Should we pray for a wicked ruler?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water. He turneth it whithersoever He will. Proverbs 21:1

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

God can change a ruler, God can remove a ruler, and God can overrule a ruler.

You ask, “Should I pray for my leader if he’s wicked?” You ought to pray all the more for him. Why? Because the Bible says, “I exhort therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.” 1Timothy 2:1-3 The apostle Paul, who penned these words under inspiration from the Holy Spirit, lived in an era where Roman appointees ruled the Middle East, and Rome itself ruled the world. Its Caesars became increasingly corrupt and immoral over time.

The greatest responsibility in America is not in the White House but in the church house. We’re to pray for our government. Pray for those who are in authority.

ACTION POINT:

Would you pray for America right now? You might pray, “Oh God, bless America. Lord, we deserve judgment, but we need mercy. Bring this nation, Lord, back to You. The troubles that we see in our land are tokens of Your love to bring us to our knees. Lord, it’s beyond us. God, we need You in America.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God’s Pleasure to Do You Good

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

Jesus will not sit by and let us disbelieve without a fight. He takes up the weapon of the word and speaks it with power for all who struggle to believe.

His aim is to defeat the fear that God is not the kind of God who really wants to be good to us — that he is not really generous and helpful and kind and tender, but is basically irked with us — ill-disposed and angry.

Sometimes, even if we believe in our heads that God is good to us, we may feel in our hearts that his goodness is somehow forced or constrained, perhaps like a judge who has been maneuvered by a clever attorney into a corner on some technicality of court proceeding, so he has to dismiss the charges against the prisoner whom he really would rather send to jail.

But Jesus is at pains to help us not feel that way about God. He is striving in Luke 12:32 to describe for us the indescribable worth and excellency of God’s soul by showing the unbridled pleasure he takes in giving us the kingdom.

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Every little word of this stunning sentence is intended to help take away the fear that Jesus knows we struggle with; namely, that God begrudges his benefits; that he is constrained and out of character when he does nice things; that at bottom he is angry and loves to vent his anger.

Luke 12:32 is a sentence about the nature of God. It’s about the kind of heart God has. It’s a verse about what makes God glad — not merely about what God will do or what he has to do, but what he delights to do, what he loves to do and takes pleasure in doing. Every word counts. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

John Piper 

What do you usually pray about?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

 For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke 19:10

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you know what the most frequent prayer request is about? Physical healing.

“Pray for my aunt who’s a Christian—she’s about to die.”

“Pray for my uncle. He’s saved, but he’s having heart surgery.”

But how many prayer meetings have you been to where people asked for prayer for their lost neighbor who is going to hell?

More often than not, we’re more interested in keeping the saints out of heaven than keeping the lost out of hell.

It’s not wrong to pray for our saved loved ones facing a crisis, but how much more urgent to pray for those who, if they died today, would go out into a dark, Christ-less eternity?

It’s not a tragedy to die and go to heaven. It is a tragedy to die and go to hell.

Friend, it’s time we elevated our prayers outside the physical realm of life into the spiritual realm.

ACTION POINT:

Take a look at your prayer list today—where are the lost who need to be saved? What are you doing to help them find their way?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Heaven’s Relief in the Coming Wrath

God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted . . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (2 Thessalonians 1:6–8)

There will come a time when the patience of God is over. When God has seen his people suffer for the allotted time, and the appointed number of martyrs is complete (Revelation 6:11), then a just and holy vengeance will come from heaven.

Notice that God’s vengeance on those who have afflicted his people is experienced by us as “relief.” “God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted.” In other words, the judgment on “those who afflict” us is a form of grace toward us.

Perhaps the most remarkable picture of judgment as grace is the picture of Babylon’s destruction in Revelation 18. At her destruction, a great voice from heaven cries, “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!” (Revelation 18:20). Then a great multitude is heard saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants” (Revelation 19:1–2).

When God’s patience has run its long-suffering course, and this age is over, and judgment comes on the enemies of God’s people, the saints will not disapprove of God’s justice.

This means that the final destruction of the unrepentant will not be experienced as a misery for God’s people.

The unwillingness of others to repent will not hold the affections of the saints hostage. Hell will not be able to blackmail heaven into misery. God’s judgment will be approved, and the saints will experience the vindication of truth as a great grace.

John Piper 

Are you tired of waiting on God?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord. Psalm 27:14

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you know the story of Joshua and how the wall of Jericho fell down? Some people haven’t heard the whole story. They think the Israelites just marched up to it, gave a shout, and “the walls came a-tumblin’ down.” Not at all.

Following God’s orders to Joshua, the Israelites marched around it once a day for six days. Then on the seventh day, they marched around it seven times before they gave the shout. Then the wall collapsed!

Now, why not just walk around Jericho one time? Why would God make them go around it for seven days?  I think it was because God was testing their faith.

God was teaching them that waiting time is not wasted time. Isaiah 28:16b says, “He that believeth shall not make haste.” God is never in a hurry, like we are. We get upset when we miss a section in a revolving door! God is also never late. He knows what He is doing.

ACTION POINT:

Do you know what our problem is? We’ve been around Jericho six times and we’re ready to quit. Don’t do it. Stay the course. Say with the psalmist: “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him” (Psalm 62:5).

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

How can I be truly “free”?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. John 8:36

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Living a pure life means surrendering to Jesus Christ. But some people don’t want to surrender because they say they “want to be free.” What if a train said, “I don’t want to run on these tracks, I want to be free”? Then off through the meadow it would go.

What if a kite said, “I want to be free. I don’t want to be tied to a string”? The string breaks, and down it goes. What if a tree said, “I don’t want to be planted in the earth. I want to be free”? Jerked up from the earth, it dies.

Paul made this point as he appealed to some Greek citizens of Athens who prided themselves as being philosophers and thinkers. Standing at Mars Hill, Paul presented the way to God—totally new to them—through the Lord Jesus Christ, proclaiming,

“That they should seek the Lord…and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. For in Him we live, and move, and have our being…”  Acts 17:27-28a

ACTION POINT:

Everything that is truly free functions best when it functions as God made it. God made you to know Him and to love Him. Far from “being free” from Him, Jesus Christ is the source of our spiritual life. He is our very life. 

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Powerful Root of Practical Love

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. (1 John 3:14)

So, love is the evidence that we are born again — that we are Christians, that we are saved.

Sometimes the Bible makes our holiness and our love for people the condition of our final salvation. In other words, if we are not holy and not loving, we will not be saved at the judgment day (e.g., Hebrews 12:14; Galatians 5:21; 1 Corinthians 6:10). This doesn’t mean that acts of love are how we get right with God. No, the Bible is clear again and again as Ephesians 2:8–9 says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.” No, when the Bible says that we are saved by faith but that we must love people in order to finally be saved, it means that faith in God’s promises must be so real that the love it produces proves the reality of the faith.

So, love for others is a condition of future grace in the sense that it confirms that the primary condition, faith, is genuine. We could call love for others a secondary condition, which confirms the authenticity of the primary and essential condition of faith which alone unites us to Christ, and receives his power.

Faith perceives the glory of God in the promises of future grace and embraces all that the promises reveal of what God is for us in Jesus. That spiritual sight of God’s glory, and our delight in it, is the self-authenticating evidence that God has called us to be a beneficiary of his grace. This evidence frees us to bank on God’s promise as our own. And this banking on the promise empowers us to love. Which in turn confirms that our faith is real.

The world is desperate for a faith that combines two things: awestruck sight of unshakable divine Truth, and utterly practical, round-the-clock power to make a liberating difference in life. That’s what I want too. Which is why I am a Christian.

There is a great God of grace who magnifies his own infinite beauty and self-sufficiency by fulfilling promises to helpless people who trust him. And there is a power that comes from prizing this God that leaves no nook or cranny of life untouched. It empowers us to love in the most practical ways.

John Piper