FBC Daily Devotional – December 10, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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00:00

I trust you're doing well this week and enjoying the little bit of warmer weather that we're getting in December, unseasonably mild, which is a wonderful thing.

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I'm not going to get any complaints from me out of that. Although I'm sure the kiddies might enjoy seeing some snow accumulate.

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I probably did too when I was a kid, but these days it's a little different.

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We don't have to shovel the sunshine, do we? It gives us some vitamin D, but we'll say more about that later on in this series that we're doing on our spiritual vitality.

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I mentioned yesterday, reading the article on Tuesday in the newspaper about taking some precautions to avoid the spread of COVID -19.

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A couple of those precautions that were suggested had to do with keeping your distance.

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Let me just remind you of those two. One of them was practice social distancing, making sure to stay at least six feet from others when in public.

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Of course, the whole idea of staying home except for essential business, even if you're not experiencing symptoms, and then avoid close contact with people who are sick.

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If you are sick yourself at home, do your best to self -isolate from others in your home so they don't get sick as well.

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Those things are common sense things. If you're around people who are sick, there's a good likelihood you're going to get sick.

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How often does this happen? Every year with flu bugs and colds and so forth.

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I remember last year, our grandson's school, I can't remember how many students were in his class, maybe 14 or something like that.

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But anyway, there was one period of time when the cold and flu season came on and half the class was out.

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They almost ended up closing down school because there weren't enough students to have school. So many were sick.

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It's a very simple reason for that. School rooms can be incubators for colds and bugs and so forth.

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We get that. There's a common sense thing about keeping one's distance from people who are sick.

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If you're sick yourself, stay away from other people so you don't get them sick. We get that.

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But we're also thinking about our spiritual health because remember, John wrote to his friend and he said,

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I'm praying that you will be doing well. Things will go well with you and you'll be in good health physically.

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Even as your soul, things go well with your soul. And so he's drawing a parallel between physical health and spiritual health.

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He wants his friend to be physically healthy in line with how spiritually healthy he is.

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So there are some principles that we can draw from the scripture that dovetail very nicely with this whole idea of maintaining physical health, stay away from people who are sick.

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For example, 1 Thessalonians 5 .22 says, abstain from every form of evil.

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And that word abstain literally means to be at some distance away from.

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Keep your distance away from every form of evil. Now, why is that?

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Because that evil, if you get too close to it, will easily entice you and draw you in and cause your soul to suffer.

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I remember years ago, there's a guy who was in our church and he had recently been converted and had a history of struggling with alcohol and just couldn't stay away from the stuff.

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And he was sharing with me how normally he was doing pretty well, but he had fallen off the wagon, if you will, one night or two before this conversation.

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And he said what happened was he was walking by the convenience store where he always bought his booze and it was like a magnet that just drew him in and he ended up buying a 15 pack or whatever it was and downing it pretty quickly and it got bombed.

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And he felt awful about it and he was greatly convicted over it. And he says, you know, what can

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I do? I need to get... Well, there's a lot of things I suppose go into helping alcoholics overcome that addiction.

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But one of the very basic principles, very basic principles is stay away from those places that will draw you in, suck you in and bring you down.

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Exactly what Paul is saying here. Keep your distance away from every form of evil.

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And then 1 Corinthians 15, 33, another verse Paul shared with the

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Corinthians was, he says, do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals.

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Bad company ruins good morals. So stay away from bad company. We understand this on an adolescent level, don't we?

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We talk about peer pressure among adolescents and young people get in with the wrong crowd and decent kids normally, they get in with the wrong crowd and the next thing you know they're being corrupted and they're being ruined.

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We understand that on an adolescent level, but it's true on every level of life.

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Every level of life. People can get drawn into a mindset in a workplace that corrupts their morals and so on and so forth.

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Well, stay away from bad company that's going to ruin your good morals.

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And then in 1 Timothy 6, 11, Paul is writing to young pastor

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Timothy and he says, but as for you, O man of God, flee these things. These things that are going to ruin your ministry, ruin your life, flee these things.

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And instead he says, pursue the things that make for spiritual health and vitality.

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He says, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness, things that make for a healthy soul.

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But flee from those things that will infect your soul and make you spiritually ill.

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So one of the good principles that we can garner from the scriptures for our spiritual health and vitality is to keep our distance.

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Keep our distance from those things that will make us spiritually sick, that will drag us down, that will infect us with the disease of sin.

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Keep your distance. Flee from them. Avoid them. Well, I hope that challenges us and encourages us.

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I need this encouragement. I need these challenges in my own life as I trust you do as well, as I'm sure you do.

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So may God help us. Let's pray to that end. Our Father and our God, these are very practical, practical counsel from your word.

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You have given us everything we need for spiritual health and vitality, and one of the things we need is this exhortation to stay away from that which is going to infect and make our souls sick.

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Help us, oh Lord, we pray, to obey that which you've given us and to accept this counsel and see the wisdom of it.

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And this we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right.