Daily Devotional For Sunday, January 12, 2025
Well, we are well off into the New Year. Some of you may have made some New Year’s Resolutions such to lose weight, get in shape through exercise or a gym membership or get more sleep. All of these are good and great, but did you make any spiritual New Year’s Resolutions such as have a daily quiet time, pray more, memorize Scripture, join your church, attend worship faithfully or serve somewhere in your church or tithe?
Look at James 2:14-17:
“What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? (15) Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, (16) and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? (17) So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless” (NLT).
I would encourage you in 2025 to be more public about your faith in Christ. We are called to be a witness for Christ. No one can tell your story of your faith in Christ better than you can. No one. If you don’t tell your story, it will not be told. The good news is you do not have to be eloquent or have great ability. All you have to do is to be available and obedient. We talk some about this in worship in the sermon from The Gospel of John. John uses some judicial terms to express this and one of them is the word “witness.” In a court of law, a witness does not have to have a Ph.D, nor be even literate. This means they may not even be able to read or write, but they can talk. All they are asked to do is tell what they saw and heard. That’s it. Nothing else is required but for the witness to tell the truth. The witness is not the lawyer – either defending the one on trial or the prosecutor accusing the one on trial.
Sometimes Christians will say, “I don’t need to get involved in the public square. I just trust the Lord and pray.” While I’m absolutely an advocate for prayer, I think this mindset is biblically ill-informed and dangerous. This same response could be used to say, “I’m going to trust God and pray for food to eat.” But if you sit in your house, totally disengaged from what is necessary for your personal nutrition, you’ll starve to death. You still have to plant a garden and tend it, or go to the grocery store for food and prepare it. And if you take this same approach spiritually, you could miss the Kingdom of God. “I’m going to sit in my house, and if God wants me to be saved, He’ll save me.” No, He’s given you the opportunity and the choice. You can choose His Kingdom. You can do the things He’s asked you to and boldly be a light—or you can stand apart from it. As we begin this new year, let’s choose to trust God in new ways, follow Him courageously, and be willing to put our faith into action.
Could we lose our lives for living out our faith? Yes, it is possible but most of the time we do not lose our lives because we refuse to live out our faith; instead we lose our witness. There are always risks in sharing our faith. Our role is not to convince nor convict people of their sin so that they repent. Our role is to communicate to others the difference Jesus Christ has made and continues to make our lives. Sometimes our actions will speak louder words than our actual words:
“Some come with track marks from years of drug abuse. Others come with children in tow. Some are struggling through a bad week. Others, a bad decade. All bring their dirty laundry. They wash it and dry it for free at church-run laundry services throughout the United States. “Christ said we should feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and I think those clothes should be clean,” said Catherine Ambos, a volunteer at one such ministry in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Churches have been washing clothes across the US since at least 1997, when a minister at First United Methodist Church of Arlington, Texas, started doing a circuit around the city’s coin-operated laundries, passing out change. There may well have been others before this. Today, these ministries exist across the country, run by churches of all traditions and sizes.
Belmont Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, has one of the older laundromat ministries still running. The church started helping people clean their clothes in 2010, when pastor Greg Anderson heard through another ministry that poor people in homeless shelters and long-term-stay motels would regularly throw away their clothes.
Anderson said, “It was just easier to go and get new clothes at a clothing-center type of ministry as opposed to being able to launder them.” The church decided to install five washers and dryers in a building on its property and open a laundromat. Today, volunteers estimate that they save people upwards of $25,000 per year. This is money they didn’t have, or if they did, they could now spend on food, gas, or medicine.
19.25 million US households are without a washing machine. 38% of US households earn less than $50,000 per year” (Source: “The Gospel According to Clean Laundry,” Christianity Today Magazine (July/Aug, 2022), pp. 23-24).
Questions To Consider
- Would you say that you freely share your faith with unbelievers and lost people? Why or why not?
- A witness has only one charge – tell the truth of what they have seen and heard. That’s all. The Great Commission was not just given to the disciples or only to ministers today, but to all believers. As a Christ follower you go places and see people your ministers/pastors will never see or encounter. Why do you think many Christians feel it is the pastor’s or their minister’s responsibility only to share the Christian faith?
- What do you think about the story above of “clean laundry” and why? Is it possible that helping people clean their laundry might also help them get their souls cleaned? Why or why not?
- What does James 2:14-17 say to you about your walk with Christ and why?
Scripture To Meditate On: Titus 1:15-16, “Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted. (16) Such people claim they know God, but they deny Him by the way they live. They are detestable and disobedient, worthless for doing anything good” (NLT).
Prayer To Pray: “Heavenly Father, thank You for the promise of a new year. Prepare my heart and mind to see the opportunities You present to me and help me to respond in obedience. I intend to boldly share Your Truth and stand up for Your principles everywhere I go. Help me not to turn a “blind eye” to those in need. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
I love you Southside!--Pastor Kelly