DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 3, 2019
“Error Code: 8”
Prayer: God, You are above all things. How high above our ways are Your ways O Lord! By Your power and grace, help us to stay focused with all of our hearts and minds on You. Let us not be consumed with the fleeting worries and passions of this life, but instead be filled with all of Your goodness that has been given to us through the blood of Jesus. Amen.
Scripture: Philippians 4:8
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.
Devotion – “Error Code: 8”
“Error Code 8.” It’s one of a long list of error codes on a computer that no one wants to see. Error Code 8 isn’t a fatal error, it’s an error code for insufficient memory.
Every command, every operation, everything you do on a computer requires memory. Although I am certainly not comparing computers to humans here, I think it is accurate to say that computers are programmed to “learn”, to remember things, and then from that memory they perform the commands and actions you want it to. However, unlike the beauty of the human mind that God created, computers only have a finite amount of memory. If a computer is not well taken care of and cleaned up regularly, the memory will eventually fill up and the computer will be unable to perform any function. Of course, this usually happens right when you’re in the middle of something important that has to be finished immediately. Ultimately, the only way to solve an Error Code 8 is to go through and clear out all the junk files; all the trash, and the unnecessary files and snippets that have accumulated so that enough room is made available for the computer to operate sufficiently again.
Have you ever had one of those days where you have personally experienced an Error Code 8? One of those days where at some point you have reached your max? There is no more room intellectually for retaining or processing more information, no more room emotionally to deal with drama, no more patience left to be spent. You’re just done for the day. I certainly have. Well, when we reach full capacity, Jesus gives us this invitation in Matthew 11, “28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
When we are all filled up and over-burdened with junk files, Jesus offers to clean us up, to take all of the junk, and even all of the hidden files in our minds and hearts that we can’t see. Jesus wants to and invites us to download and cast upon Him all of which fills us up and prevents us from operating and functioning normally. The same Lord Jesus who took upon Himself the sins of the world, who burdened the entire wrath of God that would have crushed us and brought us to nothing, now calls us to burden Him with all of the things in this life that worry us and bother us and cause us to fear and keep our thoughts and memories full with all of the unnecessary junk files that prevent us from living and operating in the peace and joy that He has promised to give us.
You know friends, when the devil attacks us, he attacks out minds. He deceives us and causes us to think about all the wrong things. He distracts us with all the garbage in life and all the worries in this life. The Devil wants to fill up our thoughts and memories with fear and doubt. But what if we were able to give the Devil an “Error Code 8”? What if whenever he wanted to distract us or deceive us or fill us up with all the junk that pulls us away from God, the devil had and Error Code 8 message flash up on his screen and was unable to function and operate the way he wants to?
Well, the only way to do that, is to have your memory and your thoughts already filled up. If our hearts and minds are already filled up with the Word of God and with the things of God, the Devil may try to overload us with all of his junk files and SPAM email, but all he will receive is an “Error Code 8: insufficient memory in system to perform this function.”
This is exactly what Paul is telling us in our passage from Philippians 4:8, “And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” When our minds are full and focused on God and His Word and His ways, that is how we resist the devil and prevent ourselves from becoming overloaded and incapacitated by the endless troubles and worries of this life.
Scripture tells us that when we are baptized, the Word of God works in the water to clean us and regenerate us, mark us as a true child of God, and give us a new life. When we are baptized, we are made clean and righteous in the eyes of God and are saved. Of course, while we still live in this broken world, we still fight the daily temptation to sin and be consumed with everything but the things of God. Our only hope is in the same Word of God that has saved us and made us clean in baptism. That same Word of God that we hold in our hands and keep in our hearts and minds daily cleanses us and keeps our thoughts and memories preoccupied with the wonderful things of God so there is no room left for the wicked things of this world or the Devil. Paul puts it this way in Romans 12, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
So, in the end, I guess an Error Code 8 isn’t so bad after all…as long as our minds and thoughts and memories are filled with all of the precious promises of God we find in His Word.
God bless you my friends, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
