Anyone who owns a car knows that proper alignment is one of the essential elements of vehicle maintenance. Proper alignment is essential for the integrity of your vehicle and, most importantly, for your safety. Anyone who’s ever run up on a curb or nailed a pothole has probably been told they needed a front end alignment as part of the repair. Wheel alignments can be expensive, but the cost of doing nothing is potentially much higher. Bad wheel alignment may not seem like an emergency, it’s important to address this issue promptly.
Bad alignment can cause your car to pull to the left or the right. It adds stress to your suspension system, and overworks your shock absorbers. It can cause difficulty steering, and even lead to loss of control.
What does ANY of this have to do with a spiritual devotion? More than you might think.
Today’s verse is a reminder about the Word of God.
THE WORD OF GOD IS ALIVE AND POWERFUL
The Apostle Paul teaches us that God’s living word is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. This is essentially a process of ALIGNMENT. When we are taught from His God, God uses it to lay the foundation in our lives of the way things ought to be. He teaches us what is good and right.
As we examine our lives in light of His teaching, we see the areas where we are not in alignment with His word. He rebukes us; He shows us THAT we need to change. When we run up on a curb or hit a pothole in life because of our inattention or poor choices, it has an impact. (Hitting a curb always has an impact, in cars and in life.)
Then His living word corrects us, He shows us WHAT and HOW we need to change to let our loves be brought into proper alignment.
That’s because bad alignment can cause your heart to pull too far to the left or the right. Too far to the liberal left and you can find yourself having abandoned any semblance of obedience to the Word of God. Too far to the conservative right and you become legalistic and overly dogmatic. It adds stress to your suspension system, and the things that have been holding you up begin to fail; you feel unsupported inside. Bad alignment overworks your shock absorbers, and day to day situations overwhelm you. When that happens, it can cause difficulty steering; just trying to get through the day is more and more of a major effort. It can even lead to loss of control; where anger or addictions rule (and ruin) your life.
Making the choices to align with God’s word may seem expensive, the “price” of what He calls you to abandon or embrace may appear quite high. But the cost of doing nothing is much higher. His corrections allow us to bring our lives into proper alignment.
Finally, His word leads us in the way we should go so we maintain our alignment.
THE WORD OF GOD IS ALIVE AND POWERFUL
Letting His word work in us and keep us in alignment will be a process of constant REFINEMENT.
He will continue to purify us, making us more and more like Him. He is conforming us into His image. Like a goldsmith refining gold, heating it in a furnace to melt it and bring the impurities to the surface; God uses the fiery furnace of life to manifest our impurities. When the goldsmith sees the impurities, he uses a tool to skim them off and leave the gold purer and therefore more valuable. God skims away our impurities as we are constantly being refined by His word, leaving us purer and more valuable, too.
The goal of the process of our ALIGNMENT and REFINEMENT is an ASSIGNMENT.
When you first begin to engage in a relationship with Christ, you feel completed and joyful. The presence of Christ brings you peace, and inner warmth that is comforting. When that feeling begins to wane, many people wonder what is happening. It is simply God working in you to show you something in your life needs alignment. allow HIs word to teach, rebuke, correct and train you.
Life’s fiery tests come to us all, but allowing Him to use them as moments of refinement removes garbage from inside us and leaves us more pure. It is not a comfortable process. It is, however, most necessary.
The one who has been aligned and refined will begin to experience an inner discomfort, too. They will look at their life and say things like, “I’m reading my Bible and praying; but God seems somehow distant. I don’t feel His closeness like I used to.” If you’ve allowed the alignment and refinement process to teach and purify, the distance you feel is not the result of sin. He has not abandoned you, He has moved away a bit in order for you to seek Him and FOLLOW HIM. He is leading you from where you are into a place you need to be. In other words, He has an ASSIGNMENT for you.
THE WORD OF GOD IS ALIVE AND POWERFUL and He will use it to LEAD you and guide, as well as speaking to you through His Holy Spirit. God’s word says that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. God forms us and fashions us by HIs process of alignment and refinement. Then He assigns us the good works He created us to do. He calls us to walk in them. Walking requires action and motion. Walking requires us to FOLLOW where Christ leads.
As we follow Him, we find great fulfillment, more closeness and intimacy with Christ. The presence, passion and power of God we missed are found in our obedience; we fulfill who we are called to be and do what we were created to do. It would be impossible if we were constantly being pulled to the right or the left, or if every bump in the road caused us to lose control.
Alignment leads to refinement; they open the door to our assignment because we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
All this is only possible because of one core truth …
THE WORD OF GOD IS ALIVE AND POWERFUL
