NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

Day 23 - We exist for a reason

Scripture focus: Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with dwellings. Isaiah 58:12 NIV

You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again. Isaiah 58:12 The Message

The internal longings in our bodies (appetites) and the discomfort in our soul (personality and emotions) is one of the ways God gets our attention and invites us to come to him to recover our life. But we're a stubborn people, and we can let the rumble go on too long before we turn to Him. We train ourselves to become hyper-sensitive to our appetites, emotions and personality.

Hyper-sensitivity to our internal longings can turn us into rice Christians. Years ago in China there was a famine. The Christian missionaries began handing out rice to their congregation. Guess what happened? All of a sudden there was an evangelism explosion. Soon many of the Chinese wanted to go to the Christian Church and get their rice.

Clearly God wants to provide us with everything we need – including rice. But when we get so focused on God relieving our discomfort, we've missed the boat. As God meets our needs and satisfies our deepest desires, transformation is supposed to take place. We aren't supposed to go to church to become fat cats. We're fed manna and living waters so that we can then go out and share that experience, strength and hope with others.

We were created to be a conduit that carries God's resources to hurting people.

We can't do that if we sit in our pews and try to figure out new ways to get God's attention so that he'll meet our every need, want and yearning.

Ignoring our internal longings doesn't work either. So here we sit. We have our longings, and we get a glimpse of the abundant life. But it's fleeting, and our body and soul cry out for more more more. Where do we go from here? To be continued….

Recommended reading: Psalm 24-26

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