Titus 3:3 - "Peace! Be Still!"

Titus 3:3 "For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another." (ESV)

1 Corinthians 13:11-13 "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (ESV)

Mark 4:39-40 "And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." (ESV)

When I read tonight's scripture I couldn't get over how the Lord took me, this rebellious child of His, and did a work in him several years ago. Brother Paul's description in Titus pretty well nails down the me that lived in this body at that time.............rebellious...........egotistical...........a sinner in every sense of that word.

But God touched me...............and like the scripture from Mark, He rebuked the winds of rebellion in me......then there was the great calm of His Presence.

And when I looked into His Face that night at the altar.........I saw His Love for me. And from that point I was a child again...........but a child born anew into a world with the Lord at its center............I felt His Love so strongly then as I do now..........I feel Him so close..........He is the Air that sustains me with each breath..........He is the Living Water that satisfies the thirst I have for Him.

The days of chaos in my life have been brought to an end by the Presence of the Lord's Spirit within me. And even though I'm still of the flesh and am subject to its weaknesses.........I now have a Beacon to light a path through the turbulence of this temporal life to the rest I'll find in Him for all eternity......"Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'" (John 8:12 (ESV)

Love in Jesus,

Jim

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"But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired." (1 Corinthians 12:18 NASB)

"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission."

This devotional was originally posted on CCI-Devo - Daily Group Devotionals on April 27, 2004 in post #537. It was written by Jim Ross, a former United Pentecostal Church member, who attends Christian Challenge International, the sponsor of the devotional group. The devotional is the copyright of Jim Ross and is reprinted on this site by permission.