God Calls Us to Honor Our Parents

PRAY OVER THIS

“Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.”

Colossians 3:20

 

PONDER THIS

I can honor my parents by the life that I live. My life will either honor or dishonor my parents. When we’re children, we are to obey our parents. Even when we’re grown, we learn to take their advice. But children are to obey. Today’s verse makes this clear: “Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:20). Do you want to please God? You cannot please God by displeasing your parents. Obey your parents in all things. There’s a blessing in obedience. And not only is there a blessing in obedience, but there’s also great danger in disobedience.

What are some practical ways young children honor their parents?

How can you honor your parents as an adult? How can you do this even if you have a strained relationship with your parents or if they are no longer living?

PRACTICE THIS

Practice one way of honoring your parents today as a means of worship to the Lord.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If You Don’t Fight Lust

Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11)

When I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in, I tried to understand his situation, and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know, Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.”

As a professing Christian, he looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?”

So, I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the threats of the Bible, and that puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical warnings. I believe this view of the Christian life is comforting thousands who are on the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13).

Jesus said, if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). The point is not that true Christians always succeed in every battle. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly. We don’t make peace with sin. We make war.

The stakes are much higher than whether the world is blown up by a thousand long-range missiles, or terrorists bomb your city, or global warming melts the ice caps, or AIDS sweeps the nations. All these calamities can kill only the body. But if we don’t fight lust, we lose our souls. Forever.

Peter says the passions of the flesh wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11). The stakes in this war are infinitely higher than in any threat of world war or terrorism. The apostle Paul listed “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,” then said it is “on account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6). And the wrath of God is immeasurably more fearful than the wrath of all the nations of the world put together.

May God give us grace to take our souls and others’ souls seriously and keep up the fight.

John Piper 

Bible Study

James 4:1-4

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. [4] You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

Galatians 5:19-25

[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. [24] And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

[25] If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Romans 13:14

[14] But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Leviticus 25:23

Redemption of Property

[23] “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.

Finding Unity in Our Differences

PRAY OVER THIS

“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

Genesis 1:27

 

PONDER THIS

A man is never to lose his masculinity. A woman is never to give up her femininity. God gave you that femaleness. And God gave the male his maleness. A female might object, “Well, I’m not inferior to a man.” That’s right! You’re not inferior to a man. As a matter of fact, you’re superior to a man . . . at being a woman. And a man is superior to a woman at being a man. God made them different that He might make them one. Any society that blurs the distinction between male and female is headed for disintegration and disaster. And in America today, we are reaping the results of disregarding these God-given differences. God made them in the beginning male and female. We honor Him by honoring the way He made us.

What are some unique ways God has made you according to your gender?

What are some ways you honor God by living as a male or female?

PRACTICE THIS

Choose one action today to honor God through the gender He has given you.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

What It Means to Love Money

The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. (1 Timothy 6:10)

What did Paul mean when he wrote this? He couldn’t have meant that money is always on your mind when you sin. A lot of sin happens when we are not thinking about money.

My suggestion is this: He meant that all the evils in the world come from a certain kind of heart, namely, the kind of heart that loves money.

So what does it mean to love money? It doesn’t mean to admire the green paper or the copper coins or the silver shekels. To know what it means to love money, you have to ask, What is money? I would answer that question like this: Money is simply a symbol that stands for human resources. Money stands for what you can get from man — other human beings — instead of God.

God deals in the currency of grace, not money: “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!” (Isaiah 55:1). Money is the currency of human resources. So, the heart that loves money is a heart that pins its hopes, and pursues its pleasures, and puts its trust in what human resources can offer.

So, the love of money is virtually the same as faith in money — belief (trust, confidence, assurance) that money will meet your needs and make you happy.

Love of money is the alternative to faith in God’s future grace. It is faith in future human resources — the kind of thing you can obtain or secure with money. Therefore the love of money, or trust in money, is the underside of unbelief in the promises of God. Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. . . . You cannot serve God and money.”

You can’t trust in God and in money at the same time. Belief in one is unbelief in the other. A heart that loves money — that banks on money for happiness — is not banking on all that God is for us in Jesus as the satisfaction of our souls.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Genesis 2:21-24

[21] So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. [22] And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. [23] Then the man said, 

    “This at last is bone of my bones

        and flesh of my flesh;

    she shall be called Woman,

        because she was taken out of Man.”

    [24] Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Malachi 2:15-17

[15] Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. [16] “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”

The Messenger of the LORD

[17] You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”

Matthew 19:4-6

[4] He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, [5] and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? [6] So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Mark 10:6-9

[6] But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ [7] ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, [8] and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. [9] What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Teaching God’s Word in Daily Life

PRAY OVER THIS

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

 

PONDER THIS

I believe in family worship, but sometimes family worship can be painful. It’s almost like you just try to cram something down the throats of the kids. “You sit still while I instill.” It’s “a dose a day keeps the devil away.” But according to today’s passage, that’s not the real way to teach the Bible. There is a time and place for when a family comes together to share. But you begin to verbalize it when you rise up, when you lie down, when you’re in the way, when you go out, when you come in, and when you speak the things of God normally and naturally, consistently every day. Then you’re really teaching. You see, you need to vitalize it. It needs to be in your heart. Then, you need to verbalize it.

Which form of teaching discussed today are you more prone to?

Why is it important to teach consistently with our lives and not only with our words?

PRACTICE THIS

Consider one way you can teach with your life and not only with your words. Put this into practice today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers