Category: Devotions

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Daily Devotion

You Didn't Know Any Better
 
"So you must live as God's obedient children. Don't slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn't know any better then."  1 Peter 1:14
 
Hey everybody!  Sorry I have not posted a devotion…quite honestly I don't really have a good enough excuse.  I have been super busy with work, traveling and all.  But on to the good stuff!  I have been reading the book of John, slowly at turtle speed.  But today I finished the 15th chapter, actually more than that.  But John 15 is a really good chapter.  It has one of my all-time favorites–I know I say a lot of scriptures are my favorites, but don't you have some like that?  I would hope so!  That scripture is John 15:7–"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."  Jesus is talking to the Disciples in this chapter, right before He is betrayed by Judas Iscariot.  But I noticed some really important scriptures here. 
 
John 15:22, 24 say the following:  "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin." ESV 24"If I hadn't done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty. But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate me and my Father." NLT
No excuse.  That's powerful.  Basically there are two kinds of people:  the people that know Jesus and the people that do not know Jesus.  Then among the people that know Jesus, there are two more kinds of people:  the people that know Jesus and acknowledge what He did and try to live right, then the others are those that know Jesus and just sin anyway.  When we sin as if there is no consequence, we are fooling ourselves.  Everything has a consequence whether it be good or bad.  Consequences are not bad!!  They are just results!  If I go to bed late, 9 times out of 10, I'm gonna wake up late and then cause everything else to be late.  That's the consequence–the result of my being a night owl.  If I spend more money than I'm supposed to, 9 times out 10 I'm gonna be crying about it later.  Jesus said the people that heard Him teach and saw Him perform miracles had no excuses for their sin.
 
When you were little, you tried something until you learned that maybe you didn't like it.  You tried to touch something that you shouldn't have, and maybe you got spanked, got shocked, burned yourself…anything.  But until you knew better, you did it. Until you were taught different, you thought one way.  Then you had no excuse if you got hurt or got in trouble.
 
We all sin, we all "fall short of the glory"–but God grants us forgiveness and the promise that He will forget.  But for those who just completely disregard directions, those that know better and keep doing the same things without learning or repenting what happens?
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Daily Devotion

The Gift

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23

One of the main reasons I have decided to go to seminary is to get my own understanding. I love reading the Bible, the more I learn about God, the more I want to share with others. Yesterday before my surgery as I was reading it, I was reading John 9, about the man blind from birth and Jesus made the paste of mud and gave him sight. In John 9:30 the man said this to the corrupt Pharisees: “The man answered, “This is a very strange thing. You don’t know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31 We all know that God does not listen to sinners, but he listens to anyone who worships and obeys him. 32 Nobody has ever heard of anyone giving sight to a man born blind. 33 If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” (NCV) If you don’t know who Christ is, where comes from, how can you accept the gift of eternal life from God, when it comes through Christ!

I explained in brief the meaning of the first part of this scripture. In plain english, for the wages–for the earnings, the pay–of sin is death. Wages are something you earn for working. The pay you earn for sin is death, the earnings of sin is death. Here, sin is an act; it is a behavior; it is also a state of mind. When you are born, as offspring of Adam and Eve, we are born into sin–into the mind state of sinfulness, following after our flesh. When you are born again, you are born of God, into the mind state of sinlessness, following after the leading of the Holy Spirit. 1 John 3:9 says “No one who has been born from God practices sin, because God’s seed abides in him. Indeed, he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born from God.” 1 Peter 1:23 says “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and stays for ever.”

Immediately after that the scripture continues to say “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Obviously but comes as a direct contradiction of the words that preceded it. So through God’s sacrifice of Himself the payment we would have received for our sins has been voided. Like a canceled check it means nothing. Through our belief, our faith like the blind man believing that Christ was from God, the punishment for our sins have been canceled. Because we are all children of God, we can willingly accept the gift.