Monday 21 Jan 2013

Monday Reading: 1 Corinthians 12:12-26

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 12:13
13  For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.

Devotion:
One thing that stands out for me as a Christian is that even though I think at times I may be the only one standing up for God in a cloud of unbelief, I know that I am just one part of the body of the church. Yes we are going to come up against some pretty horrible things in our lives because of the sin nature of man, but we will also meet some pretty remarkable people along the way who will help to strengthen our resolve to do God’s will and not to be crushed by the will of man.

We may not be standing together with another Christian right now, we may not be in sight of another Christian, but we know that we are all spiritually connected through Christ as one body. When we invited Jesus Christ back into our lives as we asked Him to forgive us of our sins for that very first time, we were brought into spiritual unity with others who have done exactly the same. Just as we have many parts of our own bodies, some of which are strong, others weak, some critical, some less so; each part of our bodies makes up the whole and each part of our spiritual body in Christ makes up the whole. We are not alone!

We need to realise that we are of one body in Christ and we must not reject other parts of our body just because we have an issue with them. Just because the left hand works totally differently to the right hand it does not mean that one should be excluded because together they can hold a lot more than just by themselves. Similarly we need to embrace other believers in Christ knowing that together we will be able to achieve more than we can working alone.

This does not mean that we turn round and accept any person who believes in anything! We have one Father God, one God the Son and one Holy Spirit under whom we serve. If others do not accept the single God in three persons that we serve as God of all, then they are not part of the same spiritual body. We do need to be careful not to graft in other religions and other gods just to keep people happy otherwise we are turning away our God in preference to man.

Points to Ponder:
Do you feel alone at times?

Are you rejecting Christians who are different?