How good are you at waiting?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Psalm 37:7

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

We don’t like the word “rest,” do we? This word rest literally means to be silent. But what we often do is badger the Lord. We’re always talking: “Now, Lord, why did You do this? Why did You do that?” Questioning Him. Criticizing, murmuring, complaining. We want God to hurry up. We want Him to do it yesterday. God says, “Be quiet!  Wait on Me. Be still and know that I am God.”  The Bible says, “Therefore, will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious to you.” Rest in the Lord.  Be silent before Him.  And wait patiently on Him.

We’re always running around pulling up our radishes by the roots to see how they’re growing, and then cramming them back into the ground.

Yet Isaiah tells us, “And therefore will the LORD wait, that He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you: for the LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him” (Isaiah 30:18).

ACTION POINT:

I want to tell you something, friend.  God is not interested in time; He’s interested in timing. God does everything in the fullness of time when it’s ready. You’re not going to hurry God. Lean back, watch, wait, and trust. He knows what He is doing.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Is Anyone Really Worthy?

Christ alone is worthy!

You will never be worthy except through the blood stained cross of Christ!

Christ thought you worthy of saving, a sinner doomed.

He rescued you from the fiery pit of hell!

You must repent.

Let that sink in!

Now, do you believe God is able to accomplish His salvation promise of long ago? 

That said promise came in the form of a man who is the Christ?

He was crucified, died and rose again 3 days later.

Christ alone is the only acceptable way for man to have salvation!

Your faith in Christ and His ability to save sinners is all you have to stand on, not your works, not your lineage, not your anything except Christ crucified!

Faith in Christ, period!

The by-product of faith is to love your brother and share the gospel, these are what we strive for.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." - Acts 4:12

20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,

21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

22 That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness." - Romans 4:20-22

And that was counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever.  - Psalm 106:31

Works and faith

You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. - James 2:24

For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead. - James 2:26

You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; - James 2:22

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, - Hebrews 11:17

remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. - 1 Thessalonians 1:3

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,

4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,

5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. - Galatians 1:3-5

28 Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?"

29 Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."

30 So they said to him, "Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?

31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

32 Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."

34 They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."

35 Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." - John 6:28-40

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. - Galatians 6:9

6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.

9 For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.

11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. - 1 Corinthians 3:6-11

Ask God to increase your faith.

Savory this:

and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. - 1 Corinthians 3:23

Grace Denied and Supplied

Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. (Acts 14:22)

The need for inner strength arises not just from the depletions of everyday stress, but from the suffering and afflictions that come from time to time. And they do come.

Suffering is inevitably added to heart-weariness on the way to heaven. When it comes, the heart may waver and the narrow way that leads to life may look impossibly hard. It’s hard enough to have a narrow road and steep hills that test the old jalopy’s strength to the limit. But what shall we do when the car breaks down?

Paul cried out three times with this question because of some affliction in his life. He asked for relief from his thorn in the flesh. But God’s grace did not come in the form he asked. It came in another form. Christ answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Here we see grace given in the form of Christ’s sustaining power in unrelieved affliction — one grace given, we could say, within the circle of another grace denied. And Paul responded with faith in the sufficiency of this future grace: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

God often blesses us with a “grace given” in the circle of “grace denied.”

For example, on a beastly hot day in July, the water pump on our car stopped working, and twenty miles from any town we were stranded on the interstate in Tennessee.

I had prayed that morning that the car would work well and that we would come to our destination safely. Now the car had died. The grace of trouble-free travel had been denied. No one was stopping as we stood around our car. Then my son Abraham (about eleven at the time) said, “Daddy, we should pray.” So we bowed behind the car and asked God for some future grace — a help in time of need. When we looked up, a pickup truck had pulled over.

The driver was a mechanic who worked about twenty miles away. He said he would be willing to go get the parts and come back and fix the car. I rode with him to town and was able to share the gospel with him. We were on our way in about five hours.

Now the remarkable thing about that answer to our prayer is that it came inside the circle of a prayer denied. We asked for a trouble-free trip. God gave us trouble. But in the midst of a grace denied, we got a grace supplied. And I am learning to trust God’s wisdom in giving the grace that is best for me and for unbelieving mechanics and for the watching faith of eleven-year-old boys.

We should not be surprised that God gives us wonderful graces in the midst of suffering that we had asked him to spare us. He knows best how to apportion his grace for our good and for his glory.

John Piper 

Are you worried about what other people think about you?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.” 1 Peter 3:16

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When the Bible tells us, “Commit your way” to the Lord, what does that mean—my “way”? It means your well-traveled path,  your lifestyle, your way of living, your reputation, the way you do things, what people think about you, how people perceive you.  Just give that to the Lord.

We’re worried about what people think about us.  Just let someone say something bad about some folks—criticize their lifestyle, the way they do things—and they get all upset about it. And none of us likes to be criticized.

Have you ever been criticized? Maybe blamed for something you didn’t do? Or been unjustly slandered? You are not alone. Jesus was the whipping boy of His day. He endured relentless criticism and slander. Was He worried? No.

ACTION POINT:

You too must not worry when others speak falsely. Just give that to the Lord. Author/Pastor Peter Lord told me one day, “When anybody says anything bad about me, I just say, ‘Thank God they don’t know any more.’” Jesus would tell us, “When they criticize you, just roll that over onto Me. I understand and I am in charge. You just trust in Me.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God’s Will Is That You Draw Near

Let us draw near with a true heart. (Hebrews 10:22)

The command we are given in this passage is to draw near to God. The great aim of the writer of the book of Hebrews is that we get near God, that we have fellowship with him, that we not settle for a Christian life at a distance from God.

This drawing near is not a physical act. It’s not building a tower of Babel by your achievements to get to heaven. It’s not necessarily going to a church building. Or walking to an altar at the front. It is an invisible act of the heart. You can do it while standing absolutely still, or while lying in a hospital bed, or on the train as you commute to work.

This is the center of the gospel — this is what the garden of Gethsemane and Good Friday are all about — that God has done astonishing and costly things to draw us near to himself. He has sent his Son to suffer and to die so that through him we might draw near. Everything that he has done in the great plan of redemption is so that we might draw near. And that nearness is for our joy and for his glory.

He does not need us. If we stay away, he is not impoverished. He does not need us in order to be happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. But he magnifies his mercy by giving us free access through his Son, in spite of our sin, to the one Reality that can satisfy our souls completely and forever, namely, himself. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

This is God’s will for you, even as you read this. This is why Christ died: that you would draw near to God.

John Piper 

Why are you still carrying that burden?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it to pass.” Psalm 37:5

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Many say they’ve committed their lives to the Lord, but have they really? The psalmist challenges us to commit our way to the Lord.

The word “commit” in this passage has the idea of rolling a burden over to the Lord.

An old hymn written long ago is titled “I Remember When My Burdens Rolled Away.” The first verse says,

“I remember when my burdens rolled away;

I had carried them for years, night and day.

When I sought the blessed Lord,

And I took Him at His word,

Then at once all my burdens rolled away.”

Have a commitment that rolls burdens on the Lord.  He will take care of you.  He will vindicate you.  He will answer you.

ACTION POINT:

Take comfort in Psalm 55:22—“Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee: He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” Once again roll your burdens over to the Lord. Surrender everything to Him.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Every Soul Who Does Not Listen

20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus,

21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.

22 Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.

23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.' - Acts 3:20-23

Conviction of sin:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." - Romans 7:7

8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,

10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

11 In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,

12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,

14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. - Colossians 2:8-15

4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. - Romans 7:4-6

2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all.

3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.

5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,

6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end,

8 will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?

9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.

10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.

11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.

12 Since we have such a hope, we are very bold,

13 not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.

14 But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.

15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.

16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. - 2 Corinthians 3:2-18

Our Gospel Light:

1 Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.

2 But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God.

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.

6 For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Corinthians 4:1-6