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If you are looking to feed and challenge your faith, visit
Crosswalk.com's Spiritual Life Channel at: http://spiritual.crosswalk.com ----------- T O D A Y G O D I S F I R S T Marketplace Meditations by Os Hillman Paneled Houses "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?" - (Haggai 1:4) There is a crisis of grand proportions in the spiritual house of God today. The moral fiber of our world has eroded. Greed, idolatry, and pleasure are the gods of our day. And it is no different in the Body of Christ. The prophet Haggai wrote about a people who had lost concern for the need to build God's house because they were so focused on their own worldly needs. It is a dangerous place to get with God. When our world begins to focus around increasing our pleasure, building bigger and better homes, and failing to make what is important to God important in our own lives, this should be a warning to us. Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. "It is written," He said to them, " 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers' " (Matthew. 21:12-13). Jesus came into Jerusalem and found the businesspeople buying and selling in the temple. As far as they knew, this was an acceptable practice in their day. Their fathers did it, and now they were doing it. It was business as usual. Jesus got angry, turned over the tables, and said that His house was a house of prayer. He found the businesspeople of the day seeing His house as a place for profit, not prayer. They had stepped into a place of complacency that was not acceptable to the Lord. When we begin to blend in with the moral condition of an ungodly world, we begin losing God's perspective on life. It is easy to begin blending in with our culture and to accept what is being modeled by the ungodly. God called us to be salt in a world that needs much salt. "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men" (Mt. 5:13). Each of us must ask ourselves if we have lost our salt. Are we having an impact on our world? Or is our world having an impact on us? Ask God to give you a vision for how you can be salt to your world today. Published and distributed by Crosswalk.com, this daily devotional is written by Os Hillman (os@marketplaceleaders.org). Os is president of Marketplace Leaders, an Atlanta based ministry teaching Biblical principles for career and business success. He offers a FREE newsletter and other resources at: http://www.marketplaceleaders.org Order "TGIF: Today God I s First" - 365 daily meditations to motivate and inspire for $17 for TGIF subscribers. Click here to order: http://www.marketplaceleaders.org/displayroom/skudetail.nhtml?uid=10055 To support Os Hillman & Marketplace Leaders , click: https://nhf.org/applications/donate.htm?FDN=Marketplace%2BLeaders Mail: 3520 Habersham Club Drive, Cumming, Georgia 30041 USA. ____________________SUBSCRIPTION INFO_______________________ * You subscribed to Marketplace Meditations as: < jeff.king@enron.com < * To unsubscribe from this newsletter immediately, click here: < http://link.crosswalk.com/UM/U.ASP?A3.12.261895 < If that link is not clickable, simply copy and paste it into your browser window. * To change your address: unsubscribe your old address and then subscribe your new address. * To subscribe, send an email to: < SUBSCRIBE-marketplace@lists.crosswalk.com < or go to < http://www.crosswalk.com/lists < for a complete list of our newsletters. * Copyright ? 2001 Crosswalk.com, Inc. and its Content Providers. All rights reserved. ____________________________________________________________
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