Insight—your reward for obedience

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you. John 15:15

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

What is the blessing of obedience? Intimacy with God. You will come to know things that you could never know any other way when you become intimate with God. And yet people are still asking, “How do I understand the Bible?” Friend, you will have a knowledge that surpasses anything you could gain from a school of learning when you serve the Lord in obedience.

Jesus said that we become His friends when we become His servants. And a friend knows all things. Amos 3:7 says, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.”

ACTION POINT:

Have you stopped growing? Perhaps it’s because you’ve stopped obeying. The way to have insight into the heart of God is through obedience.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Pleased with His Precepts

This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:3–5)

What is plain in these verses is that being born again — being born of God — turns the commandments of God from being burdensome to being our delight. How does that work?

How does being born of God make the commandments of God a delight rather than a burden?

The apostle John says, “This is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith” (1 John 5:4). In other words, the way that being born of God overcomes the worldly burdensomeness of God’s commandments is by begetting faith. This is confirmed in 1 John 5:1, which says, literally, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”

Faith is the evidence that we have been born of God. We do not cause ourselves to be born again by deciding to believe. God creates our willingness to believe by causing us to be born again. As Peter said in his first letter, God “caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Our living hope, or faith in future grace, is the work of God through new birth.

So, when John says, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world,” and then adds, “And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith” (1 John 5:4), I take him to mean that God enables us, by the new birth, to overcome the world — that is, to overcome our worldly disinclination to keep God’s commandments. The new birth does this by creating faith, which evidently includes a disposition to be pleased by God’s commandments, rather than put off by God’s commandments, so that they feel burdensome.

Therefore, it is faith that overcomes our inborn hostility to God and his will, and frees us to keep his commandments and to say with the psalmist, “I delight to do your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:8).

John Piper 

"Free love”—fact or fantasy?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous. 1 John 5:3 

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

One of the most prevalent ideas of the 1960s was the idea of “free love.” That concept is a lie. There’s no such thing as “free love.”  Real love is a great and grand commitment.  Real love costs you dearly. It is self-sacrificing. It means doing what is best for the other person.

Sometimes a young man who seeks his own gratification will say to a young woman “I love you” as a means of getting something from her. Oh, he loves her all right. He loves her like a man who loves oranges. He takes an orange, cuts a section, squeezes the sweet juice from it, wipes his mouth, then tosses it away like garbage, and says, “Man, I love oranges!” Let me tell you, real love is not that way.

ACTION POINT:

Lust lives to get. Real love lives to give. Read 1 Corinthians 13, and as you do, compare the world’s idea of “love” to genuine love. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Don’t Serve God

The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

What is God looking for in the world? Assistants? No. The gospel is not a “help wanted” sign. Neither is the call to Christian service.

God is not looking for people to work for him. “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). He’s the great worker. He’s the one with broad, burden-bearing shoulders. He’s the strong one. And he is looking for ways to show it. This is what differentiates God from the so-called gods of the world: he works for us. Isaiah 64:4, “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you [in other words this is his uniqueness], who acts for those who wait for him.”

What does God want from us? Not what we might expect. He rebukes Israel for bringing him so many sacrifices: “I will not accept a bull from your house. . . . For every beast of the forest is mine. . . . ‘If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine’” (Psalm 50:9–10, 12).

But isn’t there something we can give to God that won’t belittle him to the status of beneficiary?

Yes. Our anxieties. Our needs. Our cries for power to do his will.

It’s a command: “[Cast] all your anxieties on him” (1 Peter 5:7). God will gladly receive anything from us that shows our dependence and his all-sufficiency.

Christianity is fundamentally convalescence. Patients do not serve their physicians. They trust them for good prescriptions and therapy. The Sermon on the Mount is our Doctor’s therapeutic regimen, not our Employer’s job description.

Our very lives hang on not working for God. “To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4–5).

Workmen get no gifts. They get their due. Their wage. If we would have the gift of justification, we dare not work for it. God is the workman in this affair. And what he gets is the glory of being the benefactor of grace, not the beneficiary of service.

John Piper 

Don’t judge—forgive

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Luke 6:37

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The apostle Paul, writing to the church in Ephesus, reminds them that at one time, before they came to Christ, they were “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Sometimes Christians look at people who have committed adultery or murder and compare themselves to them. They may even say, “They’re dead in their trespasses and sin.” I want to tell you something.

They are no more “dead in trespasses and sin” than your sweet daughter or precious parent who has not received Jesus Christ’s gift of salvation. There may be degrees of corruption, but there are no degrees of deadness. All lost people need Jesus Christ.

You may think you don’t have a testimony to share because you didn’t get a Ph.D. in sin before you were saved. Perhaps you were saved as a little child. Well, it took as much of the grace of God to save you as it did to save a murderer on death row. Never forget that, precious friend.

ACTION POINT:

Dead people need to stop comparing themselves with other dead people. Do you tend to size people up based on your understanding of goodness and badness? Remember, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Rise Up Over Loneliness

We all will struggle with loneliness at sometime in our life.

One of those times might be when you have lost a loved one in death, go through a divorce or a break up with a dear friend.

Six Scriptural truths to remember in your loneliness 

1. Loneliness happens.

17 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, "Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt."

18 But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle. - Exodus 13:17-18

God sometimes takes you the long way around as he works in you.

Your hope is in God alone.

2. Loneliest does not mean God has forgotten you.

20 And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.

21 And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.

22 The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. - Exodus 13:20-22

God was in the cloud and fire.

He will never leave you.

3. God is always at work behind the scenes on your behalf.

Behold the miracle!

1 Then the LORD said to Moses,

2 "Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea.

3 For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, 'They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.'

4 And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD." And they did so.

5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, "What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?"

6 So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him,

7 and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them.

8 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly.

9 The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh's horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.

10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD.

11 They said to Moses, "Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?

12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: 'Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness."

13 And Moses said to the people, "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again.

14 The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent."

15 The LORD said to Moses, "Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.

16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.

17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen.

18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen."

19 Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them,

20 coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night.

21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.

22 And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

23 The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh's horses, his chariots, and his horsemen.

24 And in the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic,

25 clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, "Let us flee from before Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians."

26 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen."

27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the LORD threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea.

28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.

29 But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

30 Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

31 Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses. - Exodus 14

4. Do not be deceived by your emotions; listen to your faith.

Satan brings up your weakness.

5. Keep moving forward.

Keep on keeping on.

Take those steps in faith.

God heals brokenness by faith and hope.

For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.  - Psalm 30:5

It might take time.

Be still and wait on the Lord.

6. As a child of God, He is your defender and deliverer.

God has a miracle for you!

His plan will never be thwarted!

You matter to God!

Thanks Pastor Kevin!

That The Works of God Might Be Displayed

1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.

2 And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

3 Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.

5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world."

6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud

7 and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, "Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?"

9 Some said, "It is he." Others said, "No, but he is like him." He kept saying, "I am the man."

10 So they said to him, "Then how were your eyes opened?"

11 He answered, "The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' So I went and washed and received my sight." - John 9:1-11

1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill.

3 So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."

4 But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."

8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?"

9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.

10 But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him."

11 After saying these things, he said to them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him."

12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover."

13 Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep.

14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died,

15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."

16 So Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

17 Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.

18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off,

19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

20 So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.

21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you."

23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,

26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world." - John 11:1-27

God's ways are not our ways!

Who can understand them?

And why can't we?

One thing, we see in part, while God sees the whole.

Things hidden from me and you are exposed to God Almighty.

That's where faith and trust come in for Christians.

To walk through despair knowing Christ is for you!

Our mission as Christians is to love the hurting.

The church should be a sanctuary for those who have fallen and are repenting.

We are so quick to judge.

Let us glorify God for His sovereignty and majesty, trusting in Christ for His marvelous grace.

And above all, share, love and rejoice that though Christ the risen King you have eternal hope!

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.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;

9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;

10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.

11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. - 2 Corinthians 4:1-11