The “I Will” of God

“Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.” (Zechariah 2:4–5)

There are mornings when I wake up feeling fragile. Vulnerable. It’s often vague. No single threat. No one weakness. Just an amorphous sense that something is going to go wrong and I will be responsible.

It’s usually after a lot of criticism. Or maybe after a lot of expectations that have deadlines, and that seem too big and too many.

As I look back over about 50 years of such periodic mornings, I am amazed how the Lord Jesus has preserved my life. And my ministry. The temptation to run away from the stress has never won out — not yet anyway. This is amazing. I worship my great God for this.

Instead of letting me sink into a paralysis of fear, or run to a mirage of greener grass, he has awakened a cry for help and then answered with concrete promises.

Here’s an example. This is recent. I woke up feeling emotionally fragile. Weak. Vulnerable. I prayed: “Lord help me. I’m not even sure how to pray.”

An hour later I was reading in Zechariah, seeking the help I had cried out for. It came.

“Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst.” (Zechariah 2:4–5)

There will be such prosperity and growth for the people of God that Jerusalem will not be able to be walled in any more. “The multitude of people and livestock” will be so many that Jerusalem will be like many villages spreading out across the land without walls.

Prosperity is nice, but what about protection?

To which God says in verse 5, “I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord.” Yes. That’s it. That is the promise. The “I will” of God. That is what I need.

And if it is true for the vulnerable villages of Jerusalem, it is true for me a child of God. That is how I apply the Old Testament promises to God’s people. All the promises are yes to me in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). There is a “how much more” after every promise for those who are in Christ. God will be a “wall of fire all around” me. Yes. He will. He has been. And he will be.

And it gets better. Inside that fiery wall of protection he says, “And I will be the glory in her midst.” God is never content to give us the protection of his fire; he aims to give us the pleasure of his presence. I love the “I wills” of God!

John Piper 

Are you ready at any given moment?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10:13

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Winston Churchill was speaking to the House of Commons one day when he gave this advice, “We must always be ready to meet at our average moment, the thing that any possible enemy could hurl against us at his selected moment.”

Satan could hurl a deadly temptation at you at any given moment. The phone could ring with terrible news about a friend. A police officer could knock on your door to inform you of a tragedy in your family.

Trials can come with such a force that they blow you off course. Temptation can strike at your backside and almost give you whiplash!

It is not God’s will that you have fewer temptations or trials, but that you have victory in temptation and trials.

ACTION POINT:

Are you ready at this moment to meet either what the devil may throw at you or what God may allow to come your way? If you’re not sure, you can get ready by spending time in His precious Word today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

What Does God Expect From Me?

Everyone can do this!

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  - Micah 6:8

Act justly.

Micah challenged the people because they worshiped God with their lips but not their heart.

9 The voice of the LORD cries to the city- and it is sound wisdom to fear your name: "Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it! 

10 Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is accursed? 

11 Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights? 

12 Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. 

13 Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins.  - Micah 6:9-13

Treat people the right way.

Honor, love and respect your neighbors.

Just think how you act when you are cut off in traffic or when you are headed into a parking spot and someone whips around you and gets that spot.

17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. - Romans 12:17-18

19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

20 To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head."

21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. - Romans 12:19-21

God expects His children to act justly.

Look around at the lost world.

There is great opportunity to act justly.

How do we act justly?

1. Control your anger.

Your greatest opportunity to act justly is when you are mad.

People will not respect you.

Quick temper verses:

31 Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways, 

32 for the devious person is an abomination to the LORD, but the upright are in his confidence.  - Proverbs 3:31-32

The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.  - Proverbs 12:16

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.  - Proverbs 14:29

You can control your temper.

Just stop, be quite, be still and give it to the Lord.

Respond with grace.

Be accountable.

2. Care for others.

Love your brother.

Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.  - Proverbs 3:27

Every person is important.

Give that heart felt smile.

Love one another!

Thank you Pastor Kevin!

Devastated and Delighted

The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.” (Deuteronomy 7:6)

What would the doctrines of grace — the old Puritan term for the Calvinistic teaching of God’s sovereign grace in our salvation (TULIP) — what would those doctrines of grace sound like if every limb in that tree were coursing with the sap of Augustinian delight (that is, “Christian Hedonism”)?

Total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to God’s beauty, and deadness to the deepest joy.

Unconditional election means that the completeness of our joy in Jesus was planned for us before we ever existed, as the overflow of God’s joy in the fellowship of the Trinity.

Limited atonement is the assurance that indestructible joy in God is infallibly secured for God’s people by the blood of the new covenant.

Irresistible grace is the commitment and the power of God’s love to make sure we don’t hold on to suicidal pleasures, and to set us free by the sovereign power of superior delights.

Perseverance of the saints is the almighty work of God not to let us fall into the final bondage of inferior pleasures, but to keep us, through all affliction and suffering, for an inheritance of fullness of joy in his presence, and pleasures at his right hand forevermore.

Of those five, unconditional election delivers the harshest and the sweetest judgments to my soul. That it is unconditional destroys all self-exaltation (that’s the harsh part); and that it is election makes me his treasured possession (that’s the sweet part).

This is one of the beauties of the biblical doctrines of grace: their worst devastations prepare us for their greatest delights.

What prigs we would become at the words, “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6), if this election were in any way dependent on us. But to protect us from pride, the Lord teaches us that we are unconditionally chosen (Deuteronomy 7:7–9). “He made a wretch his treasure,” as we so gladly sing.

Only the devastating freeness and unconditionality of electing grace — followed by all the other works of saving grace — let us take and taste such gifts for our very own without the exaltation of self.

John Piper 

Are you in a trial - or being tempted?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:7

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

James 1:13 says, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.”

Some people get confused between temptations and trials, and the difference between the two is this: 

Trials are sent by God to cause us to stand.

Temptation to sin is sent by the devil to cause us to stumble.

One is meant for our maturity. The other is meant for our misery.

Any temptation to sin comes not from God but from the devil. While God does not cause both kinds, God allows both kinds, and He will use both to make us more like Jesus.

ACTION POINT:

Are you in the furnace of affliction? Do you feel you’re being tempted? Trust in God to see you through.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

He Does All That He Pleases

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

This verse teaches that whenever God acts, he acts in a way that pleases him.

God is never constrained to do a thing that he despises. He is never backed into a corner where his only recourse is to do something he hates to do.

He does whatever he pleases. And therefore, in some sense, he has pleasure in all that he does.

This should lead us to bow before God and praise his sovereign freedom — that, in some sense, he always acts in freedom, according to his own “good pleasure,” following the dictates of his own delights.

God never becomes the victim of circumstance. He is never forced into a situation where he must do something in which he cannot rejoice. He is not mocked. He is not trapped or cornered or coerced.

Even at the one point in history where he did what in one sense was the hardest thing for God to do, “not spare his own Son” (Romans 8:32), God was free and doing what pleased him. Paul says that the self-sacrifice of Jesus in death was “a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). The greatest sin, and the greatest death, and the hardest act of God was, in some profound way, pleasing to the Father.

And on his way to Calvary, Jesus himself had legions of angels at his disposal. “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18) — of his own good pleasure — “for the joy that is set before him,” as it says in Hebrews 12:2. At the one point in the history of the universe where Jesus looked trapped, he was totally in charge doing precisely what he pleased — dying to glorify his Father in justifying the ungodly, like you and me.

So, let us stand in awe and wonder. And let us tremble that not only our praises of God’s sovereignty, but also our salvation through the death of Christ for us, hang on this: “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever he pleases.”

John Piper 

What do you believe about Creation?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Let them praise the name of the Lord: for He commanded, and they were created. Psalm 148:5

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

In Genesis 1:11-12 we read, “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good” (italics mine).

In this text, when God made everything, He made it all by the Word of His power. He just spoke it into existence. The universe dripped from His fingertips. If evolution were true, then one plant or animal group would have to evolve into another group. But then you would expect to find transitional forms of life. You can't find transitional forms between amoeba and man—not one. You talk about the “missing link,” the whole chain is missing!

Satan is very clever. He is behind the whole theory of evolution because, as H.G. Wells said, if there was no fall in the Garden of Eden, then you don't need to be born again. There is no sin, no God you'll have to face, no accountability. But you're not an accident.

"Behold if any man be in Christ Jesus, He is a new creation” ( 2 Cor. 5:17).God made the original creation by speaking it into existence. But the new creation—new creature in Christ? He didn't make that new creation with a word. No, His Son had to hang on a cross, enduring unspeakable torture because of His love for you, so you might have your sin forgiven.

ACTION POINT:

What do you believe about the origin of creation? You didn't come from slime. God made you in His image, loves you and has a wonderful plan for you. When you accept the salvation He offers through Jesus Christ, you become a new creation. “All things have become new.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers