
Glory Seed Devotional 08/15/2014
A Planting of Faith Seeds for the Glory of the LORD
“We have everything we need to live a life that pleases God. It was all given to us by God’s own power, when we learned that he had invited us to share in his wonderful goodness. God made great and marvelous promises, so that his nature would become part of us. Then we could escape our evil desires and the corrupt influences of this world.” (2 Peter 1:3–4, CEV)
On a chilly fall evening in 1998 my wife, Patti and I stood on a street corner and watched as a fire consumed our church home. As the flames shot up into the evening sky, as water from the fire trucks found their place in the flames, and as what was once a church home to many for nearly a hundred years fell to ashes the entire scene seemed to be laughing and crying at the same time.
That fateful evening for me is one of the most powerful lessons I’d ever experienced in my life. It taught me that God cannot be housed in wood, bricks, steel but in one of the greatest mysteries of all time God finds his home in the bones, flesh and blood of you and I. For the first time in my life I experienced for real the temporality of manmade objects no matter how much they appeared to be indestructible. At the same time as my life’s sanctuary was falling into a heap of ruble the Holy Spirit continued to whisper, “God is alive! God is alive! God is alive!”
In today’s scripture Peter talks about God inviting us to share in his “wonderful goodness”. As I look back on that fall evening years ago I understand and experience it now as God’s invitation to step out of the ruble of a crumbling imperfect world and into God’s world of perfection and permanency. In chapter 3 of Revelation the Holy Spirit talks about Jesus opening a door that no one can shut. I believe Jesus is in fact the Door that opens up God’s world of perfection and permanency.
I believe John the Baptist can be given credit for the one of the most powerful and far reaching statements in the bible, “Jesus must become more important, while I become less important.” (John 3:30, CEV) When we figure that out and then begin practicing it our entire personal world will undergo a marvelous and powerful transformation one that will last a lifetime!
Believe it! Experience it!
Grace and PEACE!
Gary
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“Turn to the LORD! He can still be found. Call out to God! He is near.” (Isaiah 55:6, CEV)
“Turn to the LORD! He can still be found. Call out to God! He is near.” (Isaiah 55:6, CEV)
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Scripture marked CEV are taken from the Contemporary English Version © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.
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