Sold Out For Jesus daily devotion online
G. John White's first devotional Sold out for Jesus covers 12 vital themes of Christianity.
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November Topic: EMMANUEL - GOD WITH US |
WE HAVE SEEN HIS GLORY! Let's spend November together looking at the fact that God longs to be with us and for us to spend time with Him. |
Genesis 32:30
I SAW GOD FACE TO FACE AND YET MY LIFE WAS SPARED
Yesterday we were looking at Jacob's response to seeing God. He called the place Bethel - the house of God, and he erected a pillar of remembrance. He would never forget that encounter.
Can I ask you a question? When you enter your church - your house of God - your Beth-El - every week, what is your attitude? Don't let time allow complacency to creep in and destroy the joy, the awe, and the wonder of meeting with God.
Today, we discover a man with a permanent limp! He must have been some amazing sort of a guy, to have been wrestling with 'an angel' and winning! Ahead, so far, that the 'angel' had to 'cheat' and dislocated his hip in order to overpower him!
God called him an 'overcomer'. Hey, I like that! God calls us to be overcomers, doesn't He? Was Jacob the forerunner of the overcomers? Here was a man with determination. Here was a man who was 'on his way'. Here was a man who was going to grasp his destiny. Here was a man who was not going to let, even God, go, until he had received a blessing from Him. Furthermore, even a new name apparently was not enough!
But I believe God respected, and dare I say, loved and honoured his motives. God knew his heart. Yes, He knew the deception and the scheming, but He also saw through all that to his heart and found one who was 'sold out' to God. Jacob doesn't often get a 'good press' does he? But I believe God loves people who, though 'true to character' nevertheless want and seek to serve and follow Him despite themselves and their impetuous actions!
Indeed the Bible tells us that God loved Jacob. He loves people to be hot or cold, but hates the lukewarm. Lukewarm suggests to me pretence, compromise and show - a 'surface-only act.' God finds them abhorrent.
Nevertheless, Jacob however, appears to us to overstep the mark. Wrestling with God! Yet doesn't God want us to be people with backbone? People of faith, who believe God's promises and follow through on them, whatever the cost? To follow through on following Jesus too, whatever the cost?
To the Jewish mind, to use the word for God was too holy. No-one could look on Him and live, and yet Jacob did just that. Why? Because I believe the heart of God has always been to seek fellowship with man. To get to know His creatures intimately. Sin just mucked up His plan.
Hey, God wants you to seek His face and see Him. Try it today!
Your life will not only be spared, but it will be then, that you start to really live.
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