Consecration

These short devotional have been written by Rev Malcolm Duncan, Elim Minister of Kensington Temple in London. They were written in 2024 to help Elim Ministers and members spend time consecrating their lives to God.

Select a day : 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14   (Day 15 on Mon)

There should be no hunger in the world.

There is enough to share, and enough to sustain every person on this planet. The very fact that millions of people in the world live on less than a dollar a day is indicative of the depth and the spread of sin. So often we think that we just need to be a social service. But the reason people are hungry, naked and thirsty is greed. The reason people in the UK still live beneath the poverty line is we do not re-distribute what we have, we choose to keep rather than share, and we choose to remain silent rather than challenge. Yet the invitation of God is that all might come and eat! All those who are thirsty are invited to come and drink.

There are personal consequences of wrong behaviour and there are collective consequences of sin. Both need to be challenged. In our action and our commitments, we fight injustice and sin, individually, in our communities and in our nation and the world. But we also challenge and wrestle with dark spiritual forces. The United Kingdom and the nations of the world will not be changed just by our action. We are a people who believe that God is still involved in the world, and we both invite people to come and eat and drink whilst at the same time wrestling with God and confronting the spiritual forces in our nation and in our world. We know there is enough. We know God will change the world through us. But we also confront the wrong in the world, the injustice and the spiritual forces that want to steal, kill and destroy.

Yet the presence of sin in the world is only because there is sin in people, and in us. What a travesty it would be to offer hope to the world without having experienced it ourselves? How sad it would be to see the churches we minister to and the communities that we are part of transformed by the Holy Spirit yet not to experience that transformation ourselves? A sin-soaked world needs a Spirit-filled Church! And how catastrophic would it be to see Elim seeking a new season of power, renewal and anointing if we are not, as Elim’s leaders, first willing to get on our knees and cry out to God for His grace at work in us? As Elim’s leaders, we are called to come and drink at the well of God ourselves. It seems to me that the stipulations of Isaiah’s invitation are very simple. The thirsty can come and drink. The penniless can come and eat. Those who know their need are warmly invited and lovingly satisfied. Our Movement is full of people who know their need – but we, as leaders, must also know ours. We need God’s sanctifying, life giving power in our lives. We need His grace to visit us afresh and renew us.

Consecration is too often portrayed as a hard, joyless, legalistic command. Nothing could be further from the truth. God’s call to consecration is a command to experience joy, abundance, freedom, life and satisfaction in life, in ministry and in community. The accuser has duped us. He has convinced many that consecration is a pathway to drudgery and obligation, so they have discarded it. But the call to sanctification is a call to liberty and life! The only way to enjoy the fulness of God is to throw ourselves on the mercy of God and lay our lives at His feet.

For further thought –

Have you allowed yourself to believe that consecration is drudgery? How can you recapture the beautiful picture of a consecrated life being a liberated life? Are there areas of your ministry and life that have become dry and joyless? Take some time to allow God the Holy Spirit to draw you deeper into Christ so that the life of Christ may fill you and flow through you.