June 3
These things "are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." 1 Cor. 10:11. How often we misinterpret God's blessings, and flatter ourselves that we are favoured on account of some goodness in us! God cannot do for us that which He longs to do. His gifts are used to increase our self-satisfaction, and to harden our hearts in unbelief and sin.
Desire of Ages, page 107 from the chapter, 'The voice in the wilderness'
The immediate thought I had was, “how can God’s spiritual gifts increase our self-satisfaction?” I was the one who was thinking spiritual gifts, in reality the gifts mentioned are not God’s spiritual gifts.
God gives all sorts of gifts, including those of life, health and existence. As you read through the Psalms there are many instances of wealthy people ignorant of God’s blessings. In the New Testament there are instances of the Scribes and Pharisees expressing their self-satisfaction, yet facing the condemnation of Jesus as he applauds sinners praying sincere prayers.
There is another possible misunderstanding. We might think that God uses His gifts to increase our self-satisfaction. We are the ones who use the gifts to increase our failings. We look at ourselves, recognise the blessings we have and think how well we are doing – when in fact we are all the time walking away from God.
The song for today is ‘Choices’ by Lloyd Snow. The song is ‘I stand amazed’. Click on the picture to listen
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Housekeeping details for you
The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.
A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here
