Monthly Archives: September 2019

Devotional Series, Holy Habitation

The Right Tools

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This passage in Scripture spoke to me this morning:

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.” (Hebrews 12:11-13 NASB)

Discipline. We tend to hate the word when hearing or reading it conjures up memories of spankings and other uncomfortable things we link to it. But discipline is so much more. Discipline is the fuel and determination needed for growth, maturity, attaining the goal and winning the prize. Discipline looks at the need, sees the tools available to meet the need, then deliberately and purposefully puts the tools to good use, winning the day.

Returning to SparkPeople and Grow Young Fitness in the past weeks, after a long time away from community life and use of resources found there, and determining to use the tools these provide us, I quickly learned I was eating way more than I realized. Through discipline I learned something about myself that I needed to know and found the resources to do something about it.

Discipline is good. It empowers us to live better lives and be our best self. Grasp hold of the tools you find for your need and, deliberately and purposefully making good use of them, have a great, victory day. I’m going to.

Devotional Series, Holy Habitation

Grasp The New

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“… At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. …”

When first converted, someone saying to me that I am now a new person brought the thought, “That’s nice.” Oh to fully realize the height, depth, width, and length of this truth. That we are in Christ and He is in us is our New Reality. That our surrender to Him brings true life to living, making us new from the inside out.

We are no longer trapped by this finite life and it’s self-centered, worldly philosophy, but we have already entered the new, eternal Kingdom, possessing through Christ His thoughts, purposes, desires, and understandings. How different life is. What a difference this truth makes for life.

Oh, to teach that to the very young in Christ, that though this shell will one day pass on, we are already eternal with Christ, charged and empowered by Him to pass these Kingdom truths and realities to others along the path of this world assignment. Missionaries of The Kingdom of God. All else pales when we begin to grip our New Reality.

“So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5:16-21 NLT)