Devotional Week 1 Day 5
Pray:
Ask God to reorient you to Himself. Confess any known sin. Thank Him for His forgiveness. Be still and reflect on Jesus and His sacrifice for you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind to God’s Word. Pray for others in your life that they, too, would know and love God today.
Read:
2 Thessalonians 1:3 We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing.
Reflect:
Here we see that their love was not yet perfect. It is “increasing,” so it had room to grow. God does not grow. He does not increase or improve. Why not? Because he is perfect. He does not change because any change would be a step down from perfection. He does not need to get better at love; his love is perfect. He does not need to understand me better. His understanding of me and everything else is complete. Some have implied that God is petty to number every hair on my head and track sparrows when there are so many other big issues to which he could be paying attention. This is a misunderstanding of the nature of God. His knowledge is immediate and complete. Immediate means he does not have to go get it, read, learn, or collect data; he has all knowledge. Complete means that there is no knowledge that he does not have. So he doesn’t “count” hairs on heads or “track sparrows falling”…he knows it all, it is simple to him. We, on the other hand, need to grow in every way possible. We need to always be “increasing.” In knowledge, in spiritual fervor, in faith, and, of course, in love. We need to settle this fact in our minds…we are growing in faith and love, or our faith and love are dying, drying up. You are not now and never will be a static being. You are moving in a direction. Move in the direction of faith in your interactions with God and love in your interactions with others.
Pray:
(Personalize this prayer today; make it specific to the circumstances that face you.)
Ask God to lead you through His Spirit as you go through your day. Ask Him to bring to mind the truth of the gospel and its implications for what you will encounter today. Tell Him “Yes” to His will and ask Him for His power and protection to live this “yes.” Ask God to create and reveal opportunities to proclaim the good news today.