Becoming Strong in the Lord: Part 9 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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All this week, John North is focusing on becoming strong in the Lord, and shares from the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Ephesians 2:19-22

Transcript

Good morning. I’m John North. I’m here to help you start your day right as we go to God’s Word together and spend a little time with God.

Time with God, the foundation of your spiritual life, the key to spiritual growth, the way to learn to walk through your day with an awareness of God’s presence with you. The way to change your thinking so that you take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, as Paul says, the key to victory in the spiritual battle. Have you learned to begin every day with the Lord?

Well, that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re talking this week about becoming strong in the Lord.

And today we come to a passage in 2 Peter Chapter 3.

What Peter says in verse 10:

But the day of the Lord, that is the day when the Lord returns, will come like a thief. No one will be expecting it. In which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat. And the earth and its works will be burned up.

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Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning and the elements will melt with intense heat, but according to His promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless. And regard the patience of our Lord, His waiting, not returning straight away to salvation. Just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand which the untaught and unstable distort as they do also the rest of the scriptures to their own destruction.

And then here’s the challenge.

You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard, lest being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness.

But rather grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ.

Get your life focused on knowing Jesus Christ more.

Come to understand His grace in your life. Learn to let that grace flow through you into the lives of other people. If you want to mature, if you want to keep from falling from your own steadfastness, if you want to be strong in the Lord, you have to pursue Jesus Christ. Make Him and knowing Him the number one goal of your life.

That is the way to strength.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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