WOW! Here goes PART 3 of our adventure together... hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post 'DAILY' instead of what I started out the year doing... EEK!! :) I am so excited to be doing a ROMANS devotional here, and a 1 Corinthians devotional with my Jr High's... so I just might share some of that adventure here too! :)
Today we are looking at ROMANS 1:18-25
The subtitle in THE MESSAGE version says, "Ignoring God Leads to a Downward Spiral"...
18-23But God's angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
24-25So God said, in effect, "If that's what you want, that's what you get." It wasn't long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
WOW! Sounds like the world today for sure... which is going in a downward spiral. Even Christians sometimes are ignoring God at some points in their life. "People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn't treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand." This certainly speaks of our world... it wants everything cheap and fast, they are addicted to 'fast food', 'high speed internet', etc... and want to buy God like you can buy a Big Mac. They certainly have trivialized Him, and made Him seem like nothing in their lives, but infact He should be everything, as He is the One who gave them everything, including their lives. The world refuses to worship God and now live in a state of confusion for sure. They have heard the truths and choose not to believe. The stories in the Bible are just like FairyTales to them, and Jesus has become just like Santa. You believe in Him until you are older, and then decide not to anymore. There are alot of people who went to church and were 'Christians' as children, and now that they have 'grown up', they choose not to be a part of all that... they see it as foolishness. Our Jr. Youth 'Ablaze' were just speaking of this last night, as we started our 1 Corinthians study. In 1 Corinthians, it speaks of the cross being foolishness to those who do not believe. They came to the conclusion that its easy for the world to see it all as foolish, and we discussed how they are really the foolish ones. It says in Psalms that 'The fool says in his heart there is no God'. Therefore unbelievers are the fools.
There should be NO compromise in how we think or feel about God. He is the Creator, and we were made to worship Him alone. When I was in Youth Group, we were involved in dramas, and one of them was called 'The Statue', where a bunch of us were rocks, and then one of us (me)was picked out by 'the artist'. He formed me and chipped away at me to form a 'beautiful statue', he then brought it to his 'city' and told the people how great it was and that they were to worship it. But while they were worshipping it (me), I would fall down. They would then pick me up and put me back up and bow to worship. Again I would fall, and again they would pick me up... and then I fell one last time, and I think they kicked me and walked off... (I actually forget the ending. I should look it up, and have our Jr Youth perform it at our church.) But then I stood and read the following verse, from the NIV (1984) Version which is actually v. 25 from above -- "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen."
My prayer is that the world once again comes back to the TRUTH, and that they will indeed worship our Creator who is forever praised, and that they will worship Him in Spirit and in Truth! :)
God bless you!
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