Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Being a Christ-ian

I was reading the book of Luke during my QT with God and He gave me a few questions to ponder about. In addition, God spoke to me about money issues as well as the cost of being a disciple.
These are the questions that I asked myself during my QT:
1. What does it mean to pray 'in Jesus' name'?
-From what I learnt from Jeremiah, when we pray in Jesus name, we invoke the name of Jesus. For Jesus has been given the name above all other names, that at His name, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.
2. How can your life have the power and authority of Jesus behind it?
-In order to have the power and authority, we need to walk right with God and stay close to Him. It grows over time as we walk with Him. We do have some form of power and authority as we are sons of, but as we practise and walk close to Him,it will grow as we understand our position.
Thank God for Jeremiah for guiding me with the questions.
As I mentioned earlier, God spoke to me about issues concerning money as well as the cost of being a disciple for God.
So what is God reminding me about regarding the issues with money?

I was reading the parable of the rich fool in the book of Luke and I just felt God asking me to slow down and to see what He is reminding of from this parable.
As seen from Luke 12:16-21,
"The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. 17He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'
18"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '
20"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'
21"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

From the parable, it can be seen that the rich man's money did him absolutely no good the night of his death. I was reminded not to put my faith in money to secure my future.

As I was reading further on, I realised that God was actually reminding me not to worry about the things in life but to seek first his kingdom and righteousness.
In Luke 12:30-31, it says ‘For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father know that you need them. But seek first his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

God also spoke to me about the cost of being His disciple but I can’t exactly explain it as I’m not very sure about it. I was a little confused with Luke 14:26 but after some clarification, basically what the verse means is that the old is gone, the new has come.We're no longer ours but God's as we're purchased by God's precious blood.The life we live should be for God and no longer for ourselves.

Labels: Devotion