Today's Devotional
May 7, 2008
Subject: Start In The Spirit, End In The Spirit
Galatians 3:3 "Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?"
I wonder how many times we do this? We start something very spiritually-minded, believing through faith that it is the very thing God wants us to do and then before you know it, we're into the flesh and doing it through natural and often sinful means.
Here is a point in case. Recently we had the dilemma over our execution of church discipline. Our church has an attached house next to it and for the last couple of years we allowed a couple to live in the house who worshipped at the church. They had the understanding that it was to aid them while they were both unemployed and they were to contribute to the ministry when possible. They were initially very grateful for the opportunity, but soon, slothfulness and apathy about the church crept in. They slowly disappeared from worship and bible study and their responsibilities of keeping the house clean and cutting the grass were totally neglected. After efforts to show them the error of their ways, the church served the couple with letters a few weeks ago stating that they would have to remove themselves from the property, to which their response was to seek legal remedy and to see if we could legally have them removed.
Their hearts were initially set to help out the ministry in any way that they could. This was the spirit of God working in them to do good for the grace shown them. In the end, they not only stopped attending worship, but began to detract from the ministry and its resources in many other ways and are now beginning to fight the church through fleshly means. I saw this clearly as the young lady talked to me in a very proud manner about how she talked to someone and she knew that we were breaking the law by changing the locks on the house. It was most sad.
From the church viewpoint, we know that we tried to help them when they needed it and should we now also try to fight them with fleshly means? No, our weapons of warfare are not carnal and we need make no legal defense in this matter. God will be our defense. We will not end this by fleshly means when we started it by His Spirit.
Today think about something that God has you doing. Are you still doing it with the fervor and spirit that you started with? If not, flesh could be your problem. If you start in the spirit, end in the spirit. The flesh makes things really messy.
Carlen
