After a full day Father, I come before You. I am humbled as I sit in Your presence, to be used of You. I would ask that You would use to their fullest the gifts I have been given, they were given to me by You, and they are best used according to Your will.

Romans 7:1-6 (<<click here to read the passage)

I recently saw a clip of a cooking show on TikTok (♫♬ oh, be careful little eyes what you see ♬♫ – always be wary) and there was a 19-year-old contestant, who though fairly talented, was eliminated early on. His circumstances were tragic in that he was his family’s source of income – his parents, if I remember correctly, had some very serious physical problems. He wept when he lost but, one of the judges, a hard-nosed but well-respected chef in his own right, spoke to him.

In essence, he told the young man not to worry. Though he was being eliminated, he saw the gift he had, and rather than seeing him return to a potentially dead-end career in the fast-food industry, he offered instead to send him to culinary school and to support his family in the meantime! Wow!

The young man was overwhelmed. The chef made it very clear, that the talent was there but without help, he may never see his dreams and talent bloom into very possible greatness! And he wanted to give him every opportunity to see it become a reality!

Before Jesus became known to us verse 5 tells us that we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds…

That’s just the way it was. We were born with that old nature – we had no choice in the matter. But as time went on, we did make decisions – we willingly, knowingly yielded to those sinful desires…we allowed them to work within us. And whether we embraced those evil desires or felt that we had no other option but to yield, that is what we were compelled to do.

But then a light shined on our world of darkness, maybe we knew we had potential and maybe not…but Jesus surely knew whom we were created to be! He saw – and continues to see! – what we can become. But in our own strength, in our enslaved state of lostness – separated from God by our sin and rebellion, we cannot overcome our lostness.

But then came Jesus! When we died to the power of the law – all the rules and regulations that pointed out our sins and wrongdoings – we died to its hold upon our lives when [we] died with Christ. vs 4

The remainder of verse 4 goes on to say,

And now [we] are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. NLT

Our circumstances were surely tragic, and we were doomed to eternal elimination but a higher power – indeed our very Creator! – reached out and gave us what only He could give – our salvation! With the blessings of His grace and mercy, Jesus has set us on the path to see our dreams and talent bloom into a promise of greatness – no guessing here! And only because of His sacrifice does that opportunity become a reality! Amen and amen!

Jan 15th, 2023, Sun, 7:38 pm