Build Yourselves Up
The Book of Jude is only one chapter long, but is still a very powerful book. It is written to those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ. If you are a Christ-follower, that includes you!! So if you have a letter in the Bible written specifically to you, I think it follows that you should pay attention to what it says.
One portion stood out to me. Verse 20: "But you dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit." Sometimes the phase "build yourself up" has a negative connotation, like being boastful, making your accomplishments seem bigger and better than they are, or inflating your importance. But in the sense it is written here, building yourself up is a good thing; in fact it's a necessary thing. The Amplified Version reads this way. "But you, beloved, build yourselves up (founded) on your most holy faith -- make progress, rise like an edifice higher and higher -- praying in the Holy Spirit."
We are to build ourselves up in our faith. How do we do that? Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. Rom. 10:17. We can hear the Word of God spoken by pastors and teachers, but we also need to hear it for ourselves through reading and study. When you study on your own and discover things you didn't know before, they become yours. It's like uncovering buried treasure. The Lord is faithful to open his word to you when you take time to read and study the letter he has left for us.
Then we are to pray in the Holy Spirit. How do we do that? Sometimes we come before the Lord with specific needs and requests and we articulate them. There are other times when we feel the weight of a need but we don't know how to pray. We can ask the Lord to show us how to pray so that we are praying with his mind and his will. Sometimes we might not be able to find the words to pray and we will just groan. Groaning can be praying!! Rom. 8:26 says "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express."
Another way to pray in the Holy Spirit is to pray with our prayer language. Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 14:14-15: "If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind." I can remember specific times when I did not know the words to express the need and burden that I felt, and I began to let the Spirit pray through me with words I did not understand and I could feel that burden being expressed to the Lord.
One such time was then our son, Mark, was in a car accident while he was on duty as a sheriff's deputy. He had been T-boned by another car on icy roads and suffered a closed head injury. My husband and I were at a prayer breakfast when we received word that he was being airlifted to a hospital in Seattle. "Airlifted' is never a word a mom wants to hear about her son. We jumped into our car and drove to the hospital, praying in the Spirit all the way there. I could find no other way to pray. People all over were praying for him and the Lord was merciful and spared Mark's life. He was in the hospital for weeks and had no short term memory. The days wore on and we all kept praying. I will never forget the conference the hospital had with his family, employer and his doctors after weeks of hospitalization. Mark came walking down the hall with a cup of coffee in his hand and from the look in his eyes I knew "Mark was back." During the meeting his head doctor said these words. (I wrote them down as she spoke.) "We have not done this. Whoever you want to give thanks to, give thanks."
It's an okay thing to do. Go build yourself up.
Tomorrows Bible Reading - Job 28, Zechariah 4-5, Revelation 1-2
God is good all the time,
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