NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS FROM THE WORD OF GOD (PART 1)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace." Colossians 3:12-15a

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

NOTE: This has been a traditional devotion for each New Year. Part 1 will be today, followed by Part 2 tomorrow. Enjoy and may the Lord’s richest blessings be yours in 2015!

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace." Colossians 3:12-15a

Making New Year’s resolutions has been a tradition that goes back to the Babylonian Empire. Most of us have made them. Maybe we have vowed to lose weight, quit a bad habit, save money, or commit more time to family. There is any number of things we might try to do.

But what if we changed our vantage point and instead of choosing what we want, we focused on what the Lord wants instead. I believe in Paul’s words to the Colossians, we find ten resolutions He would have us focus on as we enter 2015. Today, I’ll offer resolutions six through ten and tomorrow will share one through five.  

10. Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

How many of you are selective in the things you wear? Most people are and want to ensure that they look their best every day.

But how well do we clothe ourselves with our attitudes and demeanors? Do we take time to properly prepare ourselves before we let others see what we look like on the inside? Here’s what God's word says about what should be part of our inner wardrobe:

Compassion, Kindness, Humility, Gentleness, Patience

With this, how well dressed are you on the inside? In 2015, maybe a makeover might be in order.

9. Bear with each other

Can you think of someone right now who just seems to constantly annoy you?

This year, resolve to be more tolerant and respect others. To stop looking so closely at a person's shortfalls while ignoring your own for we're all imperfect when we get down to it.

Seek to be more understanding and strive to resolve differences when they occur. Seek to rebuild bridges instead of tearing them down. Pray for those you differ with and seek reconciliation in the year ahead.

8. Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

We all know what forgiveness is but putting it into action is often the real problem. If left to our own devices, we would choose who want to forgive. That's why God has to provide strict guidelines to govern our forgiveness.

His word from verse 13 orders us to “Forgive as the Lord forgave you”. WOW! This takes all the guesswork out of forgiveness for we must forgive everyone without exception. If you doubt that, then ask yourself if you’ve done anything that the Lord has not forgiven you for? There isn’t.

We are to forgive likewise. Period.

7. Over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity.

The package of prior resolutions all revolve around love which is central to the greatest commandments of Jesus. Remember His answer when asked about the greatest commandments? He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." Then He said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:36-40)

If you truly love God with all you are, you will easily embody compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with and forgiving one another, all in the name of love through the One who showed and taught us what love is all about.

6. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts

In a world full of violence, confusion, problems and constant change, peace is sometimes very hard to come by? I think that's why we’re given God’s word in Philippians 4:6-7:

"Do not be anxious about anything but give your concerns to God in prayer and petition and with thanksgiving. So you might find the peace of God that transcends all understanding and your hearts and minds will be guarded in Christ Jesus."

God wants us to remember He is fully able and ready to handle any problem we have. And when we truly surrender our burdens to Him, we can then fully experience the peace that transcends all understanding. I pray for that peace to rule your hearts and the hearts of all creation in the New Year.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com

FINDING PEACE

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.

In Christ, Mark

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** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.

Isaiah 26:3

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As we get set to close another year, the one thing many people will be looking for in 2015 is peace. Maybe they have been caught up in disagreement or quarrel, either at work or at home, hoping for relief and a return to times of harmony and solace. Maybe they have been in the midst of some form of long term affliction, tired of not being well and yearning for healing and restoration. Maybe the weight of the world has fallen on their shoulders because of something that has brought them stress or worry or fear. They hunger for any kind of relief that could take away their burdens and set them free. Or maybe they have been in the center of war or conflict, living in constant danger of being injured or killed from the constant fighting all around them. They pray for the day when the hostilities might be over and they might be able to live every day in tranquility again.

There is no certainly no shortage of the need for peace in our lives and in our world, that’s for sure. That’s why today’s scripture verse and associated verses are so important to all people because there will be some time in life for everyone when the need for peace will arise and when it does, we can always turn to the Lord God Almighty who provides it in abundance and in a way that no one else can. Look at today’s verse from Isaiah, chapter 26:

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.

This verse is in the midst of a song that is prophesied to be sung when Jesus returns and makes all things new to include the heavens and earth where those who placed their steadfast faith and trust in Jesus as Savior will inhabit the New Jerusalem. It will be at that point that perfect peace will come but until then, the people of this world will always be dealing with matters that will disrupt their sense of peace.

So what do we do in the interim? How do we cope with the things of this world where our sense of serenity always seems under attack?

God’s word again offers us the answer as we look at these verses from Philippians, Chapter 4:

Do not be anxious about anything but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Vv. 6-7  

Want peace in your world today, tomorrow, and every day until Jesus returns to bring perfect peace? Follow the guidance of these two simple verses, verses I refer to as God’s prescription for worry, stress, anxiety, and fear, the negative emotions that Satan uses to shackle the Lord’s people and keep them from fulfilling His purposes. Let me break it down to you in a way that will make total sense to you, in a way that you can easily process and apply to find a peace that no one else can bring.

First, let look at the first words:

Do not be anxious about anything.

Note here that God’s word isn’t giving us an option. It doesn’t say, “I would recommend you avoid being anxious about things.” It doesn’t say, “If you want to, don’t be anxious about anything.” No, it says, “Do not be anxious about anything”, period. It is a command from the word of God, plain and simple. We are not to be anxious or worried or afraid or stressed about anything. We are ordered by God.

So how can we possibly do this? How can we fulfill this command to never be anxious about anything?

We need to go on in the passage for the answer.  

In every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Go back to the featured verse for today from Isaiah. The word of God tells us that perfect peace comes to those who maintain steadfast trust in God, a God who has assured, and then proven to, His people over and over and over again that He is with them, that He is for them, and that there is nothing beyond the work of His hands.

What more evidence do we need that would lead us to place our faith in Him without question?

And yet, we seem to want to either rely on ourselves or trust other people in the world more than the One who created it all and all of us, the One with a power that is unmatched, unrivaled, and incomparable to the greatest power this world might know.

Friends, the true key to peace is to place our fullest faith and reliance on God and God alone, to believe that God can and will do all things when we call on His precious and holy name. This is why God’s word tells us to take our anxieties and fears and worries and stresses, the things that burden us in life, and lay them down at His feet, essentially saying to Him, “Lord, this is too much for me to handle but I know it isn’t too hard for you.” We’re to do this through prayer and petition, turning to the Lord who loves and cares for us, and presenting our requests for deliverance and relief from the matters that are weighing us down. And through this all, we are to approach God with the deepest sense of thanksgiving, thanks that we have a heavenly Father who loves His children so very much and desires to bring them peace in the midst of hardship and difficulty.

When we do this, when we commit ourselves to stop carrying our burdens separate from the help of God, choosing to be obedient to His command to not be anxious about anything and turning to Him in trust through prayer, then and only then will we experience the end results that God’s word from Philippians talks about.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.   

When we fully rely on God to handle the pressures of life that come upon us, we are set free from those pressures, liberated from our burdens in a way that brings us peace. And not just any peace but a peace that transcends all understanding. No one outside of another believer who exercises these basic steps from the scriptures can understand that kind of peace because no one in the world can find it there. It is a peace that only comes from the Lord God Almighty, the One who brings us all things in perfection. What a blessed assurance we have in this truth!

And just in case you might be concerned about maintaining this peace beyond understanding after you receive it, know and trust that Christ Jesus, the One who preserves us now and forever, stands ready to guard and protect our hearts and minds through the Holy Spirit. We know it because God’s word tells us so and because as Christians, we should always have Jesus in our hearts and minds. He is the reason for who we are, He is the reason for who we will be on that day when He returns to usher us into His perfect peace in the new heaven and new earth, the day when the righteous inhabit the New Jerusalem.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com

THE COMING RIGHTEOUS CITY

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.

In Christ, Mark

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** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts. Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.

Isaiah 26:1-2

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Chapters 24 and 25 of the Book of Isaiah contain prophecy of the end days when Christ will return to judge the earth. In those days, as correlated with Revelation, Chapter 21, earth as we know it will be destroyed as will the current heavens, with a new heaven and earth being created. Within that new creation, we are told of no other city that will exist except for the New Jerusalem, the city we find mentioned at in our scriptures today at the beginning of Isaiah, Chapter 26. As we will see through the word of God, the New Jerusalem will be the coming righteous city, a definite upgrade over any city that perished when the original earth passed away.

Think about it. What city can say it is righteous today? There are none because all cities are inhabitated by and led by sinners who daily make decisions that are contrary to God’s word, will, and way. If you don’t believe it, you aren’t paying attention to the news, both nationally and in the world as a whole. Frankly, it’s amazing that God hasn’t started to just destroy cities for their transgressions and apostasy as He did Sodom and Gomorrah in biblical days. In the end, it’s one of the greatest daily testimonies of His amazing grace and mercy when it comes right down to it.

So what will the coming righteous city be like?

For the answers, we can turn to these opening two verses of Chapter 26 and a song that is foretold to be sung at the time of Christ’s return:

In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:

We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts. Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter, the nation that keeps faith.

First, the city will be strong and it will be so because God and His Son Jesus will be the rulers and leaders of this New Jerusalem. There will be no need for kings or lords because all who reside in the new city will be there under the appointment and protection of the King of kings and Lord of lords. The Lord God Almighty and Christ Jesus will reign supreme with power, so much so that the New Jerusalem will have gates but not walls or ramparts. There will be no need for them because the salvation of God will serve as the fortification the city needs. There will be no evil in the New Jerusalem for Satan and evil were defeated and vanquished along with the old earth, cast into the fiery lake along with all people who chose to not place their faith and trust in Jesus as Savior. And so in this New Jerusalem, there will only be righteousness and peace, a perfect peace we will look at in tomorrow’s devotion.

Yes, the New Jerusalem will be strong and mighty, fully under the control and power of the Lord God Almighty and His Son Jesus. It will also be perfectly uncorrupted and holy, free from imperfection or impurity. It’s inhabitants will be righteous, the ones who kept their faith and trust in their Savior Jesus Christ, the ones who found justification and pardon from their transgressions through the precious shed blood of the Lamb of God who willingly gave Himself up as a sacrifice to pay the penalty for the sins of mankind. It will be those who were washed clean into righteousness who will be taken up to the New Jerusalem by Jesus at His return to live and abide with Him in perfect righteousness forever.

So the question for today is this: Will you be a resident of the New Jerusalem and be counted among the righteous when Jesus returns?

My prayer is that you will join myself and others who have made the right choice and given their lives to the Lord and Savior of the world, the Lord Jesus who God gave to us this Christmas season out of His deep love for His children, the children He didn’t wish to see perish but rather to have everlasting life in the New Jerusalem, the coming righteous city (John 3:16).

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com

PRAISING GOD FOR SALVATION

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com.

In Christ, Mark

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** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth.

The Lord has spoken.

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in Him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

The hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain; but Moab will be trampled in their land as straw is trampled down in the manure. They will stretch out their hands in it, as swimmers stretch out their hands to swim. God will bring down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands. He will bring down your high fortified walls and lay them low; He will bring them down to the ground, to the very dust.

Isaiah 25:6-12

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Yesterday, we looked at how God’s word spoke loudly about praising Him for the deliverance He brings, deliverance that comes to us in so many ways. In the end translation, we saw how we all have reason to praise Him for deliverance as we are all sinners and cannot possibly save ourselves from the sure death and judgment ahead. Only God could do that - and did so - through His only Son Jesus, the One whose birth we celebrated a few days ago, the One who brought us the greatest gift of all from God: the gift of salvation.

Through placing our faith and trust in Jesus as Savior, we are freed from the penalty of sin, liberated from the wrath and judgment that we were going to subject to and ushered into the sure promise and hope of eternal life. Friends, this is something that should have us awake to every day with a sense of excitement and gratitude, with the truest sense of praise.

It’s this sense of praise that we see unabashedly expressed in the scriptures today from Isaiah, Chapter 25, scriptures that foretell the day when Jesus returns to make all things new. Look at these words again:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine—the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain He will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth.

The Lord has spoken.

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him, and He saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in Him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

A day is coming when the world as we know it will be no more. There will be no more pain. No more sorrow. No more hardship. No more brokenness. No more illness or disease. No more sin. None of the things that come against us will exist anymore. For on the day of His return, the Lord Jesus, our blessed Savior and Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, the One we placed our hope and trust in, will wipe all the tears from our eyes and remove our disgrace forever. He will swallow up death forever and usher us into the new earth and heaven where we will be saved and will rejoice and be glad in our salvation.

In other words, those who placed their faith in Christ as Savior, will praise Him for the salvation He brought, the salvation we praise Him for promising today.

Friends, we have so much to look forward to in life, no matter what our present circumstances might be. For in Jesus, we are saved and have gained victory over death, receiving instead a life everlasting, a life full of perfect light and love.

Today and every day, let us never forget that because of Jesus, the best is yet to come in life. If that won’t lead us to praise God, His Father and ours, for providing salvation through His deep love for us, His children, I don’t know what will.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com