Good day dear friends.
As we being our morning of prayer, please lift up Bill Nicolas in prayer as he undergoes surgery this morning at 8:30 at CTMC. Also, dear friends of the Nicolas, suffered a loss in the death of Bill Kurtz. Please hold the Kurtz family in prayer as the Lord comforts them.
Here is our study guide:
Thursday: In the Book of Revelation, please find chapter 7, verses 9-17. In that passage see how accountability will pay off for those who hold true to the teachings and love of God. Note what verses 15 through 17 stress. In this image of Heaven, we are made to see how we will be the ones who will be worshiping God and glorifying Him!
Here is that passage from Rev. 7:9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!" 11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing, "Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen."
13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?" 14 I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. 16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; 17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
The greatest blessing that comes from our faithfulness to God in being accountable to God, is that of being eternally in the presence of God. John the writer of Revelation, had the opportunity to visit realms never before known. On the Sunday morning, God's Holy Spirit took John to Heaven to see and experience that which is yet to come for us. The vision of these verses is worship and praise to God that never ends and the great fulfillment that comes to those who are there in God's presence. After suffering long and hard the trials of this earth, they've been taken to the presence of God, their robes have been washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. Their every need from earth have not carried over. No more hunger, no more thirst, no striking from the heat of the sun; a presence before the throne where the Lord sits as our shepherd, who is guiding all to the "springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
Our main job is to be faithful to God for God is faithful tous. Ours is the blessings that come from God and the least we can do is to try our best to seek to bless the Lord with our lives. In other wrods to live right, to seek to do what God would have us do. Paul's concern for the Corinth church was that they sought only to do their own will and to please thesmselves. They had no regard for God in their thinking that because Jesus had made them right once with God, they no longer had to worry about anything. And that's just not so. We must seek to serve God with complete love and devotion, knowing our eternity depends on it. But we do it not just for eternity's sake, but because it best serve God and others.
PRAYER: Loving God, make me a person of love and service to other. Let me seek to be Your person in all things. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord!
e.v.
