How to Plead for Unbelievers

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)

Paul prays that God would convert Israel. He prays for her salvation! He does not pray for ineffectual influences, but for effectual influences. And that is how we should pray too.

We should take the new covenant promises of God and plead with God to bring them to pass in our children and our neighbors and on all the mission fields of the world.

God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone and give them a new heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 11:19)

Circumcise their heart so that they love you! (Deuteronomy 30:6)

Father, put your Spirit within them and cause them to walk in your statutes. (Ezekiel 36:27)

Grant them repentance and a knowledge of the truth that they may escape from the snare of the devil. (2 Timothy 2:25–26)

Open their hearts so that they believe the gospel! (Acts 16:14)

When we believe in the sovereignty of God — in the right and power of God to elect and then bring hardened sinners to faith and salvation — then we will be able to pray with no inconsistency, and with the confidence of great biblical promises for the conversion of the lost.

Thus, God has pleasure in this kind of praying because it ascribes to him the right and honor to be the free and sovereign God that he is in election and salvation.

John Piper 

If you could do it over again...

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. Matthew 2:1-2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Once a year we celebrate fathers. Maybe you are one. Let me give you a challenge. One father said, 

“If I had it to do all over again, I’d love my wife more in front of my children. I’d laugh with my children more. I’d listen more, even to the youngest child. I’d be more honest about my own weaknesses and stop pretending perfection. I would pray differently for my children. I would be more encouraging and bestow more praise. And finally, if I had it to do all over again, I would use every ordinary thing that happened in every ordinary day to point them to God.”

Praise God for the impact of godly fathers in our lives!

ACTION POINT:

If there’s going to be music in marriage, the dad has to be the leader of the band. Celebrate the dad in your life today!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

What Kind of Prayer Pleases God?

This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2)

The first mark of the upright heart is that it trembles at the word of the Lord.

Isaiah 66 deals with the problem of some who worship in a way that pleases God and some who worship in a way that doesn’t. Verse 3 describes the wicked who bring their sacrifices, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man.” Their sacrifices are an abomination to God — on a par with murder. Why?

In verse 4 God explains, “When I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen.” Their sacrifices were abominations to God because the people were deaf to his voice. But what about those whose prayers God heard? God says in verse 2, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

I conclude from this that the first mark of the upright, whose prayers are a delight to God, is that they tremble at God’s word. These are the people to whom the Lord will look.

So, the prayer of the upright that delights God comes from a heart that at first feels precarious in the presence of God. It trembles at the hearing of God’s word, because it feels so far from God’s ideal and so vulnerable to his judgment and so helpless and so sorry for its failings.

This is just what David said in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” The first thing that makes a prayer acceptable to God is the brokenness and humility of the one who prays. They tremble at his word.

John Piper 

How to make amends with your teen...

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation. James 5:12

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

In June we take time to focus on fathers, and I’ve discovered in talking with teenagers that many of them harbor bitterness and resentment. Much of that resentment is directed toward their fathers over the serious matter of broken promises.

If you’re a dad who wants to restore your relationship with your teenager, one of the best things you can do is to remember those broken promises. Then go and say to them with a remorseful spirit, “I’ve asked God to forgive me, and I want you to forgive me.” Then ask this question, “Have I ever made a promise to you that I’ve failed to keep? If so, I want you to tell me because I want to repent. I want you to believe that your dad is a faithful man.”

ACTION POINT:

Are you a man of your word? If not, start fresh today and make a commitment that you will stand behind your word. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Sinful Man

Lord, You are too marvelous for us. We can't comprehend the wonder, majesty and power that is You. Your mercy is great to a stiff necked people. Let the peoples rejoice as they ponder Your great and mighty self. Amen and Amen

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." - Luke 5:8

And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" - Isaiah 6:5

10 But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation. 

11 Thus shall you say to them: "The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens."

12 It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. 

13 When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses. 

14 Every man is stupid and without knowledge; every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. 

15 They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish. 

16 Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob, for he is the one who formed all things, and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance; the LORD of hosts is his name. 

17 Gather up your bundle from the ground, O you who dwell under siege! 

18 For thus says the LORD: "Behold, I am slinging out the inhabitants of the land at this time, and I will bring distress on them, that they may feel it." 

19 Woe is me because of my hurt! My wound is grievous. But I said, "Truly this is an affliction, and I must bear it."  - Jeremiah 10:10-19

1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. 

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?" 

4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. 

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation  - Psalm 42:1-5

4 "The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. 

5 They have dealt corruptly with him; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation. 

6 Do you thus repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you? 

7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you. 

8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.  - Deuteronomy 32:4-8

What Can You Give For Your Soul?

36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

37 For what can a man give in return for his soul?

38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." - Mark 8:36-38

He Has Risen!

1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,

3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.

5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?

6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,

7 that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise."

8 And they remembered his words,

9 and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

10 Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles,

11 but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

12 But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened. - Luke 24:1-12

Oh Lord, we pray for Your great mercy!

Serve God with Your Thirst

So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (2 Corinthians 5:9)

What if you discovered (like the Pharisees did) that you had devoted your whole life to trying to please God, but all the while had been doing things that in God’s sight were abominations (Luke 16:14–15)?

Someone may question this and say, “I don’t think that’s possible; God wouldn’t reject a person who has been trying to please him.” But do you see what this questioner has done? He has based his conviction about what would please God on his idea of what God is like. That is precisely why we must begin with the character of God revealed in Scripture.

God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket. So, the great question is: How do you serve a spring? And: How do you serve a watering trough? How do you glorify God the way he really is?

If you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough, you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring, you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart’s satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell the people what you’ve found.

My hope as a desperate sinner hangs on this biblical truth: that God is the kind of God who will be pleased with the one thing I have to offer: my thirst. That’s why the sovereign freedom and self-sufficiency of God are so precious to me: they are the foundation of my hope that God is delighted not by the resourcefulness of bucket brigades, but by the bending down of broken sinners to drink at the fountain of grace.

By all means we should seek to please God, now and forever. But woe to us if our whole life proves to be based on a false view of what pleases God. The Lord is pleased not by those who treat him as a needy watering trough, but as an inexhaustible, all-satisfying spring. As Psalm 147:11 says, “The Lord takes pleasure . . . in those who hope in his steadfast love.”

John Piper 

The name you're allowed to call God...

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Galatians 4:6

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you know what “Abba” means? It means “Daddy Father.” Have you ever thought about God as your Daddy? When Jesus taught us to pray “Our Father” in Matthew 6:9, the same word in Greek is the word “Pater” – “Abba Father.”

American children say, “Da-da.” But in the Middle East they say, “Abba - Abba.” Jesus says that we can call the great God of the universe “Daddy.”

I’m so glad that our Heavenly Father never gets too busy running this universe and commanding the angels that He forgets us. He wants to be with you like there is no one else on earth and nothing else for Him to do.

ACTION POINT:

Do you wish you had a hug right now? You can crawl up into the lap of your Daddy Father, and He has nothing better to do than to give you a hug.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers