‘Beating Satan to a Pulp’, ‘Redeeming the World a Million Converts at a Time’, ‘Conquering Spiritual Army on the Move’…those would make way cooler headings for 2014’s Discipleship Focus here at
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| Google ‘exciting personal devotions’ and this comes up. |
First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman.
Maybe one day I’ll try and get away with doing that. But for now, what I’m excited about, what I hope you will be excited about, and what I think is most important is this: encouraging each other about our personal devotions.
It’s like the accounting department of the corporate world though, isn’t it? No-one ever launched a marketing campaign by punching the air and shouting ‘we’re gonna be ROCKING the book-keeping this year!!’ while macro formulas flash across the screen and their air is filled with pounding music.
And whilst I’m not sure what it would look like to rock your personal devotions, I’m looking forward to what God will do this year as we make his glory our focus and look to serve him every day of our lives.
I don’t know any Christian who has the devotional life they’d like to have, or think maybe they should have. Either we end up complacently thinking “hey, it is what it is”, or we beat ourselves up endlessly for having failed to meet an arbitrary standard that keeps moving just beyond our reach.
So as we head towards the end of the first week of 2014, with new year’s resolutions already mostly broken, let’s encourage each other into the Word and into prayer – not by saying “you gotta do that”, but by talking to each other about God. About who he is, what he’s done, and the immense privilege of being his children.
Paul T Reynolds 