Together We Are Stronger, Part 1 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. I hope as you start this week that you have in your mind that the number one priority of your week is to walk close to the Lord, because if that part of your life is right, then all of your life is right.

God will work in you and through you in the lives of other people in ways that you could not predict and could never manufacture on your own as you walk with Him and spend time with Him with His Word, the Bible open in front of you, allowing Him to speak into your life and direct your life.

If you don’t know God yet in your life on a personal level, then you need to come to Him in prayer and just say to Him, God, I know my life is not what it should be, and I know that I offend you a lot with the things I do, and my conscience tells me I’m breaking your laws, and that separates me from you.

But I want to put my trust in what you have done for me when Jesus died on the cross. He died in my place to take the penalty for my sins so that I could be forgiven and start a relationship with you. I put my faith in you and invite you to begin to direct my life.

When you do that, you embark on this beautiful relationship with God, and the number one thing for you then is building your relationship with Him, and you do that by spending time with Him every single day, and that’s what we do at this time in the morning. We open the Bible and we invite God to speak to us.

This week our theme is: Together we are stronger.

I just want to read a couple of verses to you from Matthew 18. Jesus is talking about what we should do when we see somebody else that we know and love doing things that we know offend God and are destructive to their lives and others.

Jesus says:

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And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private, not go and talk to other people about it. First, go and reprove him in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses every fact may be confirmed.

He goes on a few verses later in verse 19 to say:

and I say to you that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am in their midst.

It’s so beautiful that Jesus puts these verses in the context of talking to someone we love about sin in their lives, about things that are offending God and hurting their own lives, and He says, do it together, agree together, pray together about it, and then go together and talk to that person, and I think that this just unfolds to us, unpacks to us this beautiful principle of life that there is so much strength in doing things together, in working together in things that please and honour God, and I encourage you in your life as you think about this week, to think about what you could put in place in your life that connects you and your spiritual life with other people on the same journey towards God as you are.

How you can encourage each other. How you can strengthen each other this week in doing what you know that God has called you to do, because as you do this, linking arms with other people, your life and their life becomes so much stronger because of it.

I’m John North.

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

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