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Finale Revelation and Imagination Daily Devotional- 14

by David Joynt on June 19, 2021


REVELATION 2:7 | 7 Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. To everyone who
conquers, I will give permission to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.

REVELATION 22:2 | 2 through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Revelation is imbedded with a sense of conflict. Later we will see great battles between God and evil that occupy much of the central section between chapters 6-20. But public and cosmic struggles also have a personal side. “To everyone who conquers” Jesus promises permission to eat from the tree of life, an experience of paradise restored. What the Ephesians had to conquer was their own tendency to substitute hard work and orthodoxy for passionate love. God wants our devotion, first and foremost, and only then our duty. Jesus, through John, reminds us that delight is our destiny and also can be characteristic of our present.

Where are the battle lines in your soul?

 

Tags: soul, battle lines

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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