Page 11 - Living Light Spring 2024

Friday March 8 - The great undying One, our Protector “...protect them from the evil one.” John 17:15
She had met Jesus after years wandering along dangerous spiritual side-tracks, but why hadn’t she come to the pioneer mission conference? Had she retreated into old ways? So next day I asked her mentor, who replied with surprise: “No, she was there.” She’d changed her hairstyle but not her new-found commitment! I rejoiced to know that the Lord was protecting her from evil, keeping her close to him.
I believe too that he protects us from the evil of accident and mishap. “I don’t know”, said my daughter the other day, “why I hesitated when the lights turned green. But if I hadn’t, I’d have been hit by a great lorry that came thundering through on red.” I rejoiced to know that the Lord was protecting her, as I pray daily.
Yet sometimes protection is not given. Christian friends have died from accidents and illness, and Christians abroad are being killed because of their faith. The world and its ways, the devil and his ways, remain our foes. But remember: God is the Eternal One – the ‘Great Undying One’, as our indigenous friends overseas sometimes call him. He’s with us always, so that whether we live or die, nothing can separate us from him and his love – not trouble, not suffering, not even death (Romans 8:38-39). His is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
Father, thank you that by your side is the safest place, for ever and ever. Amen.
Saturday March 9 - Holiness and joy “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:17
Have you ever asked God to ‘sanctify’ someone or yourself? I confess I haven’t, though I’ve used words pointing that way. It means to ‘make holy’, so Jesus is asking God to help his disciples lead holy, godly lives, in the image and likeness of Jesus.
‘Sanctify’ also means ‘set apart for sacred use’. Jesus came into the world, but set himself apart from its ways (v 19). So now he asks God the Father, who has given him these first disciples, to set them apart from the world’s ways in order to serve the ways of the Kingdom of God. The instrument of holy living and of being set apart is the word of God – and our obedience to that word of truth, now unfolded to us in the Scriptures. The word of truth is ‘the gospel of your salvation’ (Ephesians 1:13), the good news to live out in sanctified lives, obedient to God.
And also in joyful lives. Jesus’ desire is that our faithful obedience to God will, as for Jesus, give us complete joy. So he prays that “they may have the full measure of my joy within them” (v 13; see John 15:10-11). Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22); indeed, the first Christians in Thessalonica ‘in spite of severe suffering... welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit’ (1 Thessalonians 1:6). Holiness and joy – may that be true of us, whatever our circumstances.
Father, please keep on sanctifying me, that my life may be holy and joyful. Amen.
PRAYER FOR TODAY
PRAYER FOR TODAY
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