Daily Devotional June 13 - Which Of These Are You?

 "Give unto the LORD the glory due unto His name: bring an offering, and come before Him: worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness." 1 Chronicles 16:29

How can you give glory that is due unto God? Is it possible that there is a connection between your inner senses and the creator? Yes. First, bring an offering. I know, you have heard it a million times. Sometimes preachers use this verse and others like it in an attempt to get an offering. And there are many verses that talk to the issue of money, giving and tithing, but this is not one of them.

The offering that God is looking for here is the offering of a body, mind, spirit and soul that is devoted to the things of God. There are many ways to approach God. Let me mention a few:

1 You are desperate. You didn't get with God early in the situation and now it is haunting you.  You go to God begging and pleading and you feel like God is a billion miles away. You can't hear God's voice and you are starting to lose the battle for your mind and body.

2 You are willingly disobedient. You aren't even trying to live up to your own standards. You are so satisfied with your current conditions that you don't want to rock the boat through discipline and a godly life. You go to God at church, if you attend at all, and you give God the basic 'close your eyes to pray devotion' and you look around to see if so and so is there.

3 You have one foot in your relationship with God and one foot in the world. You are not against the idea of God, and you believe there is a God and that Jesus is the Son of God. You are saved, you just aren't convinced that God knows what He is talking about in the scriptures. There are a lot of scriptures that you take issue with. You haven't researched the scriptures enough to be sure you are right and what you have researched turned up an answer that you didn't like. So it's best to simply stay away from it. After all if God wants you to know something that you don't know, He will get a hold of you via one of your many techno devices.

4 You love the Lord, but you haven't had much time with the Lord. You are not against the idea at all, it's just that there isn't enough time to juggle work and the kids, make dinner, clean the house, go to games and watch your favorite TV show, much less private quantity time with God.

5 You love the Lord and the Lord comes first. God knows about all the things you have to do and just what it will take on His part to make sure that you have enough time if you do devote quantity time with God. You have learned that just a few moments of undivided attention is where many of the secrets of the holy live. You have also learned that without this special time with God, all is vain, empty and void. You clearly see the world and how it tries to sell its wares to anyone who will listen, whether you need them or not. You see how the world system takes people away from worship and keeps them away through stress and strain. You have met the Master and you know that even the difficult times with the Lord are better than the easy times without. You have come to like meeting with God and you have learned how to dispose your time in a way that honors God and also finds a way to perform your secular duties with excellence. You know how to worship God in the beauty of holiness.

Which one of these conditions do you find yourself living out?

I will venture to say that a simple yielding to God of your self is sufficient. Because you have free will you can deny God access to interaction with you. Even though God is always on for you, you turn God on and off like a light bulb with your will. It has always been this way. You have always had control over your free will decisions. I can tell you from thousands of testimonies, the more you yield, the more you receive; peace of mind, spiritual enlightenment, measurable results, personal interactions with God, personal intervention by God on your behalf. 

Don't get this wrong, God is always doing all these things for you but you can only see according to your faith. If you want to see measurable results of God's intervention, you will have to yield more of yourself and rely on your faith to a greater degree.