Is Jesus really the Messiah?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made the same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ [Messiah].Acts 2:36

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Speaking to a crowd in Jerusalem, the Apostle Peter put it down plain and straight: “Jesus, the one you crucified, is the Messiah!”

Skeptics of Christianity say Jesus wasn’t really the Messiah. All He did was arrange His life to fulfill all the prophecies about the Messiah. About that second part, they’re right! He really did. The only thing is, He arranged it centuries before He was born!

  He arranged to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

  He arranged His peasant background and the humiliation He would suffer (Isaiah 53:3).

  He arranged that He would be betrayed and sold for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12-13).

  He arranged His crucifixion with the piercing of His hands and feet (Psalm 22:16).

  He arranged He would be buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isaiah 53:9).

  Finally, Jesus arranged that He would be followed by millions who, with no hope of material gain and at a cost of their own lives, would set out to convince others of Him—who He was and His paying the price for our sins.

Oh yes…He arranged it all! To God be the glory!

ACTION POINT:

Praise God for His power, His plan, and His control over all things! Truly, nothing is too hard for Him, and His purpose for redemption was fulfilled precisely on time.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Let Joy Move You

Joy gives you fire in your bones!

Choose joy!

Don't let your heart turn to stone!

6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,

7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith-more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire-may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. - 1 Peter 1:6-9

1 Shout for joy to God, all the earth; 

2 sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise!  - Psalm 66:1-2

My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.  - Psalm 84:2

Help My Unbelief

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. (Romans 12:3)

In the context of this verse, Paul is concerned that people were thinking of themselves “more highly than [they] ought to think.” His final remedy for this pride is to say that not only are spiritual gifts a work of God’s free grace in our lives, but so also is the very faith with which we use those gifts. “. . . each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

This means that every possible ground of boasting is taken away from us. How can we boast if even the qualification for receiving gifts is also a gift?

This truth has a profound impact on how we pray. Jesus gives us the example in Luke 22:31–32. Before Peter denies him three times Jesus says to him, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus prays for Peter’s faith to be sustained even through the sin of denial, because he knows that God is the one who gives faith. So we should pray the way Jesus did — for ourselves and for others that God would sustain our faith.

Thus, the man with the epileptic son cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). This is a good prayer. It acknowledges that without God we cannot believe as we ought to believe.

Let us pray daily, “O Lord, thank you for my faith. Sustain it. Strengthen it. Deepen it. Don’t let it fail. Make it the power of my life, so that in everything I do, you get the glory as the great Giver. Amen.”

John Piper 

Have you topped out your pain tolerance?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And He said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Are you in pain right now? The Apostle Paul walked that same journey.

When you’re hurting, there are 3 possible ways to pray.

     First, you can pray that God will give you an escape from the pain. That’s normal—in fact, that’s how drug stores stay in business!

     Second, you can pray that God will give you the strength to endure the pain. And that, too, is a natural response. If we can’t escape the pain, we can pray to endure the pain.

     Third, we can ask God to enlist the pain in our lives for our good and His glory.

ACTION POINT:

If we pray to escape our pain, then we see pain as our enemy. If we pray to endure our pain, then pain is seen as a master. But if we pray to enlist our pain, we see it as our servant. We are able to find God’s grace to glory in our infirmities, that the power of God may be manifest in our lives.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Faith for the Future

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

If “all the promises of God find their Yes in [Jesus],” then to trust him now in the present is to believe that his promises will come true.

Those are not two separate faiths — trusting him, and believing in his promises. Trusting Jesus — believing in Jesus for salvation — means believing that he keeps his word. Being satisfied in the crucified and risen Jesus includes the belief that at every future moment, to all eternity, nothing will separate us from his love, or keep him from working all things together for our good. And that “good” is ultimately seeing and savoring the beauty and worth of God in Christ as our supreme Treasure.

The confidence that this all-satisfying good will be there for us forever is based on all the glorious grace of the past, especially the grace that God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Romans 8:32).

We need to taste now the spiritual beauty of God in all his past achievements — especially the death and resurrection of Christ for our sins — and in all his promises. Rooted in this past grace, our confidence and trust lay hold on all that God himself will be for us in the next moment, and in the next month, and in the endless ages of eternity.

It is he and he alone who will satisfy the soul in the future. And we must be sure of this future, if we are to live the radical Christian lives that Christ calls us to live here and now.

If our present enjoyment of Christ now — our present faith — does not have in it the Yes to all God’s promises, it will not embrace the power for radical service in the strength that God (in every future moment) will supply (1 Peter 4:11).

My prayer is that reflecting like this on the nature of faith in future grace will help us avoid superficial, oversimplified statements about believing the promises of God. It is a deep and wonderful thing.

John Piper 

You can sin all you want to

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2 Peter 1:4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When a person is saved, they are always saved. However, some people distort this truth. They get the idea that if it’s true, they’ll sin all they want to. 

Friend, I’ll let you in on a secret: I sin all I want to. The thing is, I don’t want to!

You see, if you’ve have really surrendered yourself to God and asked Him to save you, Peter tells us you’ve become “partakers of the divine nature.” If the only thing that keeps you from sinning is fear of losing your salvation, I wonder if you’ve ever been saved in the first place.

Does becoming “partakers of the divine nature” mean that you don’t sin any more? No. Before I was saved, I was running to sin. Now, I’m running from it. I may slip, but because I’m saved, I have a desire to live pure and clean to the glory of God.

ACTION POINT:

What about you? Do you have a desire to be holy? Or do you treat the doctrine of “once saved, always saved” as a license to live a sinful life? If it’s the latter, you’re in trouble.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

When Reason Serves Rebellion

The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!” (Proverbs 22:13)

This is not what I expected the proverb to say. I would have expected it to say, “The coward says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!’” But it says, “sluggard,” not “coward.” So, the controlling emotion here is laziness, not fear.

But what does laziness have to do with the danger of a lion in the street? We don’t usually say, “This man is too lazy to go do his work because there is a lion outside.”

The point is that the sluggard creates imaginary circumstances to justify not doing his work, and thus shifts the focus from the vice of his laziness to the danger of lions. No one will approve his staying in the house all day just because he is lazy. But they might excuse him if there is a lion in the street.

One profound biblical insight we need to learn from this is that our heart exploits our mind to justify what we want. That is, our deepest desires precede the rational functioning of our minds and incline the mind to perceive and think in a way that will make the desires look right, even if they’re wrong.

This is what the sluggard is doing. He deeply desires to stay at home and not work. There is no good reason to stay at home. So, what does he do? Does he overcome his bad desire — his laziness? No, he uses his mind to create unreal circumstances to justify his desire.

Jesus said, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). We love the darkness so that we can keep on doing what we want without exposure. In this condition, the mind becomes a factory of darkness — a fountain of half-truths, equivocations, sophistries, evasions, and lies — anything to protect the evil desires of the heart from exposure and destruction.

Consider and be wise.

John Piper