Thursday after Exaudi
Posted on June 2, 2022 by under
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 (NKJV)
5:1 For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2 For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, 3 if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. 4 For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.
6 So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. 7 For we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
9 Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
Devotion
Our earthly bodies wear out and grow old. As God told Adam after he had sinned, we are dust, and to dust we shall return (see Gen. 3:19). Isaiah describes it this way: “We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Is. 64:6). In this life we groan, not just because our bodies grow old and things hurt, but because we are yet inclined to sin and evil; we are unable to serve our God in righteousness and true holiness. As believers in Christ Jesus, we look forward to the day when we put off this body infected by sin, and are clothed with our heavenly bodies, made to live forever in holiness as a part of God’s eternal kingdom.
While we do not necessarily long for death and the putting off of our old bodies, we do long for life and the changing of our vile and sinful bodies into glorious and heavenly bodies, like unto our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi: “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).
Prayer: Almighty, Everlasting God, make us to have always a devout will toward Thee, and to serve Thy Majesty with a pure heart; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
