The Secret of Submission

BIBLE MEDITATION:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

If we are going to survive in the tough times of our lives, we must learn to submit. Wait. What? That’s right. Now, I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but let me explain.

The Word of God teaches us that no person is inferior to anyone else. We are all one in Jesus Christ. Submission is something we do to one another “in the fear of God” (Ephesians 5:21). Through submission comes power and victory.

Do you want to know a good definition of submission? Here it is: Submission is one equal willingly placing himself under another equal that God may therefore be glorified.

ACTION POINT:

We are never more like Jesus than when we submit. And never more like the devil than when we rebel.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

God Is Not an Idolater

When he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed. (2 Thessalonians 1:10)

Paul says that Christ is coming precisely to be glorified and to be marveled at. That is why he is coming.

People stumble over the teaching that God exalts his own glory and seeks to be praised by his people because the Bible teaches us not to be like that. For example, the Bible says that love “does not seek its own” (1 Corinthians 13:5, NASB).

How can God be loving and yet be utterly devoted to “seeking his own” glory and praise and joy? How can God be for us if he is so utterly for himself?

The answer I propose is this: Because God is unique as an all-glorious, totally self-sufficient Being, he must be for himself if he is to be for us. The rules of humility that belong to a creature cannot apply in the same way to its Creator.

If God should turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside himself. He would commit idolatry.

This would be no gain for us. For where can we go when our God has become unrighteous? Where will we find a Rock of integrity in the universe when the heart of God has ceased to value supremely the supremely valuable? Where shall we turn with our adoration when God himself has forsaken the claims of infinite worth and beauty?

No, we do not turn God’s self-exaltation into love by demanding that God cease to be God.

Instead, we must come to see that God is love precisely because he relentlessly pursues the praises of his name in the hearts of his people. Our praise for his greatness is the capstone of our joy and his greatness.

John Piper

When Will You Decide to Start?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. John 9:4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Robert Moffett, a great missionary statesman, said, “We will have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but only one short hour before the sun sets in which to win them.”

Life’s setting sun is sinking low. There are only a limited number of days in which to save souls. Are you going to spend your days investing in the things of this world, or depositing treasures in heaven?

When?

Are you going to plant happiness in this life alone?

Or are you going to start sowing seeds of salvation?  If so, when?

Are you going to do something nice for your wife? When?

Are you going to write your father? When?

ACTION POINT:

Make a promise to yourself right now that you will not put off until tomorrow what you can and should be doing today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Pleased to Praise

Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you! (Psalm 67:3, 5)

Why does God demand we must praise God?

C.S. Lewis:

Just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?”

The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

There is the answer — the solution to the apparent egomania of God in demanding us to praise him! It is a demand for our greatest happiness. We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise. If we were not allowed to speak of what we value and celebrate what we love and praise what we admire, our joy would not be full.

So, if God loves us enough to make our joy full, he must not only give us himself; he must also win from us the praise of our hearts — not because he needs to shore up some weakness in himself or compensate for some deficiency, but because he loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing and praising him, the most magnificent of all beings.

If he is truly for us, he must be for himself! God is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking his own praise is the ultimately loving act. For him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue. When he does all things “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12, 14), he preserves for us and offers to us the only thing in all the world that can satisfy our longings.

God is for us! And the foundation of this love is that God has been, is now, and always will be for himself

John Piper 

How to Let Go of Yesterday and Live Today

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13-14

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

There are two days that can steal your joy and rob you of the fulfillment God has for you today: One is tomorrow; the other is yesterday. Both are days we Christians should refuse to live in.

So many of us have never learned how to separate ourselves from yesterday. We are still dragging it around with us and it is stealing our joy. Paul could have lived there in the realm of guilt, but he refused.

ACTION POINT:

Maybe you, like Paul and countless others, have committed some horrible sins. But friend, what God has called cleaned, let no man call unclean. If you have sinned and given it to God, it is buried in the depths. Don’t let it contaminate your day. Learn to live in the present.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

An Unshakably Happy God

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11)

God is absolutely sovereign.

“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3).

Therefore, he is not frustrated. He rejoices in all his works when he contemplates them as colors of the magnificent mosaic of redemptive history. He is an unshakably happy God.

His happiness is foundationally the delight he has in himself. Before creation, he rejoiced in the image of his glory in the person of his Son —  Then the joy of God “went public” in the works of creation and redemption.

These works delight the heart of God because they reflect his glory. The heavens are telling the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works” (Psalm 104:31) He does everything he does to preserve and display that glory, for in this his soul rejoices.

All the works of God culminate in the praises of his redeemed people. “Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!” (Psalm 150:2). The climax of his happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints. “His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love” (Psalm 147:10–11).

But our praise is not only God’s delight, as an echo of his excellence; it is also the apex of our joy. Praise is the consummation of the joy we have in seeing and savoring the greatness of God.

Therefore, God’s pursuit of praise from us and our pursuit of pleasure in him are the same pursuit. This is the great outcome of the gospel of the glory of the grace of God in Christ!

John Piper

Who Are You Burning Your Candle For?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For if you live after the flesh, you shall die: but if you, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. Romans 8:13

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

We preachers are fond of saying, “Get right with God. You may die!” It is far better to say, “Get right with God. You may live!” The greatest joy in life is living for Jesus. Why waste more time? There’s a life to live!

Friend, the best thing you can say about a life lived without Christ is that it’s a wasted life. Billy Sunday, a revival preacher from the 1920s, said repenting and accepting Christ on your deathbed is “burning the candle of life for the devil, and then blowing the smoke in God’s face.”

Don’t choose to live and die like that!

ACTION POINT:

If you’re not saved, it’s not too late. If you want to be saved—wherever you are, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done—Jesus wants to save you. Repent and believe and you will be saved.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers