Devotionary

Paul longed for his resurrection. And his desire for it impacted the way he lived his life as he waited for its arrival. One of the things that will impact our current sanctification is to remember that it will culminate with our future glorification.

Why is it, that when the Scriptures tell us we are “new creations” and that we have the power to “walk in newness of life”, we have a difficult time believing it? It might be because we don’t always feel or act like a new man. But there is a solution.

God’s will can only be accomplished God’s way. And no matter how wise the ways of this world may sound, they can’t deliver what God has promised. While the world may offer tempting detours and shortcuts, they always end in death.

Satan knows how to take good things and make them the most important things in our lives. He is like a magician who uses sleight-of-hand to refocus our attention on the trivial rather than the vital. And we end up missing what God has in store for us.

While some have pitted James and Paul against one another, claiming that each seems to contradict the other, they are actually saying the very same thing but from slightly different perspectives. Faith is always fruitful.

One of the true miracles that accompanied the coming of the Holy Spirit was the transformation of the disciples. They went from being timid, cowering-in-the-corner followers of Christ to bold, Spirit-filled proclaimers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We tend to make fruit-bearing a competition sport, where we score points with God by producing more fruit than the believer next to us. It becomes an endless and hopeless endeavor to manufacture that which only God can produce.

The Holy Spirit is not just some disembodied force we can tap into and utilize for our own selfish desires. He is the Spirit of God who wants to radically alter our actions and our attitudes.

The disciples learned that the Spirit within them was meant to empower them so He could flow out from them. They would be like PVC pipes through which the life-transforming power of God’s Spirit flowed to the world around them.

In the face of what appears to be a less-than-new lifestyle, we tend to look for a list of things we need to do in order to grow up, measure up, and muster up some much-needed righteousness in our life. But Paul would have us look up - to God.

We have everything we need to grow spiritually. It is not as if we have been left to survive and thrive on our own. We have all the resources necessary to grow from innocent infancy to full-blown adulthood. But are we taking advantage of them?

Jesus loved us when we were mired in our sin and lacking any capacity to reciprocate. Love is to be a non-negotiable mark of what it means to be a Christ-follower. We love because His love resides within us and must flow out from us.

Jesus was about to leave them but told Peter to follow Him. Not to a destination, but in the pursuit of the Father’s will. And they would soon find themselves empowered to follow Jesus in full obedience, proving their love for Him as they fed His sheep.

By placing our faith in Christ, we received forgiveness and stand before God as fully righteous in His eyes. But we are expected to live up to our new identity. God is not demanding perfection, but a growing awareness of our need for His Spirit’s power.

Grace was enough. Paul didn’t need to add anything more. Because God’s grace was fully sufficient, Paul could rest in the knowledge that he was in no way deficient.