Langdon's Devotional

Colossians 4:5-6 – “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious . . . so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” Witnessing to others is rarely as simple as telling someone that God exists and them accepting Him into their heart where they stand. Minds are not easily changed, and hearts are not easily softened. Not if we try to do it ourselves, at least. Those things can only happen through God’s amazing power – so how can we help allow that to happen? I think breaking this verse down could help to understand how we can put ourselves in a position for God to work through us. 1. Be wise. (v. 5) I’m sure it doesn’t need to be said that having a solid understanding of the Gospel is crucial to witnessing to others. Even so, walking in wisdom in this context means a lot more than just being knowledgeable of scripture. Wisdom is not just intelligence – it’s good judgement as well. It is so important that we use good jud...

James 2:26 – “For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” Lukewarm Christianity can be so much more dangerous than those that recognize themselves as open opposition to the word of God. Treating salvation as an excuse to live comfortably in sin is even more treacherous than fully acknowledging Christianity in condemnation. In the second case, there is at least some kind of admission of what is required to truly be a follower of Christ. While we should be conscious of how lovingly we treat those that appear to be lukewarm, we should also be very cautious about not falling into the same pitfalls – this is easier to do than we may assume. Don’t get it twisted – works are not what get us into Heaven. There is no debating that. However, working to expand God’s kingdom should instead be proof of our salvation. When we are truly followers of Christ, we desire to do God’s work. When we find ourselves in a lukewarm position where we question whether...

Galatians 6:9 – “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” We are hard-wired to be discouraged by failure, even when we know that a failure is a direct result of us doing the right thing. A good example is the “nice guys finish last” mentality that a lot of young men and women adopt, whether it be conscious or subconscious. Instead of allowing our moral guidelines to influence our outcome, we tend to let our outcome influence our moral guidelines. If being “good” truly makes us finish last, then that’s not a race we should want to win. This verse is encouraging to me because it recenters me. Being who I want to be is never accomplished through how I want to do it. And we hardly ever expect that. Why should we be surprised that doing good becomes tiring? If we didn’t grow weary doing what God instructs us, then we wouldn’t have to be instructed to do it in the first place. But we need not wonder whether it pays off to do good and fo...

Ephesians 6:18 (NIV) – “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” Let’s be clear: our Lord is not a “clockwork God”. He is very involved with our lives, and not only that, but He cares deeply about them. The Holy Spirit is meant to be active in our lives, especially within our prayer lives. It follows that there are no things that are too small (and especially not too big) to be brought forth in prayer. God wants to hear from us, and He wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to work through us, through prayer . At the same time, this is how we are meant to stay involved in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayer is a blessing because it gives us a way to impact the lives of fellow believers. When prayer is frequent and habitual within the church is when God’s power is the most noticeable to us. A gift that powerful is too special for us to take for gran...

1 Corinthians 13:12 – “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.” I’m a planner. I like to have a baseline for every big situation or event that I can mentally prepare for. Things can go differently, and that’s usually okay with me, but I need to at least rehearse things in my mind before they happen, so that I have something to compare to reality. A lot of people are the same way, and it leads to us feeling as though what we rehearse in our minds is what reality should be like in the future. Yet, who are we to dictate what the future should hold? We are as temporary as anything or anyone in our lives that has been corrupted by sin (which is to say, everything but God ). As long as we are living in that sinful world, we have no definite view of what’s ahead of us – only what’s behind. Spending too much time trying to look dimly into or past a mirror can rob us of current opportunities, leavin...