Resources that serve our community in deepening their understanding of our faith. Engage and grow – even at home.
By regularly having family worship, we can more naturally and easily bring biblical teaching into every area. We do not need to “inject” God or the Bible into regular life, but have this as the paramount thoughts and meditations throughout the day. God’s instructions come to govern everything that we say, do, and think, making this a regular part of our daily rhythm.
Like with prayer, we must set aside time explicitly for the purpose of reading and studying the Bible (meditating, or chewing on, and digesting the Word). As with prayer, we ought to jealously guard this time, recognizing that God’s priorities take precedence over everything else, and, in fact, set the course for every area of our lives. The only way to have a well-ordered life (redeeming the time) is for us to regularly and actively be in God’s Word.
We saw in the last devotional that we have a biblical mandate to redeem the time. This is a comprehensive command that pursues walking in the light, and is contrasted with living as the world lives. Despite being comprehensive, there are many ways that this command is practical. It literally refers to going over every area of our lives and heart, actively testing them with Scripture, and then seeking to conform them to what we learn is pleasing to God.
In a way, redeeming the time is as seeking to conquer our hearts for the Lord, according to the grace that we have in Christ. We can either be active or passive in this pursuit. However, be warned: is anyone is a genuine believer, then they will seek to be active in this pursuit, whether they are consciously aware of all that entails or not. This is because, to not do so is what characterizes those still in darkness, who have not yet seen the light of Christ or His gospel.
“…we ought to remember just how exalted Christ is now, and yet, even with His exaltation, He is bringing us up to be exalted with Him, so that we too may have a perfect relationship with God. The exalted Christ is not One who is far off, nor will He be brought near (as if He will have to lose His exalted status to come down to our base state), but we will be brought near to Him. There can be no greater honour that a human being can experience than what we have in Christ.”
“Jesus truly loves his churches, and so he lovingly rebuked, commanded, and exhorted them to obey Him with all their heart. He desires for them to remain with Him forever…Each of the seven church’s situation is unique, and has a broad range of application for us today. We have, for instance, a theologically-correct church that has forgotten its first love (Ephesus), the faithful persecuted church (Smyrna), the internally compromised church (Pergamum), the externally compromised church (Thyatira), the seemingly vibrant but actually near-dead church (Sardis), the small but divinely preserved and effective church (Philadelphia), and the double-allegiances church (Laodicea). I believe that if we are careful to heed these messages from Christ, we could avoid many of the pitfalls that came about on those churches.”
“…while the church in Laodicea did not forget the gospel or what God desires, they simply compromised with the world around them, all the while claiming and affirming the gospel of Christ and His Word. In some ways the church in Laodicea was worse than in Sardis, since they both knew the truth, but chose to reject it anyway through their hypocrisy. Laodicea was not ignorant of the truth, but sought to hold onto the benefits and privileges of both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world.”
“…even though Christ promises to preserve those that are truly His, He still commands them to persevere and to be steadfast. Perseverance will mark those He preserves. May we not be self-deceived into thinking that God does not require any faithfulness, or self-discipline, or endurance in us. That Christ’s Name is attached to His own is not a point of chance, but is a testament to their perseverance. It is a reward for enduring. May we strive for this endurance with the grace that He supplies. If we are His own, then we will endure.”
“ In light of the corruption in the church in Sardis, we need to be diligent to test our desires, practices, and experiences by the Word of God. If God’s Word teaches anything contrary, then we must be willing to follow the Word over anything else. This may initially sound obvious or easy, but few often realize how much their own thinking and beliefs actually affect their faith. There are often so many untested assumptions in our beliefs that come to corrupt our faith and practice. Rather, in order to avoid becoming like the church in Sardis, we need to diligently test and affirm the truth with God’s Word, and reject all that is contrary, regardless of how precious those things may seem to us.”
“…Jesus commands us to be sober-minded and ready for His return—paying careful mind to our walk, that we may walk as Christ; that we may be good and faithful servants, diligently going about the Father’s business. That is how we are to long for Christ’s return. If we truly long for His return, then we will make the most of the short time that we have on earth to do God’s will, as He has revealed to us in Scripture. To truly long for the return of Christ is to be diligently, and with great sobriety, carrying out the desires of God both within our hearts and in the world. To pursue “sobriety” means that we are diligently seeking to distinguish truth from error (according to God’s Word), being carefully and always on guard against evil, both from within our hearts and in the world. It is as the wakefulness of a dutiful guard on the night watch, longing for the sun to rise…”
