Devotional - week of September 7, 2008

NO LONGER LIKE A SILLY DOVE

"Ephraim also is like a silly dove, without sense—They call to Egypt, They go to Assyria.” Hosea 7:11

This passage presents Israel as a silly dove that is looking for help and hope without intelligent direction.

All Christians grieve when one of their fellow believers turns to some perverted form of Christianity or to a non-Christian movement. This is nothing new in the Kingdom of God. It has been happening since biblical times. Ephesians 4:14 expresses conditions like this in believers of that day. The verse says:

… that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting …

Ephesians 4:11-13 reveals God’s method of dealing with the weakness in a person that causes him to be so unstable.

The answer begins with God’s gift of pastors that are teachers equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry. The truth that equips all believers for ministry is the life of grace. People are mentally, emotionally and spiritually stabilized when they are taught how to serve in the Kingdom of God by living out their union with Christ.

A church of members who are equipped for ministry by a teaching pastor and who are serving God out of their union with Christ will be edified. It will be built up mentally, emotionally and spiritually (Ephesians 4:12).

Ephesians 4:13 says that the result of Christian service through God’s grace into a maturing church will “… come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”

The born again but immature members of such a church will no longer be like the silly dove that goes from one place to another looking for meaning in life (Ephesians 4:14).