Tag: holy

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Colossians Devotionals

Seeing our brothers and sisters as God sees them

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another.

Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.

Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:12-15)

Sometimes, our brothers and sisters in Christ can be frustrating.

But God reminded me of something this morning as I read this passage.

Yes, I am chosen by God, holy, and dearly loved by him.

But so are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

And that’s why he calls me to put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience when dealing with them.

That’s why he asks me to bear with them and forgive them. To love them. And to let his peace rule in our relationships.

When we forget how God sees our brothers and sisters, it’s easy to slander them in our hearts.

In doing so, we indirectly blaspheme God, because we slander someone made in his image. (The word translated “slander” is generally translated “blaspheme” when used in reference to God).

And so God reminded me this morning, especially when I look at my wife and daughter, to remember that all his children are chosen, holy, and dearly loved by him. And I am to treat them that way.

How do you see your brothers and sisters in Christ?

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Revelation Devotionals

Having heaven’s perspective

Revelation

One thing that will happen when we finally see God face to face is that we’ll have heaven’s perspective on who he is.

How do they see him?

Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God, the Almighty,
who was, who is, and who is to come. (Revelation 4:8)

Very reminiscent of how God revealed himself to Moses. When Moses asked him, “What is your name,” God replied, “I AM.”

I AM.

God is the eternal one. He existed before time even began. He exists now. He exists for all eternity.

And he is utterly holy.

Unique. With none like him.

Unadulterated purity. Pure to the point that even his angels marvel at him.

How often do we see him as such? As the one who is so much greater and purer than us?

Think about this. The four living creatures John describes are so overwhelmed in the presence of the Father that they can’t help but cry out praise to him.

And as they do, the twenty-four elders in heaven fall down before him, casting their crowns at his feet and worshiping him.

Our Lord and God
you are worthy to receive
glory and honor and power,
because you have created all things,
and by your will
they exist and were created. (11)

Yet so many people here on earth do not acknowledge this.

Some don’t even acknowledge that God exists.

Others acknowledge his existence, but they refuse to acknowledge his worthiness of our worship. In their minds, he may be the Creator, but that doesn’t mean he is worthy of our worship. Or of our loyalty. Or our love.

Let us not take the perspective of the people of this world.

Let us take on heaven’s perspective.

As we gaze upon his holiness, let us strive to be holy ourselves.

As we take the time to consider his awesomeness of who he is, let us offer him our worship, our loyalty, and our love.

For truly, he is worthy.

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1 Peter Devotionals

Regarding Christ as Holy

1 Peter

I was just meditating on these words today from Peter.

 …but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy. (1 Peter 3:15)

The context here is of not fearing persecution for following Christ. Peter says, “Don’t fear what other people fear or be intimated by the people around you. Rather, regard Christ as holy.”

What does that mean: to regard Christ as holy?

I think it is basically remembering who he is and to make sure he has his rightful place in your hearts.

I think about Moses and then later Joshua coming face to face with God, and both times they were told, “Take off your shoes. You are standing on holy ground.”

Why was the ground they were standing on holy? Not because it was intrinsically holy. But because of the One who occupied that ground.

The Eternal I AM. The one who always was and ever will be. The One who never changes.

The Commander of the Armies of Yahweh. The One to whom we answer to as his soldiers, as his people.

And because of who he is, we are to set him apart in hearts above all others.

Too often, I think we take him lightly.

As our “buddy upstairs,” for example.

Or as a genie who is supposed to answer our every beck and call.

But he is so much more. He is our Lord. He is our King. And the day will come when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11)

And that means us too. We too will bow before him and confess, “Jesus is Lord.”

That is something we cannot afford to forget as we live our daily lives.

He is Lord.

And he is to be honored as such in our hearts.

How about you? Do you set Jesus apart in your hearts above all others? Does he have your loyalty and allegiance?

Or do you set other things above him in your hearts?

Where is your heart today?

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Revelation

Honoring our King who sits on the throne

Revelation

“I am a friend of God,” says one contemporary worship song.

“We are children of God,” proclaims the apostle John in one of his epistles. (I John 3:1)

And yet while both are true, one thing that we should never forget is that he is also our king. And he is worthy of our honor and our praise.

Here in Revelation 4, we step into the very throne room of God, and we see God in all his glory as king.

As is often the case when people try to describe God, John finds it impossible to describe Him in detail. All he can do is give us glimpses of His glory, comparing Him to precious stones such as jasper and carnelian, and emerald. (3)

Not to say that God is a gem, of course, but that His glory radiates with great beauty.

John then tells us that from his throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder which recall the awesomeness of God’s power which the Israelites witnessed on Mount Sinai. (Exodus 19:16)

And before the throne were 7 blazing lamps or torches. (5)

Back in those days, torches were set before rulers to show their authority. But John tells us these lamps also symbolize the “seven spirits of God,” which we saw in chapter 1 probably refers to the Holy Spirit.

Leading up to the throne was a sea of glass, like crystal. It’s not clear whether this is an actual sea that John sees or it’s a pavement of glass that sparkled like crystal (NLT). Either way, imagine approaching God on that.

Before you even get to God, you have to go past some beings which are glorious in their own rights.

First are the 24 elders on their thrones.

People dispute who they are, but my guess is that they are a high order of angels, who also perhaps represent the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles joining as one people before God.

They are dressed in white, showing their holiness, and have crowns on their head, perhaps showing the authority they have.

Second are four living creatures which seem to merge the characteristics of the angels called cherubim (Ezekiel 1:5-14; Ezekiel 10), and seraphim (Isaiah 6:2-3).

These creatures are also angels of high order who would later help execute God’s judgment on the earth.

John says one was like a lion, another like an ox, the third like a man, and the fourth like a flying eagle. Perhaps they represent all of creation serving and praising God, the wild (lion), the domesticated (ox), humanity, and the birds (eagle).

It’s also possible they represent God’s majesty (lion), strength (ox), intelligence (man), and loving care (eagle — see Exodus 19:4).

But the thing that stands out to me, is that as awesome as these beings are, they all bow in worship to God.

The four creatures cry out day and night,

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come. (Revelation 4:8)

And as they do so, these mighty elders, rulers in their own right, throw their crowns before the God who gave them their authority singing,

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being. (11)

What can we get from all this?

First and foremost, that though God is our father and our friend, he is also the king upon the throne. He is the almighty God. And he is worthy of our worship.

Sin comes when we refuse to recognize this one all-important fact.

Second, he is the king, and he is in control.

Although this world sometimes seems out of control, and things will go from bad to worse as we will see later in Revelation, God is on his throne, and nothing happens apart from his will. And ultimately, he will triumph, to his praise and glory.

Amen. Come soon Lord Jesus.

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1 Corinthians

Sanctified and called to be holy

Sanctified and Holy

The church in Corinth, as we will see throughout this book, had its share of problems, many of them serious.

That said, it’s really amazing the things Paul said about the church. He called them “sanctified in Christ” and called to be holy.

Considering their problems, it’s hard to see the former, and while they were called to be holy, set apart for Christ, they certainly weren’t living that way.

But it’s a reminder to me that God does not merely see where we are now, but where we will be. And we are to look on other brothers and sisters in Christ the same way.

We are not to see them simply where they are at now in their Christian walk. But we are to see them as people Christ has already set apart for himself. They are now his.

And so as Paul did with the Corinthians, we are to remind our brothers and sisters that they are called to live that way. To no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and rose again.

Just as importantly, we need to see ourselves the same way.

It’s easy to look at ourselves as Christians and get discouraged. We see our sins and how we struggle, and we wonder how God could accept us.

But let us remember that we have already been accepted. God has already set ourselves apart for himself. So now, let’s live that way.

But remember too that we don’t need to do this on our own strength. For Paul tells us,

He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. (1 Corinthians 1:8-9)

We may not always be faithful. But God is. And he will never stop working in us until the day we stand before Christ, holy and blameless in his sight.

How about you? How do you see your brothers and sisters in Christ? How do you see yourself?

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John John 2

Jesus’ zeal for his temple

John

Well, for those who have been praying for my computer, thank you. It’s finally back up and running after hours of futile troubleshooting. All of it actually sparked a thought for today’s blog.

In this passage, Jesus comes to the temple and finds that it’s invaded by a bunch of merchants and money changers.

They had set up their business in the temple courts, namely, the court of the Gentiles. People who were not Jews and wanted to come to worship God were only allowed in up to that point.

But when Jesus arrived at that outer courtyard, he saw utter chaos. Sheep, cattle, and birds were all making a ruckus, hardly conducive to an atmosphere of worship.

And if that weren’t bad enough, many people who had to change their money to pay for their temple taxes were getting horrific exchange rates.

Others, meanwhile, were being told that the animals they had brought to sacrifice weren’t good enough and were being forced to buy new ones at premium prices.

Little wonder that Jesus was a bit, shall we say, perturbed?

So for one of the few times in the gospels, we see Jesus go on a rampage, driving all the money changers and animals out of the courtyard, and bellowing out,

Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market! (John 2:16)

The Jewish leaders then demanded him to show what right he had to do such a thing; what miraculous sign he could do to show that he was truly doing God’s will, to which Jesus replied,

Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. (John 2:19)

The Jews thought he meant Herod’s temple, that was still not fully completed even after 46 years. (It was finally completed in 63 A.D).

But John tells us that Jesus was talking about his body. That though they may destroy it on the cross, yet he would raise it up in three days.

By the way, this totally destroys the idea that Jesus rose from the dead as a spirit as some, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, like to claim. Here Jesus specifically tells us that he would raise his actual body.

But just as Jesus referred to his body as a temple, so Paul refers to our bodies as the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19).

And just as Jesus was zealous for the temple in Jerusalem, and keeping it pure for the worship of God, so he is zealous for the temple of our bodies, that we keep it holy and set apart for God.

Yet so often, we clutter it up not only with sin, but with other things as well that would keep us from a pure worship of God.

Which brings me back to my computer. When it went down, my hardware was fine, I just had my Windows software go down, such that it would not boot up. As a result, I still had access to all my files. I just had to go through DOS (does anyone still remember DOS) to get at it.

I tried desperately to find a way to not have to reinstall everything. But in the end, I simply had to back everything up, format the disk (in other words, wipe everything out), and then reinstall everything.

I had a lot of things on the disk that were not bad at all. There were many good things there. But because of the corruption that was there, it made it impossible for the system to go.

How about you? Is there anything in your heart that is distracting you from your worship of God?

Or is there anything in your heart that is keeping others from seeing God in you, just as all the sheep, goats, and money-changers kept the Gentiles from seeing God in the temple?

There may be sin. Or there may be things that are not bad in themselves, but are still causing harm in your temple.

Let Jesus purge it from your life and make you the temple he desires you to be.

What’s in your temple?

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Jeremiah

Making ourselves useless

Jeremiah

What are we doing here on earth?  What is God’s purpose for us? 

Ultimately it comes down to two things:

First, to know him more. 

And second, to touch the world around us for him. 

God could take us straight to heaven and accomplish the first.  But he would be quite limited in doing the second if he took us to heaven right here and now. 

(I suppose he could use our writings or the inspiration people take from our lives to touch others even after our death, for example).

But it is possible to make ourselves useless.  To be a person that God cannot use at all to touch this world.  How can that happen? 

God told the people of Judah,

I bound the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to me,’ declares the Lord, ‘to be my people for my renown and praise and honor. 

But they have not listened.’  (Jeremiah 13:11)

In other words, God intended Israel and Judah to be a shining light to the nations around them.  That the nations would see God in their midst and be drawn to him. 

But Israel and Judah refused to listen to or obey him.  So God made a graphic picture for them to realize what had happened to them.

He had Jeremiah buy a linen belt, wear it for a while, and then bury it in the ground for a time. 

When Jeremiah finally brought it back out of the ground, it was ruined and completely useless.  God then told Jeremiah,

In the same way I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 

These wicked people, who refuse to listen to my words, who follow the stubbornness of their hearts and go after other gods to serve and worship them, will be like this belt – completely useless!  (Jeremiah 13:9-10)

When we in our pride turn from God, refuse to heed his voice and instead follow the stubbornness of our own hearts, following the gods of this world, whether it be idols, or money, or possessions, or whatever it may be, we become like the linen belt:  buried in the ground, ruined, and useless to God.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be that way.  As the old song goes,

My heart’s one desire
Is to be holy
Set apart for You, Lord

I choose to be holy
Set apart for You, my Master
Ready to do Your will.