Romans 10:9


If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved ~ Romans 10:9

Salvation in Christ is a precarious thing. It demands from us that Jesus be declared as Lord of our life. Our human nature finds that challenging, as we erroneously think this means giving all my control to Another makes me less than. Yet, the truth is, when I give up all I am to Christ, He makes me more than! We live in an age where I want to be my own person, do my own thing, set my own values, faith, morality. I want to claim my rights to do what I want to do. This is a dangerous time. Yet Jesus said, “if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26). Jesus came that all might be saved to eternal life, yet not all will choose Him, for the reason of self. Self is a powerful deterrent, yet self is not real without Jesus! To declare Jesus “Lord” is to declare He has the power and authority over you. Declaring Him Lord over our lives means we owe our service and obedience to Him. The oxymoron of the thing is, when we truthfully declare Him as our Lord we gladly, freely, willingly give all we are to His service! We desire this! Do we lose? Yes! We lose selfishness and want, greed and lust, envy and pride, jealousy and hate! We lose our old self of the world and gain our true self in Christ!
Devotion by Pastor Julia

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comments

Popular posts from this blog

Proverbs 18:2

Image
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in sharing their own opinions ~ Proverbs 18:2 If we are going to understand something, we must fully digest it so that when we speak, we speak with wisdom. When we have only half truths in our mind, our words become empty and senseless. We then puff out air rather than understanding when we speak. A wise person will want to improve their mind through learning in various ways from the world around them. A person who delights in spiritual understanding will find peace and enjoyment in reading the Word of God on a daily basis, and in participating with God’s people in a learning and praising environment – the church! We come together in corporate worship with the understanding that not one of us knows all things, but we bend our mind and heart to learn what God has to show and say to us. A foolish person makes a show of what they “know” to please their friends or to save face in front of them. More often a wise person will hold t
Read more

Romans 8:26

Image
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans ~ Romans 8:26 Many days, many times, I have the words for prayer. It comes forth and flows fairly naturally as I converse with my Lord God. I hope in the God I worship to hear me, and to receive my words, as I pray in the name of Jesus and believe in Him, my intercessor. He is my Living Saviour, my High Priest, standing at the right hand of God the Father. But there are times when my pain has been so deep that my words will not come. There are times when my agony is so piercing that what words I may speak would not be enough. And so, in my deep, black moments, I come before my God and let my darkest emotions erupt in sounds that only He can understand. The Holy Spirit within me cries out in my stead, and He becomes my second intercessor. It is not that He is not there with me in all my prayers, but there are times wh
Read more

Isaiah 43:19

Image
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert ~ Isaiah 43:19 When we meet a challenge, we are often found discouraged, lost, even hopeless. Nothing is working, everything seems to be against us. We do not know how to move forward, so we remain curled up in a ball. Then, a glimmer of light shines through! Hope is regained and movement is stirred within. Don’t we become excited when we begin to feel it? God moves like that. We cannot see our way around it, but He can and does. And He makes a way for us out of the calamity of our fears. It is the feeling of springtime after a long winter, or the smell of fresh cut grass. Life stirs within and we move and we see what God saw all the time – the answer to our dilemma. Our desert place becomes an oasis, and we can do what we are called to do. Something totally unexpected happens, something unheard of, but it begins in our life, and we feel the
Read more