{"id":1165,"date":"2012-05-25T00:33:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T04:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/?p=1165"},"modified":"2012-05-24T22:37:32","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T02:37:32","slug":"may-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/?p=1165","title":{"rendered":"May 25"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Meditations <\/em><\/strong>on <strong>2 Corinthians 8:5, \u201cA<\/strong>nd not <em>only<\/em> as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and <em>then<\/em> to us by the will of God.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Starving Christians in Judea needed money to survive and Paul was encouraging the Corinthian saints in both the first and second letters to step up and help. While doing so he uses the Macedonian Christians as an example and so we have this very revealing statement about the Macedonian\u2019s core value, \u201cthey first gave themselves to the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is at the heart of who we are and all we ever will become. If we do not begin with self-surrender to God nothing else will matter. We can throw money at problems, we can give ourselves wholly to any and all earthly relationships, we can achieve all kinds of accolades; but without surrendering to God what will they mean?<\/p>\n<p>It is such a simple statement, \u201cthey first gave themselves to the Lord.\u201d But meditate on all it encompasses and let it describe you today. &#8211; Joe<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meditations on 2 Corinthians 8:5, \u201cAnd not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God.\u201d Starving Christians in Judea needed money to survive and Paul was encouraging the Corinthian saints in both the first and second letters to step up and help. While doing so he uses the Macedonian Christians as an example and so we&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/?p=1165\" class=\"read_link\"><span>Keep Reading<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middleburg-meditations"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1165"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1167,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1165\/revisions\/1167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.middleburgchristians.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}