Friday: The Lord God Has Sent Me and God’s Spirit
WEEK 51
FRIDAY
THE LORD GOD HAS SENT ME AND GOD’S SPIRIT
Luke 4:17-19
We are looking at the mastery of our capacities and faculties by the Spirit. This Spirit control makes sacred all occupations if they are morally legitimate.
Businesspeople come under the head of “administrators.” They can be in business for God. How? The application is simple: They are in business to supply their own needs; and after those needs are met, all the rest belongs to the needs of others. The criterion of one’s own needs? This: One has a right to as much of the material as will make that person more mentally, morally, spiritually, and physically fit for the purposes of the kingdom of God. Beyond that is luxury, therefore with no blessing of God on it. The individual will then be dealing with dead wealth, which is “filth.”
I know people, however, who handle their business with as much sacredness as a minister handles the Bible in the pulpit. And they are both sacred callings. This passage is to the point: “And now the LORD God has sent me with his spirit” (Isa 48:16). When I am sent, the Spirit is sent and adds a plus to all I do, say, and am. Any dedicated Christian can say the same, “The Lord God has sent me with his Spirit into business to turn the sordid into the sacred by dedication.” We need nothing more than we need businesspeople who feel that God is sending them and the Holy Spirit into commercial life to lift it to a higher level and to make money for God.
A Roman Catholic businessman wrote to a Protestant businessman and said: “When I think of you, I think of integrity. You have made integrity and your business dealings the same.” The Lord God had sent him and his Spirit into that situation to lift it to the Christian level. A boy was grumbling over cleaning shoes. He saw a carpenter singing at his work and asked him why; the carpenter said, “Nothing exciting in this? Nothing to sing about? But I do it for Jesus; therefore I sing.” Everything is done for Jesus; therefore everything has meaning, the highest meaning.
O Christ, you touch my body and make it a temple of the Spirit; you touch my mind and I think your thoughts after you. Everything is different now for there is a different motive. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My life is a Spirit-touched life; therefore everything has a plus added to it.