Today's Devotional

 

January 16, 2008  

                                                                                         

Subject:   No More Pine Needles In His Pasture

John 1:29 - "The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."

Ephesians 2:10 - "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

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During the holidays I had a lot of time on my hands so it was a good opportunity to work on creating a larger pasture for my horses.  I was to do this by cutting down some of the pine trees that cover much of my land.  The pine trees created too much shade and prevented the grass from growing and of course the grass is quite necessary for the horses.  Last year, because there were so many pine trees I spent many days raking up fallen pine needles because the horses can't eat those.  The pine trees were a pain and a nuisance.  I didn't finish, but I cut down about 15 or so.  After cutting them down and piling up all of the branches for later burning, I noticed that I was quite content to do a "final" raking of the pine needles.  As I raked, I thought to myself, "there will be no more pine needles.  This is it.  This is good work."  So I raked with joy knowing that the things that created the pine needles was gone.

That's where we are in the Christian life.  Jesus' death, burial and resurrection was the cutting down of the "pine tree of sin."  When He arose, that meant that there would be no more pine needles to fall for all of those in His "pasture."  However, we've got lots of pine needles lying around that still need to be raked up.  That is why the believer works with joy because we know that He's already taken down the trees that caused us pain, sorrow, doubt and fear.  All of those things now are just old pine needles that need to be raked up.  If we don't rake them up they can continue to be a nuisance.

Today if you've got fresh pine needles of sin falling, you're not in His pasture.  Believers aren't complaining because of the pine needles that they have to clean up in this life, because God has ordained us to good work and this is good work. 

Carlen