Daily Reflections Feb 14, 2018

Joel 2: 12 - 18; 2 Corinthians 5: 20 - 21, 6: 1 - 2; Matthew 6: 1 - 6, 16 - 18.

“Thou calls out to me in my darkness. Thy light is hidden from me. Thou call for my repentance and I remember my sins. Go away from me, Lord! I am unworthy... But Thou embraces me with compassion and reminds me of Thy mercy. Nothing is hidden from Thee; I am always exposed. But Thou offers me a chance at redemption only to bring me closer. In shame, I sincerely confess and acknowledge my evil. My shame is my pain, I am in sorrow and repentant. But, my pain arises from Thy mercy and my sorrow is but Thy Grace. Here I am, lost in the darkness and Thy love guides me back to Thy fold”.

Our repentance is a call from God. The Spirit within us begins to stir. This Temple can no longer be a home for evil, for it was designed for the Lord. It is only a matter of time before the angels blow the trumpet and our spiritual ears awaken our soul. The Lord has summoned us to a meeting, we need to cleanse and be pure. When the Holy Spirit awakens a soul that is in sinful slumber, it does as the Prophet describes in the book of Joel 2: 12 - 18. For until the awakening, we live in darkness as the flesh impoverishes the soul. And as we keep postponing the moment of repentance the strength of our soul begins to wither and our gladness just fades away. Withered and burnt are the pastures of our soul that enhances the irritability of the flesh. Dry is the spiritual streams where living water used to flow as our soul is thirsty for redemption. The spiritual barns of the Lord’s grace lie empty and shattered. Cobwebs of doubt begin to make an appearance. Finally, the rodents of paranoia gnaw from within and bring despair to our soul. It all sets in within us in stages as sin takes over and the seeds of rejuvenation are parched and dry. And if the Lord had not been merciful to call us, we would be lost forever. The Lord calls us in whispers and inspires us to pull ourselves from spiritual gutters. He reminds us to reprimand ourselves and pinch our conscience, for the lack of prayer has let the evil creep in. The Lord invites us to get spiritually replenished and come clean with our conscience. He calls us to repentance. It is now our turn to respond with groaning and mighty cries of sincere grief. To open our hearts and to express our sorrow for turning away from Him. And yet, it is important to have our sorrow, pain, repentance and cry for mercy expressed to God from within and not make an outwardly show about it to those around us.

It is foolish to keep delaying and postponing our repentance. It is eminent to rush to the Lord. For if we delay the devil hurries in and he strengthens the sin within us. The strengthened sin that demolishes our other strongholds exploiting our every weakness to increase the perversion and evil within us. In the second epistle of Paul to the Corinthians 6: 1 - 2, the Lord’s grace provides us with the initial resentment for our evil deeds, but if we brush that off our conscience, that grace goes in vain and the devil polishes our heart with pride. Then he injects our conscience with carelessness and continues to poison our will. As we continue to impoverish the goodness in our heart with carelessness and pride, we become reckless and lose control over our behaviour, our words and impatience become our forte. There is a remedy for all mistakes, but the remedy must be timely. There will be other moments when the Lord will pour out His grace and call to us and we must hearken to His call or to the devil we will fall. Paul’s second Epistle to the Corinthians 5: 20 - 21 declares unto us, thatChrist knew no sin and He humbly took all our sins upon Himself, dying an excruciating death on the cross so that through Him, we may have mercy and absolution of our sins. It is through this great sacrifice, that God decided to provide us with a path to Redemption. And through His divine words inscribed by His servants in the Holy Scriptures, God made us aware of His will.It is all a well-laid plan to save us from the enemy and from our destruction. We only have to take cognizance of this fact and work our way to making our peace with God.

We all love to pamper ourselves with comfort, luxuries, and food that is tasty to our palette. God allows us to indulge in the produce of the world as long as it does not lead us to vanity and sin. We must not allow our character to get drowned in the pampering of our bodies and our need for self-respect, to an extent that we forget the necessity to be humble, to be compassionate and to be merciful to our neighbours. We must be fine-tuned to understand what is necessary and what is gluttony, for gluttony is not limited only to food, but it defines anything that makes us greedy. In the midst of a material world, we must live our lives loving God above everything including our own bodies. For our bodies are His Temple and we must maintain the sanctity of His temple. So, when we need to express our sincere love for God through our devotion and our worship, we must deny ourselves of these comforts, luxuries and the food that we enjoy. And even though it is only right to testify to His mercy and His love from rooftops and shout our praises to him with all our strength; Our relationship with the Lord of Host must be personal and the expression of our love for Him be very private.

That is why our Lord Jesus Christ instructs us in the Gospel of Matthew 6: 1 - 6, 16 - 18, to keep secret our moment of prayer because it is our intimate conversation with our Lord of Hosts, who delights to listen and speak with us. That is why we must keep our acts of sacrifice and fasting from anything material a secret because we display our love for God by denying ourselves of comfort and pleasure. Now when we speak about fasting, the Lord includes all material luxuries, wealth, food and even denying giving vent to the weaknesses that lead us into sin. Thus, God plans to purify us and make us perfect.

And while we sincerely repent and pray earnestly for forgiveness, acknowledging our many sins and the many moments when we gave in to temptation, we must also remember those around us who suffer because they lack the very things we want to deny ourselves. So, when we deny ourselves our wealth and instead we share that wealth with the poor, we walk an extra mile in denying ourselves and taking away our neighbour’s suffering. In a way, we emulate Christ, who was without sin and walked the extra mile to suffer pain and death for our sins. And yet, He did it humbly because it pleased His Heavenly Father. It is the Heavenly Father who testifies through the prophets and the Apostles that Jesus Christ died for our sins. So also, as we fast in secret, we deny ourselves of glory from human eyes and wait for the Lord to accept the righteousness of our sacrifice. Thus we build our life to Salvation and Eternal Life.

- By Bro Maryo