Good morning champions.
As you read this I will be travelling back to the UK after a very successful ministry trip in New York, Saw God move powerfully and touch many lives over the six day in Kingston and Syracuse. Good times.
Here’s some breakfast for you
Psalm 84: 5-7 (NKJV)
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. 6 As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools 7 They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.
I have been thinking of these verses a lot recently and have been considering how pilgrimage effects many areas of our lives, also how it is not a bad thing but more often than not a God designed thing. Here’s some thoughts for you.
· What is it to pilgrimage? The word pilgrimage means to journey so when God speaks of pilgrimage in this psalm he is saying blessed is the person who sets His heart on journeying and that is so true especially when it comes to our walk with God, blessed (daily) is the person who sets His heart on Journeying with the Lord.
· Other faiths in the world have a spiritual pilgrimage mentality but there’s are always to physical places and landmarks like Mecca and Lourdes it is not to be that way for us, our pilgrimage is to a person Jesus and ever towards a deeper relationship with Him.
· Christianity is not meant to be something or somewhere you totally arrive at instantly, in one way yes in the fact that when we believe we receive from God everything we are going to get (of His fullness we have received, John 1:16) but in another way no because we are called to spend the rest of our days (till we appear before him in Zion) journeying into everything he has given us, to understanding and embracing all that He has done and given.
· God wants us to “keep on movin” not to be parked vehicles but ever moving ones ever hungry to like Abraham walk into the promises of God for our lives.
· Our journey does not end when we reach a historical landmark if it did how sad would that be you would be left thinking what next, no God commits to walk with us each and every day on this pilgrimage that he has called us too and every day gets better and better.
· It’s when we set our hearts to journey with the Lord that we learn all that we need to and He is revealed to us so we know him closer and more intimately as the miles of our days pass by.
Think about the 2 disciples that walked with the freshly risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24), for some reason Jesus had not allowed them to recognize him but appeared as someone they did not know, but as they walked (journeyed) with him he made the mysteries of the scripture easily understood and then it was on the journey that He revealed Himself to them. As we set our hearts to journey with the Lord he helps us to daily understand His mysteries and daily reveals himself to us as he did to them and causes our hearts to burn within us as there did in them.
Today take another great step on this great pilgrimage he has called you to walk, don’t live like you have arrived keep on moving ever forwards into new things with him.
Bless you
Andy
A devotional by Pastor Andy Elmes to inspire you with a godly thought to start your day well. God’s word is indeed the breakfast of champions.
Great Big Life
Empowering People
Andy Elmes
Pastor & Leadership Coach
UK Office:
PO BOX 240
Southsea
PO2 7YE.
+ 44 (0) 2392 342592
