by George Runyan | Aug 10, 2016 | Devotional, George Runyan
Romans 5:17 – For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.
The reign in life is present, not simply future. The Scriptures are clear that we died when we were buried with Christ. We rose from the dead when we were raised up in His resurrection. “When we were dead in our transgressions, God made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved) (Ephesians 2:5).
We are aware that our body has five senses. They are extremely helpful in navigating in this natural world. The problem is that because the senses are connected to the natural world, they feed the appetites of the flesh. The entire book of James deals with this reality. Consider James’ statement, “Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust” (James 1:13). Temptation enters through the eye and ear gate. John speaks to this when he says, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father” (1 John 2:16).
Our daily challenge is to bring the natural man into submission to the spiritual man. It is the will of God that we reign in this life with Christ. Ruling our soul and our body is the key to ruling in other areas. Paul taught, “By grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:5). The theme of God’s grace is seen throughout the entire New Testament. For some, grace is only speaking of God’s gift of eternal life. It is true, “I am a sinner, saved by grace,” but there is so much more. Paul teaches, “So that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:21). The reign through righteousness to eternal life is in the now, not just the future. Paul declares how grace operates, “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31). Paul goes on to say that his battle is not rooted in human motives. “Become sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have not the knowledge of God” (1 Corinthians 15:34).
The attitude of grace is, I have died with Christ, and I am buried with Christ.
The attitude of grace is, I too may walk in newness of life.
The attitude of grace is, I have become united with Him in the likeness of His death. The attitude of grace is, certainly, I shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.
Take time to study thoroughly Romans 6 to grasp Paul’s view of grace and reigning in life through Christ.
Father, I thank You for Your amazing grace applied to my life. I surrender my body to You, along with my soul and spirit. I claim the prayer of the apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, that You would sanctify me entirely; that my spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
by George Runyan | Aug 9, 2016 | Devotional, George Runyan
1 Corinthians 2:16 – We have the mind of Christ.
Yesterday we saw that the Lord wants to transform our reasoning and our imaginations and bring them under the control of the Holy Spirit. Today, we will consider three more areas of the soul. The third sense is our affections. Paul addresses this subject when he teaches, “If ye then be raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3 KJV). The things of the Spirit can only function through the cross of Christ. You cannot set your affections on things above without walking in the risen life of Christ. Once our affections were attached to this world, but now they are to be joined to the Lord.
The fourth sense is memory. Jesus told His disciples in the upper room, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26). Paul made known the gospel to the Corinthians. They received the gospel and he tells them, “in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast (keep in memory) the word I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:2). Over the years I have met some who at one point believed, but did not keep in mind what they received and their faith turned out to be vain. David instructs us when he says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You (Psalm 119:9-11). David treasured God’s word by committing it to memory and applying it in his daily walk.
The last sense we will consider is conscience. The writer of Hebrews prays that, “The blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). Peter says, “Keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame (1 Peter 3:16-17). It is vitally important to know in our hearts that we are right with God, regardless of what others may say. Paul said to Timothy, “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1Timothy 1:5-6).
Father, I commit my soul to You. I pray for the Holy Spirit to control my reasoning, imagination, affections, memory and conscience. I pray that each of these senses of my soul would be yielded to the work of Your grace in my inner man.
by George Runyan | Aug 8, 2016 | Devotional, George Runyan
1 Corinthians 2:16 – We have the mind of Christ.
Yesterday we saw that the Lord wants to transform our reasoning and our imaginations and bring them under the control of the Holy Spirit. Today, we will consider three more areas of the soul. The third sense is our affections. Paul addresses this subject when he teaches, “If ye then be raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1-3 KJV). The things of the Spirit can only function through the cross of Christ. You cannot set your affections on things above without walking in the risen life of Christ. Once our affections were attached to this world, but now they are to be joined to the Lord.
The fourth sense is memory. Jesus told His disciples in the upper room, “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26). Paul made known the gospel to the Corinthians. They received the gospel and he tells them, “in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast (keep in memory) the word I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:2). Over the years I have met some who at one point believed, but did not keep in mind what they received and their faith turned out to be vain. David instructs us when he says, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word. With all my heart I have sought You; Do not let me wander from Your commandments. Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You (Psalm 119:9-11). David treasured God’s word by committing it to memory and applying it in his daily walk.
The last sense we will consider is conscience. The writer of Hebrews prays that, “The blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14). Peter says, “Keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame (1 Peter 3:16-17). It is vitally important to know in our hearts that we are right with God, regardless of what others may say. Paul said to Timothy, “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1Timothy 1:5-6).
Father, I commit my soul to You. I pray for the Holy Spirit to control my reasoning, imagination, affections, memory and conscience. I pray that each of these senses of my soul would be yielded to the work of Your grace in my inner man.
by George Runyan | Aug 7, 2016 | Devotional, George Runyan
Romans 8:5 – Those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
Paul describes two categories of people, those of the flesh and those of the Spirit. The believers are to set their minds on the things that concern the Spirit of God. Today, we will consider five specific areas the Spirit of the Lord wants to develop in our spirit. Each of the five is a characteristic of God’s nature. Faith, love, peace, joy, reverential fear, and true worship are in us because of the new birth. Each one provides a basis for everything else the Holy Spirit accomplishes in our life.
Faith is an attribute of God’s heart, not simply a mind-set. Jesus said, “Have faith in God” (Mark 11:22). A close look at this verse reveals that the original language should be translated “have the faith of God.” This kind of faith is given to the believer through the Holy Spirit. God’s faith is made alive through the new birth and resides in our spirit. Faith is: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 KJV). The hope spoken of in this verse means a “sure expectation.”
There are many types of love known to man. The most important is “the love of God”. His love is placed in our spirit in the “new birth.” As we set our mind on the love of God, it changes how we relate to people. God’s will is that His love dominates our thoughts and practices.
Peace is what the Lord made possible in the work of salvation. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). It is the peace of God that keeps our hearts and minds from being distracted and confused.
Joy comes out of peace. Many experience happiness, but not joy. Happiness changes with the circumstances, but Spirit-filled joy is a result of walking in God’s love and peace. I find very few people that exercise godly joy. One reason is that their minds are not fixed on the love of God, but their own selfish needs or wants.
True worship flows from faith built on hope, love, peace, and joy. We worship God to celebrate all He has done for us. At times, we offer “the sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15). We sacrifice our selfish desires and the works of our flesh on His altar. The evidence of our worship is seen in “doing good and sharing, with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Hebrews 13:16).
Father, thank You for giving to me Your nature. Let these senses grow and develop in my spirit. I ask for the Holy Spirit to empower my thinking and my actions through the senses of my spirit.
by George Runyan | Aug 5, 2016 | Devotional, George Runyan
John 3:3 – Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.
This is one of the most familiar Scriptures. During his 1976 presidential campaign President Carter made it a popular saying when he declared that he was born again and served as a Baptist Sunday school teacher. The phrase originated with Jesus when he was speaking to Nicodemus, a Jewish teacher. Nicodemus understood that Jesus must be from God. Because of the signs Jesus was performing such as healing and miracles. Nicodemus was trying to figure Jesus out through his intellect. Jesus gave Nicodemus a new paradigm to consider. Even though Nicodemus saw the signs, he had not truly seen the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God in not an intellectual experience, it is a “spiritual birth.” Many today are still trying to get to God through their intellect, but that is impossible to do. “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). As Jesus ministers to the woman at the well, He introduces her to this new paradigm of thinking. She thought that worship had to do with the location of worship. Jesus tells her that a new day is coming when the “true worshipers will worship in the spirit.”
The kingdom of God is in the Spirit. “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him” (Romans 8:16-17). What powerful understanding Paul brings to the church in these passages. Salvation begins at the point of “His Spirit testifying to our spirit.” I remember in the eleventh grade at a Youth for Christ gathering, I said to God, “Tonight, when I leave this place I want eternity settled.” As I left the building, His Spirit testified to my spirit that I had eternal life. From that moment until now, I have never doubted my salvation in Christ. I have grown in the knowledge of my inheritance given to me from God. I know that I have an eternal inheritance with Christ.
I have known many blessings as a child of God, but I have also experienced sufferings with Him. Suffering begins in denying to self, submitting to the death of self and receiving His resurrected life daily as well as in the eternity to come. Nurture your spirit man with the Word of God, with prayer, and with the fellowship of like-minded people.
Father, I thank You for drawing me to Yourself and causing me to be born again. Help my spirit to grow and become strong in Christ. Teach me how to deny my fleshly appetites and hear Your Holy Spirit better.
by George Runyan | Aug 4, 2016 | Devotional, George Runyan
2 Corinthians 1:10 – God delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us.
As Paul writes to the church in Corinth, he is describing the comfort he knows even in times of affliction. The kind of affliction he is speaking of was “beyond his strength” (2 Corinthians 1:8). Paul says, “We had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). In verse 10, Paul reveals the threefold order of God’s salvation. First, God delivered us from “so great a death.” The great death is what the Scriptures call the “second death” (Revelation 20:6). We were dead in our “trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Through the blood of Christ, our sins have been forgiven and washed away, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (Ephesians 1:7-8). Salvation begins in our spirit and is renewed and made alive in Christ daily.
Second, “God will deliver us.” Paul is speaking of the salvation we experience through our trust in God. We need His help on a daily basis. Sin is always there looming to trip us up in our daily walk. Afflictions in this life can discourage us from going forward with the Lord and His eternal purpose. The work of salvation was finished in the cross of Christ. Daily, the Holy Spirit is our helper to apply and walk out this salvation in personal victory. Our soul is challenged daily in our intellect and our emotions. Through our will, we can choose to trust God or we can choose not to. What God has begun in our spirit: faith in God, true worship, His love, peace and joy, He intends for us to experience daily in our soul.
Finally, we will experience the final part of our salvation at the Lord’s return. “This perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:53). In the now, we can experience healing for our bodies. When God heals the physical, He is releasing eternal life in the now. There is coming a day when these bodies will be changed into the likeness of His glorious body. “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we all will be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).
Father, I thank You for the provision of full salvation in my spirit, soul, and body. I trust You for Your life to be released daily to my being. My hope is in the promise of Your resurrected power, that one day I will be raised from the dead. Until that day, I trust You to keep me healthy and strong to serve Your eternal purpose on earth.
