A light came on in my car the other day, a gauge to remind me that the car needed an oil change. Consequently, today my car was in the shop for routine maintenance, nothing unusual really. This was true until the mechanic came out and said that rather than replacing a break light as I had requested, they need to replace a circuit board. The job of a circuit board is to relay important information from the brain of the car to its parts. Without the replacement of the circuit board, a good bulb would be of no value. Hence, from the routine maintenance and checkup for which I took my car to the shop came the realization that good parts in my car were not functioning because their link to the brain of the car was not working.
We too need spiritual maintenance from time to time and often a simple check-up will reveal we have “wiring” issues as well. So how do you and I know if we need repair? Good news! God’s Word provides gauges for our spiritual circuitry!
Last Saturday in a Men of Valor small group, I became aware of one of the gauges I can read on the control panel of my spiritual life. This indicator will allow me to always know whether I have a properly “connected” walk with Jesus.
Colossians 2:6–7 (NASB95) says, 6 Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude.
You see, an offshoot of the connection to Jesus that allows for us to grow in our relationship with Him day by day is gratitude. Our connection was firmly rooted in Christ when we were saved. Still, our daily walk with the Lord can be short circuited. If we are not living a life of gratefulness, this indicates that there is a problem which needs to be fixed in us as soon as possible. A proper connection will cause us to be infused with so much gratitude that it will spill over from our lives into the lives of others around.
Our gauge for knowing where our spiritual walk and connection to Jesus stands is found in answer to the following question, “Are we grateful?” If we can’t answer this question ourselves, we should ask someone else. The gauge will be so clear that anyone around you and I can answer the question for us (Our spouse, the person we sit by in church, the co-worker with whom we share an assignment on Tuesday morning). “Does gratitude splash from our lives in such a way that we can’t help but be an encouragement to those around us?”
This gauge comes as standard equipment for all Christians and churches. Overflowing gratitude is an indication that all is well; the lack of it signals that we need immediate maintenance. A fresh connection with Jesus will fix the problem and return us to the walk of the Spirit and gratitude will again ooze from us.
Check your gauge today!
We will not be looking at a Core Value this Sunday. Dick Kelly from Slavic Gospel Association (SGA) will be with us in our service. SGA is the organization through whom we support our 3 church planters to the Ukraine; Victor & Galina Opalinkiy, Oleg & Oklena Pelepko, and Audrey & Valentina Yakimenko. Come expecting the ministry of the Holy Spirit in your heart.
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