Shema
CF Ambassador
An Emoji Devotional for Monday, March 6 2023
Topic: How can I live a God pleasing life?
By Pastor Hans Wenger
After having surrendered to God and dedicated my future life to his guidance, I need to look back and see what has really happened. I have left the rule of darkness, sin and death. Through the blood of Jesus, he shed for me on the cross, I got cleansed from all of my sins and I have been legally admitted into the kingdom of God. I have Jesus Christ accepted as my Lord and Redeemer and he has entered my heart and dwells now within me. This makes me to his follower and disciple.
Before Jesus went back to the Father, he commissioned his disciples as follows: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’
The next step now is learning to obey God’s commandments and to get baptized. Baptism is a visual depiction of what happened in the spirit. By getting immersed into the water, I am dying with Christ to this present world, and by emerging from the water I am re-birthed into a new life in the kingdom of God. I am now born-again out of water and spirit. The Holy Spirit has entered me when I invited Jesus into my heart. With the Holy Spirit I received eternal life and that means that I have regained the life Adam and Eve and all of mankind have lost in their fall in Paradise. The eternal life and the glory of it are not yet fully visible. They remain hidden in God until Jesus Christ will be revealed as the King of the kingdom of God in the latter days. (Colossians 3:1 – 4)
It is very helpful to read Chapter 3:1 - 21 in the Gospel of John at this juncture. As I am now born again and have received the Holy Spirit, I am now equipped for the understanding of the word of God. “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1. Corinthians 2:14)
In order to obey God’s commandments, I need to know them and that is the reason I need to immerse myself now into the word of God. I recommend starting with the Gospel of John. It depicts best that following Christ has nothing to do with religion, but everything with relationship with God and with people. Also Matthew Chapter 3 to 7 can be very helpful to understand that there is no way for us to reach salvation through keeping the law. We will always fall short and therefore need God’s grace and mercy. On the same token it is very important that you surround yourself with a group of followers of Christ with whom you can exchange your thoughts and experiences. I do not need to figure out everything myself. It can be very helpful to ask and to discuss the meaning and understanding of different topics.
I am now trying to just give you some guidelines that may be helpful in your walk with the Lord.
Faith and trust
“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.“ (Hebrew 11:1) We all live in this present world, but we are Aliens, we are citizens of the kingdom of God. That means that between what we know to be true and our daily experience is a gap. As we begin to walk with the Lord, this can irritate us. We know we have eternal life, but we experience dividing death. We are therefore in danger to somehow weaken the assurance about what we do not see. I hold it for true that Jesus will come again and rapture his church, but I do not much to be ready for encountering him. To hold something for true and to have faith are two different things. Faith knows that what is promised will come into existence, no matter what and it fully and literally trusts every word of God.
An artist had a rope stretched over a big waterfall and balanced back and forth over the roaring waters. He then took a wheelbarrow and pushed it over the waters. As he was back again he addressed the crowd by asking: “Do you trust me that I can sit a man into the wheelbarrow and cross the chasm again?” The crowd jeered and scanted: “We trust you, we trust you,” but got very quiet when he asked: “Who volunteers?” Suddenly a young man stepped forward and said: “I do!” He safely crossed the waters with the artist and the crowd jeered again. The young man had faith and trust. The crowd only held it for true, but doubted in the heart.
Have faith in the word and take it literally for you and you will make wonderful experiences with God.
Surrender and dedication.
In my conversion, I have surrendered to God, received the Holy Spirit and became a child of God. I do not need to repeat that. However, by trying to be a sincere follower of Christ, I will catch myself time and again with mistakes and sins. This can discourage me and I may hold myself for a failure or just pretend that my behavior is not sinful and flawed at all. Both reactions are wrong. The apostle John teaches us in his first Epistle about the subject. I will just quote the main verses from the first chapter, but it is very helpful to read chapter 2 as well.
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1. John 1:5 – 10)
This is not a new conversion; it is much more a means of sanctification and growth.
We need to dedicate ourselves to discipline, to prayer and to the study of the bible. If I struggle time and again with the same sin, it may be helpful to talk about it with a friend or to go for counseling. I need to force myself to reserve a certain time of the day for my audience with God and for my prayers. If we do not fix a prayer time, we may have not time for prayer. The devil does not want us to study the word and to pray.
Obedience
Follow the word of God in your heart. Recently I had to give my opinion about a man, who does some questionable teaching and I judged him rather harshly. On the same day I searched for the parable of the speck and the plank. The bible server guided me to Mathew 7. I opened it and the first thing I saw were the following verses: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. These are the verses 1 and 2 of Matthew 7 and with verse 3 the parable of the speck and the plank begins. I was caught cold. I had grossly violated respect and love for the brother in question. Nevertheless my ego searched for justification and a way out. Well, I was concerned about missing clarity and truth was kind of an excuse, but in my heart I was fully convicted that I had sinned against God and a brother. I had to repent according to first John 1:9.
Do not try to justify yourself, as I did, when you feel in your heart that you are guilty. Come to Christ and confess in obedience to his word. If you try to escape, you are saddening the Holy Spirit.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to follow you as your diligent disciple. Help me to grow and to be changed into your example. Thank you for helping me and for being with me at all times. I love you and I want to learn from you. Amen
How can I come to spiritual maturity and be ready to enter the kingdom of God?
My future as a follower of Christ Jesus
