A Sincere Devotion - Should We Give Anything Less.
For my personal Bible study and quiet time, I am going through the book of Proverbs. This morning as I was seeking for direction from the Lord, He laid on my heart my blog title "A Sincere Devotion". I had no idea that when I opened up to my reading for today that the first verse would pop off the page and into my heart and mind.
Proverbs 11:1 says, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight." I have read this verse many times and know that it is talking about a person being deceived through a purchase using weight scales. This morning God shed a new light on this verse for me and so I would like to share with you what God put on my heart.
Christ is our purchaser.
He paid the full complete amount for our redemption. Not only did He pay the price for our sins, but He went way beyond the purchase price. This purchase price cannot even be weighed. But so many times we act and live like He has somehow cheated us. Let me explain.
As Christians, we want all the benefits of the blessings and gifts of Christ but then we don't want to identify with Him when something comes along that looks more pleasing. We cheat the purchaser. We don't give Him our full amount or we tilt the scales a little so we can be a little unfaithful at times.
We know the right thing to do, but we are out for our own personal gain. We live for ourselves and not the One who has redeemed us.
We all love good customer service! We want a store or company to go out of their way to please the customer. If we have been wronged as the customer we want it taken care of immediately. We want the store to hold to a good standard of excellence. That's what a purchaser does. Stores have gone out of business for the sole reason of poor customer service.
Don't we do the same thing to our Purchaser? We want to be held to a different standard than what we want to hold people to. We want tons of forgiveness, love, justice, patience, grace, and so on. But, we want to hold others to a different standard.
God deserves and wants nothing less than sincere and complete devotion. It's His delight!
But here is the thing...
We can't! WE CAN'T!!
The cool thing is that our purchaser is also our sustainer.
Our sustainer is our forgiver.
Our forgiver is our moment by moment grace giver.
Our grace giver has wiped out the scales because He now is the scale!
So when God says, "A just weight is my delight" the biggest delight is Christ. He has become our weight for us! He balances the scales in our place.
Without a purchaser, there is no hope for a just balance, and today that gives me so much HOPE!
There is no way that I can ever live a sincerely devoted life apart from Christ. He has to take our place on the scales because if it were up to me there would be no hope. Through Him, I am no longer an abomination to the Lord because of my false balance.
A sincere devotion?
Yes, but only because of Christ, through Christ, and for Christ's glory.
Proverbs 11:1 says, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is His delight." I have read this verse many times and know that it is talking about a person being deceived through a purchase using weight scales. This morning God shed a new light on this verse for me and so I would like to share with you what God put on my heart.
Christ is our purchaser.
He paid the full complete amount for our redemption. Not only did He pay the price for our sins, but He went way beyond the purchase price. This purchase price cannot even be weighed. But so many times we act and live like He has somehow cheated us. Let me explain.
As Christians, we want all the benefits of the blessings and gifts of Christ but then we don't want to identify with Him when something comes along that looks more pleasing. We cheat the purchaser. We don't give Him our full amount or we tilt the scales a little so we can be a little unfaithful at times.
We know the right thing to do, but we are out for our own personal gain. We live for ourselves and not the One who has redeemed us.
We all love good customer service! We want a store or company to go out of their way to please the customer. If we have been wronged as the customer we want it taken care of immediately. We want the store to hold to a good standard of excellence. That's what a purchaser does. Stores have gone out of business for the sole reason of poor customer service.
Don't we do the same thing to our Purchaser? We want to be held to a different standard than what we want to hold people to. We want tons of forgiveness, love, justice, patience, grace, and so on. But, we want to hold others to a different standard.
God deserves and wants nothing less than sincere and complete devotion. It's His delight!
But here is the thing...
We can't! WE CAN'T!!
The cool thing is that our purchaser is also our sustainer.
Our sustainer is our forgiver.
Our forgiver is our moment by moment grace giver.
Our grace giver has wiped out the scales because He now is the scale!
So when God says, "A just weight is my delight" the biggest delight is Christ. He has become our weight for us! He balances the scales in our place.
Without a purchaser, there is no hope for a just balance, and today that gives me so much HOPE!
There is no way that I can ever live a sincerely devoted life apart from Christ. He has to take our place on the scales because if it were up to me there would be no hope. Through Him, I am no longer an abomination to the Lord because of my false balance.
A sincere devotion?
Yes, but only because of Christ, through Christ, and for Christ's glory.
Thanks for sharing this! A great challenge and a great reminder of God's unbelievable grace and faithfulness to me of which I am so undeserving!
ReplyDeleteThanks Alison! God and His amazing grace is awesome! I hope you had a great weekend
DeleteI love this, Valerie. It brought to mind the verse in Ephesians where Paul tells us to walk worthy of our calling. We were bought with a high price! Thankfully, Paul also agrees with what you pointed out: "By the grace of God I am what I am." We can only walk worthy by His grace. Thanks for this insight from Proverbs!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jennifer. I have really enjoyed my study through Proverbs. That is a great verse and does go along so well. I hope you all had a great weekend.
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