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The Sixth Day Exercise for August 8, 2015

daily text logoAugust 8, 2015

2 Corinthians 3:17-18

17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (NET)

The Sixth Day Exercise

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One of the great things about martial arts—not that I would know by personal experience—is a person advances by colored belts and degrees. From the beginners white belt through yellow and orange and blue and onward toward black. Once a person becomes a black belt there are degrees, and I suppose once you get through all the degrees there are levels of Ninja-hood to progress through.

This provides something of an apt metaphor for the Life hid with God in Christ (aka the Christian life). We just don’t have a schematic of belts and colors and identifiable degrees. I suspect we don’t because in the Christian life we are not seeking mastery as much as to be mastered by. Still, one of our great needs is to have a sense we are making progress and growing and becoming more than who we were by the grace of God.

I like how today’s Sixth Day text puts it—we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next by the power of the Holy Spirit on the journey of becoming re-created in the image of God– who is Jesus Christ. The Sixth Day Exercise is all about keeping touch with our growth—paying attention to the work of the Spirit in particular ways in our lives.

We’ve been at this awhile now and because it is a work in progress and we are going this way together, in today’s Exercise the last question is a request for your insight as to how we might strengthen the Sixth Day Exercise. Please let me know your thoughts.

In case you are new to the Sixth Day Exercise. In case you are just joining us, each week we share in an exercise called “The Sixth Day Exercise.” As Genesis 1 has it, God created human beings in his own image on the sixth day. Genesis 3 shows us the desecration of the image of God in our race which has only compounded itself across the centuries. It’s why the Image Bearer himself, Jesus Christ, came. His life, death, resurrection and ascension reversed the curse of sin and death and created a pathway whereby our broken race could be made gloriously whole again; restored to the Creator’s intent. Paul put it this way:

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15:22. 

Given we were made on the Sixth Day, it makes sense that we might stop and assess how it’s going on the long journey of being “remade” on each successive sixth day.

DO THE SIXTH DAY EXERCISE HERE.

P.S. Join the Daily Text Fasting Challenge. It’s 40 days, one day per week at a time, over the next 52 weeks. It’s a food only fast. Begins after supper on one day and ends at 4pm the next- 2 meals. Liquids fine. Fasting goes better together. I’ll send you a short weekly encouragement email if you register.– sign up here.

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J.D. Walt writes daily for Seedbed’s Daily Text. He serves as Seedbed’s Sower in Chief. Follow him @jdwalt on Twitter or email him at jd.walt@seedbed.com. Get the Daily Text delivered to your inbox fresh every morning. Subscribe HERE.

All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

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