2024/06/10 Devotional
Today’s Reading: James 1:1-8
James 1:2-3 — Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
God promises to help us grow. Once a person has taken a step of faith toward God and asked Christ to save him or her by grace, God begins Operation Sanctification. This is His program to conform the new believer to the image of Christ. This process is gradual yet continual and depends on the believer’s willingness to yield to God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.
Operation Sanctification is God’s grand plan for each individual believer to be shaped by everything experienced in life into the likeness of Jesus. Like a sculptor, God will chip away at the rough stone of the believer’s humanity using the tools of testing, trials, and tribulations to reveal the character of Christ that has been deposited in the believer at the moment of salvation.
The Holy Spirit within the believer desires the new creation nature of Christ to grow and to show the nine fruits of Christlike character mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23. Difficult times can either drive us away from God or cause the Christian to draw near to Christ and His truth for strength and wisdom. When the believer asks God for wisdom and help in times of testing and trials, the Holy Spirit will give grace for endurance and growth in godliness.
It is not a natural response to count it all joy when trials are met, but it can become a more common response as the believer grows in grace into Christlikeness. When the believer matures, trials can be viewed with less dread and seen to be opportunities for faith to be exercised and for Jesus to be magnified.
We need to learn to embrace challenges, not because we are capable of confronting them, but because God is more than able. David was able to defeat Goliath because David had been tested by trials involving a bear and a lion and experienced God’s deliverance: “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37). David grew from those tests, and so will you!
…06/10/2024 Devotional
“Operation Sanctification is God’s grand plan for each individual believer to be shaped by everything experienced in life into the likeness of Jesus.”
When I was a teenager, I had to fight with myself to get into competitive schools. I had to struggle hard to survive at work. I had to give up my career to raise children.. What was all this about? The Lord was sculpting me into the likeness of Him through those paths. If this is not grace, what is it? I hope that I can be where the God needs me.
Thank you Jesus!
2024년 6월 10일 묵상
“성화 는 각 신자가 인생에서 경험한 모든 것을 통해 예수님을 닮아가도록 하는 하나님의 위대한 계획입니다.”
나의…