Today I was reading a devotional book "A Closer Walk" by Steve Troxel. The devotion was titled, A Vessel of Purity. It talks about the greatest commandment is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30). God wants all our love he does not want to share it with anything else of this world; "For the Lord your God is a jealous God" (Deuteronomy4:24)
I wanted to paraphrase what he said in this devotion but I will just type what he wrote not to miss anything.
Giving God the fullness of our love requires that we live a very focused and holy life; "But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do" (1 Peter 1:15). Our love must be intently focused on the holy things of God rather than the corrupted things of this world. Any time we allow our love for God to mix with our love for the world, the worldly love initially dilutes and eventually completely over takes any love for God.
James 3:11-12
"Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water."
Are we trying to walk on both sides of the fence? Do we maintain our "Godly" activities along side our "ungodly" activities? Do we praise God and discuss Biblical issues during certain portions of the week and then lust after the world during the other? If so, beware! The ungodly will soon overtake and totally consume the Godly - and we won't even be aware it's happening. If we're not careful, we will one day look at what consumes our attention and say, "How did I come to this place in my life? When did I leave God's path?"
The good news is we have been given the Holy Spirit as the Great Purifier. If we make the time to carefully listen, He will "guide us into all truth: (John 16:13). If we submit to His leading, He will strain, sift, distill, and refine until all that remains is the fresh and the pure.
Purity does not come by separation from the world, it comes as our heart is wholly separated into God. We have been planted amongst the weeds of the world and there we will remain until the day of the great harvest (Matthew 13:24-30). But while we must live and minister among the things of this world, and while worldly blessings and provisions, we must never give our worship to the things of this world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15).
Jesus has made us into a new vessel and asked that we be filled with what is pure and Holy Let's stop mixing fresh water and salty water, Godly and ungodly devotion. Let's commit every area of our life (without compromise!) to our Heavenly Father and glorify Him in all we do by maintaining a vessel of purity.
This devotion really spoke to me this morning. Yes, my toes are flat from all the stomping! This one is one where I could understand the part of the fresh water and the salty water mixing. If I had read this 3 weeks ago it might not have spoke to me as much as it did today. While we were in FL on vacation I got to see what water looks like when fresh and salty mix. It is not very clean looking. At the time when I saw it I did not know why it looked the way that it did. I just told the kids that it looked dirty and that they couldn't swim in it and to wait till we could go back to the other beach. I later found out that it was brown because of the salt and fresh water mixing. I know that I don't want my life to look like the brown water I want the blue clean clear water. I hope that in these pictures you can see the difference. The brown water picture was taken on the Navy base beach and the blue water picture was take about 30 mins. down the road at Pensacola Beach.
Posts
