Devotional for April 28

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13).

 

Most of us know St. Augustine, for his famous quote, “You have made and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it reposes in You.”  The book that contains this quote, The Confessions, contains many other prayers and conversations with God from arguably the most influential person of the Christian church after the Apostle Paul.

 

While recently reading the book, I came across the following prayer, “Give what you command, and then command whatever you will.”  This brief prayer of Augustine recognizes God’s right to command, but that with the command, He gives the grace to carry out the command. Otherwise, God would be a tyrant, demanding what we cannot perform.

 

There are many commands in the New Testament that seem quite difficult if not humanly impossible to obey; commands calling us to forgive our enemies, to reject lust and anger, to avoid judging, to turn the other check (Sermon on the Mount).  There are commands to “rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks” (I Thess. 5:16-18), and “Do all things without complaining and arguing” (Phil 2:14).

  

Anyone who has endeavored to practice these commands will understand their difficulty.  But with Augustine’s reasoning, every command becomes promise.  It points us to what we can become and will become if we pray for and appropriate the grace of God in our lives.  God does not command what He will not give.

  

When God commands us to perform any particular task, i.e., to preach the gospel, or to leave our home and go abroad in His service, we have the assurance that God will give the grace and strength to perform His will (command).  Instead of seeing God’s commands as impossible duties, Augustine’s statement teaches us to view them as the promise of our possibilities.  If God gives what he commands (and He will), then let Him command whatever He will.  

Devotional for April 21

“…He (Jehoram) passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David…”

(II Chronicles 21:20-NIV).

 

Jehoram was the son of Jehoshaphat and the grandson of Asa.  Both father and grandfather had been godly kings of Judah.  Jehoram’s youth was filled with good example, and when his father died he was given the kingdom.

 

With a godly heritage and the kingdom in his hands by age 32, Jehoram was in an excellent position to become a great blessing to Judah.  He became a terrible curse. 

 

He trashed his heritage and scorned his opportunities. Because of a sinful sense of insecurity, his first recorded act as the king was to execute all of his brothers and some leading princes of Judah.  When he made Ahab’s daughter his wife, he continued the downward plunge.  He finally hit the bottom by promoting pagan religion in the high places and compelling his subjects to engage in immorality.

 

That’s when he received a letter from a prophet by the name of Elijah.  It definitely was not an encouraging one.  Jehoram would suffer the loss of possessions, wives, children, and his own health. 

 

Two years later Elijah’s prophecy was fulfilled.  The enemies of Judah had invaded the land and had carried off Jehoram’s possessions and family. He was stricken with a painful bowel disease and by the age of 40 he was dead.  The Bible says that he died “to no one’s regret” (NIV).

 

Which brings me to my point.  If we live our life and die “to no one’s regret” it will be a sure indication that we have much to regret about our life.  If there are many people who regret and grieve our passing, we have probably lived a life that warrants few regrets.

 

What kind of life are you living? Will your family and other people have a reason to regret your passing?  Today, tomorrow, and the day after, you’ll be settling that question.

Devotional for April 14

“Not everyone who says…but he who does” (Matthew 7:21).

 

Closing the gap between our talk and our walk can be one of our greatest challenges.  Words come easy; actions take effort. The ethical behavior described in the Sermon on the Mount has been praised by many and lived by few. This is why Jesus called it the strait gate and the narrow way that not many will find (7:14). 

 

Closing this gap between talk and walk is of great importance for both the Christian and the observing world.  Without walking the talk, Jesus said no man shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Without walking the talk, the world will not enter the kingdom either, because they will not believe the message.

 

Let’s not misunderstand, both walk and talk are important. They are complementary. The walk is the demonstration needed for talk to be believed. The talk is the explanation of the “how” and “why” of the walk.

 

The talk without the walk however is detrimental. Lips and life must testify to the same thing. There is the familiar story of a psychiatrist who is assigned to a new wing in a psychiatric hospital. While making his rounds he comes to a room with two men in their beds.  The first man irritates the psychiatrist with his behavior so the doctor says, “Excuse me, just who do you think you are?” The patient replies, “Napoleon.” The psychiatrist is intrigued, so he probes deeper. “That’s very interesting, and who told you that you are Napoleon.”  He replies, “God told me.”  At this point, the man sitting in the bed next to him says, “I most certainly did not!”

 

Anyone can claim to be anything they want, but reality is not created by talk but by actions. A woman once told me, as I approach the door to a psychiatric hospital that she was “Jesus”.  I was perplexed as to how to respond to her.  She was clearly the wrong gender, was living a bit late in history, and made her home in an institution for the mentally handicapped. Her lips were saying one thing, and her life quite another and she had an excuse for such a disparity. 

 

The mentally competent have no excuse for such a gap between the talk and the walk. While I was flying in the seat next to a doctor’s wife several years ago, she told me in grieving tones how her husband was having an affair with a nurse. She explained the devastation felt by her teenage children.  He had preached one thing to them all his life, and now he was living something radically different.  

 

His life was a sad and extreme example of how shameful we all look when we divorce our words from our actions.  If we want to save ourselves and those who hear us, our talk and our walk must be joined in an enduring union.

Devotional for April 7

“Giving all diligence, add to your faith….temperance [self-control]“ (II Peter 1:5-6).

 When we add self-control to our faith it goes without saying that every area of our life will improve.  Self-control is the path to a meaningful, joyful and useful life.  With self-control the spiritual life will flourish, health will improve, work will be satisfactory, abilities will be maximized, finances will be kept in order, relationships will be pure, the temper will be tamed, words will be moderated, priorities will be right, and life will be balanced.

 

Of first importance in this list is our spiritual life which thrives when we order our daily schedule in such a way as to make time to seek God in solitude with meditation and prayer. But this is where the average Christian fails. And when failure happens here, potential failure arises from every direction. When Samuel Logan Brengle was once asked what his greatest temptation was, he answered, “To start my day without God, and when I yield to this temptation, I become vulnerable to ten thousand additional temptations.”

 

All that stands between many sincere Christians and a dynamic spiritual life is a daily dose of self-discipline. And really, this is not an insurmountable obstacle.  The attitude must be taken that whatever else happens in a day, the believer will spend time in the secret place with the Lord.  If a meal needs to be missed, a little sleep denied, or a fond activity passed up, one will be more than amply rewarded for the deprivation.

 

Do I take the approach that “I have many important things to do today, and if I have the time, I will work the Lord in.”  Or do I say, “I have one important thing to do today—to seek the Lord, and if I am diligent in this matter, then I know everything else of importance will follow in its course.” This is the path that Christ prescribed for us (Matthew 6:33).

 

When Bill Hybels wrote the book, Too Busy Not To Pray, he had this disciplined and focused approach in mind.  Martin Luther was in the habit of saying that he had so much to do that he must spend extra time in prayer.  Most of us, on the other hand, find it easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we are so busy working for the Lord that we don’t have the time to be with the Lord.  This is a mistake of grand proportion.  We never are working better for Him then when we are daily disciplining ourselves to be with Him.

Devotional for March 31

“Giving all diligence, add to your faith….temperance [self-control]“ (II Peter 1:5-6).

The Christian life is not about finding all the grace we need at the beginning and then cruising from there to the finish line. Peter reminds us that key additions are to be made along the way. It is God’s plan that our character be marked by growth and progress. To our initial faith, the virtues of knowledge, patience, kindness, charity, and self-control are to be constantly added.

The Christian is in constant danger of relaxing and regressing. This is why we are called to diligence. We may lose our first love instead of adding to it. We may lapse into a state of self-indulgence rather than developing self-control.

The cure for this kind of subtraction is constant addition. No one stays in a state of neutrality in regards to Christian character. We are going forward, or we are going backward. We are progressing, or we are regressing. We are adding, or we are subtracting.

While rising this morning, I became aware that I stand in need of more self-control. These words came clearly to mind, “Add to your faith…self-control”. It is time for me to rise up and meet the challenge of what St. Paul described as “keeping under my body and bringing it into subjection” (I Corinthians 9:27). Adding more self-control to my life will look something like this.

• I will talk less and listen more.
• I will read less and meditate more.
• I will eat less and fast more.
• I will surf the web less and exercise more.
• I will work less and pray more.

What would the addition of more self-control look like in your life?

Devotional for March 24

“And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35).

He [Jesus] knew should he wait till the sun rises and the day’s hectic demands settle in, time for meditation and prayer would be gone. To beat the press, he must beat the sunrise.  In rising early, he had the unhurried time needed for prayer. In seeking solitude, he had the undistracted context.

The practice of solitude and the discipline of properly arranging one’s schedule is absolutely necessary for the devotional life to survive and thrive. Solitude (as we are using the word) is the voluntary and temporary withdraw from the company of others to pursue spiritual fellowship with the Lord.

Moses, the leading character of the Old Testament, was a man given to solitude. The Apostle Paul, the leading character of the New Testament, practiced solitude.  Jesus Christ, God’s Son and our Savior, the central figure of both testaments, sought solitude.

And yet you and I presume to get by without it?  What folly.  Solitude is the foundational spiritual discipline of the earnest Christian life. In solitude we “enter into our closet and shut the door” to the influences of society and company that distract our inward focus on the Lord.  Solitude facilitates the other important Christian disciplines like prayerful and scriptural meditation which, if left undone, impede the flow of grace into the believer’s life. 

Solitude, with its accompanying silence, can impart the most important kinds of knowledge. “Be still and know that I am God.”  Solitude removes the intoxicating influence of our noisy world while clarifying and sobering our thinking.  Here we discover life-changing truth concerning God, ourselves, the meaning of life and personal purpose.  This is knowledge not found at the university or even in theology classes. That kind is theoretical, this is experiential.

To understand the importance of solitude, consider the aforementioned Moses and Paul.  It was alone on a mountaintop that the moral law was revealed to Moses.  In the seclusion of a desert, Paul came to understand the “gospel” he later preached to the Gentile world.  Both the law and the gospel were revealed in solitude.

It is indisputable that there are blessings for you and me that are unavailable unless we too get away from the crowds to be alone with the Lord.  If we are to know Him, enjoy His presence, receive His grace, be filled with the knowledge of His will, and experience the power of His Spirit, then we must be no stranger to solitude. 

March 17

“That night the King could not sleep…” (Esther 6:1) 

Imagine that!  The pivotal point in the high drama of this book happens through a rather insignificant event.  A king who has a night of insomnia and is suffering from boredom asks for the “book of remembrance” to be brought to him, where he reads that Mordecai had never been amply rewarded for engaging in a little espionage for the King.  This is the beginning of the end for Haman. He goes nowhere but down from this point, while Mordecai and the Jews go nowhere but up.  What a reversal of events.

In Israel’s previous history, God had used mighty miracles to rescue his people. In the story of Esther, God utilized ordinary events to deliver on His promises:  The king holds a banquet; his wife chooses not to obey; a new queen is chosen; a Jew refuses to bow down to a Gentile; an evil man conspires to commit genocide; a king spends a sleepless night reading; a Jew is rewarded for reporting a conspiracy; and on and on it goes. 

Nothing supernatural here; no plagues nor parting of the Red Sea, just the superintending hand of God guiding in the common-place affairs of men.  In the end, Haman is hanging on his own gallows, and Mordecai replaces him in a key position of the Persian government. The Jews are saved and avenged of their adversaries. All is well that ends well.

It would be good that we consider how God has guided our lives. What influences brought us to the Lord? How is it that we met and married our spouse? What providence led us to our current job? How and why are we at this place at this time?

What soon becomes obvious is that a series of ordinary events, which may have seemed insignificant at the time, have come together to create the tapestry of our lives. Seldom does God need to work great miracles to keep His promises and accomplish His purposes.

The assurance we receive while reading the book of Esther is that God exists behind the scenes, orchestrating the details of our life.  Most of this orchestration is through the common-place events of life, while only occasionally the supernatural is summoned.  If we are ready to seek and submit to His will, He will get His will done in our lives.

And His will is where our salvation and greatest blessings lie.

    

Devotional for March 10

“Who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14b). 

 

Esther had no idea when she was chosen to be queen what God had in mind for her. Perhaps she just thought it was about being a famous woman, pleasing the king, living in the palace, and being surrounded with maids and pleasures.

 

While this position brought her blessings and honor, it also placed her in a position of challenging opportunity laced with danger. Due to Haman’s evil conspiracy, she found herself in double jeopardy. Mordecai asked her to request an uninvited audience with the king which was a death sentence for most in ancient days. She would also need to reveal her ethnicity if she were to intercede for her people, and there was already a law on the books calling for the death her kind.

God thrust her into what would become the defining moment of her life.  Would she risk herself for the good of all the Jews, or would she save herself and let them fall to their fate? Would she decide in favor of self preservation or would she risk all for the greater good of God’s people?

We have the book of Esther in our Bible’s today because of the decision she made. It is highly improbable that we would have ever heard from this woman unless she had chosen to fast and pray, and then make a straight path for the king’s throne with the attitude, “If I perish, I perish!”  The annual celebration of Purim by the Jews is the continual reminder that God honored her decision.

Living and laboring for God is not always risk free or calculable. It wasn’t for Esther, and it won’t be for us. Some, like the Apostle Peter, in answer to prayer are delivered and live, while others, like James the brother of John die (see Acts 12:1-7).  The moment we try to live life risk free, all guaranteed and secure, is the moment that God can no longer use us.

God’s purpose for us is that we would courageously face the challenges of our time and place. God is not asking us to behave with presumptive folly. However, when choosing His life and the interests of His kingdom, we will need to risk, not run.

Like Esther, if life has pressed us into making a momentous decision, let’s fast and pray, while courage rises, and then let’s go do the honorable thing. This is what God had in mind, when He had us in mind.

Devotional for March 3

“But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s commandment…” (Esther 1:11) 

The year is 468 BC and the Jews are in exile in Persia. The king of Persia calls a great banquet. Queen Vashti rebuffs the king by refusing to unveil her beauty. Esther is chosen out of many prospects to replace Vashti. The King does not know she is Jewish. The enemy Haman conspires to commit genocide against the Jews. He convinces the King that the Jews are enemies of the state. To save her people, Esther reveals her ethnicity to the King and pleads for mercy. The King is outraged at Haman and his neck is stretched on the very gallows that he has constructed for Esther’s cousin Mordecai. The Jews are saved and the feast of Purim is celebrated annually by Jews to this day in commemoration of their great deliverance.

When the godless king called a banquet and when his queen refused to honor his request, no Jew in that day could possibly have imagined that a series of events were about to be triggered that God would employ to save His people. 

None of us can quite conceive what God is conspiring to bring about in our lives either.  One thing we know, he is planning for our salvation and ultimate good, and this in spite of Satan’s hellish rage and devious plans.

It does seem strange that the book of Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention the name of God even once. But when reading it, one discovers that it is not necessary seeing that the Providence of God is stamped on every page.

 

We may think that God is as absent from our lives as his name is from the book of Esther, but know that He is working behind the scenes, usually through ordinary events, to orchestrate good for us. He used something as simple as Vashti’s refusal to appease her husband to get Esther where he wanted her to be and to bring about good for the Jews. We are not told whether God considered Vashti’s act one of righteousness or rebellion. In either case, God was at work. He can redeem the good, the bad and the ugly.

In the book of Esther we can see that God is the Lord of history. The king, the queen, the good and the evil all unwittingly do His will. With such a Lord in charge of our lives, who is endlessly conspiring for our good, let’s go face the day.