Rooted in devotion

0:00 So I want to tell you a story about a man named James Pearson. He was not a celebrity. He wasn't a public figure. He was just an ordinary man who found himself in an extraordinary amount of trouble. So he worked for a small manufacturing company. He was a quiet guy, lived a simple life. I won't be out of nowhere. He was accused of being involved in a serious financial crime at his company, a crime that involved a heavy prison sentence if found guilty. So the evidence against him was terrible. Piles upon piles upon piles of evidence stacked against him.

0:34 There were transactions that were traced to his computer, the one he used for work. There was a Co worker that claimed to have seen him in places he wasn't supposed to be. There were documents that had his signature on them. Even the timing of the event seemed to point straight at him. It was kind of situation where even he could not explain how everything seemed to line up against him. There wasn't much he could do. He was as shocked as everybody else. And so if you look at it from the surface, it was an open and shut case for the detectives involved.

1:05 And there's something remarkable happened. A lawyer, someone who didn't know James was not related to him, had no obligation to help him, heard about the case and something didn't sit right with him. So he showed up on bed uninvited, entirely voluntarily. And he's like, OK, I want to help you with this case. So the man did not just file paperwork. He fought for James. He spent weeks going through the company's records, interviewing stuff, digging through time stamps, accessing logs and all the things that they do.

1:38 And he found some inconsistencies, some small cracks in the story, things that James himself would never have known. And slowly, the whole story began to unravel. The witness in quotes had actually lied. The digital evidence was tampered with. Essentially, someone inside the company had set James up, using him as a sort of scapegoat. And after months of, yeah, tears and, I think, court dates, James was finally declared innocence completely free, no prison, no criminal record. His life was handed back to him intact.

2:11 I think there was even some sort of reimbursement for the trauma he experienced. So later, during an interview, someone asked him, what do you feel toward the man who helped you out of this? And James could not answer at first. In fact, he broke down crying, and he said this. I don't think there's anything he could ever ask me to do that I wouldn't do. He gave me my life back. And just like James, when you truly understand what Christ has done for you, what he saved you from, the privileges you now have in him, there's a response, a sense of duty, a desire to reciprocate the love that you've received from Christ.

2:46 And that's what we call devotion, the instinctive God, I love you. God, I want to please you. God, I want to live for you. It rises from a heart that understands or realizes that he'd been rescued from death. Hi, welcome. Welcome back to Rooted with me for me here, timeless biblical truth is taken and brought into everyday life in a way that's square, honest and grounded. And I'm happy to have you here. Like if you can see my face and you see that I'm blushing. I'm not upset, but I'm actually serious.

3:18 I'm a very shy facing. People might disagree, but I am. Anyway, I want to talk to you about something simple today, but deeply foundational devotion. Not just the idea of having a quiet time or doing spiritual routines, but the hard posture behind it. The kind of devotion that flows from truly seeing what God has done for you. Something that's not forced, that's not mechanical, but real. Because when devotion is understood properly, it stops feeling like a Christian obligation and starts feeling like a natural response to love, which it's actually supposed to be.

3:52 And so that leads me to the first thing I want you to remember about devotion. I have 5 of them. 1st is that your devotion to God will never rise higher than your understanding of the gospel. The more clearly you see what God has done for you, the more naturally your heart responds in love, gratitude, and obedience. Many times believers struggle devotion because they're trying to force a response without first seeing the reason for the response. When you understand, you're seeing problem that we weren't just misbehaving, we're spiritually dead.

4:21 We talked about this in your angelion. If you haven't watched it Canyon, just jump back. And when you realize what our choices actually deserved, the cross stops being a distant Bible story. It becomes personal. It becomes witty. Christ, the Son of God, mind you, took our place. His death, burial and resurrection didn't just help us, it recreated us. It gave us a new life, new identity, new desires, new realities, just like Paul talks about in collusions or even efficient to read those books. We see new realities, new possibilities that we have in Christ.

4:58 And it's from that understanding that devotion becomes alive. Because when the gospel becomes clear, devotion becomes more natural. It makes sense. Essentially. R2. One of the biggest barriers to a consistent devotional life is the image we create of what devotion should look like. We imagine it happening at a specific hour, with a specific vibe for a specific amount of time. And when life or when the actual experience does not match the picture that we have in mind, we feel like we've feel good.

5:30 And sometimes, on the days when we actually meet the ideal standard that's in our head, we feel so proud of ourselves that we unconsciously check out spiritually for the rest of the day. It's like, OK, I've prayed this long today. That should carry me. In fact, we might even push it. I had this very, very good devotional experience on Saturday, and because of that, for the next one or two days or even 3 days, I feel like I'm good. Both extremes miss the point. Devotion was never meant to be rigid because God did not put His presence in a rigid temple.

6:02 He put it in US. Paul emphasizes this repeatedly in First Corinthians chapter 3, chapter 6, telling us that God Spirit dwells within us. In the Old Testament, devotion was tied to a place you went up to the temple, you moved towards God, but in Christ, God lives in you. We become mobile temples, meaning devotion isn't tied to a location, posture or schedule. It's tied to relationship. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, liberty and expression, liberty and timing and emotion in rhythm.

6:33 I just have to say this, you're no more spiritual. If we pray at nights, I get it that it is sacrifice if when you're supposed to be sleeping, you choose to pray the sacrifice, but do not know limited to just praying at night. That's an example, and David is a perfect example of this freedom that we're talking about. His devotion didn't always look or feel the same in Psalm 34. It was more about gratitude. In Psalm 51. That's a very popular one. He's broken and repentant in some effect, saying he's confused and he's asking God hard questions.

7:09 In Psalm 23, he's confident and steady, trusting God as a shepherd. And then if someone for still is overwhelmed and is hiding in a cave. So he's the same man, same God, but different seasons, and yet God called him a man after his heart. So David shows us that devotion isn't always about performing at a consistent mood. It's about consistently bringing your hearts, whether happy, exhausted, scared, joyful, discouraged, whatever the case might be, even depressed. There were sometimes when we went to God, depressed.

7:44 You don't need the perfect atmosphere. The perfect emotions are the perfect routine. You simply need honesty and openness, the awareness that God is with you in every moment. When you remove the pressure of a fixed picture, devotion becomes less of a chore and more of a relationship. You won't spend as much time trying to replicate that image in your head. There's this for anything that happens to me. I don't know if it happens to everybody. I think it does where it's like you want to read maybe for school, you have an exam coming up and you want to read and maybe the time is 9:13 PM and you're like, OK, I'm going to read by 9:30 PM.

8:21 And because you were doing something, you got distracted and then the time is now 9:31 PM, you push it, I'm going to read by 9:40 PM. And any of the you end up wasting so much time simply because you want it's at a particular time in a particular way. And we devotion, we do that as well. I didn't have my Bible study in the morning and because of that you struggle to have Bible study for the rest of the day and didn't wait till the next day. That ought not to be the case. The third thing is, after understanding that devotion doesn't always look the same, it's crucial to add this devotion will not always feel the same.

9:01 There will be dry moments. There will be moments when prayer feels empty. There will means when Bible study feels boring, means when your emotions are not cooperating and listen, dryness is normal. Boredom is normal. What's not normal is giving up because of it. Many believers think something is wrong with them when they don't feel spiritual. But in reality, it's often in those situations that devotion becomes real because devotion is not proven in the days where you feel goosebumps. It's proven in this where you feel nothing but you still stay.

9:34 There's some that would do my church God stay. And the thing where you just stay with God for some time, maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour, you just stay with God irrespective of how you feel. Your attention might wander, but you command your affections to stay with God. And this is where you have to grow a spine. There's a diligence that you must build, a willingness to keep showing up even when nothing exciting seems to be happening. A commitment to do the boring things because those boring things are what will shape you.

10:02 Think about. Think about your favorite football club or your favorite show. You don't always feel excited, but you still show up. You stay consistent because you've attached value to it. It should be the same and even more for devotion. And the departure is if you stay long enough, duty eventually becomes delights. What starts as consistency becomes desire. What starts as showing up becomes encountering. Because God rewards those who diligently seek Him. Paul says in Philippians 3 verse one that to write the same things to you is not troublesome for me.

10:34 For you it is safe. Paul understood repetition. He understood that sometimes you need to hear the same truth again and again because repetition builds stability. So keep reading the scriptures. Keep returning to the same reminders. The fourth thing is that one of the biggest hindrances to devotion is condemnation. That feeling of I messed up. Oh, I'm struggling with this one again. I'm too dirty to come before God am I know a hypocrite. Those questions and sometimes it's not even about committing some dramatic scene.

11:08 It can simply be a personal struggle, A weakness, a habit that you're fighting and suddenly the enemy whispers, you see, you're not worthy of devotion. Stop pretending. Why are you lifting up your hands in worship you that you just did that yet that thing yesterday. But this is where you must understand the scripture properly. Even Paul opposed to Paul, the same man who encountered Jesus, planted churches, wrote letters we still read today that Paul described an internal struggle in Romans 7. He said the good I want to do I don't do, and the evil I don't want to do.

11:45 That's what I find myself doing. That's in Romans 7. This is not a baby Christian speaking. That's a spiritual giant being brutally honest about the tension between the flesh and the spirits. I remember when I was in this place myself, I had done something I wasn't supposed to do, and I felt too bad. I felt terribly, but I was, I was thinking how like going to the presence of God the next day. By this time I was already even a worker in my church. And so I'm thinking, how do I go to church like this?

12:16 What if, oh, I'm even asked to do something like I would feel so unworthy. And then I had to go back to scripture. So I had to read this particular portion of scripture. I had to read it to remind myself. I'm saying this to also remind you. Now. Paul shows us that struggle is not a proof of hypocrisy. It's a proof of life. Dead things don't fight, only living things wrestle. And Paul ends Roman 7 not in despair, but in gratitude. He says thanks to God, who delivers me through Christ Jesus our Lord.

12:47 He does not leave us drowning in the struggle, which is what most of us do. OK, you've done something bad and you realize that it's wrong, which is good. It's not a bad thing. It shows that your conscience is healthy, but you then begin to wallow in that guilt and just stay there rather than look to the person who can help you. And in some ways, it's a form of pride. So imagine this. Maybe, for example, in class, there's this girl, maybe there's this guy, he's very smart, you're very smart. You're both gone in for the first position in the class.

13:17 And so because you're competing with this person, maybe there's something that you're struggling with and you don't understand and the other person understands it. Any of you going to go and meet them to ask, Oh, please, I need your help. Our pride will not allow you just feel like I should know this. You feel disappointed or annoyed with yourself when you don't understand something. And so Christ is offering you a way out. But because you feel you have this great sense of self, like I should be better than this.

13:39 I should be doing better. I need to be doing this. You are allowing self condemnation. You are allowing guilt instead of looking to the one who will help you. Paul in Romans 8 verse one says there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ, not less condemnation, not reduced condemnation, no temporary condemnation. There is no condemnation because you are standing in. God is built not on your perfection, but on Christ's perfection. So when you fall, when you feel, when you feel unclean, this is only time to run away from devotion.

14:17 It's a time to run towards it. Devotion is not a reward for good behaviour. Devotion is a place where God heals, God strengthens, God restores, God realigns you. Your means of struggle do not disqualify you did draw you closer to the grace that qualifies you. How that makes sense. And finally, at the end of everything, devotion is about a person. It's not a routine, it's not performances, it's not religious achievements. The object of our devotion must always be Christ. There's a verse that the first time I read, I think I was in my first day in the university then.

14:52 I might have read it before, but I just never took note of it. But when I read it that time, it's came alive. And it's John 3, verse 30. Johnny Baptiziere says he must increase, but I must decrease, and he's talking about Jesus Christ. And that verse has anchored me for the rest of my Christian journey. Christ is the object of our devotion. More of him and less of me. The goal of Bible is not just to know more verses, it's to know Christ. The goal of prayer is not to pray eloquently, it's to communicate with God.

15:24 The goal of worship is not to feel emotional, it's to set your eyes on Jesus. Like everything that you're going to do, journaling, fasting, there are good things, but they are not the goal. They are things that lead you towards the goal, which is intimacy with Christ, knowing Christ, loving him, being conformed to his ways, conform to his character. Everything else, spiritual growth, holiness, purpose flows naturally from intimacy with Christ. So as you walk in devotion, do not forget you're not pursuing a habit, you're pursuing a person, you're pursuing a relationship with a person.

16:03 His name is Jesus Christ. And that is a wrap for today's episode. I hope you liked it. I hope it blessed you. While I was thinking about this, while I was preparing for this, it was really speaking to me a lot has no news. I just kept on thinking like, you know, these things make so much sense and these are things that we might forget. So we just need that regular reminder. And this is me reminding you. I want you to do me a favour and share this with someone. Remind them of these things as well.

16:33 Also read the show, leaving a nice written comments are still disabled for now. Also, for next week's episode, we're actually going to be looking at the book of the Bible. I'll leave it to guess which one it is or look out for that. Turn on your notifications. And yeah, I'll see you next week Friday as well. Stay with it. Bye.