The Daily Fountain devotional Monday, January 10, 2022
TOPIC: GOD HAS
GIVEN US ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST
TEXT: 1 John 5: 1-12
We are to appreciate and believe what
God had done in Christ and that Christ is born of God. Anyone who loves God
ought to love Christ too, who in love for humankind,
relinquished His position in heaven and came down
to this world to die for humanity (John 3:16). Thus, verses 2 and 3, insist
that if believers love God and Christ, they should equally love one another. It
is our obligation to love as Jesus taught in John 13:34,35. The love that is being emphasized here is what Greeks called 'Agape.' This
is a sacrificial love that gives out to satisfy others,
not minding the cost. Through this love, true believers are compelled to
willingly obey all the commandments of God.
The believers' victory is emphasized in verses 4
& 5. "For whosoever is born of God
overcomes the world." This means that he who is born of God is born for
God to live victoriously over the world. It is abundantly clear that faith in Christ is the seed for this victory.
When anyone is born again, Christ
indwells and empowers him or her to become a child of God and to overcome sin, flesh, and the world. In verses 6 to
9, we see that having thus acquired
the power to become an overcomer, a child
of God should now live by and exercise his faith in the Lord Jesus (v.7). Thus, verses 10 to 12, talk about the
witness and record of God which are
greater than that of man. God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. Anyone that desires eternal life must
accept Jesus. You cannot have
eternal life without Jesus.
Prayer: Lord
Jesus, thank you for granting me eternal life through your death and resurrection. Please, come into my
heart; sanctify me and make me your
child indeed. Amen.
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
TOPIC: MAINTAINING UNITY IN THE BODY OF
CHRIST
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:1-17
The concept of unity
appears early in the scriptures. In Genesis 1:26, we read, "And God said, 'let us make man in our
image." This shows that unity is important to God. One can understand why it appears that Paul was in
a hurry to talk about it,
denouncing disunity in the strongest terms, and making a strong case for unity, among the Corinthian
Church of his day.
The
question, "Is Christ divided?" continues to beg for answers, even more in our time. Doctrinal matters have
so divided the Body of Christ
that the multiplicity of denominations within Christendom is at the highest. S.J. Stone put it succinctly in his
Hymn, A&M 255, "With scornful wonder
men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed."
Paul enjoins the Corinthian
Church to shun all forms of divisions
and maintain the same unity as found in the Godhead, who called them "unto
the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (v.9). God, Himself also testified to the efficacy of
unity in Genesis 11:6.
Prayer: May the love of God reign
supreme in my heart, and may I receive the grace to pursue peace
and unity among the brethren. Amen.
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
TEXT: 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
THE LIMITATION OF MAN'S WISDOM
Over the centuries,
human beings have been in the quest to find out the origin of life, which
resulted in the "Theory of evolution." They tried to explain how man evolved from inanimate to the animate and from the
lowest of tiny living beings to human beings. Indeed, that exposed the
foolishness of man as he tried to exclude God from creation. Who has witnessed such evolution till date? And because
human wisdom cannot explain the
existence of God, faith comes in (Hebrews 11:6). It is by that faith that we equally know that the worlds were
created by the word of God (Hebrews
11:3).
As men struggle
vainly to build self-righteousness through human effort, we learn here that it is only through acts of
believing (exercising faith
in Jesus and His finished work) that we attain the righteousness of God and
acquire life, just like those who believed in the brazen serpent made by Moses survived (John 3:14&15).
Here lies a great miracle; that man
is saved by merely believing the message of salvation which he fails to attain through personal labour and human
wisdom. The wisdom that comes from God leads us to believe in our heart that God
raised Jesus from the dead while confessing with our mouth that "Jesus is
Lord" (Rom. 10:9).
Prayer: Lord, grant us the wisdom
that will help us to truly confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in our hearts that you raised Him from the dead.
Thursday, January 13, 2022
TOPIC: WISDOM OF GODTEXT: 1 Corinthians 2
There is a wide gap
of difference between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man. The wisdom of man oftentimes is embedded
in big or lofty words and great
learning. According to Paul, "my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but
in demonstration of the spirit and
of power, that might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (vv. 4-5). God's work must be done in
God's own way, to achieve God's
own desired result. Every child of God must seek God's wisdom in every area of
his or her life.
Servants
of God must refrain from the temptation of preaching to please men, rather our
preaching should be to present Christ to the world, and this is the wisdom of
God. Paul in 1 Corinthians 1: 22 - 23, says "For the Jews demand signs and
Greek seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to
Gentiles." The wisdom of God
may sound too simple, uncivilized, and not in line with the current trends, yet the power is made manifest
through it. Some ministers in search of flamboyant and sophisticated ministry, have ended up departing from
the way of the truth. The wisdom of God is the way of the truth and it is also the power of God. Every believer should
live by this wisdom.
Prayer: Deliver me, O Lord, from the operations of the wisdom of men and lead me by your own wisdom in Jesus' name. Amen.
Friday, January 14, 2022
TOPIC: BUILDING CORRECTLY TEXT: 1 Corinthians 3:1-23
We are saved to do good works. With this in mind, we should learn how to engage in ministry without any ulterior motive. Compare their purpose in ministry with what obtains in our churches today. When our purpose for ministry is wrong, worldliness will definitely thrive in our ministry and this will affect the Body of Christ. May God help us to understand the correct perspective of ministry so that we can build correctly.
Prayer:
Give me the wisdom and right attitude to build acceptably
for you, dear Lord. Amen.