Monday 9 Jun 2014

June 9: Joel 2:28-32

Key Verse: Joel 2:28
And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

Devotion:
These words were written by the prophet Joel many years before Christ was on earth in human form and certainly years before they fully understood anything about Pentecost! This is another promise of God that we see was carried out in full and one we remember with festivals and commemorations… but how many of us take these words deep in our hearts and entrust our lives in God’s hands so that He can do His will in our lives as well?

It is one thing to say that the Holy Spirit will come into your life and another thing entirely the deep seated belief that He is going to live in you from that day onward. The deep seated belief must change us and our attitude because we then should be remembering every day that God is in us! If God is in us do we really want to embarrass ourselves every day by giving in to sin once again? We don’t have to, but we do. With the Holy Spirit in us we do have the strength to resist and turn away from sin. We do have the wisdom to tell others about God and to read and understand His Word… if only we will allow Him to work in our lives!

Joel wrote that God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh; that means every one of us has the same chance at being able to live our lives fully with God in them. We have the same choice of accepting Him and living with Him as everybody else, but it is still a choice that we have to make first of all. And when we do make that choice we should be making it fully and not a half-hearted attempt! If these people would be able to prophesy, dream and see visions then surely we should be able to if we accept that same Spirit into our lives.

The difference here being that the disciples were together, all trusting Christ for what He had done, all believing that Christ could do anything, all trusting God to send them a helper and waiting on God. If we submit to God’s will, His ways and wait on Him then should we not expect the same from Him? God has promised us the Holy Spirit will dwell within us when we believe in Him. Believe and receive!

Points to Ponder:
Do you believe Christ died for you?

Do you wait on the Holy Spirit?