The Honeymoon That Never Ends

As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)

When God does good to his people it is not so much like a reluctant judge showing kindness to a criminal whom he finds despicable; it is like a bridegroom showing affection to his bride.

Sometimes we joke and say about a marriage, “The honeymoon is over.” But that’s because we are finite. We can’t sustain a honeymoon level of intensity and affection. But God says that his joy over his people is like a bridegroom over a bride. And he doesn’t mean it starts out that way and then fades.

He is talking about honeymoon intensity and honeymoon pleasures and honeymoon energy and excitement and enthusiasm and enjoyment. He is trying to get into our hearts what he means when he says he rejoices over us with all his heart. Jeremiah 32:41, “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” Zephaniah 3:17, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

With God the honeymoon never ends. He is infinite in power and wisdom and creativity so that there will be no boredom for the next trillion ages of millenniums.

John Piper

Should we bring children into such a chaotic world?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. 

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Psalm 127:4-5

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

I would be afraid to bring children into this world if I did not know God. But because I know God, I am free to encourage you to have children.

Don’t ever let the devil intimidate you. I’ve had couples ask me, “Pastor Rogers, the world is so dangerous today, do you think we ought to have children?”

I respond with a hearty “Yes!”

God’s people are the ones who ought to be bringing a godly seed into this world. What does the world need? Jesus. How are they going to hear if the light goes out?

ACTION POINT:

Are you contemplating having children? Do you know someone who is? Encourage them with this devotional today. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

What Does Mercy Look Like?

When we pray for someone, we often ask for God mercy.

If they are sick, if they have financial problems, if they have a wayward spouse, or unruly children, or an addiction, we ask for mercy.

Is our vision of mercy different from Gods?

We know that our God lovingly sent His own Son to death and raised Him up for our justification, sanctification and forgiveness.

How do we know what to pray?

Let's read the Bible on this matter!

Walk with the Lord!

The ultimate gift of mercy is Christ!

Choose life!

14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

15 "See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. - Deuteronomy 30:14-15

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.  - Psalm 86:15

15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. - Romans 9:15-18

God alone is over all!

17 Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace, 

18 that they may know that you alone, whose name is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth.  - Psalm 83:17-18

God gave us Jesus!

Our hope if in Him!

We show mercy by sharing the gospel.

20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,

21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

22 And have mercy on those who doubt;

23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. - Jude 1:20-23

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

5 who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,

7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. - 1 Peter 1:3-9

6 It has been testified somewhere, "What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? 

7 You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, 

8 putting everything in subjection under his feet." Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. 

9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

11 For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers,

12 saying, "I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise." 

13 And again, "I will put my trust in him." And again, "Behold, I and the children God has given me." 

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,

15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. - Hebrews 2:6-15

22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?

25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. - Romans 8:22-30

God is for us!

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

32 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?

33 Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.

34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died-more than that, who was raised-who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered." 

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,

39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 8:31-39

God The Giver

4 There is one body and one Spirit-just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call-

5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism,

6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. - Ephesians 4:4-7

How sweet these words are.

Nothing rest in your care, God alone is the giver.

You are in a helpless state sinner. 

He carries you, sustains you, guides you, covers you in forgiveness, let's His grace fall on you and all these things through His own Son.

These words of His written so long ago, holding supernatural power, they will lead you to Christ and what He alone can do.

Repent from sin, make peace through the cross, Christ is able to cleanse you.

1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles-

2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you,

3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly.

4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ,

5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power.

8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,

9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things,

10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord,

12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. - Ephesians 3:1-12

7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

8 For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,

9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,

10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

11 All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills. - 1 Corinthians 12:7-11

How Much God Wants to Bless You

The Lord will again take delight in prospering you.” (Deuteronomy 30:9)

God does not bless us begrudgingly. There is a kind of eagerness about the beneficence of God. He does not wait for us to come to him. He seeks us out, because it is his pleasure to do us good. God is not waiting for us; he is pursuing us. That, in fact, is the literal translation of Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.”

God loves to show mercy. Let me say it again. God loves to show mercy. He is not hesitant or indecisive or tentative in his desires to do good to his people. His anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger. That’s what he meant when he came down on Mount Sinai and said to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6). It’s what he meant when he said in Jeremiah 9:24, “I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

God is never irritable or edgy. His anger never has a short fuse. Instead he is infinitely energetic with absolutely unbounded and unending enthusiasm for the fulfillment of his delights.

This is hard for us to comprehend, because we have to sleep every day just to cope, not to mention thrive. Our emotions go up and down. We get bored and discouraged one day and feel hopeful and excited another.

We are like little geysers that gurgle and sputter and pop erratically. But God is like a great Niagara Falls — you look at 186,000 tons of water crashing over the precipice every minute, and think: Surely this can’t keep going at this force year after year after year. Yet it does.

That’s the way God is about doing us good. He never grows weary of it. It never gets boring to him. The Niagara of his grace has no end.

John Piper 

Are you parenting or just coasting?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A little boy was riding around and around the block. A man asked him, “What are you doing?” 

“I’m running away from home,” he said.

“But you’re just going around and around the block,” said the man. 

The little boy responded, “That’s because my mom won’t let me cross the street!”

Even in the earliest ages, there can be restraint in the heart of a child because of godly training by his or her parents. The only way I ever learned to play football was on the training field. The classroom wasn’t enough. Parents must provide training and education for the lessons of life to be ingrained in their children.

ACTION POINT:

Has God given you the divine responsibility of parenthood? Then spend time this week training your child in one area of godly living. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Who Killed Jesus?

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)

One of my friends who used to be a pastor in Illinois was preaching to a group of prisoners in a state prison during Holy Week several years ago. At one point in his message, he paused and asked the men if they knew who killed Jesus.

Some said the soldiers did. Some said the Jews did. Some said Pilate. After there was silence, my friend said simply, “His Father killed him.”

That’s what the first half of Romans 8:32 says: God did not spare his own Son but handed him over — to death. “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). Isaiah 53 puts it even more bluntly, “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God. . . . It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he (his Father!) has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:4, 10).

Or as Romans 3:25 says, “God put [him] forward as a propitiation by his blood.” Just as Abraham lifted the knife over the chest of his son Isaac, but then spared his son because there was a ram in the thicket, so God the Father lifted his knife over the chest of his own Son, Jesus — but did not spare him, because he was the ram; he was the substitute.

God did not spare his own Son, because it was the only way he could spare us and still be a just and holy God. The guilt of our transgressions, the punishment of our iniquities, the curse of our sin would have brought us inescapably to the destruction of hell. But God did not spare his own Son; he gave him up to be pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities, and crucified for our sins.

This verse — Romans 8:32 — is the most precious verse in the Bible to me because the foundation of the all-encompassing promise of God’s future grace is that the Son of God bore in his body all my punishment and all my guilt and all my condemnation and all my blame and all my fault and all my corruption, so that I might stand before a great and holy God, forgiven, reconciled, justified, accepted, and the beneficiary of unspeakable promises of pleasure forever and ever at his right hand.

John Piper