Daily Devotional – July 6, 2020

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, here we are, entering the first full week of July, after the 4th of July weekend, and I trust you had a good weekend.

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We're able to celebrate our nation's independence, and I don't know, did you get to see some fireworks or maybe shoot some off?

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Anyway, whatever the case, I hope you had a good weekend. It's been a pretty trying time for our nation these last few months, and we needed a little bit of reason to celebrate and just remember who we are as Americans and what

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God has graciously done in giving us this land and the freedoms that we enjoy, and so forth.

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Well, now that we are well into July, we are also into the traditional vacation season that's upon us, at least it's the traditional vacation season.

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I don't know how much of that's actually going to go on this year. A lot of people who've just kind of suspended their vacation plans, but this is the time of year that normally many

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Europeans, for example, are on holiday for the entire month. They get the whole month off of work, business is shut down, and they go on holiday, and they have a whole month to do it.

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Well, speaking of vacations, have you ever had this experience? Your vacation time is coming, and you see it a few weeks or months off, and so you plan out the perfect trip.

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It's a few months ahead of time, and you get all the details worked out. You get the date scheduled, the time scheduled off, figure out the place you want to go, the route you're going to go to get there if you're going to drive it, different things to do or see along the way, and you get all of this stuff worked out.

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Get hotels reserved, and a place to stay, and all that stuff, and the activities. You find out the things you want to do while you're on vacation, and maybe even buy some advance purchase tickets for some event of some kind, just depending on what kind of vacation you consider to be the perfect vacation,

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I guess. Well, as the time gets closer, and closer, and closer, your anticipation builds, doesn't it?

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You can hardly wait for that last day of work before you head out the door for your two weeks of vacation, and finally, the day comes, and off you go.

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During that whole vacation, it's like everything goes as planned. Oh, yeah, sure. There's a little few glitches along the way.

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Maybe one day it rained when you weren't expecting it. It just basically goes according to plan. It's like everything was just right.

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The travel times were just right. The meals were really good. You got in all the activities that you wanted to do.

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The events that you attended, they were exciting, and they were fun. Two weeks later, after you left work, you're back home, and then back to work.

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And within 24 hours, sort of a melancholy just kind of settles over you.

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You should be raring to go. Get back at it. But it's like you have little energy for it.

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What gives? What's happened? Well, no doubt, there can be several reasons for it, but I suppose

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I'd like to just consider one. Just one. What were you expecting that vacation to do for you?

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You expecting it to make up for all the sleep you've been depriving yourself of over the last year?

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Were you expecting your vacation to bring your family back together after a long, slow drifting apart?

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Maybe you were expecting it to restore a sense of peace and tranquility in your soul.

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Maybe you wanted your vacation to give you some joy to your otherwise kind of drab, mundane life.

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But you get home after that perfect vacation, and the next morning the alarm goes off, and you wish for another hour of sleep.

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And later that evening, after you get home from work, you're sitting around the dinner table, and your son won't say hardly two words to you at dinner.

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And afterwards, he retreats off to his room and his tablet or video games or TV or whatever.

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And you find the anxiety over your work, the social crisis, the threat of COVID, the political upheaval that's going on in our nation.

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You experience all of that, and it's throwing your soul back into a state of dis -ease.

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You feel like very shortly after you get back that that vacation happened a long, long time ago, if at all.

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Nothing has really changed. You had a good time while it lasted, and you have some memories to cherish, but it all seems so futile, empty.

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Well, Thomas Watson, a guy who lived a long, long time ago, he commented on this malaise when he wrote this.

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He said, sometimes God's children must see the world's emptiness to be acquainted with Christ's fullness.

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Let me read that again. Sometimes God's children must see the world's emptiness to be acquainted with Christ's fullness.

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Well, if you're a follower of Jesus and you've suffered that vacation letdown, allow that experience to help you get better acquainted with the fullness that is in Christ.

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What were you expecting the world to provide that it simply can't, but that only

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Christ can? Paul encourages us in Ephesians 4 not to allow ourselves, quote, to walk as the

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Gentiles do, that is, as the unconverted. In the futility of their minds, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

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In other words, the Gentiles, the unconverted, they can't help but look to the world for satisfaction and pleasure and joy and fulfillment.

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But in the end, they don't find it. Satisfaction? The world leaves you wanting more.

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Like that old rock and roll song. I think it was the Rolling Stones sang it. I can't get no satisfaction.

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I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried. I can't get no satisfaction. Pleasure? Well, once that pleasure is had, that which the world offers, the sensation of pleasure dissipates pretty quickly.

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Joy? Oh, some laughs maybe, but the world has never really provided anyone with the deep confidence that all that's going on is for a greater purpose and fulfills what's ultimately best for you.

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Fulfillment? Well, maybe today, but what about tomorrow? Remember that famous athlete?

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I think it was Tom Brady. Don't quote me on that, but he was asked the question, which is your most satisfying

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Super Bowl win? And his answer, the next one, the next one.

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All of this is why John, the apostle, exhorts us not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world.

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After all, he says, the world is passing away along with its desires. So, allow the emptiness of the world to get you acquainted with the fullness of Christ.

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After writing about how God had graciously called to salvation common, ordinary, everyday people, not the movers and shakers of the world,

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Paul says this. He says, and because of God, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

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This is exactly what we need to live well in this world and the next, and it's in Christ.

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And in one of Paul's prayers for the church, the church at Ephesus, he prays this, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

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How are you filled with all the fullness of God? By knowing Christ and knowing the love of Christ that surpasses human knowledge.

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So, if you've been looking to something in this world to fill you up and it's left you empty, as it always will, get acquainted with the fullness of Christ.

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Well, I trust as we begin this new week, and you look back over the weekend, if the weekend and what you were expecting it to do for you has left you empty,

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I trust you'll get acquainted with the fullness of Christ. May this be a week of experiencing the joy of that fullness that is in Him.

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Let's look to Him in prayer and ask Him to fill us with that fullness. So, our

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Father and our God, we do thank you today for all that is in Christ Jesus. It's all that we need.

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Father, forgive us for looking to this world to find satisfaction and fulfillment and joy and peace, things that only

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Christ can give. But I pray that in discovering that emptiness in the world, we would get better acquainted with the

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Savior who offers it all. And this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

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Well, have a good rest of your Monday, and I trust you'll keep cool. We're in for a nice heat wave this week.

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I was actually supposed to go on a backpacking trip this week, but I looked at that weather forecast and saw it was supposed to be in the 90s every day, and I'm thinking, eh, you know,

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I want that to be a fun experience, an enjoyable experience, and it would truly leave me empty in more ways than one if I went out this week.

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So, I'll be with you each day this week, enduring the heat, but I trust it'll be a good one.