Friday:
Deuteronomy 18:9-11
“Salvation is like buying a car, if we don’t stay committed to paying our bills, we’ll lose it. If we want to keep the car, we have to follow through with our contract, and pay what we owe due to the agreement we made.” When we first enter into salvation, we’re making a contract with God that we are officially handing over our lives to Him so that He can guide us. The unfortunate part is when we enter in to that contract, we don’t read the fine print. We still want to control our lives when the contract requires a surrendering spirit. Then when we become frustrated, we forfeit the entire contract by no longer “paying the bills.” In other words, we stop listening to God, obeying Him, and stop paying attention to His will for us. Jesus never intended the salvation’s prayer to be light and easy, something that sounds good at one time with no follow up. He said, “Follow Me, and you will be saved.” It’s not only saying it with your mouth, but living it out with your life.
Question: What’s your lifestyle like? Is it a life worthy of salvation or something somewhere either close or far off?
Challenge: Go deeper in your intimacy with Christ. How? Read your Word as soon as you wake up, pray continually throughout your day, and focus on others more than yourself.
Saturday:
Genesis 17:12
“It was never the law that was important, it’s why the law was set in place.” Take the instance of driving a car. You’re going 100mph down the highway and you approach a bend in the road that wraps itself around a hill. What you can’t see around the corner is the completely stopped traffic. You finally see the traffic and because of your speed don’t have enough time to slow down. Then, SMACK! Right in to the back of not only the car directly in front of you, but the whole line of cars in front of the one you just hit. Imagine if you were actually going the speed limit, you would have had a lot more time to completely stop, or at least allow the damage to be much less. The speed limit isn’t set in place to make you go as slow as humanly possible so you’re late to destination, but to make sure you end up there! The law is there to protect and others around you. It’s the same idea with God. He directly appoints us to talk or pray with certain people, it’s our choice whether or not to listen to His will. The consequence is a lost soul continuing in his/her ways, not knowing the love of Christ you had to offer them. Secondly, you don’t receive the blessing God had in store for you.
Question: Have you missed an opportunity to tell someone about Christ? What will you do differently to make sure you don’t miss the next chance you get?
Challenge: Look for those opportunities where you can step outside your comfort zone and be obedient to the will of God.
Sunday:
2 Corinthians 3:6
“Jesus didn’t come to the earth just to simply die for your sins.” For a lot of people that grew up in the church this thought is very contrary to the way you were raised. Others who didn’t, this still might come as a surprise. However He did come to release you from your sins, but His sole purpose was to have a relationship with you. He wants to spend quality time with you, because He loves you so much. As much as we desire to be in His presence, He desires to be in ours, if we allow Him to. If Jesus’ only purpose was to come to the earth for you to be saved, then He would have taken you up to Heaven as soon as you had your salvation. So why did He come? His greatest desire for you isn’t for you to be the best at not sinning. It’s for you to simply have a relationship with Him. So then why did He die if He came to have a relationship? Then why did Jesus die for your sins? God is a holy God and He can’t be around sin, but because He is so passionate about loving you, He gave you a way to be with Him.
Question: How often do you spend time growing your relationship with God? How can you take time out of your day to spend more time with Him?
Monday:
Exodus 8:1
How often do we find ourselves trying to win the approval of God? We try to earn the right to pray, talk, or be in the presence of God when God desires to be with you, no matter the circumstance. Just like the Pharisees, we get so caught up in attempting to be perfect that we lose sight of His presence and base our relationship solely on our actions. But how can you have a relationship with someone you don’t talk to? They might think you’re nice because you do things for them, but it gets old after a while because there’s nothing to back it up. Sin is the result of a problem. The problem is a lack of relationship, not a lack of action.
Question: Who do you spend the most time with? Why don’t you spend that much time with God?
Challenge: Get with Him. Be alone, in your quiet place and allow Him to have a conversation with Him before cutting Him off with all your requests. Let Him know how good you think He is, and He’ll show you that He’s greater. Worship Him. That’s all that He asks of you. Give Him your time.
Tuesday:
Galatians 5:16
“If you are living in the Spirit, then it’s impossible to be living in the flesh. If you’re living in the flesh, you can’t be living in the Spirit.” How do you know this is true? Think about it this way, if you’re standing in California, you can’t be standing in Australia at the same time. It’s the same way with God. If you’re living with Him, in the Spirit, you can’t be living in the flesh. God isn’t flesh, and He can’t be something that He’s not. Although when we live in the Spirit we aren’t God, but we are being led by God. If we live in the flesh, we can’t be living with God because in the flesh is where sin is. Living in the Spirit is having an absence of sin. Does that mean we’ll never sin, no. It means we have no desire to sin. The key to staying saved is by living in His presence, and denying your flesh.
Question: Are you living in the Spirit or in your flesh? Decide which one you’ll choose. Trying to live a little bit of both will never do.
Challenge: Weigh out the options of what’s important to you. Is it living in the presence of God and reaping the benefits and blessings, or in your flesh where love is only temporary and where it’s easy, but very lonely.
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