We are to give our all when in the service of our God and Savior. In 1 Corinthians 9:24 Paul says, Do you not know that in a race all runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. When we serve God we are to give it our full effort. Just being there half-way does not satisfy the requirements of our relationship with God. We are either fully committed to Him or we are simply signing up for an insurance policy to keep us out of eternal damnation.
In today’s reading I found 1 Corinthians 8:8 interesting, But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. It is my belief that what we put into our bodies has no bearing on our relationship with God. I find it interesting that the same people who will get hung up on drinking a beer or a glass of wine are sometimes the same people who will eat a greasy cheeseburger. If they are treating their bodies as a temple, then they should not allow anything bad to enter their bodies. Everything should be handled in moderation with responsibility and respect for what God has entrusted with us.
Looks like I forgot to post yesterday, so today I will do two post to catch up.
We must never take for granted all God did for us by sending His Son to be sacrificed for us. 1 Corinthians 7:23 says, You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of man. Christ paid the price to set us free from the whims of this world that lead us to unfulfilled lives and slavery to sin. Christ set us free; let us not allow ourselves to be placed back into slavery.
Our bodies were created to honor God and to be in a relationship with Him. When we accept Christ into our lives, the Holy Spirit lives in us. We are no longer our own, we are one with Christ. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own. 20 you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body. We are not expected to be perfect, but we are expected to do all we can to honor God with our bodies in all we do. Just as a temple is holy, so are we supposed to be holy as a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
Allowing sin to enter and stay in your lives is not a good thing. In 1 Corinthians 5:6 Paul says, Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? A little bit of yeast in a batch of dough goes a long way, just as a little bit of sin in our lives tends to work its way into more sin. While the expectation is not that we need to be sinless, we are supposed to fight deliberate sin in our lives.
We all want to be liked by others. No matter what your personality style, you want to be liked and not judged. But in the end, it does not matter what other people think of us; it only matters what God thinks. In 1 Corinthians 4:3-4 Paul tells the Corinthian believer this, 3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. Our conscience should always be clear because of Christ’s sacrifice for us. While we will never be perfect, nor will we ever stop sinning because of our nature, God’s grace for us is all that matters. What others think of us, or even what we think about ourselves, does not matter.
This is a fascinating video with many interesting thoughts, both spiritually and just plain interesting. The video is produced by a guy name Destin Sandlin who is literally a rocket scientist. He credits his fascination with scientific method and his job as a rocket engineer for having inspired him to make educational videos on his YouTube channel “Smarter Every Day”. One of the things Destin talks about in the video below is, “Knowledge does not equal understanding”. While I believe Destin is a believer, he does not come right out and say it, but this has some very interesting spiritual implications. Just because we have knowledge, does not mean we understand. In other words, if we do not have the Holy Spirit to help us understand God, all the knowledge in the world will not bring us closer to Him. Moreover, as believers, telling people about God and giving them more knowledge about Him does not necessarily help them understand His love and desire to have a relationship with Him. It is not an issue of knowledge, but instead, it comes from an understanding that can only come from God Himself.
On the non-spiritual side, and something incredibly interesting, is the complexity of the algorithm in your brain used to ride a bicycle. It really is THAT complicated. If you really think about it, there are innumerable calculations and adjustments your brain instructs your body to make to do something as “simple” as riding a bike. Your brain is an amazing computer and able to do much more than we may ever realize.
Sit back and enjoy the video. I hope it blows you away as much as it did me.
If you ever come across anything you’d like me to post on this blog, please feel free to contact me at dino.evangelista@gmail.com.
When we accept Christ into our lives God chooses to live in us through the Holy Spirit. We become the temple the He lives in 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? By recognizing God’s presence in our lives we are able to do all God intended through us.
God gave us the Holy Spirit so that we could begin to understand who God is. We do not need to be educated to understand God, we simply need to look to the Holy Spirit and ask for knowledge and wisdom about who God is. In 1 Corinthians 2:12 Paul says, We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. The reality is we will never fully comprehend all that God has done for us until we are finally in the presence of God. But with the Holy Spirit we can at least begin to grasp our need for God and all that Christ has done in providing salvation to us all.