What Binds the Hands of Love?

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. (Colossians 1:3–5)

The problem with the church today is not that there are too many people who are passionately in love with heaven. The problem is not that professing Christians are retreating from the world, spending half their days reading Scripture and the other half singing about their pleasures in God all the while indifferent to the needs of the world. That’s not happening! The people of God are not so full of love to God that they spend half their days in his word.

The problem is that professing Christians are spending ten minutes reading Scripture and then half their day making money and the other half loving and repairing what they spend it on.

It’s not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love for the lost and hurting of this world. It is worldly-mindedness that hinders love, even when it is disguised by a religious routine on the weekend.

Where is the person whose heart is so passionately in love with the promised glory of heaven that he feels like an exile and a sojourner on the earth? Where is the person who has so tasted the beauty of the age to come that the diamonds of the world look like marbles from the dollar store, and the entertainment of the world feels empty, and the moral causes of the world are too small because they have no view to eternity? Where is this person?

To be sure, he is not in bondage to the Internet or eating or sleeping or drinking or partying or fishing or sailing or putzing around. He is a free man in a foreign land. And his one question is this: How can I maximize my enjoyment of God for all eternity while I am an exile on this earth? And his answer is always the same: by doing the labors of love. By expanding my joy in God, no matter the cost, if by any means possible I might include others in it.

Only one thing satisfies the heart whose treasure is in heaven: doing the works of heaven. And heaven is a world of love!

It is not the cords of heaven that bind the hands of love and make them ineffective. It is the love of money and leisure and comfort and praise — these are the cords of selfishness that bind the hands of love. And the power to sever these cords is Christian hope. “We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:4–5).

I say it again with all the conviction that lies within me: it is not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love on this earth. It is worldly-mindedness. And therefore the great fountain of love is the powerful, freeing confidence of Christian hope.

John Piper

Is this how you start your mornings?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up.” Psalm 5:3

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Christianity is a love relationship. You cannot love someone that you do not know. And you cannot know someone that you don’t spend quality time with. 

To know Jesus is to love Him. 

To love Him is to trust Him. 

To trust Him is to obey Him. 

To obey Him is to be blessed.

It begins with a quality, daily communication with the Lord. Why is it best to spend time with the Lord in the morning? Because you are getting ready to go on a road trip through life. You don’t take the trip and then read the map, do you?

ACTION POINT:

How are you starting your mornings? With a cup of coffee and the paper? Or with the pure milk of the Word and the light of His presence?

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

Are you hoping your good deeds will outweigh your bad ones? Considerthis:

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Suppose you’re driving down the road and a police officer stops you for running a red light. And you say to the officer, “I ran a red light, but you have no right to give me a ticket because I stopped at all the other streets and I have obeyed the speed limit.”

He responds, “Don’t tell me about all the things that you’ve done good. You’ve broken the law.”

If you think you’re going to be saved by keeping the law, then you must keep all of it, because God demands perfection. No amount of obedience can make up for one act of disobedience. If you keep the whole law and yet offend in one point you are guilty of it all.

ACTION POINT:

Read Romans 7:1 to 8:4. Can you relate to Paul’s quandary about keeping the law and the war within his members concerning its requirement of absolute obedience?

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 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 

Have you thought about what would be your "dream home"?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“I go to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you believe that there is a home in heaven waiting for you? There is! Because Jesus cannot lie. He is Truth incarnate. He always told the truth. He said, “If it were not so, I would have told you.”

Jesus would not let the hope of heaven go on beating in your heart if it were simply a lie, a superstition, or a fond delusion. Heaven is not merely a state of mind. It is not a condition. It is a place so real that Jesus is there in a literal, resurrected body. There is a body in this place called heaven—His resurrected body. And if you’re trusting Jesus, one day yours will be too. Heaven is a place on God’s map, not an altered state of consciousness.

ACTION POINT:

Do you have a dream home? If you’ve never thought about what would be your perfect home, think about your heavenly home. Nothing could be more perfect!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

When Everyone Deserts You

At my first defense no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them! But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (2 Timothy 4:16–18)

This morning I was lingering over these magnificent and heartbreaking words. Paul is in custody in Rome. So far as we know, he was never released. His last letter comes to an end like this.

Consider and be astounded!

He is deserted: “no one came to stand by me.” He is an old man. A loyal servant. In a foreign city, far from home. Surrounded by enemies. In danger of death. Why? Answer: So he could write this precious sentence for our discouraged, or fearful, or lonely souls: “But the Lord stood by me!”

Oh, how I love those words! When you are deserted by close friends, do you cry out against God? Are the people in your life, then, really your god? Or do you take courage in this magnificent truth: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20) — no matter who deserts you? Do you strengthen your heart with this inexorable oath: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5)?

Then let us say, “The Lord stood by me!”

Question: What was threatened in 2 Timothy 4:18? Answer: that Paul might not attain the Lord’s heavenly kingdom! But over against the threat Paul cries, “The Lord will . . . bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.”

Question: How was Paul’s attaining the heavenly kingdom threatened? Answer: “Evil deeds.” “The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.”

Question: How could an evil deed threaten Paul’s attaining the heavenly kingdom? Answer: by tempting him to forsake his allegiance to Christ through disobedience.

Question: Was this temptation the “lion’s mouth” from which he was rescued? Answer: Yes. “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9).

Question: So who gets the glory that Paul did not yield to this satanic temptation, but endured to the end in faith and obedience? Answer: “To him [the Lord] belong glory and dominion forever and ever” (1 Peter 5:10). “To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (2 Timothy 4:18)

Question: Why? Wasn’t it Paul who stood firm? Answer: “The Lord stood by me and strengthened me!”

John Piper