Friday June 25, 2021

Heavenly Father – help me start today with a clear heart and a clear mind ready to receive your word in a brand new way today. Amen.

Romans 1:24-32

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture continues to be Proverbs 3:5-6. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Did you catch the last conditional statement? If you want God to direct your path THEN you must “acknowledge” God. It’s difficult to catch the powerful word play there. We tend to think of acknowledgment as recognition. To be clear, that passage nor our Scripture Reading for today means to give God an honorable mention. We need to KNOW God. I’ll give you an example. When I was a kid, my brothers and I went to daycare. When my mom came to pick us up, the daycare workers were always shocked by our response. Before they came to get us from our classes, we’d already be lined up in age order. We did this because my mom’s key ring had a very distinctive sound, and when we heard it, we knew it was time to go. We were so well acquainted with her sound, we responded when it called to us. To this day, I think I still know that sound. That isn’t conceptual, intellectual knowledge. That’s intimate, relational knowledge. In that same way, we’ve got to KNOW God. When we fail to retain the knowledge of God, we tend to exchange supreme goods for lesser ones.

Today, let me invite you to a deeper relationship with God. Ask yourself how you’re spending time with God and investing in that relationship. Is your relationship a priority or just a possibility?

Lord, these are your words. This is our story. Help me live in a way that honors you today and everyday. Amen.