17-24

¹⁷ Then he said to Him, “If I have found favor in Your sight, give me a sign that You are speaking with me. ¹⁸ Please do not leave this place until I return to You. Let me bring my gift and set it before You.” And He said, “I will stay until you return.” ¹⁹ So Gideon went and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread from a half bushel of flour. He placed the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot. He brought them out and offered them to Him under the oak. ²⁰ The Angel of God said to him, “Take the meat with the unleavened bread, put it on this stone, and pour the broth on it.” And he did so. ²¹ The Angel of the LORD extended the tip of the staff that was in His hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread. Fire came up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. Then the Angel of the LORD vanished from his sight. ²² When Gideon realized that He was the Angel of the LORD, he said, “Oh no, Lord GOD! I have seen the Angel of the LORD face to face!” ²³ But the LORD said to him, “Peace to you. Don’t be afraid, for you will not die.” ²⁴ So Gideon built an altar to the LORD there and called it Yahweh Shalom. It is in Ophrah of the Abiezrites until today.

Luke 5: 5-8

⁵ “Master,” Simon replied, “we’ve worked hard all night long and caught nothing! But at Your word, I’ll let down the nets.” ⁶ When they did this, they caught a great number of fish, and their nets began to tear. ⁷ So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them; they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. ⁸ When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!”

Both these men came face to face with healthy fear.  They both met with God and came away realizing who they were and who God is.  They realized that their sinful selves were in the presence of our almighty, righteous and Holy God.  As a result they were humbled and realized just what God expected and could do.  We can gain some instructions from these two men.  We, too, need to meet with God and come face to face with God and have a little fear about who He is and who we are.  If we did, we would be humbled.  We would see that we should be a little more concerned about what God thinks, than what others think.  We would see that we should be more concerned about God and His Kingdom, than our little worlds that we live in.  A little healthy fear of God can go a long ways in our lives.  So take some time to meet face to face with God each day and gain that healthy fear in your life.

Simply Wise

Don’t you just love it when things are simple and easy.  God seems to have designed that in to so many of the things He created or the things that He wanted us to do.  For example, He created all the perfect and simple food we as humans needed to eat to stay healthy and strong.  He gaves us vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, and proteins to eat in a balanced fashion to help us to thrive physically.  Yet, in our sinful nature we come along and make things more complicated and we decide to mass produce foods that require genetic engineering, preservatives, additives and other processing to make it.  All of which is turning out to be very fattening and unhealthy for us.  When it comes to food, simple is better.  He even made salvation a simple matter.  We just simply need to believe that Jesus is God in the flesh and that He died for our sins and that He rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the Father.  Then we come along as humans and complicate the message.  Some groups make works a requirement to be saved.  Some make a religious belief system the requirements for being saved.  All these religious groups have complicated what God made so simple.

These things we do as humans to complicate matters really show we are very simple minded.  In other words as humans as the online dictionary puts it we are “Lacking in subtlety or sophistication; artless or naïve, stupid or silly; foolish.”  We are foolish when we make things more complicated than need be.  Yet, even God knows our simple mindedness and provides us with s simple solution to make us wise.  He gave us His word to make the simple wise.  Read Psalm 19: 7-

“The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;”

Jesus is the Word.  He gave us Jesus as the first step to becoming wise.  Then just learning the Word through the studying of the Bible will further the process of becoming wise.  What an easy system.  God makes things so simple for us.  Wisdom can be simple and can make wise the simple.

In the Habit of Being Thirsty

When I am hot and thirsty, somehow over the years I have programmed myself to think that a nice glass of soda with ice will satisfy me.  My thirst will be quenched.  Unfortunately, the result isn’t always as good as I hoped.  The soda helps, but doesn’t really do the trick.  My habit of reaching for a soda is not really wise, when I am thirsty.  When I was young I should have trained myself to drink water, even if I didn’t prefer its taste in the beginning over soda.  Drinking water regularly may have been difficult, but it would have been better for me in the end.  My body would have been a whole lot healthier.

It is the same with our spiritual life.  Most humans have a tendency to reach for items that bring us pleasure.  We enjoy our hobbies and our friends, more than we enjoy spending time with God.  We enjoy a good adventure movie more than we enjoy reading our Bibles.  We enjoy our accomplishments in our careers more than our accomplishments in our work for the Lord.  In the end those choices will not be the best for us.  They are temporary pleasures that make us spiritually unhealthy.

David was running from King Saul and had ended up in the wilderness.  A place that was very dry and desolate.  While he was there he took the opportunity to pen Psalm 63.  His life was difficult and he had no clue how it would all end.  Yet, in this Psalm we see David’s wise heart.  He declared to us his habit of being thirsty for the Lord:

“1 God, You are my God; I eagerly seek You. I thirst for You; my body faints for You in a land that is dry, desolate, and without water. 2 So I gaze on You in the sanctuary to see Your strength and Your glory.”

What do you thirst for in this life?  Are you in the habit of wisely thirsting for the Lord?  Are you pleased by just seeing His strength and glory as you spend time looking at Him through His Word or His Spirit’s eyes?  You are in a dry, spiritually desolate place in this world.  This alone should cause you to thirst after the Lord.