December 31 I Friday

Malachi

Revelation 22

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”   

—Proverbs 9:10

What sets a genuine Christian apart is not that they attend church every week, but that there are features of their life that defy any explanation other than the fact that God is at work within them. The peace, the joy and the sense of security that they experience can only have one explanation: God is doing something.

      If there is nothing about our lives that require a divine explanation, we are little different to our neighbours next door who could not care less about God. As far as they are concerned, we simply have different interests and hobbies to them when there is no fundamental difference in the way we live our lives compared to them. In other words, our neighbours may be into golf, and they probably think our hobby is going to church on Sundays 

      We all have a choice. We can live in the realm of the normal, where everything we attempt is perfectly normal, reasonable, explicable and could be explained in terms of human ability, or we can choose to live in the realm of the supernatural, where we commit ourselves to things which humanly are not possible. We may be afraid to choose the latter, as it is normal for people to fear when God speaks. We find examples of this throughout Scripture. 

      When God spoke to Abraham at the age of 75 saying, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1), Abraham and his wife, Sarah, who was 65 at that time, had been married for years and had no children. God told Abraham, “Do not be afraid” (Genesis 15:1); God would fulfill His promise. Another example is Moses, when God said, “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). Moses rightly feared that he was unable to accomplish this task on his own. In each of these cases, God was telling them something that would take them out of their depth, where they would not have the human resources to accomplish it and the natural response would be fear. 

      Fear is a good thing. If we feel we can do what God is telling us to do, then there are no grounds for fear, because we can do it. But when God begins to speak, He often says things that are beyond human explanation. If we live in the realm of the natural and never allow God to take us into the realm of the supernatural, we will never know the thrill that we ought to experience in the Christian life. May we step boldly into the New Year, choosing to live in the realm of the supernatural.

Prayer: Glorious God, I choose to live in the realm of the supernatural, where the only logical explanation in my life is that You are doing something. Thank You for the mighty work that You are already doing. May 2022 be a year where I grow deeper with You. Amen!