Are You Sleeping on the Floor?

Daily Reading:  1 Peter 3

Scripture Focus: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.  (1 Peter 3.18)

Devotional Thought: A young African boy was taken in by missionaries.  When he first arrived, he would not sleep on the simple cot with clean sheets provided by his hosts.  He had never had a bed before.  Instead, he would lay on the floor beneath his cot.  He could not stand to think about his dark, dirty skin against the clean white sheets.  But finally, his new family convinced him that that was exactly what they wanted him to do - live in his new home.

Christ wants us to live in our new spiritual home, too.  God – in Jesus Christ – took a physical body so that he might suffer death for each one of us who were condemned to die for our sins.  No one else could have died in our stead.  Only Jesus, the Son of God.  And he did it “once for all” (Hebrews 10.10, NIV).  What Jesus does, he does completely.  There is nothing that can be added to gain our salvation.  As the old hymn says, “Jesus paid it all!”

Jesus died to “bring us to God.”  That is the ultimate purpose of his death.  Aren’t you glad for that?  The human spirit can only find rest – true rest – in the presence of God.  Sin has separated us from our Creator, but Jesus brings us back into God's family.  Finding rest in the holy and pure presence of God is exactly what Jesus wants us to do, exactly what he died to provide.  The question we need to answer is this: “Am I living in fellowship with God as Jesus intended and paid for with his blood, or am I sleeping on the floor?"

You don’t have to sleep on the floor, friend!  You belong to the family of God!

Prayer: Thank you, Lord Jesus, for suffering for my sins, for making me alive in the Spirit, for bringing me to God, and for welcoming me into the family of God.  Lord, I come in.  I find my rest in you.  Amen.

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 57.1-5

1 Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.

2 I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me.

3 He will send from heaven and save me; he will put to shame him who tramples on me. Selah God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness!

4 My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts-- the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.

5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!