I hope your holiday weekend has been very pleasant and filled with joy. Today is my 47th wedding anniversary and I thank God for my wife being able to put up with me for this long. Now you guys didn’t think I was going to stop there and not ask if you were inviting Jesus to celebrate with you this weekend did you? He’s celebrating with me and my house (which includes all of you).
Today’s Prayer
Father, I long to have more of You. I want to obey Your voice, to receive Your correction. I trust in you and want to draw near to You, just to feel Your presence. I want to love You more, Father and Creator. I thank You for Your blessings. I praise You for who You are. You are awesome and great and greatly to be praised. The work of Your hands is beautiful. You are so merciful. Your love is so liberating. I appreciate Your blessings so much. Let me share Your blessings with others, that they may know that You are God our Father and there is none like You. I lift my hands to You today, to receive a touch from on high. Thank You, in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Let’s eat.
Freedom in Christ
Galatians 5:1-15
1 So Christ has really set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law. 2 Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ cannot help you. 3 I’ll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey all of the regulations in the whole law of Moses. 4 For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace. 5 But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive everything promised to us who are right with God through faith. 6 For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, it makes no difference to God whether we are circumcised or not circumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love. 7 You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth? 8 It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. 9 But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others–a little yeast spreads quickly through the whole batch of dough! 10 I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will judge that person, whoever it is, who has been troubling and confusing you. 11 Dear brothers and sisters, if I were still preaching that you must be circumcised–as some say I do–why would the Jews persecute me? The fact that I am still being persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through the cross of Christ alone. 12 I only wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves. 13 For you have been called to live in freedom–not freedom to satisfy your sinful nature, but freedom to serve one another in love. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! Beware of destroying one another.
Quote of the Day
The deeper we are willing to enter into the death of self, the more shall we know of the mighty power of God, and the perfect blessedness of a perfect trust. ~Andrew Murray~