Insightful Musings on the New Testament
by
Ray Sparre, NU class of '67

Ray has a wealth of experience as a Husband, Father, Pastor, Missionary, and student of the Word. He believes and practices his faith where the rubber meets the road. You'll find his writings to be practical, insightful, and grounded in a truly Christ-centered world view.

Below are links to a printable daily Bible reading guide which Ray is following, and an archive of all his daily devotional writings for 2010.

|  Daily Reading Guide  |  2010 Devotion Archives  |
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14 Aug 10
            Greetings, dear people.
            We have another hot summer day in the making…they’re predicting the temp to hit 100 degrees.
            We need to be off soon to our commitment at Country Meadows in Woodburn for our 10am Gospel Sing—a kind of casual mini-service for seniors at this Assisted Living Center.  Our scheduled routine is to be there the first and third Sundays of each month.
            We were out of the heat of the valley for a time yesterday, reaching about 5000 feet in elevation.  We joined some senior friends of ours in an attempt to find and pick some wild mountain huckleberries.  Unfortunately, there were hardly any berries…but the scenery was spectacular.  All the activity surrounding that outing, plus some other stuff, prevented my getting off the devotional for yesterday…thus another double today.
            May your day be blessed…even though it may be sweaty.
                        Love, Dad/Ray
 
14 August 2010
Passage: Romans 6:1-14
Focus: “—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”  Romans 6:7.
            Imagine a man who was notorious in your community as a drunkard and womanizer.  He finally dies.  There he is on the floor—cold and motionless. Now, set beside him a bottle of Jack Daniels and say, “Here you go, Mack, have a drink.”  How would he respond?  Nothing.  Now have a beautiful suggestively-dressed model walk past him.  “Hey, Mack, did you see that?”  Nothing.  I’d say that’s pretty good evidence to support Paul’s thesis that “anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”
            To be sure, you will never be absolutely free from sin and its impulses this side of eternity.  However you can reduce actual sin to virtually zero by properly managing your brain and body in submission to Christ and His Holy Spirit.  How?  By understanding that your sin nature has vicariously died with Christ (That’s what the ceremony of Baptism is all about!) and by continually regarding (reckoning, viewing, affirming) yourself as though you were DEAD—DEAD to SIN but ALIVE to GOD.  And if I understand correctly how this works, this very discipline actually releases Divine assistance (the Holy Spirit) that allows you to truly achieve what you could not successfully achieve entirely on your own.
            This passage from verses 11 through 14 is probably the most practical recipe for Christian victory you will ever find.  Let’s read it again.
            “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.  Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.  For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law (religious legalism), but under grace.”
            All I want to say is, “HALELUIA!”    
 
“The believer finds victory only as he starves the old nature and feeds the new.”