Daily Devotionals
Daily Devotional: Psalms 114:1-8
Ps 114:1-8
When Israel came out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue, Judah became God's sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea looked and fled, the Jordan turned back; the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. Why was it, O sea, that you fled, O Jordan, that you turned back, you mountains, that you skipped like rams, you hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool, the hard rock into springs of water.
1 Cor 3:16-17
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
Where does God live? We all know that God has the ability to be everywhere at the same time, and maybe he exercises that ability all the time. (There are many things that the human mind cannot really grasp about God.) One of the things we are told is that God lives in those who belong to him. When there is a local group of his people, God is living in, and among, them. When there is one lonely person serving the Lord, he is in that person as well. We, his people, are his sanctuary.
We usually think of a sanctuary as the place where we go to worship the Lord, but it is also the place where he lives and dwells. It is the meeting place for God and all of his people. So, as we live for the Lord, as we strive to be like Jesus, he lives in us and empowers us. This is one of the many blessings we have in Jesus Christ.
Paul tells the Ephesians that God the Father lives in us through his Spirit. He later, in the same book, says that Christ lives in us through the Holy Spirit as well. He writes to the Romans that the Spirit lives in all who belong to Christ and if we do not have the Spirit living in us, we do not belong to him. As the triune God lives in each of us individually and collectively, we are being molded into his likeness and we are empowered to do more than we can possibly do on our own. We can do all things through him, even more than we can think, or imagine when we yield to his working in us and we allow his power to be unleashed through us.
O Lord God, use me in your service, in your way, to accomplish your will. Help me truly yield to your will and allow your Spirit to work in me. Give me your wisdom, more strength to stand, and more self-control to do what needs to be done. Be with those who are sick and give your healing where it is your will. I know there are some who are struggling to keep their faith, so I ask you to empower them and use me to encourage them. Help me work out what you are working in me to will and to do, according to your good purpose. I pray in the name of Jesus.
Robert
