| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Knowing God” Our Bible verse for today: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” Psalm 51:10-12 (NIV) Our thought for today: “It begins with you and me” To conclude our month of thinking devotionally about “knowing God”, I want to build on our devotional from yesterday where we considered God’s appeal to the people in the days of Malachi, “Return to me and I will return to you.” (Malachi 3:7). In that devotional we learned that this was really all about a broken relationship with God. It was a relationship which God wanted very much to be restored and renewed so that the people would be aware of His presence and would return to living in a way that He could bless. In Psalm 51:10-12 King David was thinking along the same lines, and He turned it into a personal prayer of repentance. He understood that if His relationship with God was broken, it was His responsibility to take the steps necessary to fix it. The same is true for us. In the case of the passage in Malachi, the entire nation of Israel had drifted far from God. But the nation was made up of individuals, and if there was going to be a national move back into a good relationship with God, it would only occur if the individuals who made up that nation each made a personal move back to God. It had to happen one person at a time. Each person had to take personal responsibility to get their own heart and life right with God. In his book, “The Knowledge of the Holy”, A.W. Tozer wrote, “We as Christians are the Church and whatever we do is what the Church is doing. The matter, therefore, is for each of us a personal one. Any forward step in the Church must begin with the individual.” That’s still true today. If America is going to get back into a right relationship with God, it will only happen when the Church gets back into a right relationship with God. And if the Church is going to get back into a right relationship with God, it will only happen if the individuals who make up the Church get back into a right relationship with God. It starts with you and me. It’s a matter of personal, individual responsibility – and that’s what we’re going to think about in our daily devotionals for the month of January. We will spend the first month of the new year considering this matter of personal responsibility. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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