All Honey and No Bees?

“And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. So Abram journeyed, going on still toward the South. Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land.”

GENESIS 12:8-10

 

PONDER THIS

God tested Abraham several times. God did not test him to make him fall but to reveal some weaknesses and flaws. Our faith will also be tested at times. The famine Abraham encountered was in the land of Canaan, the promised land. He was exactly where God had told him to go. What’s the lesson for us? Sometimes we have the idea that when we serve God, obey God, and live by God, we’re going be free from all testing and trials—there’s going to be all honey and no bees—but that is not true. There are trials and heartaches even in the land of milk and honey.

Many people get married with this idea also. They think it’s all going to be sweet, wonderful, and all romance. Then they face testing and trials, and they wonder what has gone wrong. Maybe nothing has gone wrong. All couples will face challenges. A wise man once asked, “Have you ever thought about what Noah’s Ark must’ve smelled like on the inside? You couldn’t stand the stench on the inside if it weren’t for the storm on the outside.” God’s way is not the absence of the trials but His presence with you in the trials.

What are some things you have gone through that made you question if God was with you?

How does God’s presence with you in the trials of life change how you think, feel, and act during those trials?

PRACTICE THIS

Seek to glorify God by supporting and encouraging a friend who is going through a trying time right now.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If He Calls, He Keeps

[The Lord] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:8–9)

What are you depending on to ensure that your faith will last until Jesus comes?

The question is not, Do you believe in eternal security? The question is, How are we kept secure?

Does the perseverance of our faith rest decisively on the reliability of our own resolve? Or does it rest decisively on the work of God to “keep us trusting”?

It is a great and wonderful truth of Scripture that God is faithful and will keep forever those whom he has called. Our confidence that we are eternally secure is a confidence that God will do whatever is necessary to “keep us trusting!”

The certainty of eternity is no greater than the certainty God will keep us trusting now. But that certainty is very great for all whom God has called.

At least three passages put the call of God and the keeping of God together in this way.

“[The Lord] will sustain you (keep you) to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:8–9).

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you” (Jude 1–2). (See the same reality in Romans 8:30, Philippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:5, and Jude 24.)

The “faithfulness” of God guarantees that he will keep safe forever all whom he has called.

John Piper 

Bible Study

1 Corinthians 10:13

[13] No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Deuteronomy 7:9

[9] Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,

1 John 1:3

[3] that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

John 17:21

[21] that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Praying in Faith

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

HEBREWS 12:1-2

 

PONDER THIS

Imagine you and your spouse are at home and you’re having one of those tremendous arguments that is heated and volatile. Suddenly, you hear a cry from your upstairs bedroom. You go up and find your baby’s burning up with fever, terribly sick. You know you need to pray, but there’s all this hate and animosity in your heart. When you get down on your knees to pray, don’t you feel like a couple of fools? There’s nothing more debilitating to faith than sin in the heart.

Do you want to have a life of faith? If you do, you have to ask yourself the question: Have you forsaken idolatry? Anything you love more, serve more, fear more, trust more than God is an idol. Some love money more than God. Some fear Man more than God. Some trust ability more than God. They may not even realize it, but it is evident in the way they live. So many try to keep their same lifestyle, and they wonder why it doesn’t work.

This passage makes it clear—to have a life of faith you must look to Jesus. How do you look to Jesus? By laying aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us. There’s no way that you can pray in faith with unconfessed and unrepented of sin in your heart.

When have you recently been convicted of sin? How did you respond to that conviction?

How can you assess the things that threaten to become idols in your life?

PRACTICE THIS

Pray and confess to God any idols you identify. Ask Him to help you cast them aside.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

As Sure as God’s Love for His Son

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

God strips every pain of its destructive power. You must believe this or you will not thrive, or perhaps even survive, as a Christian, in the pressures and temptations of modern life.

There is so much pain, so many setbacks and discouragements, so many controversies and pressures. I do not know where I would turn, if I did not believe that almighty God is taking every setback and every discouragement and every controversy and every pressure and every pain, and stripping it of its destructive power, and making it work for the enlargement of my joy in God.

Listen to Paul’s astonishing words in 1 Corinthians 3:21–23, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The world is ours. Life is ours. Death is ours. Which I take to mean: God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God.

If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all will infallibly and freely with him give us all things — all things — the world, life, death, and God himself.

Romans 8:32 is a precious friend. The promise of God’s future grace is simply overwhelming. But all-important is the foundation: I have called it the logic of heaven. Here is a place to stand against all obstacles. God did not spare his own Son! Therefore! Therefore! The logic of heaven! Therefore, how much more will he not spare any effort to give us all that Christ died to purchase — all things, all good, and all bad working for our good!

It is as sure as the certainty that he loved his Son!

John Piper 

Bible Study

 

John 3:16

[16] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Romans 4:23-25

[23] But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, [24] but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, [25] who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Ephesians 2:4-5

[4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—

1 John 4:9-10

[9] In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. [10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Sealed and Filled

“But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”

ROMANS 8:9

 

PONDER THIS

Once you are put into the Body of Christ, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 1:13, Paul speaks of Jesus, saying, “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." And in the Book of Esther, we read that no man can break the king’s seal (Esther 8:8). Once the seal, a stamp of melted wax, was affixed to a document, it meant the deal was done, finished, paid in full. We have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of God. The King has put a seal on you that can’t be broken.

We are called to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). This is not simply a blessing to enjoy; it is a command to obey. But it is passive. Paul doesn’t say get filled, he says be filled. This is something God does; it is supernatural.

Every Christian is to be filled with the Spirit, not just the pastor, not just the evangelist, not just the choir leader. We’re all to be filled with the Spirit, young and old. He comes not only to abide but also to preside in us. We are to be filled with the Spirit.

How have you seen the Holy Spirit at work in your life?

The Bible says we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit but also calls us to be filled continually by Him. How can we seek this filling on an ongoing basis?

PRACTICE THIS

Talk with another Christian about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Pray together for God’s filling in your lives.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers