Daily Devotional #1,652

The other day we checked the schedule and SpaceX was launching another batch of its Starlink broadband  satellites. Where we live we can just go down to the end of the block and at night we can see the rockets head  into space and sometimes even see the main boosters relight as they come back to earth. The Falcon 9 rockets  were fired off from Vandenberg Space Force Base and so we walked out to the corner and watched another  rocket head into space…and then we walked back to the house. My son turned to me and said “Dad, did you  ever think that you’d be able to just walk outside and on a regular basis watch satellites being launched into  orbit around the earth?” I thought about what it was like as a kid to watch on black and white TVs the rockets  being launched in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. We waited sometimes for months and my  schools would set up TVs so we could see history being made before our eyes. And now, I put on my flip-flops  and watch almost on a weekly basis. But I answered my son saying “I would have never dreamed that anything  like this would be possible for me to see!” But still…I think I take for granted that this stuff will happen and  that maybe it isn’t as special as it once was. Maybe we do that with this new life that have in Christ also. The  Apostle Paul said that all of us were somewhere far away from God before he changed us, cleansed us, made us  holy and made us right with God. He said we came from all kinds of sexual sin, worshiping all sorts of things  other than God, some were thieves or greedy people or drunkards or abusive or cheated people. All of us came  from somewhere…and it wasn’t with God. And maybe we walk through these days on the other side of our  salvation, we take for granted what God has done for us. We need to remember where we were before God got  hold of our lives and we gave ourselves to him. We weren’t always going to heaven, we didn’t have that sure  hope of eternal life with God and often we didn’t know how we were going to make it through each day. So  take time to remember where you have come from…and thank God again for pursuing you and then welcoming  you to his family. Let your heart be filled with gratitude each day for all that God has done and especially how  God took your brokenness and sin…and paid for it all so that you…and I could live with him forever. Never let  that story of You become old. Of where you were and how God has changed your heart. For many it was to take the sword of anger and bitterness and unforgiveness from our hearts and replace it with a heart that could  now be filled with love and joy and patience and peace and forgiveness. Your story is a great story…don’t let it  and the excitement of it be lost to you. And let the remembering of it cause you to overflow with gratitude to  the God who took you as a mess and made you his child…just because he loved you. Here’s our Bible verse  for today…  
1 Corinthians 6:11 NLT Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you  were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.  
Remember I’m praying for you!  
With love, PJ