I hope that your week is going extremely well as you experience the blessing and favor of the God of all good and perfect gifts! We have a great set list of songs lined up for this Sunday (7/25/21) at Eagleville Bible Church. We are joyfully celebrating the power of our Great God that saved us from our sins and granted us a new life in Christ Jesus, regenerated by the power of His Spirit! Here are the songs and the collaborating Scriptures for this week:
- House of the Lord, (YouTube link)
- Heb 13:8,15,
- Rev 1:8,
- 1 Cor 15:57,
- Ps 28:7,
- Phil 4:4,
- 1 Pet 2:9,
- Your Love Awakens Me, (YouTube link)
- Eph 2:13-16,
- 2 Cor 5:19,
- Eph 3:16-19,
- Eph 2:4-5,
- 1 Pet 2:9-10,
- How Great is Our God, (YouTube link)
- Ps 104:1,
- Phil 4:4,
- Ps 77:13,
- Job 36:26,
- Rev 22:13,
- Rev 5:5-10,
- Phil 2:9-11,
- Mighty to Save, (YouTube link)
- Ps 51:1,
- Titus 3:4-6,
- Ps 106:8,
- Heb 5:9,
- Heb 12:2,
- Ps 138:5,
- Isa 60:1,
- Matt 5:16,
- Happy Day, (YouTube link)
- 1 Cor 15:55-57,
- Heb 2:14-15,
- Titus 2:14,
- Eph 2:8-9,
- Eph 1:7,
- Gal 5:1,
- Matt 28:6,
- Isa 1:18,
Devotional thought
To be awakened one must be asleep, right? Right! This is the reality of what happened to us spiritually when God Almighty initiated the awakening force of the gospel message in our lives through the power of His Spirit.
We were all once dead in our sins (Eph 2:4), without hope in this world (Eph 2:12), and desperately needing rescued from the power and penalty of sin in our life. Sin was working to deaden our senses and keep us wrapped up in a lifestyle that was opposed to God. We were children of darkness and we didn’t even know it. We were being deceived by the deceptive power of sinfulness, spiritually asleep behind the wheel of a vehicle destined for hell! This is the reality of anyone’s condition who is not in Christ, spiritually dead.
I know this isn’t a popular message and doesn’t make your feel good button go off, but it must be said in order to appreciate all that we have been given and saved from when we come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Too many people do not want to hear the reality of their situation, and do not want to face the fact that they are dead and on their way to eternal separation from God. I would understand that position a bit more if there wasn’t good news that follows such a message, but in just the same way that our utter sinfulness leads to death there is another, even greater, reality that we must address!
God made us alive together with Christ! Ezekiel 36:27 says that God takes the initiative to put a new spirit within us! Romans 5:8 tells us that while we were still sinning (while we were in our sleepy state, dead spiritually) Christ was showing us His love by dying for us on the cross. 2 Corinthians 5:19 assures us that it was God through Christ who was reconciling (bringing together two opposing forces) the world (that includes you and me) to Himself in order to save the world through Him! It was Peter that reminded us that we were once not a people but now are the people of God (see 1 Pet 2:10). It was Jesus that told Nicodemus that he (we) must be born again (made into new creations) before we can enter the Kingdom of God, then He tells him how in John 3:16 (see John 3:3,16) – by believing in Christ to receive the gift of eternal life! We are reminded in Titus 3:4-6 that the kindness of the Lord is what brought us to the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit for a new life in God through salvation in Christ Jesus! Do you see the pattern?
This is why we sing songs like House of the Lord, and Happy Day, because we who have been a part of that transforming work of God to awaken our hearts to the reality of our need for a Savior really are full of joy as we celebrate and worship our Deliverer through song! I love the Lord and am so grateful that He took the initiative in my life, and the life of my wife and children, to deliver me from the power and penalty of sin through Jesus. I could not have done it on my own. I would not have experienced the freedom from the tyranny of a sinful lifestyle that I didn’t even realize I was living! I needed a Savior before I knew it, and God opened my eyes to Him by replacing my heart of stone with a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36:26-27)! Hebrews 12:2 says that He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, so that alone is reason to sing for joy to His work of blessing us with faith!
I believe this is why Paul in his letter to the Ephesians was so emphatic about his desire for them to understand the depth of God’s love toward us. He understood exactly what happened in the spiritual realm when Jesus saved us through His death and resurrection, and he also knew that we would get it wrong if we didn’t comprehend that it was an act of kindness and grace motivated by the love of God that made it happen! See, if we don’t approach salvation through that lens then we will not appreciate it for the gift that it is. Instead, we will view it through the eyes of human effort and legalism, and if there is a quick way to steal the joy of salvation it is to twist it around to make it about human effort!
The Galatians found out about that when they allowed someone to come in and twist Paul’s message of justification based on faith (really the faithfulness of Christ!). These false teachers were making the believers there understand salvation to be conformity to the rules and regulations of the Jewish people, but Paul quickly addresses that in Galatians 3:2-3 by asking them a rhetorical question about receiving the Holy Spirit. He asked, “Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?” Then he asked a follow up question, “Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?”. Many of us have lost the joy of our salvation because we are resorting back to human effort and legalism in our faith, we are making it too much about us and not enough about Christ!
Does this disqualify us from the salvation of Christ? No, I don’ t think it does, but it does do a number on the level of joy and freedom we experience as Christ followers. Instead of being asleep spiritually, or dead, we become numb and in a state similar to that of a daydreaming one we experience in the physical realm. You’re familiar with that right? When someone says to you, “What are you looking at?”, or you drive down the road and come to your senses realizing that you have no recollection of the last mile or so. It is a scary thing! You think to yourself, how is it possible that I was staring at something and didn’t even see it, or how did I drive that far without being alert. I believe this can happen to us spiritually too, not dead but in a state of comatose. If that is you, the good news is that all it takes is to come to your senses and snap out of that wrong thinking. Grab back ahold of the awakening power of the gospel and get back to rejoicing in the complete work of Christ on the cross for your salvation!
Oh happy day indeed when Jesus washed all my sins away! May the love of God the Father make you alive today in Christ Jesus and regenerate a renewed Spirit within you that is full of worship for His delivering work in your life! He truly is mighty to save anyone who calls on His name! How great is our God!!
God bless you!