| Good Morning Everyone, Our theme for this month: “You have been set free” Our Bible verse for today: “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Our thought for today: “You are the plan” You are God’s plan for spreading the Good News of the Gospel. It’s through you that He plans to shower the world with the love and blessings of Jesus Christ, and it is you who will help to build His kingdom on earth. You’re it. You are the plan, and it is for this that you have been set free by Christ. How does that news make you feel? If you’re like me then you feel unworthy and inadequate. Certainly not up to such a task. What could God be thinking? There must be better ways for Him to accomplish His plan than through an imperfect, deeply flawed, sometimes confused, and often lazy knucklehead like me. If I’m the best plan He has then I’m afraid He has set Himself up to be disappointed. Fortunately, there’s a little more to it than that. Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that. It turns out that His plan involves us – plus the Holy Spirit. As Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, at the time of your salvation God placed the Holy Spirit in your heart. This is where the power comes from. It’s not you or me, it’s Him living in us and working through us. This is such an important understanding that the subject of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is addressed at least sixteen times in the New Testament. But what does the indwelling mean, how does it work, and what does it accomplish? It means that the Spirit of God lives within us and works through us. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Paul painted a picture of the follower of Christ being a walking, talking, mobile temple of the Holy Spirit. Wherever you go, you bring the Holy Spirit with you in a very focused way. If you let Him, He will use your mouth to speak God’s words, and He will use your hands and feet to accomplish God’s purposes. Jesus taught this truth in John 15:5 in His parable about the vine and the branches. Just as a grapevine lives its life through the branches that grow off of it and produces its fruit through those branches, so too Jesus lives His life through the lives of His followers and produces His fruit through them. In Galatians 5:22-23 the Apostle Paul picked up on that analogy and described for us what some of that fruit will look like – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As we go through our days, carrying the Holy Spirit of God with us wherever we go, we’re to simply allow Him to use us to accomplish God’s purposes through us. We are God’s plan – but it’s the Holy Spirit who actually accomplishes the results. We just need to let Him. God Bless, Pastor Jim |
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