“Time to Wake Up!” – FBC Morning Light (7/30/2023)

A Midyear Update and a Brief Summer Break

Well, a good Friday morning to you and the last day of June of 2023. So this year is half over as of today. My goodness, how the time is flying by. And just a reminder that today's broadcast will be the last one for a few weeks.

We'll come back at the morning light devotionals on a daily basis in August. But taking a little break, I mentioned earlier this week, I started doing these broadcasts in March, late March, I think it was of 2020.

Just when the COVID outbreak hit, we got locked down. I wanted to do these devotionals just to touch base with the church family and kind of give some encouragement to the church family on a daily basis.

And that just turned into something that I've done every day, every weekday since and have been doing it for three years straight. So I'm going to take a little break and then come back at it in August.

And I hope you will not forget about it. I'll try to communicate when we're back up and running in in early August. Well, today in our Bible reading plan, we're reading in First Chronicles 19 and 20, Romans 13 and Psalm 119 verses 89 to 96.

Wake Up and Live in Light of the Time

I'm going to focus on a few verses in Romans 13 that are really challenging and timely, I think. Listen to what Paul says in verses 11 and following. He says, and now, and do this, knowing the time, are you aware of the time?

Are you aware of the time? Or are we living in a sort of a stupor? He says, knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. This is not the time to have our heads buried in the sand. It's not the time to be asleep to what's going on in our world.

He says, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. Now, this was true of Paul. Paul wrote this a couple thousand years ago. And what Paul wrote a couple thousand years ago was true then, and it is even truer now.

Our salvation is nearer than when we believed. What do we do with that? How then should we live? He says, the night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness, and let's put on the armor of light.

Well, the works of darkness are all around us, and they're so easy to put on, aren't they? Well, we need to cast those aside, put on the armor of light that will dispel the works of darkness, is the idea.

He says, let us walk properly as in the day. Well, how should we walk as in the day? Well, he says, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. It's quite an interesting set of pairs, isn't it?

Revelry and drunkenness, losing control because of intoxication in the party spirit, not in lewdness and lust, losing control because of the passions of the flesh, not in strife and envy, not losing control in our relationships and our desires.

I want this, I want that, therefore, I'll even cause strife in order to get it. He says, we're not to live like that. We're to walk properly as in the day. Then in verse 14, he says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Become like Christ. Be like Jesus. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust. Oh, it's awful easy in this day and age to make all kinds of provision for the flesh, to make it easy to gratify the flesh.

Well, we need to get our heads out of the sand. We need to be awake and alert to what's going on in our world, to the traps and to the allurements, and to realize that these are things that will suck us into the, as he says in verse 12, the works of darkness.

They'll enshroud us. They'll envelop us. They will clothe us. We must not go there. We need to cast off those works. We need to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to become like Christ. It must be our desire, our ambition in life as followers of Jesus to be like him, to put on Christ and to live accordingly.

Consequently, because we put on Christ and we want to be like him, we don't want to make any provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust. I think with any length of time living in the challenges and the temptations of the age around you, you can become pretty aware of what are the trigger points that will trigger in you a desire to fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Well, don't make any provision for those trigger points, everything you can to keep them out of your life. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, may we do so. To our Father and our God, I pray in this dark age in which we live, we would walk in light.

We would put on the armor of light. We would put on the Lord Jesus Christ and walk like he would walk, to live like he would live, to be like he is in our inner character and therefore in our outer walk.

Help us, Father, not to make any provision for the trigger points for our flesh, we pray in Jesus' name, for his sake. Amen. All right. Well, listen, God bless you. I hope you have a wonderful month of July.

And again, come back to the Morning Light Devotionals early in August, and we'll get back at it for the rest of the year. All right. God bless you. Have a great day.