Devotion
Fight the Good Fight
Chipo Biti
As Christian, you should also realize that you have been sent to this earth to be a missionary. There are many lives out there that have not received Christ and the fate of their eternity is very dim. God has commissioned every single one of us to preach the gospel wholeheartedly as if the world will end tomorrow. We are to look at the world through eyes of compassion and treat the unbelievers as lost, never relenting in our mission to make sure that as many people receive salvation as possible. There is a heaven to gain and a hell to spurn. We need to let the love in our hearts compel us to pray for and preach to every single person on the earth who is yet to receive Christ.
That is the primary call upon our lives. To proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all who can hear. To live as children of God, expressing our authority of sons of God in order to glorify the name of God. The talents and skills that we have been blessed with will help us reach out to different people in different areas, but what matters the most is that we are using the gift of salvation that we have received to reach out to other souls out there who happen to be lost.
The apostle Paul was one of the most passionate messengers of the gospel in Christian History. He sacrificed as many life luxuries as he could to ensure that as many people as possible got to hear the good news of salvation. He was always travelling. He was beaten, jailed, mocked, and betrayed but none of those obstacles every stopped him from proclaiming the gospel. He faced death on many occasions but he refused to be shaken. He experienced shipwrecks, malnourishment, homelessness, embarrassment, but he remained relentless when it came to the things of God.
He encouraged all the believers he came across and he prayed for all of the churches too. By the time his death was nearing, he confidently said that he had fought the good fight of faith - and this was true. He remained in the faith, unwavering. Nothing could shake him from his faith in God.
Paul is responsible for the majority of the epistles in the New Testament. His heart was set on making sure that as many people received salvation as possible. That is where he drew his joy from.
Prayer
We need to follow the same example as the apostle Paul. Our hearts should be set on Christ first before we consider anything else. Because at the end of the day, the work that we do for God is what will count the most.
Devotion
Abraham is Father of All
Frances Taylor
There are questions in every age about the importance of the Old Testament for Christians. Abraham is considered to be the Father of Faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims. We forget that it was Abraham who believed in the doctrine of only one God. It is through him and his descendants that this tradition comes down to us. Another fact that we can overlook is that Jesus was Jewish. He was born a Jew, lived as a Jew, died, rose and ascended into heaven as a Jew. Because we believe that he was the Messiah, the Christ, and we follow him, we are called Christian. Without the Old Testament, we wouldn't understand the promise of salvation; we wouldn't understand why it was important for Jesus to be of the family of King David. We would not understand his teaching either, because Jesus quoted from Scripture – the Old Testament – frequently. He told us that he came to fulfill the Scriptures, not to abolish them. In the same way, we can ...
