devotionals

Pressure

/ revmwgarrett / 2 Comments

Lent – Day 24

chiropractic-adjustments-hands-on-therapy

Scripture – 2 Peter 3:9

Reflection

God is patient; most of us are counting on it.  There is comfort in knowing that God won’t foreclose on the loan of our lives today or demand a perfection we know that is beyond us.  But do we misunderstand God’s patience as an excuse for complacent living?  There is a great deal of difference between living under soul-numbing, joy-stealing, divine pressure and feeling no pressure at all.

Perhaps God, rightly understood,is the master of patient pressure.  Pressure scares me, but I count on my chiropractor to put my slipped discs under pressure so they will quit being a source of pain. Pressure scares us, but a good psychologist will put us under a little pressure to get us to face what we’d prefer to avoid.  Pressure puts the curve in the inflexible piece of wood that shapes a swift and elegant boat.  Pressure forms the pot out of the shapeless clay.

The Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

No complacency here. This is a good season to cooperate with God’s patient pressure to bend our rigid soul in a more faithful direction. Repentance is how we do it.

Prayer Focus

Ask God through the power of he Spirit to help you see where you are stuck and in pain in your life.  Pray that you will cooperate with God’s patient pressure to bend in the direction of faith, hope, and love.

ABC’s

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Lent Day 8

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Scripture   Romans 10:9-13

Reflection

The New Testament is not an invitation to Christianity.  It is an invitation to Christ.  And though making that distinction is simplistic, it is helpful at times to draw a bright line between them.  Christianity comes with great attention to the ABC’s – attendance, buildings, and cash.  It is possible to align ourselves with the institutional trappings of Christianity and never carefully consider (or intentionally avoid) its invitation to faith.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Whatever the considerable implications of that scripture are, at the simplest level we are invited to make a decision about the person of Jesus Christ.  If the attendance, buildings, and cash were all gone tomorrow, who and what would be left for us to believe in?  Lent is a great season for stripping away Christianity’s veneer and making sure we have aligned ourselves with its solid and unchanging foundation.

Prayer Focus

Living God draw my attention away for a while from the institutional distractions of the faith, and allow me to consider afresh my commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord.