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Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Fresh Illustrations

Devotional Thoughts and Teaching Illustrations About Fresh




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Proverbs 18:15 (MSG) Wise men and women are always learning, always listening for fresh insights.
Proverbs 16:22 (MSG) True intelligence is a spring of fresh water, while fools sweat it out the hard way.
Acts 3:19 So repent [change your inner self—your old way of thinking, regret past sins] and return [to God—seek His purpose for your life], so that your sins may be wiped away [blotted out, completely erased], so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord [restoring you like a cool wind on a hot day];
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life].
James 3:11 - Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and saltwater?
Mark 2:22 - And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”


DAY ONE-FRESH START

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 15:58

Life is made up of beginnings, endings and more beginnings. Winter ends and spring begins. Spring ends and summer begins. Summer ends and winter begins. We are ending one decade and starting a new one with the challenges of the past year behind and the challenges of a new year ahead. We end childhood and begin young adulthood. We end being young adults and enter middle age. We end middle age and become senior adults. We are born, we live, we die, and then if we know Jesus, we live again.

I have found that the older I get the harder it is to begin again, the harder it is to move forward and not to stop. For many of us it becomes harder to try something new, the easier it is to do nothing. We sometimes think we have done enough.

How do you begin again, how do you move forward with life, how do you really live as long as you are living? This verse in 1 Corinthians 15:58 gives us some direction as to how to do that. The first instruction that Apostle Paul gives us about how to begin again, how to live is this: “…stand firm. Let nothing move you….” He is saying that we should let nothing in this world deter us, keep us from living the abundant life that Jesus came to give us (John 10:10). We should let no bad thing, no evil thing, not even a good thing keep us from living our lives for the Lord.

For the early Christians, there were some obstacles to living the Christian life. If you were a Christian in Corinth you could count on feeling out of place, out of step with most of the people who lived there (sound familiar). If you were a Christian in Corinth you could count on encountering persecution in one form or another. Paul was telling them don't let that stop you from living like you should “…stand firm. Let nothing move you….”


Thought of the Day  What is it that Paul would say to you today? “…stand firm. Let nothing move you….…stand firm. Let nothing move you….” It’s time to get busy in 2020, we have a lot of work to do.


You Think About It!
Kevin Rayner


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