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2 Corinthians 2 Devotional – Day 2

ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness

SELF-SUFFICIENT – All things are God’s to give, and all that is given is given by Him. He can receive nothing that He has not already given us. He does not need creation. 

Acts 17:24-25 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 

Praise the Self-Sufficient God
Praise God that he needs no sleep. Praise God that He created from joy and delight and not from need. Praise the Self-Sufficient One who gives freely from his hand.

CONFESSION: Confess your sins to God and receive his continued mercy.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9

THANKSGIVING: Giving thanks to God for his specific blessings in our lives.

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100

SUPPLICATION: Bringing our requests to God.

  • Bring your personal prayer requests to God.
  • Pray for Embrace. Ask God to use their work to introduce moms to Christ and to rescue unborn children.
  • Pray that Embrace would reach their fundraising goal through the Change for Life campaign.
  • Ask God to speak to you as you read the scriptures.

SCRIPTURE READING:

2 Corinthians 2 English Standard Version

For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. 2 For if I cause you pain, who is there to make me glad but the one whom I have pained? 3 And I wrote as I did, so that when I came I might not suffer pain from those who should have made me rejoice, for I felt sure of all of you, that my joy would be the joy of you all. 4 For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.

Forgive the Sinner
5 Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to all of you. 6 For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, 7 so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. 9 For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. 10 Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.

Triumph in Christ
12 When I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, even though a door was opened for me in the Lord, 13 my spirit was not at rest because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I took leave of them and went on to Macedonia.

14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:

If we cannot learn how to mourn and rejoice at the same time then we are destined to either live in an illusion (life is not hard) or in depression (life is not good). It is essential that as we live in community with others we find our strength in God to love in such a way that we can rejoice with those who rejoice (even when we are mourning) and we can mourn with those who mourn (even when we are rejoicing). We must not become the “sun” around which everyone else’s lives must orbit. We must not be people who demand that everyone’s temperature be set by our emotional thermostat. The gospel must set the climate in which we live. When it does, then we can be in mourning and truly rejoice with others. We can have a full and glad heart and enter into mourning with others. Jesus did this and we can grow in this as we grow in him.

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