Good day to ya everyone. Praise the Lord for another wonderful day in His service. I can’t remember if I shared this particular revelation on relationship with all of you or not, so excuse me if I have because it’s running through my spirit today. It’s my hope that it will help someone else the way it helps me on a daily basis.
Today’s Prayer
Father, I come to You this morning for myself and my brothers and sisters in Christ with this profession. There are so many vocations in this world. There are so many ministry opportunities too, in the workplace, home, neighborhood, church. Help us to see our individual special mission field. Where do You want us to serve? Are we in the right place? Are we taking advantage of every opportunity You have for us? Is there somewhere else You want us to exercise the spiritual gifts, natural talents, and heartfelt desires You have given us? Please open our eyes that we may see; speak to our hearts that we may know. Thank You for guiding us and blessing us according to Your will. In Jesus’ name I come to You, Amen.
Let’s eat.
Father, Son and Holy Scriptures?
Jesus answered: Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?'” (John 14:9).
As I read the 14th chapter of John, I got a picture in my head of the following: The disciples had been with Jesus for three years. They’d seen miracles – dead men came back to life, the sick were healed, and water was turned to wine. These were but a few of the hundreds of miracles they saw Jesus perform. However, even after these experiences, they lacked one important thing – intimacy with Jesus. They didn’t really know Jesus.
This had to have been a great disappointment to Jesus. He’d invested so much into developing a close and intimate relationship with the twelve disciples. Consider that they spent three years with their Mentor. They learned about Him during those years. However, they had knowledge without intimacy. They experienced God’s power individually and He even performed miracles through their own lives. Sometimes it is easier to do the work of God without the intimacy with God.
A friend once commented about the current condition of a lot of the mainline churches today: “You’d think the trinity was the Father, Son and Holy Scriptures versus the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There’s never been a better description of the Church today.
But, unfortunately, this is a challenge to my own walk with God. It is easy for me to fall into this trap of working so hard for Jesus that I forget to work with Jesus. How about you? Jesus desires intimacy more than works. He tells us in John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” Whatever works we do must be a fruit of our intimacy with Him.
Lord, help us not to just know about you. We desire to know you.
Quote of the Day
It is far too easy, within the current upsurge of creative input in the realm of worship, to find ourselves chasing spiritual or aesthetic experiences, as if the highest achievement of our whole pilgrimage on earth were to enter some kind of praise-induced ecstasy! I am, in fact, all in favour of spiritual experiences when they are genuine, and welcome ecstasies that are the gifts of God and not artificially induced, but if such things become the AIM of our gatherings for worship, then we have turned the gospel upside down.
Graham Kendrick
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REV. ELDER G E STERRETT
FOUNDER
GCKRS HELPING HAND FOUNDATION – THE RELATIONSHIP FACTORY
James H. Taylor Sr. – Kankakee City News has published my Daily meal message for a decade.