40 Days of Praise - Day 11
Day Eleven
“In him was life“
John 1:4a
This is not a repeat of yesterday’s devotional.
Where our Lord is concerned, life is more than meets the eye. Physical creation represents life as we know it and the way we think about it. But as we learned from our days in Colossians, Creation was both visible and invisible. “God is spirit,” Jesus told the Samaritan woman. And there are spiritual beings that serve Him. They have “life” of a type that we don’t often think about.
That same type of life was breathed into Adam after he was formed from the ground. Our thoughts naturally go to the breaths that we each take constantly. But God breathed into Adam “the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), life that not only sustained him physically, but that also made it possible for Adam have a relationship with God — something that no other animal has. Angels interact with God and carry out His bidding, but humans can receive God’s love and love Him in response, can appreciate Him and get to know Him. His “breath of life” in us is more than just physical.
When Adam and Eve sinned, something in their spiritual side was lost, and that loss was passed on to all of us. Something was broken that couldn’t be repaired. It had to be replaced. There was as absence of life within us, and that absence affected all we did and said and thought. Because it affected all of us, it seemed normal. But it isn’t.
Then Jesus came. “In Him was life” — the real deal, the full package — and then it became apparent that what we had was deficient. Something was alive in Him that was dead in us. But He loved us too much to leave us that way. So He made a way to replace that life that we had lost, an eternal life, not just one of a few years.
The life that is in our Lord, that He gives to us when we receive Him, is life that reconnects us with God. Until we were born again, we couldn’t “see” the kingdom of God (John 3:3) — it wasn’t real to us. God’s words, His actions in the world, His kindnesses toward us and the corrections that He would send our way — all these we saw as coincidence, “a roll of the dice,” or as explainable in some other way that didn’t require that we take God seriously. But when life is given to us, when we are born again, we see God’s work and hear His words, we receive His help and follow His guidance. We can get to know God and fellowship with Him. And we can worship.
All this is ours because, “In Him was life,” and He placed His life in us when we believed in Him.
What a gift!
Pastor Charles M. Butler
“In him was life“
John 1:4a
This is not a repeat of yesterday’s devotional.
Where our Lord is concerned, life is more than meets the eye. Physical creation represents life as we know it and the way we think about it. But as we learned from our days in Colossians, Creation was both visible and invisible. “God is spirit,” Jesus told the Samaritan woman. And there are spiritual beings that serve Him. They have “life” of a type that we don’t often think about.
That same type of life was breathed into Adam after he was formed from the ground. Our thoughts naturally go to the breaths that we each take constantly. But God breathed into Adam “the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7), life that not only sustained him physically, but that also made it possible for Adam have a relationship with God — something that no other animal has. Angels interact with God and carry out His bidding, but humans can receive God’s love and love Him in response, can appreciate Him and get to know Him. His “breath of life” in us is more than just physical.
When Adam and Eve sinned, something in their spiritual side was lost, and that loss was passed on to all of us. Something was broken that couldn’t be repaired. It had to be replaced. There was as absence of life within us, and that absence affected all we did and said and thought. Because it affected all of us, it seemed normal. But it isn’t.
Then Jesus came. “In Him was life” — the real deal, the full package — and then it became apparent that what we had was deficient. Something was alive in Him that was dead in us. But He loved us too much to leave us that way. So He made a way to replace that life that we had lost, an eternal life, not just one of a few years.
The life that is in our Lord, that He gives to us when we receive Him, is life that reconnects us with God. Until we were born again, we couldn’t “see” the kingdom of God (John 3:3) — it wasn’t real to us. God’s words, His actions in the world, His kindnesses toward us and the corrections that He would send our way — all these we saw as coincidence, “a roll of the dice,” or as explainable in some other way that didn’t require that we take God seriously. But when life is given to us, when we are born again, we see God’s work and hear His words, we receive His help and follow His guidance. We can get to know God and fellowship with Him. And we can worship.
All this is ours because, “In Him was life,” and He placed His life in us when we believed in Him.
What a gift!
Pastor Charles M. Butler
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