august 14, 2023
“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’”
-Matthew 25:23
The past two weeks, the Baptist Bikers seem to be starting a new tradition of meeting for dinner each Tuesday night. Two weeks in a row and we have had a good turnout both times. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s a buffet and they have steak! Also, the buffet has fried chicken, which is a staple of the Baptist diet. Baptist, bikers, all you can eat, you just know people will show up!
One thing new that we did this week, during this time of fellowship, was to add a short devotion into our time together. I was asked to do the devotion for this week and I felt like I had a pretty good idea for the devotion, but I don’t feel like I pulled all out of it that I could so I wanted to draw it out a little more for our weekly Biker Devotional. As I am working on this I realize that it may actually work out better after our gathering tonight.
As everyone was pulling into the parking lot, we all started to gather together and my friend Randy made all of the introductions, as we had several new faces joining us tonight because they had been invited to join us and share in our time of fellowship. Bikers always seem to find friends to tag along on their adventures, especially if food is involved!
If you were paying attention, then you recognized the opening verse for this week. This verse features those famous words “well done, good and faithful servant.” How incredible will it be for us to hear those words, ourselves, when we stand before God when our appointed time comes? But it also got my mind picturing that day and something that I read a few weeks ago popped into my head and added a new layer to the mental image I had created. What if, as we are standing there before God, he looks past us and says “Who else did you bring with you? Who else did you share my Gospel with? Who did you love as I have loved you? Who did you forgive as I have forgiven you?”
It is one thing for us to read scripture, but it is something entirely different for us to read the Word and apply it to our lives. It is also very important to make sure that we are not trying to pick and choose which parts to follow and apply to our lives. Look at these words from John 14:21
“Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
-John 14:21
Jesus clearly says “whoever has my commandments and keeps them.” He doesn’t say anything about “most of them” or “some of them.” There is no gray area here. We must take the teachings of the Bible and apply them to our lives, it must be every word and it must transform us.
Every single one of us, saved or not, is at a different stage in our spiritual growth. For those that have experienced salvation by grace through faith have begun that enduring process of sanctification that will one day lead to glorification. Where I am in that process may be different from where you are, but we are all progressing because we all come to salvation at different stages in our lives, but we are all focused on one thing…Jesus Christ.
What happens when we hit the inevitable stumbling blocks in our spiritual growth and maturity? We must pray for strength and guidance from God. We pray for discernment as to what it is that is causing us to stumble, because sometimes those stumbling blocks are not as obvious as we would like for them to be, because when we recognize them we avoid them, it’s the ones we don’t recognize and see right away that we need to seek God’s wisdom in revealing to us what the root of the issue may be. Ultimately, in all we do, our faith, hope, and trust must be in Him, completely. We must learn to trust God with every aspect of our lives, not just what we choose to give to Him.
So when God looks over our shoulder and seeks those whom we shared His gospel with, or those whom we love with the love of Christ, or those whom we forgave without condition, I pray that each of us has done our part to apply the words of the Bible to our lives. If we haven’t, perhaps this is a wake up call for us to be more obedient.
In Matthew 28:19 we are called to share the gospel, to grow God’s kingdom.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”
-Matthew 28:19
Again, in Matthew we find the command to forgive.
“but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
-Matthew 6:15
In the gospel of John we are called to love.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”
-John 13:34
These are not all of the commandments we are called to obey but they are certainly a great place to start. We must, daily, abide by the words of the Bible and let them transform our hearts.
