Devotion to Christ
“Therefore devote yourselves completely to the Lord our God,
walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments.” 1 Kings 8:61
Greetings to you, fellow sisters and brothers, in the name of our advent (coming) Christ who is our hope, our passion, and the source of all devotion!
As we begin another church year together, I pray that you will take time to reflect on where we have been in the past twelve months. What good and wonderful blessings God has certainly brought our way! And as the church year, and the calendar year, draw to a close, I pray that you will take time to reflect on where God wants us to move in the coming year. For our work as true disciples of Christ is not yet completed.
We must take our instruction from God’s Word; “…while we…will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word” (Acts 6:4). In our last newsletter, I lifted up the importance of being “in” the Word of God every day. Again, I take this opportunity to continue preaching the absolute importance of making this a regular habit. All that we do must be based in God’s Word. We must be so firmly rooted in the Holy Scriptures that God’s Word seeps from our tongues in every word we speak, in every deed we do.
So often it seems as though the Word of God is ancient, or does not apply to our modem world. This could not be further from the truth. Included in our Holy Scriptures are more than 2,000 years of the history of people of faith. We have been called by God to continue the tradition of making disciples and spreading the Gospel message to the ends of the earth.
Again, included in this newsletter, you will find resources for your use in personal devotional time. These resources are intended to help you focus on the Word of God, and give you ideas to translate those ancient words into actions for our modem world. We must “be doers of the word, and not merely hearers”
(James 1:22).
May God go with you now and always as you seek to devote your life to Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come!