Daily Devotional – July 3, 2020

to you, July 3rd. I said yesterday this is the day we today, July 3rd, the day we celebrate our nation's independence.

I wasn't misspeaking there in terms of like, I didn't know that the 4th of July is Independence Day.

I did know that, but our calendar, on your calendar, it probably says

July 3rd, Independence Day observed. I suppose that means that a lot of places are off work on this particular day, on July 3rd.

You know, federal buildings closed down, all that kind of stuff, to give it a long weekend. So I suppose that today we could say is the day we're celebrating our independence, and maybe we can just do it all weekend long.

How's that for an idea? But anyhow, today is a day that we celebrate freedom, and of course our national emphasis is on our civic freedoms that we enjoy as citizens of the

United States, and one of the most cherished, one that ought to be the most cherished of our freedoms, is our religious freedom.

I think we take that very much for granted. We don't really appreciate it, how precious that is.

I get news reports a few times a week from different places around the world where there isn't the kind of religious freedom that we enjoy.

If you're a Christian, you better not say anything about it. If you testify to that effect, you can be stripped of your rights, you may even be kicked out of your family, and so on and so forth.

We don't have that kind of belligerence in our country.

We enjoy religious freedom. Now, to be sure, I don't have my head buried in the sand.

To be sure, that religious freedom is crumbling little by little, even in our land, but there are some contemporary government authorities who still recognize the importance of religious liberty.

I'm thankful our president does, and he's recently made some moves to establish the task force to ensure religious liberty and the promotion of religious liberty around the world, but I'm thinking of Attorney General William Barr, who said this, he said, quote, the imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety on the part of the

Founding Fathers. It wasn't just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the framers' belief that religion was indispensable to the sustaining of our free system of government.

I believe that is absolutely true, and I think the framers of our Constitution, they understood that the government cannot be in the business of establishing a state religion and coercing people to engage in that particular religion, and so we're grateful for the religious freedom that we enjoy, but I want to look at freedom in another angle.

In yesterday's devotional, I focused on the freedom from original sin, and following up on that,

I want to share today some practical suggestions for gaining freedom from the impact of that original sin on our heart and our minds.

Do you remember that verse in Jeremiah where the writer said, Jeremiah the prophet, he said, the heart of man is deceitful above all things and is incurable.

It is incurable, and indeed it is by human efforts, and our own history of secular history of trying to cure the wickedness of the human heart, apart from leaving

God out of the picture, leaving Christ out of the picture, it's an abysmal failure.

But we also learned yesterday that by Christ's obedience, we who are his followers are made righteous, and then we are able to practice righteous living.

Well, to help in that pursuit, a theologian by the name of Stephen Charnock years ago offered some very helpful practical recommendations to enable us to cure, to help cure the disease of sinful thoughts, and I want to share these with you.

Some of them may resonate better with you than others, and I'm using his terminology, so it may seem a little bit antiquated to us, but listen to what he has to say.

There are 15 things here that I want to share with you from Stephen Charnock.

Number one, he said, get accustomed to serious meditation every morning.

What's the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? What's the first thing you do? Okay, you grab a cup of coffee.

Maybe even before you do that, do you grab your phone? Do you check your

Facebook? Do you check your email? Is that the first thing you do? Well, Charnock encourages us to get accustomed to serious meditation every morning.

Look somewhere else other than the Facebook feeds or the news feeds or your email.

Look to God's Word and do some serious meditation on deep spiritual truth.

Number two, he said, avoid entangling yourself with the world. Now, he's not saying don't live in the world.

You can't help it, but entangling yourself with the world, getting so wrapped up in everything that's going on in the world that that's where your mind lives.

Number three, he said, avoid idleness. It's that old saying, idle hands are the devil's workshop, something to that effect.

Avoid idleness. Number four, awe your heart with thoughts of God's omniscience.

Awe your heart. Make your heart become profoundly filled with wonder at God's omniscience, that God knows everything.

So think about that when you turn on the news. When you see this stuff that troubles your heart and mind so much, let your heart be awed with the thought that, hey,

God knows all of this. None of this has taken him by surprise. Number five, keep a constant watch over your heart, for out of it is the abundance of life.

Number six, examine your thoughts. What are you thinking about? Where's that thought taking you?

Number seven, put a check on thoughts at their first appearance. It's what

Paul said, bringing every thought into captivity. Number eight, use corrupt thoughts as motivation.

That is, motivation to anger, getting angry at that thing that's provoking a corrupt thought, or motivation to love and to praise

God. That corrupt thought comes into your mind. Allow that to motivate you to turn your thoughts on God and to express some word of praise or thanksgiving to him.

Number nine, continue your resistance. How easily we give up, how easily we quit.

Number 10, join supplication with your opposition. In other words, pray, pray.

Number 11, welcome and entertain holy thoughts. In other words, start thinking about something that's wholesome, something that's virtuous, something that's praiseworthy.

Think of that passage of scripture, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are praiseworthy.

If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, things that are excellent, think on these things.

Number 12, encourage holy thoughts to their natural end. In other words, as you're thinking about something that is a virtuous thought, where does that thought lead you?

What is the end of that thought? Number 13, add new holy thoughts to your reservoir of morning meditations.

One way you can do this is keep a little bit of a journal and the thoughts that you write down and you can review those things in your morning meditations.

Maybe a key thought that you had yesterday that was a blessing or an encouragement to you, review that in your morning meditations.

Keying off of that, number 14, record your choices, thoughts, write them down.

Have a little notebook or some way that you write down these virtuous, helpful, productive thoughts that will take your mind in a new direction.

And then number 15, turn your choices, thoughts into prayer, allowing those thoughts to lead you to a prayer, to put that thought, the thing that you're thinking about, into actual practice in your everyday life.

Well, I'm not suggesting that these things be followed slavishly, but we need practical helps like this from time to time to to deal with our own corrupt thoughts and heart.

It's what we're born with and it's what we want to overcome as followers of Jesus. So I trust that you are in the pursuit of freedom, you who are free citizens of the

United States, I trust you're in the pursuit of spiritual freedom, freedom from that corrupt nature.

Let's give thanks to the Lord today for our freedom in our country and pray for him to sustain that, then also thank him for the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus and pray that we can sustain that and grow in that freedom.

Our Father and our God, we are grateful as citizens of this land that we have even the freedom to broadcast something like this freely in our land.

We're thankful for our religious freedoms. We pray for their sustaining influence and impact in our country.

We pray that you would defeat those efforts to rein in the religious freedom that we enjoy.

And then we thank you for the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus, freedom from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, and potentially the presence of sin, ultimately the presence of sin.

I pray that we would grow in that freedom every day, even through some of these very practical measures that we looked at today.

This we ask in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well

I hope you're able to enjoy some fireworks or something to celebrate our nation's independence, and have a wonderful weekend.

If you can make it to church on this coming Lord's Day, we'll be meeting in the auditorium at 10 30, and I hope you can join us then.

If you can't come in person, then join us on live stream at faithbaptisterling .com

or on Facebook. So I look forward to seeing you on the Lord's Day. Have a good day.