Do You Need Wisdom?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Without counsel, plans go awry, but in the multitude of counselors they are established.” Proverbs 15:22

 

PONDER THIS

Notice in verse 22, “in the multitude of counselors” this wisdom is established. If I had it to do over again, I would have more family counsels. We had family worship, but I would bring the family together. We would sit down, and I would listen to each person, and we would, as a family, say everything we had belongs to us equally. We would share the amenities and the responsibilities, and we would learn to make decisions together. We would make a family budget and we would stick to it. We would make decisions as a family about discipline and many other things. The parents are the head of the family, but there is wisdom in doing these things together.

How have you experienced the truth that plans are established in the multitude of counselors?

How does living this way help us to rely less on ourselves and more on God?

PRACTICE THIS

Where do you currently need wisdom? Spend time praying about this area and seek wisdom from a trusted advisor this week.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Radical Effects of the Resurrection

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:19)

Paul concludes from his hourly danger, and his daily dying, and his fighting with wild beasts, that the life he has chosen in following Jesus is foolish and pitiable if he will not be raised from the dead.

If death were the end of the matter, he says, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32). This doesn’t mean: Let’s all become gluttons and drunkards if there is no resurrection. Drunkards are pitiable too — with or without the resurrection. He means: If there is no resurrection, what makes sense is middle-class moderation to maximize earthly pleasures.

But that is not what Paul chooses. He chooses suffering, because he chooses obedience. Ananias came to Paul after his encounter with Christ on the Damascus road, with the words from the Lord Jesus, “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16). Paul accepted this suffering as part of his calling.

How could Paul do it? What was the source of this radical and painful obedience? The answer is given in 1 Corinthians 15:20: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” In other words, Christ was raised, and I will be raised with him. Therefore, nothing suffered for Jesus is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

The hope of the resurrection radically changed the way Paul lived. It freed him from materialism and consumerism. It gave him the power to go without comforts and pleasures that many people feel they must have in this life. For example, though he had the right to marry (1 Corinthians 9:5), he renounced that pleasure because he was called to bear so much suffering.

This is the way Jesus said the hope of the resurrection is supposed to change our behavior. For example, he told us to invite to our homes people who cannot pay us back in this life. How are we to be motivated to do this? “You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14).

This is a radical call for us to look hard at our present lives to see if they are shaped by the hope of the resurrection. Do we make decisions on the basis of gain in this world, or gain in the next? Do we take risks for love’s sake that can only be explained as wise if there is a resurrection?

May God help us to rededicate ourselves for a lifetime of letting the resurrection have its radical effects.

John Piper 

Bible Study

James 4:1-3

Warning Against Worldliness

[1] What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? [2] You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. [3] You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

Romans 7:22-25

[22] For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23] but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? [25] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

1 Peter 2:11-12

[11] Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. [12] Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Galatians 5:17

[17] For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

Do You Love Money?

PRAY OVER THIS

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10

 

PONDER THIS

Every now and then a graduation commencement speaker will tell the graduates, “Make all the money you can as long you make it honestly.” That's the worst advice I've ever heard. If you’re trying to make all the money you can, then you're going to be making money when you ought to be doing something else. You’re going to be making money when you ought to be praying or going to church or spending time with your children. No one should have a goal to make all the money he or she can. Sure, we must provide for our families, but when we determine that we’re going to be rich, we put ourselves in a very vulnerable position.

What would you say is the difference between making a living as we should and chasing riches?

How can you guard against the love of money in your life?

PRACTICE THIS

Assess your current priorities. Where might you be pursuing money inappropriately? What needs to change?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

When God Becomes 100% for Us

. . . among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3)

All of God’s wrath, all of the condemnation we deserve, was poured out on Jesus. All of God’s demands for perfect righteousness were fulfilled by Christ. The moment we see (by grace!) this Treasure, and receive him in this way, his death counts as our death and his condemnation as our condemnation and his righteousness as our righteousness, and God becomes 100% irrevocably for us forever in that instant.

The question this leaves unanswered is, “Doesn’t the Bible teach that in eternity God set his favor on us in election?”

In other words, thoughtful people ask, “Did God only become 100% for us in the moment of faith and union with Christ and justification? Did he not become 100% for us in the act of election before the foundation of the world?” Paul says in Ephesians 1:4–5, “[God] chose us in [Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.”

Is God then not 100% for the elect from eternity? The answer hangs on the meaning of “100%.”

With the term “100%” I am trying to preserve a biblical truth found in several passages of Scripture. For example, in Ephesians 2:3, Paul says that Christians were “children of wrath” before they were made alive in Christ Jesus: “We all once lived [among the sons of disobedience] in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

Paul is saying that, before our new birth — before we were made alive together with Christ — God’s wrath was on us. The elect were under wrath. This changed when God made us alive in Christ Jesus and awakened us to see the truth and beauty of Christ so that we received him as the one who died for us and as the one whose righteousness is counted as ours because of our union with Jesus. Before this happened to us, we were under God’s wrath. Then, because of faith in Christ and union with him, all God’s wrath was removed and he then became, in that sense, 100% for us.

Therefore, exult in the truth that God will keep you. He will get you to the end because in Christ he is 100% for you. And therefore, getting to the end does not make God to be 100% for you. It is the effect of the fact that he is already 100% for you.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Galatians 5:16-23

Keep in Step with the Spirit

[16] But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. [17] For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. [18] But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. [19] Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, [20] idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, [21] envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. [22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Psalm 51:5-6

    [5] Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

        and in sin did my mother conceive me. 

    [6] Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,

        and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

Romans 5:12-17

Death in Adam, Life in Christ

[12] Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—[13] for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. [14] Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

[15] But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. [16] And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. [17] For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 2:14

[14] They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!

Has Jesus Ever Made You Do Anything?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.”

(Ephesians 5:25)

 

PONDER THIS

Did you know Jesus never makes me do anything? Husbands, you are going to be in severe difficulty if you think that when the Bible says you are the head, you read that as, “I am the boss.” “I am the dictator.” No. Jesus is not the dictator of the Church; He is the head of the Church. If the Church, as His bride, refuses to follow, then she is going to reap repercussions, but He never forces us to do anything. Any husband who takes the attitude of a dictator is going to see that his home is in severe trouble. He is seeking to use the Bible as a club saying, “I am the head. Submit.” This is not the way of Jesus and cannot be our way either.

Who do you know who you would say is a great leader?

What makes that person a leader you want to follow?

PRACTICE THIS

Consider the positions of influence and leadership you have been given. How will you move toward Christ-honoring leadership?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers