We gain a renewed inner life in our spirits and minds through our moral principles and social affections. This daily devotional looks at how we grow and show the world evidence of that growth.
Nuggets
- We must diligently evaluate our relationship with God and pray for growth.
- We show God within us by showing the world the fruit of the Spirit rewards.
Devotions in The Goodness of Grace series
For this series, we are looking at Griffith’s sermon entitled Grace, the Only Source of Goodness. In the first two devotions, we looked at our lives without God.
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In the last devotion, we started looking at our lives with God. This focused on a renewed, inner life in our spirits and minds.
Griffith said we did this through our moral principles and social affections. Let’s see if we can figure out where he was heading with this.
Let's Put It into Context
Here is a running list of nuggets for the series.
Moral Principles
“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26: 41 ESV)
We must diligently evaluate our relationship with God and pray for growth.
During last year’s Redo for Godliness theme, we talked a lot about morals and spiritual graces. Spiritual graces are worldly morals that have been submitted to God to further His kingdom instead of enhancing this world.
It isn’t enough to just be a moral person. We have to submit our lives to God — then be a moral person because that is how we exhibit God’s character.
So, I was kind of scratching my head when I copied in the verse Griffith cited. How does it fit?
Watchfulness is a continual conscious examination of ourselves and all events so that we may follow God in all things. Prayer is a two-way communication with God in which we pour out our soul to Him.
How does examination and communication inform our moral principles?
Well, think about it. If watchfulness is being cognizant of where we are in our spiritual walk, we are evaluating how close to the mark we are in our moral principles.
How close are we to having God’s character? Where will the Holy Spirit being working in us to fix where we fall short?
One way we grow in our spiritual graces is through prayer. We can’t grow ourselves. Only God can do that.
But that means we are to expect answers to our prayers. In this case, we expect God go strengthen our spiritual graces.
Edmond really slammed us as to our attitude about prayer. He wrote, “But it is to be greatly feared that many people feel, when their prayers are over, as if they had quite done with them; their only concern was to get them said.”
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Ooo, baby. How many times do we just say the words because we know we are suppose to be praying, but we really don’t have the desire to be praying? Or we say we don’t know what to pray.
This goes a step further, too. It implies we don’t expect God to answer our prayers. Ouch!
We’ve talked before that sometimes we doubt God. Oh, we don’t doubt that He can do something. We doubt that He will do it for us in this instance.
But how do we circle this back to moral principles and spiritual graces?
Maybe that is where the second part of the verse comes in. “… The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mt. 26: 41 ESV).
Pilkington reminded us that we are made up of a body, soul, and spirit. Our body is our physical body. Our soul is our spiritual part that is immortal. Our spirit is our renewed mind: God’s law has been written within us at the heart-level, so it has changed our character.
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Our renewed mind where God’s laws are written on our hearts in order to change our character is willing to obey God. Our body, sometimes, feels like it has a mind of its own.
It is back to that tug of war that Satan wages to get us to keep our focus off God. He keeps trying to get us to be disobedient.
Notice Jesus didn’t put any qualifiers on who had the weak flesh — or the willing spirit. All disciples should have the willing spirit, but all will have the weak flesh.
Let’s roost on willing spirit for a second. That means we are not to put qualifiers on our willingness to serve, either.
- God, I want to witness for You, but only to my family.
- God, I want to serve You in the church, but not somewhere where I have to do a lot of prep work.
- God, I want to serve You, but don’t make me be a teacher.
Oh, yeah. We are good at qualifiers.
We are called to submit ourselves to whatever God calls us to do. We have to perform those services to the best of our abilities.
One thing we have to be careful about is committing sins of will. Oh, we will commit the sins of the flesh.
But when we commit sins of the will, we choose to sin. It is conscious disobedience toward God.
Stillingfleet noted that one way we identify these sins is from the nature of moral actions. Does it have to do with the actions we perform or our condition at the time we perform it?
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Our willing spirit should focus on growing our character to be more like God’s so that we will be more obedient to His Will than before.
Social Affections
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness” (Gal. 5: 22 ESV)
We show God within us by showing the world the fruit of the Spirit rewards.
We’ve talked about this verse a lot lately. We’ve talked how the fruit of the Spirit are rewards given to us by the Holy Spirit. We also noted that these are attributes of God to which we are supposed to be striving to make our own dispositions.
Think about the disposition part, but hook it to the word social. What are we supposed to learn here?
Just as the song and Scriptures say (Mt. 5: 15), we are not to hide the light of God away. This includes evidence of the fruit of the Spirit within us.
Instead, Toplady told us how the Holy Spirit’s work is to impact us. He wrote, “When the Holy Ghost shines upon our souls, part of the grace He inspires is absorbed to our own particular comforts; part of it is reflected back in acts of love, joy, prayer, praise; and part of it is refracted every way in acts of benevolence, beneficency, and all moral and social duty.”
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We don’t keep our rewards and newfound character to ourselves. We use what God has given us to work to expand His kingdom.
Sanderson compared the love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness that the Spirit gives us to that of the world. He argued that the worlds brand is very thin.
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Worldview people would probably argue that. They see the world’s form of love, which includes tolerance, as greater than that of disciples’ love.
To me, the tolerance does not fortify love. It cheapens it.
We also need to look at this from the perspective that we cannot out love God. Because we have been given much, we should give much. “… Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Lk. 12: 48 ESV).
Making the Connections
We talked in the last devotion that we have two natures in us. The sinful pull is strong within us.
We have to choose to keep our spirit, mind, and the inward man focused on God. We do that by choosing daily to renew our inner life through getting our moral principles and social affections to be mature.
How Do We Apply This?
- Totally commit ourselves to whatever service God calls us to do.
- Diligently watch for evil that will tarnish our character.
- Evaluate our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our spiritual graces.
- Determine which sins we commit are sins of will and which are sins of the flesh.
- Nurture all of the spiritual graces.
- Grow in grace.
- Be filled with the Holy Spirit.
- Pray for growth.
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Father God. We pray that we grow in Your grace so that we may show the world Your love. We want to have Your character. Amen.
What do you think?
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