DAILY DEVOTIONAL – September 4, 2019
“Progress”
Prayer: Forgiving Heavenly Father, defend our hearts from the accusations of the devil. Help us to hold fast and always remember that it is not by our worthiness that we are saved, but by the worthiness of Your Son our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we put our trust and faith. Amen.
Scripture: Galatians 6:9
And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest, if we do not give up.
Devotion – “Progress”
Frederick Douglas was an American pastor and preacher, a social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory[6] and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. (Wikipedia Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass)
When it comes to the history of the abolition of slavery, I think there would be few that would argue Frederick Douglas’ prominence and monumental influence in bringing about social progress.
Roy E. Finkenbine is a Dean for the University of Detroit Mercy, a history professor and historical author. In a piece that he wrote for the American National Biography (www.anb.org) Finkenbine said – that as, “the most influential African American of the nineteenth century, [Frederick] Douglass made a career of agitating the American conscience. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women’s rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education, and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted the bulk of his time, immense talent, and boundless energy to ending slavery and gaining equal rights for African Americans. These were the central concerns of his long reform career. Douglass understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation. And he recognized that African Americans must play a conspicuous role in that struggle.”
Without a doubt, Frederick Douglas knew what it took to make progress. I love what Frederick Douglas said about progress too. He said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
The same can be said for our spiritual progress and growing up and maturing in our faith in Jesus Christ. If there is no struggle in our spiritual maturing, then there is no progress. Paul says in our text from Galatians today, “– And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Why does Paul say “let us not grow weary?” Well, because doing good isn’t easy. Being good isn’t easy. Living as the righteous holy people God has declared us to be in the blood of His Son Jesus, will always be a struggle while we still live with this sinful nature and in this wicked world. However, as Paul encourages us to do, we persist and do not give up. We endure and by God’s grace continue to fight against our sinful nature and resist temptation, because God has promised to work His good in and through us, even in our weakness, especially in our weakness, and in and through our failure – especially in our failure.
The apostle Paul knew this struggle of progress in our spiritual life and faith walk with Jesus. Paul says in Romans 7, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
I know that like me, you can relate to Paul’s words as well. The Lord has given us a new heart that wants to love and serve Him perfectly, and that is a wonderful thing, but the truth and reality is we will always be very far from perfect. Our Lord Jesus calls us to be perfect even as our Heavenly Father is perfect, but Jesus doesn’t ask that of us in order that we might be saved, no, Christ calls us to be perfect because that is how God has already made us to be in the blood of Jesus. We have been made perfect by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, and Christ gave His own blood for the forgiveness of sins and all of those times when like Paul says, we fail to do the good we want and instead do the evil we no longer want to do.
It’s all about progress my friends. God is concerned not with our perfection, but with the progress we make each and every day. The progress we make not in being better or more holy people, but the progress we make in drawing ever more near to Christ and the progress we make in trusting in Him and relying on His power and His provision and His righteousness.
In another letter Paul wrote in the book of Philippians, Paul speaks personally to this spiritual walk and life of faith and progress. Paul says, “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
When we take our faith as seriously as we all should and strive to live a life worthy of the calling we have in Christ, it’s easy to get discouraged when we fall and when we fail. One of the Devil’s most successful and common deceptions is to make us think that God gives us His grace and love and provision in accordance and measure with how good we are and how faithful we are. Nothing could be further from the truth. God has made us righteous and perfect in Christ, and through faith in Jesus, when God looks upon us even in our worst moments, He is pleased because He is pleased with His Son Christ whose blood covers us.
King David was a man who knew well what it meant to make progress, to progress and grow up in faith toward God. David had his own list of sins and setbacks to say the least, and yet God smiled upon David not because He was perfect, but because as the Bible tells us David was “a man after God’s own heart.” David was not perfect, but he set his heart on doing God’s will, and he repented when he failed. David writes about this himself in Psalm 103:8-12 and says:
The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.
9 He will not constantly accuse us,
nor remain angry forever.
10 He does not punish us for all our sins;
he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.
11 For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
12 He has removed our sins as far from us
as the east is from the west.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress my friends. Celebrate the struggle, endure in the faith, remain steadfast in repentance and in trusting that God has already washed you clean in your baptism and covered you in the perfect blood and righteousness of His Son Jesus. And remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
