What Binds the Hands of Love?

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. (Colossians 1:3–5)

The problem with the church today is not that there are too many people who are passionately in love with heaven. The problem is not that professing Christians are retreating from the world, spending half their days reading Scripture and the other half singing about their pleasures in God all the while indifferent to the needs of the world. That’s not happening! The people of God are not so full of love to God that they spend half their days in his word.

The problem is that professing Christians are spending ten minutes reading Scripture and then half their day making money and the other half loving and repairing what they spend it on.

It’s not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love for the lost and hurting of this world. It is worldly-mindedness that hinders love, even when it is disguised by a religious routine on the weekend.

Where is the person whose heart is so passionately in love with the promised glory of heaven that he feels like an exile and a sojourner on the earth? Where is the person who has so tasted the beauty of the age to come that the diamonds of the world look like marbles from the dollar store, and the entertainment of the world feels empty, and the moral causes of the world are too small because they have no view to eternity? Where is this person?

To be sure, he is not in bondage to the Internet or eating or sleeping or drinking or partying or fishing or sailing or putzing around. He is a free man in a foreign land. And his one question is this: How can I maximize my enjoyment of God for all eternity while I am an exile on this earth? And his answer is always the same: by doing the labors of love. By expanding my joy in God, no matter the cost, if by any means possible I might include others in it.

Only one thing satisfies the heart whose treasure is in heaven: doing the works of heaven. And heaven is a world of love!

It is not the cords of heaven that bind the hands of love and make them ineffective. It is the love of money and leisure and comfort and praise — these are the cords of selfishness that bind the hands of love. And the power to sever these cords is Christian hope. “We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:4–5).

I say it again with all the conviction that lies within me: it is not heavenly-mindedness that hinders love on this earth. It is worldly-mindedness. And therefore the great fountain of love is the powerful, freeing confidence of Christian hope.

John Piper 

March 31

14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. - 2 Chronicles 7:14-15

Now, O my God, let your eyes be open and your ears attentive to the prayer of this place. - 2 Chronicles 6:40

O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!  - Psalm 130:2

3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? 

4 But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. 

5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;  - Psalm 130:3-5

Grace Keeps You

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast”... (Ephesians 2:8-9)

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Some Christians believe you can lose your salvation. Whether or not you can lose it depends on how you got it.

If you “got it” by works, then I could understand how you could lose it by works, right? I mean, if you had to work in order to be saved, then if your works fail, you’re no longer saved.

If sin could cause you to lose your salvation, one half of one sin would do it, because God demands perfection. Don’t think “God will tolerate a little, but He won’t tolerate a lot.” He won’t tolerate any! You would have to be completely sinless (an impossibility).

But if you’re saved by grace (and we are), then you’re kept by grace. You keep it the same way you got it—by His grace alone through faith alone.

When you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, God counts your faith for righteousness. God says to the believer, “You are righteous.” You don’t deserve it, you didn’t earn it, you don’t merit it, but when God sees you, He sees the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us we are clothed in His righteousness. And one part of the armor of God, which we are to put on each day, is the breastplate of righteousness. It’s available every day, not by our own merit, but because we’ve been clothed with His righteousness—the righteous Jesus purchased for us on the cross.

ACTION POINT:

Thank Him today for His incredible grace in saving you, and read Ephesians 6:10-18. As you do, take on yourself the whole armor of God.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If He Calls, He Keeps

[The Lord] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:8–9)

What are you depending on to ensure that your faith will last until Jesus comes?

The question is not, Do you believe in eternal security? The question is, How are we kept secure?

Does the perseverance of our faith rest decisively on the reliability of our own resolve? Or does it rest decisively on the work of God to “keep us trusting”?

It is a great and wonderful truth of Scripture that God is faithful and will keep forever those whom he has called. Our confidence that we are eternally secure is a confidence that God will do whatever is necessary to “keep us trusting!”

The certainty of eternity is no greater than the certainty God will keep us trusting now. But that certainty is very great for all whom God has called.

At least three passages put the call of God and the keeping of God together in this way.

“[The Lord] will sustain you (keep you) to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:8–9).

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you” (Jude 1–2). (See the same reality in Romans 8:30, Philippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:5, and Jude 24.)

The “faithfulness” of God guarantees that he will keep safe forever all whom he has called.

John Piper 

March 30

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? 

2 My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. 

3 He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. 

4 Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. 

5 The LORD is your keeper; the LORD is your shade on your right hand. 

6 The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. 

7 The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. 

8 The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.  - Psalms 121

1 Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, 

2 beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King.  - Psalm 48:1-2

Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.  - Psalm 124:8

Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways!  - Psalm 128:1

Are You Another Lemming?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”... 

(Mark 8:36)

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you know what a lemming is? It's a little animal who somehow gets in his mind a weird compulsion. And then all of them get it. They go headlong on a journey toward the sea. Over the mountains they go. Across the rivers they go. Through the woods they go. Over the marshes and the moors they go—on and on until they get to the sea. Then they jump in and drown. They're doing everything to get there—then that's it.

There are a lot of lemmings these days. They're working, striving, and building, but all to end in a Christ-less existence.

ACTION POINT:

You know, the chief religion in America is the cult of conformity. The theme is “everybody's doing it,” But God saved us out of that—for a purpose! He redeemed us from meaninglessness. It’s so great to be a Christian and to have a purpose in life!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

As Sure as God’s Love for His Son

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

God strips every pain of its destructive power. You must believe this or you will not thrive, or perhaps even survive, as a Christian, in the pressures and temptations of modern life.

There is so much pain, so many setbacks and discouragements, so many controversies and pressures. I do not know where I would turn, if I did not believe that almighty God is taking every setback and every discouragement and every controversy and every pressure and every pain, and stripping it of its destructive power, and making it work for the enlargement of my joy in God.

Listen to Paul’s astonishing words in 1 Corinthians 3:21–23, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The world is ours. Life is ours. Death is ours. Which I take to mean: God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God.

If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all will infallibly and freely with him give us all things — all things — the world, life, death, and God himself.

Romans 8:32 is a precious friend. The promise of God’s future grace is simply overwhelming. But all-important is the foundation: I have called it the logic of heaven. Here is a place to stand against all obstacles. God did not spare his own Son! Therefore! Therefore! The logic of heaven! Therefore, how much more will he not spare any effort to give us all that Christ died to purchase — all things, all good, and all bad working for our good!

It is as sure as the certainty that he loved his Son!

John Piper