Post by mommadee48 on Feb 3, 2023 8:22:32 GMT -5
SOWING SPIRITUAL SEEDS, by Pastor Charles Stanley. (CORINTHIANS 3:5-9.)
Think about everything that contributed to your salvation story. It's probably not possible to count all the spiritual seeds God used to draw you to the Savior. And most likely, some of the people who sowed them never saw the outcome.
It's important to recognize the value and cumulative effect of how others have worked to expand the kingdom. When we do, we then realize our own opportunity: We can sow spiritual seeds in the lives of friends, co-workers, children, grandchildren, and even strangers. God uses what we plant and leads others to spread further seed or water the ground, but He alone causes the growth.
When you display Christlike qualities and sow truth into other's lives, God feeds their spirit, changes their heart, enlarges their spiritual understanding, and increases their desire to live for Him. Whether or not you ever see the results, the Lord is using you to accomplish His will.
God is interested in more than the big things His children do for Him. He also sees all the small ways believers try to influence others for Christ. He values quiet manifestations of the fruit of His Spirit, for which no credit or praise is expected. Your love, kindness, patience, gentleness, and self-control are seeds that impact others.
OUR DAILY BREAD, GOD KNOWS US: (READ JEREMIAH1-3.)
i RECENTLY SAW MICHELANGELO'S SCULPURE MOSES IN WHICH A CLOSE-UP VIEW showed a small bulging muscle on Moses' right arm. This muscle is the extensor digiti minimi and the contraction only appears when someone lifts their pinky. Michelangelo, known as a master of intricate details, paid close attention to the human bodies he sculpted, adding intimate features most everyone else would miss. The details he carved into granite were his attempts to reveal something deeper---the soul, the interior life of human beings.
Only God knows the deepest realities of the human heart. Whatever we see of one another, no matter how attentive or insightful it might be, is only a shadow of the truth. But God sees deeper than the shadows. "You know me, Lord," the prophet Jeremiah said: "You see me (chapter 12:3.) God's knowledge of us isn't theoretical or cerebral. He doesn't observe us from a distance. Rather, He peers into the hidden realities of who we are. God knows the depths of our interior lives, even those things we struggle to understand ourselves.
No matter our struggles of what's going on in our hearts, God sees us and truly knows us.
You are always righteous, Lord, when I bring a case before You. Yet I would speak with you about your justice:
Why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why do all the faithless live at ease?
You are always on their lips but far from their hearts. Yet you know me, Lord; You see me and test my thoughts about You.
INSIGHT:
Jeremiah 1:1 reads, " The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin." This opening for the book gives us a surprising amount of information about this prophet---information we don't receive about some other prophets in the Old Testament. He's of the Levitical priestly line and starts his journey as a resident of Anathoth, a village a few miles northeast of Jerusalem---a city given to Aaron's descendants (JOSHUA 21:15-19). His father, Hilkiah, was himself a priest who no doubt would've expected his son to follow in his footsteps. Jeremiah, however, pursued his calling as a prophet rather than following his father as a priest. The name Jeremiah can mean "Jehovah establishes or exalts" or "Jehovah hurls down." That last option may in fact speak into the prophet's message, which has to do with God's judgment of Jerusalem and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
What makes you feel alone, isolated. or unseen?
How does it change things to realize that God knows you?
If you wish: Pray, Dear God, this world can be a lonely place, but I'm astounded at how truly You know me. It fills me with wonder and joy: in Jesus amen.