Week 42 Day 2
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:
Matt. 5:23-24 Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Reflect:
We are so different. We see things so differently. How is it possible to maintain constantly clear relationships with one another? How different do you suppose we are than God? How differently (and correctly, I might add) does he see the world than we do? Yet, he is willing to take the initiative in relationship with us. It is from his absolute spiritual “maturity” that he moves towards us in grace. As we close the gap on spiritual maturity ourselves, we will more and more move towards each other in grace. We will not focus on the petty differences, instead we will focus on the priority of faith expressing itself in love. The heart behind the action outlined by the Lord in today’s passage is one of love for God expressed in obedience to God. This obedience is revealed in moving towards others in love and so the circle of “love to faith to love” is complete. If you will think clearly and correctly about this matter of “maintaining clear relationships,” you will find yourself enjoying more and more people and thriving on the very differences that used to annoy and divide. You will find that God himself will choose friends for you that you would never choose for yourself. These friends will become very dear and precious to you and you will know that your life would have been less if God had not brought them into it. It is important that you understand that if you will experience God like this, you must actually let him select your friends. It doesn’t mean you have no say in the matter, but it does mean you must not “pre-decide” whom you can learn to love. If you do, you will frequently get it wrong; there are many more people that we can love than we now imagine. Open wide your heart and your mind. Grace is a spacious place with room for so many, but judgment is a small and cramped space with room only for self. Eventually judgment will run out of room even for self and you will find yourself unhappy everywhere, all the time. Grace continually grows in its capacity for happiness, as more and more people are welcomed into our lives. Who is God trying to bring into your heart and life? Will you let them in?
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.