So you don’t feel like praying….

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Romans 8:26

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

There’s an old song with the refrain “Just keep on praying ‘til light breaks through.” When you don’t feel like praying, that’s when you need to. You need to pray until you do feel like praying. You see, you’re not praying by yourself. The Spirit is praying through you and for you, helping to present your petitions to the Father — petitions that perhaps you yourself are not even capable of expressing. Do not approach God with your hands full of the brass of your emotions. Rather, approach Him with hands and heart full of the sweet incense of His worth. Just keep praying.

ACTION POINT:

How is your prayer life? Do you say grace before meals and squeeze in a quick prayer before you drop off to sleep each night? Then you wonder why your prayers aren’t being answered and your walk with God is so anemic. Take some time today to talk to the Lord. Someone has wisely said, “The word ‘love’ is spelled t-i-m-e.” God does business with those who mean business.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Unashamed

Power of Baptism

What is baptism?

An act of obedience and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in You.

1. Baptism pictures salvation and transformation.

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. - Romans 6:1-4

Death 

Burial 

Resurrection 

Dead to sin

Washing sin in blood of Christ

Regeneration 

2. Baptism reminds me I'm free of sin

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. - Romans 6:5-7

We should not sin because we have been delivered and set free.

3. Baptism empowers me to live for Jesus.

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. - Romans 6:8-11

16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him;

17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." - Matthew 3:16-17

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." - Acts 1:8

You are identified with Christ.

4. Baptism celebrates my victory over death.

From death to eternal life

Celebrate victory 

The war is won

13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. - Romans 6:13-14

Insure your place in Heaven

A. Admit sin and turn from it

10 as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; 

11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 

12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one."  - Romans 3:10-12

B. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. - Romans 6:23

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8

C. Commit your life to Jesus

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. - Romans 10:9-10

Thanks Pastor Kevin!

Glorify God by Giving Thanks

It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 4:15)

Gratitude to God is a joyful emotion. We have a sense of joyful indebtedness for his grace. So in a sense in the very emotion of gratitude, we are still the beneficiaries. But by its very nature, gratitude glorifies the giver. When we feel thankful, we acknowledge our need and God’s beneficence, God’s fullness, the riches of his glory.

Just like I humble myself and exalt the server in the restaurant when I say, “Thank you,” so I humble myself and exalt God when I feel gratitude to him. The difference, of course, is that I really am infinitely in debt to God for his grace, and everything he does for me is free and undeserved.

But the point is that gratitude glorifies the giver. It glorifies God. And this is Paul’s final goal in all his labors. Yes, his labors are for the sake of the church — the good of the church. But the church is not the highest goal. Listen again: “It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.” All for your sake — for the glory of God!

The wonderful thing about the gospel is that the response it requires from us for God’s glory is also the response that is most natural and joyful; namely, thankfulness for grace. God’s all-supplying glory in giving and our humble gladness in receiving are not in competition. Joyful thankfulness glorifies God.

A life that gives glory to God for his grace and a life of deepest gladness are the same life. And what makes them one is thankfulness.

John Piper 

Have you found that God is enough?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee. Isaiah 26:3

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

You may admit that God is necessary, but do you honestly know that God is enough and that He is, in fact, more than enough? Friend, it may be that you’ll never know  He is enough until He is all you have.

This is what God allowed to happen to Job. Everything was taken away: his health, his wealth, his family—all of it. Yet, Job still had the Lord, saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust him.” He saw the Lord Jesus by the eye of faith.

God sometimes brings us to the place where he brought Job to show us not only is God necessary, but God is enough.

The answer is not in reason but relationship.  Not in explanation but in His promises. We come to the place where we’re like Jacob, who said, “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me” (Genesis 32:26b)

Many a believer has lost his health, his business, his family, his reputation, but has still maintained his joy because the source of genuine contentment and peace is in God. Indeed, one may not know that God is enough until God is all one has.

ACTION POINT:

In the darkness, Jesus is there. Standing somewhere in the shadows, you’ll find Him. Come to know Him, understand Him and trust Him. Look to the Lord; trust in Him. Lean on the Lord. Leave it with the Lord.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Hold Fast to Your Hope

So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. (Hebrews 6:17–18)

Why does the writer of Hebrews encourage us to hold fast to our hope? If the final enjoyment of our hope was obtained and irrevocably secured by the blood of Jesus, then why does God tell us to hold fast?

The answer is this:

What Christ bought for us when he died was not the freedom from having to hold fast, but the enabling power to hold fast.

What he bought was not the nullification of our wills as though we didn’t have to hold fast, but the empowering transformation of our wills so that we want to hold fast.

What he bought was not the canceling of the commandment to hold fast, but the fulfillment of the commandment to hold fast.

What he bought was not the end of exhortation, but the triumph of exhortation.

He died so that you would do exactly what Paul did in Philippians 3:12, “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” It is not foolishness, it is the gospel, to tell a sinner to do what Christ alone can enable him to do; namely, hope in God.

So, I exhort you with all my heart: Reach out and take hold of that for which you have been taken hold of by Christ. Hold it fast with all your might — which is his might. His blood-bought gift of your obedience.

John Piper 

Where does your joy come from?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. Habakkuk 3:17-18

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

In Habakkuk’s day, there was an economic recession. There were no cows in the barn, no harvest in the fields. “Yet…” he writes. Oh, how I love that “yet” in verse 18. “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

Where was his joy? In the Lord, not circumstances.

If circumstances are what give you your joy, you can’t say “rejoice always,” because circumstances change. You might lose your job, your health, your friends, or your prestige. But Habakkuk said, “Yet will I joy in the God of my salvation.”

There’s one way to find out where you’re getting your joy. If it’s from your job, we can take your job and see if you still have joy. If it’s from your health, if your health fails, see if you still have joy.

ACTION POINT:

It’s not wrong to joy in your health, your job, your friends. But that kind of joy can be threatened. The only eternal joy anyone can have is in the Lord, because He never changes. If you get it anywhere else, it could be lost.. You need a joy which supersedes that. “Thou will show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

When God Swears by God

Since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” (Hebrews 6:13–14)

There is one Person whose worth and honor and dignity and preciousness and greatness and beauty and reputation is more than all other values combined — ten thousand times more — namely, God himself. So, when God takes an oath, he swears by himself.

If he could have gone higher, he would have gone higher. Why? To give you strong encouragement in your hope. What God is saying in swearing by himself is that it is as impossible that he will break his word of promise to bless us as it is that he will ever despise himself.

God is the greatest value in the universe. There is nothing more valuable or wonderful than God. So, God swears by God. And in doing that he says, “I mean for you to have as much confidence in me as it is possible to have.” For if more were possible, Hebrews 6:13 says, he would have given us that. “Since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.”

Now this is our God, the God who is reaching as high as he can reach to inspire your unshakable hope in him. So, flee to God for refuge. Turn from all the superficial, self-defeating hopes of the world, and put your hope in God. There is nothing and no one like God as a refuge and a rock of hope.

John Piper