Topic: The Restoring Shepherd [Wednesday 12, July 2017]
Memorise: He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. – Psalm 23:3
Read: Psalm 23:1-3 (KJV)
1 The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Bible in One Year: 1 Samuel 29-31, Ezekiel 6:8-7:4, Hymn: Sing hymn 6
MESSAGE:
For the sheep of the Great Shepherd, the infallible word of God in Psalm 23:3guarantees restoration of that which is lost. Sometimes, God allows his chosen ones to experience a loss so that they can have the opportunity of experiencing Him as the Great restorer. Be assured in your heart therefore that if you experience a loss that you did not cause by an act of carelessness or disobedience, you can obtain restoration. However, if you fail to ask for restoration, you may not experience it. In Joel 2:23-26, God promise to restore all categories of losses. Every good thing that you have lost shall be restored to you as you hold the Lord to His word, in Jesus’ Name.
Moreover, not only does the Great Shepherd restore physical and material losses to His sheep, He also restores them spiritually. Speaking of spiritual restoration, virtually all believers need this in some measure. In His letter to the Church at Ephesus, the Lord Jesus Christ told the brethren that they had left their first love. In other word, they needed spiritual restoration so that they could embrace the good things they did before, which they had abandoned.Revelation 2:5 says,
“Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.”
For many of us, the zeal, love and fire with which we served God when we first became saved have since ebbed. Our commitment, dedication and consecration are no longer the same. In those days, we made some vows to God such as “No Bible, no breakfast”, but are we still true to those pledges? We promised to win the world to Christ, saying that no day would pass without us winning a soul into God’s Kingdom. How true is that today? Some of us are even so shy or afraid of speaking about Jesus at God-given opportunities. We prefer to read books, surf the internet, or visit social media site than to preach in the buses or cabs like we used to. We sure need spiritual restoration! To be restored, you need to recall how committed you were in times past, repent of your lukewarmness and pick up from where you stopped. Go back to consecration and holiness! Go back to reaching out to the lost on a daily basis! Do you know that no day should pass without you prospecting for sinners to be saved into God’s kingdom? Ask God to restore you today!
Key Point: words like consecration, sanctification and dedication which were common place in Christianity of old are now almost completely out of our vocabulary today.
Open Heavens Daily Devotional guide was written by Pastor E.A. Adeboye, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, one of the largest evangelical church in the world and also the President of Christ the Redeemer's Ministries.
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