FBC Daily Devotional – July 6, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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A good Tuesday to you. How did your weekend go? Did you have a good 4th of July celebration?

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Did you get some extra rest and refreshment over the holiday? Maybe the day off yesterday, maybe that did you good.

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I hope so. I hope the Lord blessed you with a good weekend. And I especially trust that being in God's house with God's people was a blessing to you as you worshipped together and were challenged by God's word and refreshed, just refreshed, spiritually refreshed as you met together and worshipped the

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Lord. Well, in today's reading, we're reading in the Gospel of Luke and this incident with the disciples kind of just made me stop and think about, you know, what is it that gives us the greatest sense of joy?

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What do we really get excited about? Now, naturally,

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I suppose one of the answers to that question is some measure of success, something that, you know,

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God's gifted us to do. He's called us to do it. And we use those gifts and those abilities and those strengths, those talents and so forth that God has given to us.

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And we see some, you know, good results from it. We see effectiveness. That's reason to be thankful and to rejoice in our natural way of thinking.

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We understand that. And the disciples did too. The disciples were like that. Jesus had given them power and authority.

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He sent them out two by two and he told them to go throughout the region and proclaim the gospel of the kingdom.

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And they came back to report to Jesus what had happened. And so we read in verse 17 of Luke chapter 10 that the 70 returned with joy saying they were elated.

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They were thrilled. They were excited. They came to Jesus and said this. They said, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.

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And this was like the focal point of their rejoicing. Now, it's not that Jesus didn't want them to find any satisfaction or joy in that.

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But he said, there's something that is even more important and something that should give you even greater joy than that.

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He goes on to say, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

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Nevertheless, he says, nevertheless, these are not the things I want you to find the greatest satisfaction and joy in.

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He says this, do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.

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Now, why does Jesus do that? Why does he tell them don't find the source of your joy in the subjection of the demons to you or your effectiveness in this work that I'm sending you forth to do?

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Why does he do that? Why does he say rather than that, rejoice that your names are written in heaven?

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Well, I think a couple of reasons. One is that if your joy is tied to your apparent outward effectiveness or quote unquote success in the employment of your gifts and the abilities that God gives you, then what happens when you don't see that?

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What happens when you don't see any great effectiveness? When you go day after day, week after week and don't see any real manifest success or effectiveness from your giftedness.

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Does that destroy you? Does that crush you? Now, naturally, the answer to that question would be yes.

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I mean, because we are inclined in that direction. We all love to see some fruit, something come forth from our work, some sense of satisfaction for work completion.

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In fact, it's kind of humorous. One of the jokes about us pastors, it's not really a joke, it's an observation, is that we oftentimes enjoy doing things like mowing the lawn or having some kind of a hobby where we build something because we can actually look back on a day's work and see some fruit, see something that we've accomplished.

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And oftentimes in the work of the ministry, you can go week after week and not really see a great deal of evidence of effectiveness.

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Our work in the ministry is more longitudinal. It takes a long time to see fruit be born.

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But nevertheless, that does tend to be our inclination to find our greatest sense of joy and satisfaction out of the effectiveness of our lives or the fruit of our work.

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But Jesus says, don't let that be the focal point because there are going to be times when that doesn't come, that you don't see it.

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Instead, he says, rejoice that your names are written down in heaven. Why? Because that's permanent.

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If your name is written down in heaven, there's nothing going to scratch that out. It's there. And you can rejoice in that always, ever.

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You can rejoice in the Lord at all times. And again, Paul says, rejoice. Why? If your name's written down in heaven, there's nothing that can take that from you.

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Your name's always there. So I hope you can rejoice in that today.

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And I trust that as you look at your work, you do find things to be thankful for and grateful for and to find some satisfaction in it.

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But I also trust that that's not where you're experiencing the greatest sense of joy.

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Father in heaven, I pray that those of us who know Jesus as our Savior, we're following him.

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We would find our greatest joy in knowing you and knowing that our names are written in heaven.

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Because as your word says, whoever receives Christ, to them you give the right to be called your children.

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And no one can take that from us. And so I pray that we'd find our greatest joy in that.

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This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Well, have a good rest of your

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Tuesday. And this is probably the first day of your work week, I'm guessing. If so, I hope your work week gets off to a good start.