Why you might not be Spirit-filled...

BIBLE MEDITATION:

...Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? Acts 9:6

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

So many Christians want to be Spirit-filled, but have they ever asked why God should fill them with His Spirit?

I want you to imagine a man pushing a car into a service station. It has no battery in it. The car has four flat tires, a hole in the gas tank, and half the wires are disconnected. The attendant comes out, looks at this rattle trap, and says, “May I help you?” 

The man says, “Yeah, fill ‘er up.”

What do you think that attendant would say? “What for?” would be appropriate.

I think God sometimes says to us, “What for?” Instead, we need to just sign the contract at the bottom and say, “Lord, You fill it in.”

ACTION POINT:

Bow before the Lord, open your hands, and say, “Lord, It’s all You. I am nothing but a vessel for You to use. Use me as You will.” 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

The Powerful Root of Practical Love

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

So, love is the evidence that we are born again — that we are Christians, that we are saved.

Sometimes the Bible makes our holiness and our love for people the condition of our final salvation. In other words, if we are not holy and not loving, we will not be saved at the judgment day (e.g., Hebrews 12:14; Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:10). This doesn’t mean that acts of love are how we get right with God. No, the Bible is clear again and again as Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.” No, when the Bible says that we are saved by faith but that we must love people in order to finally be saved, it means that faith in God’s promises must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith.

So, love for others is a condition of future grace in the sense that it confirms that the primary condition, faith, is genuine. We could call love for others a secondary condition, which confirms the authenticity of the primary and essential condition of faith which alone unites us to Christ, and receives his power.

Faith perceives the glory of God in the promises of future grace and embraces all that the promises reveal of what God is for us in Jesus. That spiritual sight of God’s glory, and our delight in it, is the self-authenticating evidence that God has called us to be a beneficiary of his grace. This evidence frees us to bank on God’s promise as our own. And this banking on the promise empowers us to love. Which in turn confirms that our faith is real.

The world is desperate for a faith that combines two things: awestruck sight of unshakable divine Truth, and utterly practical, round-the-clock power to make a liberating difference in life. That’s what I want too. Which is why I am a Christian.

There is a great God of grace who magnifies his own infinite beauty and self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook or cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.

John Piper

Enduring When Obeying Hurts

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. (Hebrews 12:2)

What faith performs is sometimes unspeakably hard.

In his book Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway during World War II.

At the end of each day the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. “All die! All die!” he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing.

What can sustain the will to die for others, when you are innocent? Jesus was carried and sustained in his love for us by “the joy that was set before him.” He banked on a glorious future blessing and joy, and that carried and sustained him in love through his suffering.

Woe to us if we think we should or can be motivated and strengthened for radical, costly obedience by some higher motive than the joy that is set before us. When Jesus called for costly obedience that would require sacrifice in this life, he said in Luke 14:14, “You will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” In other words, be strengthened now in all your losses for Christ’s sake, because of the joy set before you.

Peter said that, when Jesus suffered without retaliating, he was leaving us an example to follow — and that includes Jesus’s confidence in the joy set before him. He handed his cause over to God (1 Peter 2:21) and did not try to settle accounts with retaliation. He banked his hope on the resurrection and all the joys of reunion with his Father and the redemption of his people. So should we.

John Piper 

Is there suffering in your life?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelation 21:3-4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Over and over again, people ask me, “If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?” There’s never an easy answer when someone is grieving or suffering, but God has taught me that the universe has a disease: a curse came upon our earth as a result of sin and rebellion against God. He cannot remove the pain caused by sin until the last vestige of sin is gone. 

The worst thing that could happen to human beings would be if we were to live in a world cursed by sin, yet pain free and seem to be in a paradise! We would never come to God. He promises that one day He is going to set all things right. The first verse of this chapter (Revelation 21) tells us, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away…” The same Creator God who gave man a Garden of Eden will give us, His beloved children, a new Heaven and a new earth where what we are experiencing now will seem like a distant memory. 

The Apostle Paul, who experienced great suffering, wrote, “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18), and “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)

ACTION POINT:

God has showered this world with immeasurable mercies. Focus today not on the suffering, but on the provision of God’s daily grace. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Skill Involved In God's Creation

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  - Psalm 19:1

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,

23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;

27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,

30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,

31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

32 Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. - Romans 1:18-32

Quoted from an article by John Bloom, scientist, scholar and Christian 

"I see the same trend over time in biology, biochemistry, and genetics. With almost every new discovery, the overwhelming sense grows that life is not simply chemistry, but rather life is stupendously complex information-processing systems.

Years ago, “the simple cell” was called a “blob of protoplasm.” Today, cells contain “intricate, interlocking networks of protein machines” and assembly lines that are carefully regulated and controlled by multiple feedback loops.

Could complex systems like this have evolved through blind, unguided mutation and natural selection? Could I construct a model of the Death Star by putting a bunch of Lego bricks in a bag and shaking it until the model formed? No. The plastic bricks would rub against each other and turn to dust long before some might lock together to form anything of interest. Similarly, evolutionary “just so” stories cannot explain the beauty and design of life that shouts of its Creator. No series of accidents can ever replace skill.

From the telescope to the microscope, God’s creation is declaring his glory. Being a Christian working in the sciences is beautiful, as new discoveries stretch our imagination and open new vistas of complexity, ingenuity, awesome power, and unimaginable fine-tuning. And as a Christian, I am able to think outside the box of naturalism and see the handiwork of God for what it is."

Pray for God to open your eyes to His truth!

A Hiding Place for the Helpless

How abundant is your goodness, which you have . . . worked for those who take refuge in you. (Psalm 31:19)

The experience of future grace often hangs on whether we will take refuge in God, or whether we doubt his care and run for cover to other shelters.

For those who take refuge in God, the promises of future grace are many and rich.

None of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. (Psalm 34:22)

He is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. (2 Samuel 22:31)

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2:12)

The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1:7)

We do not earn or merit anything by taking refuge in God. Hiding, because we are weak and need protection, is not a work to commend our self-sufficiency. All it does is show that we regard ourselves as helpless and the hiding place as a place of rescue.

In all those promises I just quoted, the condition of great blessing from God is that we take refuge in him. That condition is not a meritorious one; it is the condition of desperation and acknowledged weakness and need and trust.

Desperation does not demand or deserve; it pleads for mercy and looks for grace.

John Piper 

Why not Buddha or Confucius?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

...and thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:21

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Are Christians fools for believing in Jesus? Are we serving a false God? If you go to the tomb of Confucius, you’ll find it’s occupied. If you go to the tomb of Buddha, it’s occupied. But if you go to the tomb of Jesus, you’ll find it empty. He is a risen Savior.

Now that’s very important, because you can take Confucius out of Confucianism and still have Confucianism. Take Buddha out of Buddhism—you still have Buddhism. But you cannot take Jesus Christ out of Christianity and still have Christianity because Christianity is not a code. It’s not a creed. It’s not a cause. It is Christ Himself.

ACTION POINT:

You have a hope that the world needs to hear about. Who can you share that hope with today? 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers