Do you feel “fogged in”?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.

Psalm 116:5

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Imagine you’re in a plane, ready for take-off on the runway. The pilot comes on the intercom and announces there’s a delay due to fog. You glance out your window. It looks so gloomy and dark. You wonder if the sun is shining.

The fog lifts enough for the control tower to give the green light, and the plane takes off. It’s still cloudy, but the plane starts climbing, climbing, climbing. Suddenly, the plane bursts through the clouds, and it is so gloriously bright that you have to blink your eyes. Now, you realize the sun has been there all the time.

That’s the way it is with Jehovah God, the Son of righteousness with healing in His wings (see Malachi 4:2-3). He is always loving, always giving. He is waiting for you to see Him now.

ACTION POINT:

Invite the Holy Spirit to show you today the true condition of the sky—above the clouds. Open your heart to His presence and let Him speak to you about what is really there beyond the fog. Things are not always what they seem. And God has His hand upon you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Prayer’s First Priority

“Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” (Matthew 6:9)

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches that the first priority in praying is to ask our heavenly Father to cause his name to be hallowed. In us. In the church. In the world. Everywhere.

Notice that this is a petition, a request. It is not a declaration or acclamation. It is not an expression of praise, but petition. For years I misread the Lord’s Prayer as if it began with praise: “Praise God, the Lord’s name is hallowed, revered, honored!” But it is not acclamation. It is supplication. It is a request to God that he would see to it that his own name be hallowed.

It is like another text, Matthew 9:38, where Jesus tells us to pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send out laborers into his own harvest. It never ceases to amaze me that we, we laborers, should be instructed to ask the owner of the farm, who knows the harvest better than we do, to add on more farm hands.

But isn’t this the same thing we have here in the Lord’s Prayer — Jesus is telling us to ask God, who is infinitely jealous for the honor of his own name, to see to it that his name be hallowed, which means honored, revered, exalted as supremely precious?

Well it may amaze us, but there it is. And it teaches us two things.

One is that prayer does not move God to do things he is disinclined to do. He has every intention to cause his name to be hallowed. Nothing is higher on God’s priority list. But we should ask anyway.

The other is that prayer is God’s way of bringing our priorities into line with his. God wills to make great things the consequence of our prayers when our prayers are the consequence of his great purposes.

Bring your heart into line with the jealousy of God to hallow his name, and you will pray with great effect. Let your first and all-determining prayer be for the hallowing of God’s name, and your prayers will plug into the power of God’s jealousy for his name.

John Piper 

Do you want to tell God how to do things?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and ye shall serve Him, and cleave unto Him.

Deuteronomy 13:4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When we read a command in the Bible, whether we understand it or not, we ought to obey it. The Bible is not first and foremost a book to be explained, it is a book to be believed and obeyed.

So many times we want to tell God how He ought to do things. I can imagine some early apostles when they first met Saul persecuting believers—those well-meaning Christians could have been praying for God to strike him dead. But what did God do? He struck Paul alive! And aren’t you glad He did?

ACTION POINT:

Don’t substitute your human reasoning for obedience. You say, “Well, this or that seems so reasonable to me.” God says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). This will test your faith, but you must trust that He has the higher ways and the better plan.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Love’s Greatest Happiness

No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. (Ephesians 5:29–30)

Don’t miss that last phrase: “because we are members of his body.” And don’t forget what Paul said two verses earlier, namely, that Christ gave himself for us “so that he might present the church to himself in splendor.” So in two different ways, Paul makes plain that Christ pursued his joy in pursuing the holiness and beauty and happiness of his people.

The union between Christ and his bride is so close (“one flesh”) that any good done to her is a good done to himself. Which means that the clear assertion of this text is that the Lord is moved to nourish, cherish, sanctify, and cleanse his bride because in this he finds his joy.

By some definitions, this cannot be love. Love, they say, must be free of self-interest — especially Christlike love, especially Calvary love. I have never seen such a view of love made to square with this passage of Scripture.

Yet what Christ does for his bride, this text plainly calls love: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church . . . ” (Ephesians 5:25). Why not let the text define love for us, instead of bringing our definition from ethics or philosophy? According to this text, love is the pursuit of Christ’s joy in the holy joy of the beloved.

There is no way to exclude self-interest from love, for self-interest is not the same as selfishness. Selfishness seeks its own private happiness at the expense of others.

Christlike love seeks its happiness in the happiness of others — not at their expense. It will even suffer and die for the beloved in order that its joy might be made full in the life and purity of the beloved.

This is how Christ loved us, and this is how he calls us to love one another.

John Piper 

Do dark shadows frighten you?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.

Psalm 145:18

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Psalm 23 speaks of the “valley of the shadow of death.” For every shadow, there must be light. Jesus Christ said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). A shadow may frighten you, but a shadow cannot really hurt you.

I dare say that a shadow at one time or another has spooked most of us. But thank God, death is but a shadow—if you know the Lord Jesus Christ. If you keep your face toward the light, the shadow will fall behind you. You won’t even see the shadow. God doesn’t bring us to a valley to leave us there. He always brings us through.

ACTION POINT:

God is never closer than when we’re in a dark valley. That’s when He is especially near. In the original language, we’re told Hebrews 13:5 actually has five negatives! A literal translation of it would be: “I will never, no, not ever, never leave you nor forsake you.” Memorize this short, treasured verse today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Jesus’s Joy in Marriage

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses. The biblical mandate to husbands and wives is to seek your own joy in the joy of your spouse.

There is scarcely a more hedonistic passage in the Bible than the one on marriage in Ephesians 5:25–30. Husbands are told to love their wives the way Christ loved the church.

How did he love the church? Verse 25 says he “gave himself up for her.” But why? Verse 26 says, “that he might sanctify” and cleanse her. But why did he want to do that? Verse 27 answers, “that he might present the church to himself in splendor!”

Ah! There it is! “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). What joy? The joy of marriage to his bride, the church. The joy of presenting the church to himself in blood-bought splendor.

Jesus does not intend to have a dirty and unholy wife. Therefore, he was willing to die to sanctify and cleanse his betrothed so he could present to himself a wife “in splendor.” He gained the desire of his heart by giving himself up in suffering for the good of his bride.

Then Paul applies this to husbands in verses 28–30: “In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”

Jesus had said to husbands and wives — and everyone else — “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Marriage is an extraordinary place of application. It is not merely “as” you love yourself. But you are loving yourself. When you love the person with whom God has made you one flesh, you are loving yourself. That is, your greatest joy is found in seeking the greatest joy of your spouse.

John Piper 

Do we have a jealous God?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

Exodus 34:14

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When this verse says that God is a jealous God, that may sound like a bad attribute. But for God, it is a holy attribute. You see, I have no right to be jealous of another preacher because I am not the only preacher in the world. For a singer to be jealous of another singer would be a wrong attitude, because there are many singers. One singer doesn’t own all the singing in the world. There is room for many singers. For an athlete to be jealous of another athlete is wrong, because he doesn't own athletics. But there's only one God.

Therefore, He has every right to own the worship, adoration and praise that has come to him. He deserves it.

Put yourself in God's place for a moment. You're the one who made heaven and earth. Then imagine people worshiping a frog or a beetle or money or sports or family or their own intellect or denomination or church. Then you'd understand why the Bible says, ““I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:2-3).

And when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37).

ACTION POINT:

When you die to self and worship God, you will begin to experience the fullness of God in a way that transforms your life.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers