Thoughts in Worship

Message Magazine's Online Devotional for Sabbath, August 10, 2019

Audio Link: http://bit.ly/ThoughtsinWorship

Today’s Scripture Focus: Philippians 3:12-14

We are focusing on sin recovery principle number six of 12: “We are now ready for God to give us new characters that reflect that of His Son’s.”

Having a relationship with God is like an uneven exchange. We give Him our unrighteousness as well as our unrighteous habits, and He gives us His righteousness. Oh, and we don’t only give Him our obvious unrighteousness, we also give Him that which we have been foolish enough to think was righteousness before we began to understand Him. And He will give us His actual righteousness, which does rate in heaven. It’s the righteousness of Christ given to us by faith. This is the very definition of biblical perfection. It is us surrendering our all to God in exchange for His all. We surrender our weakness in exchange for His strength. We surrender our perceptions for His reality.

Oftentimes we make perfection seem so complicated. I suppose it eludes us because we have a warped perspective. We think it’s about us performing blamelessly in our own strength rather than yielding even our best abilities to God’s process of recreation. Notice I said recreation and not renovation. There is a vital difference. There is nothing in us worthy of salvaging and using to form an improved version of us. No! When we surrender to Him, we are consenting to a complete teardown and do over. He gives us new hearts. He gives us right spirits. He gives us new (righteous) desires for our hearts. He gives us new characters created from the same mold from which Jesus’ character originated.

As we move on to our next sin recovery principle tomorrow, let us rejoice that God has not left the formation of perfect characters for us to accomplish in our own strength.—L. David Harris (http://bit.ly/BQuotable)

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