Bible Reading Plan | Devotion for the week of August 9, 2020

Weekly Reading: 2 Corinthians 2-6

Passage Referenced: 2 Corinthians 5:14-21

Your words are always in pursuit of some kind of kingdom. You are either speaking as a mini-king, seeking to establish your will in your relationships and circumstances; or you are speaking as an ambassador, seeking to be part of what the King is doing.  –Relationships: A Mess Worth Making

The force of this quote takes a moment to sink in. Some part of me wants to push back and argue that I’m not always seeking to establish my will or manage situations for my benefit. But, if I’m being honest, I have to admit this is fairly true. The current situation in our world turns up the volume on my sense that I need to fend for myself and watch out only “for me and mine.” The idea that the King is working out His will, even in the midst of a pretty polarized era, is mindboggling. It all leads me back to the importance of faith and trust. Will I trust that He is working all things out according to His good purposes? Will I have faith in the unseen, eternal God when the visible, temporary trials of this life scream so loudly?

We have to give each other permission in this season to step back and take a breath. There’s some business each of us needs to work through with God before we can effectively join what He is doing in our world. First, we’ve got to recognize that we are seriously tempted to speak and act like “mini-kings.” (Thank God He forgives us for our prideful attitudes!) Then, we have to have our eyes open to what He is about all around us as He reconciles people to Himself through the cross. Finally, we have to guard our tongues and choose to use the power of our words in the service of Christ and what He desires for all people.

As you work through the best way to live out your faith, read these words below from 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 and ask the Lord to use them to help sharpen your focus on and devotion to Him.

– Nate Metler

For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. –2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (NIV)