Himalayan Heights: 2 Corinthians 4-5
All Scripture is God-breathed and useful, but there are some Scriptures that we can consider the Himalayan mountaintops of the Bible. In the next few months we will be looking at a series of great texts that inspire and move us - the "Himalayan Heights" of God's Word.
Today's Reading: 2 Corinthians 4-5
Read 2 Corinthians 4-5 if you can. Focus on 2 Corinthians 5:6-10.
6 So we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 In fact, we are confident, and we would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 Therefore, whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to be pleasing to him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
Through the Bible Readings: 1 Samuel 7-8, Luke 15:11–32, Psalm 51:1–7, Proverbs 11:19-20
If you wish to read through the Bible in a year, follow these readings.
Devotional: Devoted to What I Cannot Prove
I have devoted my life to a God I have never seen and proclaim truths I can never prove. I can open the word of God and make a case for the truth of my doctrines and practices, but that is only convincing to someone who shares my faith in the Bible as God's perfect truth. The fact is that everything I live for, everything I've devoted my life to, the entire focus and goal of my life is unproven and will be unproven until the day I am "absent from the body and present with the Lord." Last week, when I was so sick and suspecting that I had COVID 19, and I was imaging the worst, I thought to myself, "What if everything I've lived for and preached about isn't true after all?" As sick as I was, that terrible thought did not help much.
The fact is, though, that this is our life. I cannot prove anything about what I believe to you. I cannot prove that Jesus died for our sins or that he rose from the dead. I cannot prove to you that God created the world or that every word of the Bible is true. I will not be able to prove any of this until that blessed moment when I leave this "tent" and take up residence in the home that God prepared for me when Jesus Christ went to the Cross and paid for my sins.
That is why Paul said, "We walk by faith and not by sight." We believe in what we cannot see. Oh, I have sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit and seen his power at work in me and through me. The indwelling Spirit has convicted me of sin and convinced me of the reality of God. I am sure. I believe. I know in my heart that God is real, that Jesus is Lord. But I know it by faith. That is why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 that God's truth is spiritually discerned. It can only be known by those whom the Spirit convinces internally.
Being convinced, I have decided to follow Jesus and to live my life for the rewards of the "judgment seat of Christ." That is the moment at the end of this life when each of us appears before our Savior to give account for the lives we have lived in his grace. Heaven and hell are not at stake - that was settled at the Cross when Jesus said, "It is finished!" Jesus will review our lives for how we have built on the foundation Christ laid. Did we devote ourselves to eternal things (gold, silver, and precious stones) or did we squander our lives with temporal things (wood, hay, and stubble)?
That is your life, my Christian friend. You walk by faith, committed to a God you can't see or hear (with your ears) living for rewards that you won't actually receive until this life is over. What kind of life is that? If your faith is in Jesus Christ, it is a blessed life.
Father, I thank you that my faith is not in vain. It is odd to live for things I cannot see and can never prove, but thank you for the joy of walking by faith, not by sight. I long for that day when the faith shall be sight!
Think and Pray:
Take time to meditate today on what it means to live by faith, not by sight.
Consider the judgment seat of Christ. Are you living for the things of eternity that will last or that which will be burned?
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