FBC Daily Devotional – December 9, 2020

Well, a good Wednesday to you. Trust your week is going well as you've reached the middle of this another week, the second week of December. Looking forward to marching toward the Christmas holiday as well as the end of the year and a new year dawning very soon, very shortly.

Well, I was reading yesterday in the newspaper article about the local newspaper about all of the COVID problems going on in our region. And I was particularly drawn to an inset box that itemized several things you can do to take precautions against COVID -19.

And this made me think of John's letter, his third letter that he wrote, third John. And the second verse, he's writing to a friend and he says this, he says, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul.

And what struck me about this verse is that John is praying for not only the spiritual wellbeing of his friend, but for his physical wellbeing, his physical health and his prosperity in life. And we're really good about the first two things in thinking about those, aren't we?

You know, being concerned about our prosperity and our physical health and all of the emphasis these days with COVID -19 and staying away from it and keeping free from it and everything else, it's all well and good.

But I got to wondering with all this emphasis on our physical health, what if our physical health was only as vibrant as our spiritual health? And by the way, that is the connection that John makes, right?

He says, I pray that it may go well with you and you may be in good health as it goes well with your soul, as it goes well with your soul. So I think we're remiss if we give all our attention and energies to being in good physical health and neglect spiritual health, spiritual vitality.

So with that in mind, I want to focus these next several days on this very thing about seeking to encourage and maintain spiritual health just as much as we want to maintain our physical health. And what I want to do with that is draw some parallels between the precautions against COVID -19 and what we should be doing regarding our spiritual vitality.

And I would suggest that we need to begin with information, with information. So it's helpful to have these recommendations from the County Health Department and from our government and so forth. And here's the list that was in yesterday's paper.

Said this, and I'm quoting, it's titled, precautions to slow the spread. Residents are strongly encouraged to adhere to all of the required precautions necessary to protect their families and the community, slowing the spread of COVID -19.

Number one, there's six of these things. Number one, stay home except for essential business, even if you're not experiencing symptoms, because presumably you don't want to get sick and presumably you might be sick and not know it and pass it on to somebody else.

Number two, practice social distancing. Making sure to stay at least six feet from others when in public. Number three, avoid close contact with people who are sick. If you're sick at home, do your best to self-isolate from others living in the home.

Number four, wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60 alcohol. Number five, cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue.

Then throw the tissue in the trash. And lastly, number six, avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth. All right, all of that's information, and that information is given to you to help slow the spread so that you don't get somebody else sick or you don't get sick yourself.

Now, the problem with the information that is given to us regarding our physical health is the reliability factor. We can feel fairly confident in most of the things that we read, but you also know, you know full well that science is not exact.

There's not an exact science in many of these things. In fact, I mean, I've lived long enough to be told, don't eat eggs. Don't eat more than an egg a week or something like that, some ridiculously known, because they're bad for you.

And now that's completely reversed. You're told, eat eggs, they're good for you. Or eat margarine instead of butter. Don't use butter, it's bad for you. Eat margarine. And yet that's been reversed. And you say, well, you shouldn't eat very much margarine.

Butter is better for you than margarine. And on and on we can go. And probably there's conflicting opinions on those things themselves, right? Well, that's no less true with what's going on in the COVID virus.

How many times in the last six months has the CDC reversed itself or the World Health Organization? And it's just so confusing and so frustrating. But listen, here's the deal. When it comes to our spiritual health, there isn't such confusion.

We don't have to be so frustrated because we're told that God has given us what we need. We have the information available to us for our spiritual health and vitality. Now, let me just make clear that there's a presupposition here.

And the presupposition is that you have spiritual life. You can't have spiritual health if you're not spiritually alive. Bible tells us we're dead in trespasses and sins unless we're born from above, unless we're regenerated by the grace of God through the spirit of God.

And we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. But if we have come to faith in Christ, if we are spiritually alive, then we can also be spiritually healthy. Second Peter chapter one verses two through five tell us this, that God has given us the information we need for our spiritual health.

Listen to what he says. Peter says, may grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness or to our spiritual vitality, if you will.

And he's granted us these things through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he also has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

So what Peter is telling us is that when it comes to having the information necessary for spiritual health, we have it, we have it from God and therefore it is absolutely reliable. We have all that we need for our spiritual health and vitality.

So I encourage you and I trust that you do go often to the source of information for your spiritual health and vitality. Go to the word of God. Make it a regular part of your day. Make it a part of your diet where you spend time in the word every day, not just on Sundays, though that's vitally important.

We'll see that later in our series here. But daily, take part, take the vitamins of the word, the information that you need to keep you spiritually healthy and vital. Well, we'll look at more of these ideas in the next couple of days and I hope you can join us for that consideration of how to be spiritually healthy.

So our Father and our God, we thank you that you have given us what we need for our spiritual health, spiritual vitality. I pray that we would take in that information that will indeed give us strength spiritually.

And we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well, this is Wednesday and on Wednesday evening, we normally would have a midweek service. We're not gonna be doing that because of the COVID thing, no in-person midweek service.

However, tonight at seven o 'clock, I will be doing a live stream Bible study prayer time and hope you can join in then tonight at seven o 'clock. Otherwise, have a good day and may God richly bless you in it.