What holds first place in your heart?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Shall not God search this out? For He knoweth the secrets of the heart. Psalm 44:21

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Christian author and speaker S. D. Gordon said, “In every person’s life there is a throne. And when self is on the throne, Christ is on the cross. But when Christ is on the throne, self is on the cross.”

There’s something you believe to be the highest good that captivates your attention and controls your life. Your decisions are made in light of whatever this thing is. Is it Christ? Or something else?

God’s plan is not that Christ have “a place” in your life or that He have prominence in your life. Jesus Christ deserves and even demands preeminence in your life. That means there is no rebuttal, no refusal, and no rival.

ACTION POINT:

Ask God to reveal to you if there is anything is your life that is controlling your decisions, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. Give Him permission to reveal that today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Eleventh-hour Breakthroughs

Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)

One of the greatest hope-killers is that you have tried for so long to change, and have not succeeded.

You look back and think: What’s the use? Even if I could experience a breakthrough, there would be so little time left to live in my new way that it wouldn’t make much difference compared to so many years of failure.

The former robber (the thief on the cross next to Jesus) lived for another hour or so after his conversion. Then he died. He was changed. He lived on the cross as a new man with new attitudes and actions (no more reviling). But 99.99% of his life was wasted. Did the last couple hours of newness matter?

They mattered infinitely. This former robber, like all of us, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of his life. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10). How will his life testify in that day to his new birth and his union with Christ? How will his life confirm his newness in Christ?

The last hours will tell the story. This man was new. His faith was real. He is truly united to Christ. Christ’s righteousness is his. His sins are forgiven.

That’s what the final hours will proclaim at the last judgment. He is changed! And his change mattered. It was, and it will be, a beautiful testimony to the power of God’s grace and the reality of his faith and his union with Christ.

Now back to our struggle with change. I am not saying that struggling believers are unsaved like the robber was. I am simply saying that the last years and the last hours of life matter.

If in the last 1% of our lives, we can get a victory over some long-standing sinful habit or hurtful defect in our personality, it will be a beautiful testimony now to the power of grace; and it will be an added witness (not the only one) at the last judgment to our faith in Christ and our union with him.

Take heart, struggler. Keep asking, seeking, knocking. Keep looking to Christ. If God gets glory by saving robbers in the eleventh hour, he surely has his purposes why he has waited till now to give you the breakthrough you have sought for years.

John Piper 

Moving beyond your 5 senses…

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:33

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Many Christians are so materialistic that they never look past the physical world to the transcendent Christ above. They only experience what their five senses (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing) bring to them.

When a problem arises, it blows out every candle in their souls, knocks the sun out of their sky, and they can’t enjoy the daily bread of life that Jesus promises.

ACTION POINT:

For some reading this, you’re in the midst of a gigantic problem that to the world has “disaster” written all over it. If you’re seeking first His righteousness, God will give you all you need. You have God on your side—the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Don’t you forget it.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Reviled Here, Rewarded There

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. (Psalm 1:3)

How does the promise in Psalm 1:3 point to Christ?

It says, “In all that he does, he prospers.” The righteous prosper in everything they do. Is this naïve or profoundly true?

In this life, it certainly seems that the wicked prosper. “Fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!” (Psalm 37:7). “Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape” (Malachi 3:15).

And in this life the righteous often suffer and their goodness is rewarded with abuse. “If we had forgotten the name of our God . . . would not God discover this? . . . Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” (Psalm 44:20–22). The psalmists themselves knew this. We are not protesting something they didn’t already know.

Therefore, when the psalmist says, “In all that he does, he prospers,” he is not naïve. He is pointing through the ambiguities of this life to life after death, where the true effectiveness — the true prosperity — of all that we have done will appear.

This is the way Paul thought.

First, he celebrates the victory of Christ over death. “‘O death, where is your victory?’ . . . Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55, 57).

Then, he draws out the implication that, because of this triumph, every work that believers have ever done will prosper. “Therefore, my beloved brothers . . . in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). When something is not in vain, it prospers.

Because Jesus died in our place, he guaranteed that every good deed prospers — sooner or later. “Whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord” (Ephesians 6:8). “Blessed are you when others revile you. . . . Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matthew 5:11–12). Reviled here. Rewarded there.

What seems naïve in the Old Testament (“in all that he does, he prospers”) points profoundly to the work of Christ and the reality of resurrection. As the words of that great hymn by Katharina von Schlegel, “Be Still My Soul,” says, “Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay / From his own fullness all He takes away.”

John Piper 

Are you willing to transfer the title?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Matthew 16:24

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Very early in our marriage, Joyce and I got on our knees and made a solemn vow before God that all we had would belong to Jesus Christ. We would not really own title to anything.

Now, we might hold title as people view it legally, but everything we owned would belong to the Lord. If He wanted it, He could have it. If He wanted to use it, if He wanted to destroy it, if He wanted to give it away, if He wanted to give more—that was His business.

Have you done that? Have you transferred everything to Christ? Here’s what counts with God: It’s not your fame, it’s your faith. It’s not your ability, it’s your availability. It’s not your scholarship, it’s your sacrifice.

ACTION POINT:

Stop now this moment and think about what you have. Are you willing to “transfer the title”? Tell the Lord Jesus Christ that He is the true owner of all you have—including your abilities.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Make Know the Unknown God

I pray Lord, open eyes and hearts.

Let the lost find You, know You and serve You.

Give understanding, give hope and a secure eternity through our risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen

23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To the unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,

25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,

28 for "'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, "'For we are indeed his offspring.' 

29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, "We will hear you again about this."

33 So Paul went out from their midst.

34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them. - Acts 17:23-34

22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

25 The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things." - John 4:22-25

5 Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: 

6 "I am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, 

7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. 

8 I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. 

9 Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them."  - Isaiah 42:5-9

The Main Purpose of Ministry

We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. (Hebrews 10:39)

Don’t look at the temporary cost of love, and shrink back from confidence in God’s infinitely superior promises. If you shrink back, not only will you lose out on the promises; you will be destroyed.

Hell is at stake in whether we shrink back or persevere. It’s not just the loss of a few extra rewards that hangs in the balance. Hebrews 10:39 says, “We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed.” That is eternal judgment.

So, we warn each other: Don’t drift away. Don’t love the world. Don’t start thinking nothing huge is at stake. Fear the terrible prospect of not cherishing the promises of God above the promises of sin. As Hebrews 3:13–14 says, “Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

But mainly we must focus on the preciousness of the promises and help each other value above all things how great the reward is that Christ has purchased for us. We must say to each other what Hebrews 10:35 says: “Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.” And then we must help each other see the greatness of the reward.

That is the main task of preaching, and the main purpose of small groups and all the ministries of the church: helping people see the greatness of what Christ has purchased for everyone who will value it above the world. Helping people see it and savor it, so that God’s superior worth shines in their satisfaction and in the sacrifices that come from such a heart.

John Piper