Thursday,
July 13, 2023
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my
anxious thoughts. Point out anything in
me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. Psalm 139:23-24
“If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.
Luke 16:10
A friend and colleague, Dale Bost, shared a thought on Facebook a couple
of months ago. Here’s what he wrote:
God pursues us redemptively and invites us individually, every last one of
us, to be faithful to him in the little we truly “have say over.” There, at every moment, we live in the interface
between our lives and God’s kingdom among us. If we are faithful to him here, we learn his
cooperative faithfulness to us in turn. We
discover the effectiveness of his rule with us precisely in the details of
day-to-day existence.[1]
Dale’s post started the juices flowing of that occasional self-accountability-check. I
wanted to search-out (like King David) just how faithful my “will” is to God’s
will. I say the need for checking my
accountability is occasional because I know
me. And, for that reason, my human
nature resists looking too closely at my actions, especially my
thought-life. Deep-within all of us there
is a war…continually! When it comes to
human beings’ nature, we’re constantly embroiled in that personal war within;
we resist accountability, because we know deep-down that, without help, there’s
no way to win that war. We give-in; we
sin.
It is that war over which Apostle Paul so eloquently lamented:
But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind.
This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh,
what a miserable person I am! Who will
free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank
God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law,
but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. Romans 7:23-25
In the lament Paul not only held up a searchlight to the problem, but cast
a backlight to the solution of sin’s power…Jesus Christ. His love for us led to shedding his blood on
Calvary. That love covers a multitude of
sin.[2]
For You Today
Recently my bride and I addressed the legal will thing; a trusted attorney
friend wrote our wills. In those wills,
we made sure all we possess of this world’s goods pass to our children at our death. When we signed them, they set in stone (so to
speak) our will.
That was also the will of the Father, as the Son died for us – that we
would inherit all His righteousness, and He offers that freely. The question is, are we willing to offer our
will back? Today’s call is to the surrendered
life, your will matching His!
There are about 2,500 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.
Title Image:
via Pixabay.com Images without citation are in
public domain. Unless noted, Scripture
quoted from NLT©
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