July 21
Crossing the International Date Line is quite an experience. No, you can’t perceive any change when it happens—darkness doesn’t suddenly turn to light and there are no fireworks to commemorate the momentous occasion—but you do get a tingle up your spine in knowing you have just passed from one day to another, either gaining or losing a whole day, depending on which way you’re sailing.
In simply plodding along through life, the same thing happens every day. Morning and evening follow just as they always do. The sun comes up, and with the dawn each person on the planet has another opportunity to apply his skills and his resolve to conquering the set of challenges posed by the new day.
One of the most formidable of those challenges is that of rising above one’s self, of laying aside the things that tempt a believer to compromise his integrity in order to realize a short term goal or to bask in the warmth of a short term pleasure. No matter how committed you are to being the best version of yourself that you can be, this recurring contest is one you can’t be sure of winning.
Yet, if you lose, you have the Word of God to lean on. Though you may travel the path that leads you across the point where light becomes darkness a thousand times, each time you may claim again the promise that is given in Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed your transgressions from you.” Claim the matchless comfort of these words and sail into the light again.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
A Reciprocal Action
July 20
We’re good at holding grudges. Even when we think we’ve put a grievance behind us, it still rears its ugly head occasionally—sometimes when we least expect it. From the student we suspected of pilfering our lunch money in grade school to the cheating spouse, we cling to the hurts that have been inflicted upon us.
It is to our detriment to do so. The perpetrator has no doubt long since forgotten the affront and gotten on with his life while we are weighted by the burden of the indignity they required us to bear. Our spirits are not free, not even to worship the Lord, when we allow ourselves to be encumbered by the weight of the wrongs that we’ve endured.
In Matthew 5:23-25, Jesus says that if we bring a gift to the altar we must clear up any matter of un-forgiveness that we harbor against another individual. God will not receive our gift if it is given while we hold a grudge against someone. Forgiveness is the crux of the Christian faith. Jesus forgave us when we didn’t deserve to be forgiven and we must emulate Him in this grace.
In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus says, “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you.” It is a reciprocal action. When you have forgiven, then shall you be forgiven. We cannot hope to enjoy release from the grip our sins have upon us if we are not willing to release others from the grip of their sins.
We’re good at holding grudges. Even when we think we’ve put a grievance behind us, it still rears its ugly head occasionally—sometimes when we least expect it. From the student we suspected of pilfering our lunch money in grade school to the cheating spouse, we cling to the hurts that have been inflicted upon us.
It is to our detriment to do so. The perpetrator has no doubt long since forgotten the affront and gotten on with his life while we are weighted by the burden of the indignity they required us to bear. Our spirits are not free, not even to worship the Lord, when we allow ourselves to be encumbered by the weight of the wrongs that we’ve endured.
In Matthew 5:23-25, Jesus says that if we bring a gift to the altar we must clear up any matter of un-forgiveness that we harbor against another individual. God will not receive our gift if it is given while we hold a grudge against someone. Forgiveness is the crux of the Christian faith. Jesus forgave us when we didn’t deserve to be forgiven and we must emulate Him in this grace.
In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus says, “If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive you.” It is a reciprocal action. When you have forgiven, then shall you be forgiven. We cannot hope to enjoy release from the grip our sins have upon us if we are not willing to release others from the grip of their sins.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
The Simple Promise
July 19
If being a Christian is so simple, why isn’t everyone a believer in Christ? Of course, we must take into account the reality of the evil one whose purpose is to undo the work of God. In fact, his mischief underlies every possible reason for any individual’s rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior.
Deception is part and parcel of that wicked one’s bag of tricks. In John 8:44, Jesus expounds upon this aspect of the character of the devil. Jesus says, “…there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Would anyone embrace error if satan were not well-practiced at deception!
So, he spews doctrinal error through false religious systems; he dilutes truth, which then becomes a lie, by luring the foolish to compromise truth for the sake of ecumenism. One of his most effective schemes is to convince a sinner that he must save himself, overcome his proclivity to sin before presenting himself to God.
All these and so many more distortions of truth are disseminated by the evil one and his minions. The lies are used to blind the eyes of the lost to the reality of the simple promise that is for everyone who will receive it, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” I John 1:9.
If being a Christian is so simple, why isn’t everyone a believer in Christ? Of course, we must take into account the reality of the evil one whose purpose is to undo the work of God. In fact, his mischief underlies every possible reason for any individual’s rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ as personal Savior.
Deception is part and parcel of that wicked one’s bag of tricks. In John 8:44, Jesus expounds upon this aspect of the character of the devil. Jesus says, “…there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Would anyone embrace error if satan were not well-practiced at deception!
So, he spews doctrinal error through false religious systems; he dilutes truth, which then becomes a lie, by luring the foolish to compromise truth for the sake of ecumenism. One of his most effective schemes is to convince a sinner that he must save himself, overcome his proclivity to sin before presenting himself to God.
All these and so many more distortions of truth are disseminated by the evil one and his minions. The lies are used to blind the eyes of the lost to the reality of the simple promise that is for everyone who will receive it, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” I John 1:9.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Can We Hope For Forgiveness?
July 18
When we have transgressed the immutable law of God, do we dare hope that we can actually be forgiven? We tend to carry upon ourselves the weight of all the wrong that we’ve done. We have a difficult time relinquishing the guilt that besets us. We sometimes go from oblivion as to our need for a Savior to certainty that nothing, that no one, can possibly save us.
This traverses the spectrum of sins and the types of people who have committed them. An elderly woman who augmented her family’s paltry resources during WW II when her brothers were fighting in Europe to defeat the Nazis was reduced to tears every time she mentioned the abortion she had, killing the baby she had conceived through prostitution.
A former executive, retired and quite comfortable financially, still became disconcerted when he reflected upon the rising star in the company he had undermined by his false accusations against him. Things that seem so reasonable when we’re doing them come back to haunt us at the most inopportune times. At those times when we wish we could relax and enjoy life, we are instead beleaguered by guilt we thought we’d assuaged long ago. Yet, if we turn to the Word of God, we find great comfort. Isaiah 1:5-18 addresses this perplexity.
It says, “Why should you be stricken any more?...Wash you and make you clean; put away the evil of your doings…cease to do wrong…though your sins be as scarlet…they shall be washed white as snow.” Jesus has cleansed us from every semblance of sin. If we will but appropriate the salvation He has provided through His shed blood, we will be clean. Our conscience will be clean. We will be sin-free for as we are told in Nehemiah 9:17, “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”
When we have transgressed the immutable law of God, do we dare hope that we can actually be forgiven? We tend to carry upon ourselves the weight of all the wrong that we’ve done. We have a difficult time relinquishing the guilt that besets us. We sometimes go from oblivion as to our need for a Savior to certainty that nothing, that no one, can possibly save us.
This traverses the spectrum of sins and the types of people who have committed them. An elderly woman who augmented her family’s paltry resources during WW II when her brothers were fighting in Europe to defeat the Nazis was reduced to tears every time she mentioned the abortion she had, killing the baby she had conceived through prostitution.
A former executive, retired and quite comfortable financially, still became disconcerted when he reflected upon the rising star in the company he had undermined by his false accusations against him. Things that seem so reasonable when we’re doing them come back to haunt us at the most inopportune times. At those times when we wish we could relax and enjoy life, we are instead beleaguered by guilt we thought we’d assuaged long ago. Yet, if we turn to the Word of God, we find great comfort. Isaiah 1:5-18 addresses this perplexity.
It says, “Why should you be stricken any more?...Wash you and make you clean; put away the evil of your doings…cease to do wrong…though your sins be as scarlet…they shall be washed white as snow.” Jesus has cleansed us from every semblance of sin. If we will but appropriate the salvation He has provided through His shed blood, we will be clean. Our conscience will be clean. We will be sin-free for as we are told in Nehemiah 9:17, “You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Forever Clean and New
July 17
The law of God is immutable. His holy standard will never be compromised. Man’s concept of what is right and acceptable has evolved through time until his perception of truth is so corrupted that it bears no resemblance to the holy writ upon which the founding fathers of our nation established this country.
But we may be assured, God is not blotting out any part of His law to conform it to today’s version of ‘right’. Though our congress may dismiss God’s established ordinance with a vote, though our president may abrogate the law with a stroke of his pen, our Holy God’s standard remains unchanged for time and eternity.
We may liberalize our laws to satisfy the sin nature of man but this action does not ultimately satisfy man’s longing. As he plummets further and further into the abyss that is sin, he becomes ever more miserable with his existence, he becomes ever more disillusioned with the “pleasures of sin that endure but for a season” Hebrews 11:25. Fallen man knows in the depth of his corrupt heart that he needs to be extricated from the pit he has dug for himself.
Colossians 2:13, 14 says, “When you were dead in sins and the wretchedness of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all your sins, and canceled out the law in your behalf when He nailed sin to His cross.” When a man is awash in the filth of sin and surrounded by the squalor it produces in his life, he knows in the depth of his innermost being that he needs a Savior. That Savior is Jesus. May each of us embrace Him with a fully surrendered heart that we might be forever clean and new.
The law of God is immutable. His holy standard will never be compromised. Man’s concept of what is right and acceptable has evolved through time until his perception of truth is so corrupted that it bears no resemblance to the holy writ upon which the founding fathers of our nation established this country.
But we may be assured, God is not blotting out any part of His law to conform it to today’s version of ‘right’. Though our congress may dismiss God’s established ordinance with a vote, though our president may abrogate the law with a stroke of his pen, our Holy God’s standard remains unchanged for time and eternity.
We may liberalize our laws to satisfy the sin nature of man but this action does not ultimately satisfy man’s longing. As he plummets further and further into the abyss that is sin, he becomes ever more miserable with his existence, he becomes ever more disillusioned with the “pleasures of sin that endure but for a season” Hebrews 11:25. Fallen man knows in the depth of his corrupt heart that he needs to be extricated from the pit he has dug for himself.
Colossians 2:13, 14 says, “When you were dead in sins and the wretchedness of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all your sins, and canceled out the law in your behalf when He nailed sin to His cross.” When a man is awash in the filth of sin and surrounded by the squalor it produces in his life, he knows in the depth of his innermost being that he needs a Savior. That Savior is Jesus. May each of us embrace Him with a fully surrendered heart that we might be forever clean and new.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
In Jesus
July 16
Some people jump through hoops as they scrupulously follow the tenets of their religious systems with the hope of attaining salvation. There are the pious pilgrims who ascend a ‘holy’ mountain with their foreheads dragging on the ground to please their gods. There are the animists who sacrifice their children to satisfy the blood lust of the gods they serve. There are the terrorists who are counted as martyrs when they blow themselves and their victims up to gain their perceived promises of paradise.
To the Western mind, this sounds foolish and futile. To the Christian mind, it sounds demonic, for anything that smacks of death must be attributed to the evil one who does not come to save men or spare them the rigors of hell but to ‘rob, kill and destroy’ them, and to expedite them to the pit (John 10:10).
The purpose of the enemy of God is to deceive man however he can and to thereby rob him of the ‘unspeakable gift’(II Corinthians 9:15) that Christ has given him. The evil one doesn’t care whether an individual is deceived to the point of futilely sacrificing his children or himself—as long as his actions end in delusion and death—in a Christ-less eternity.
The blood sacrifice that was made by Jesus Christ, the Holy One at Calvary paid the price for all man’s sin. There is no other blood that must be shed. No other blood can pay the price that’s been paid. “In Jesus we have redemption …the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace,” Ephesians 1:7. In Jesus are we saved--completely, eternally.
Some people jump through hoops as they scrupulously follow the tenets of their religious systems with the hope of attaining salvation. There are the pious pilgrims who ascend a ‘holy’ mountain with their foreheads dragging on the ground to please their gods. There are the animists who sacrifice their children to satisfy the blood lust of the gods they serve. There are the terrorists who are counted as martyrs when they blow themselves and their victims up to gain their perceived promises of paradise.
To the Western mind, this sounds foolish and futile. To the Christian mind, it sounds demonic, for anything that smacks of death must be attributed to the evil one who does not come to save men or spare them the rigors of hell but to ‘rob, kill and destroy’ them, and to expedite them to the pit (John 10:10).
The purpose of the enemy of God is to deceive man however he can and to thereby rob him of the ‘unspeakable gift’(II Corinthians 9:15) that Christ has given him. The evil one doesn’t care whether an individual is deceived to the point of futilely sacrificing his children or himself—as long as his actions end in delusion and death—in a Christ-less eternity.
The blood sacrifice that was made by Jesus Christ, the Holy One at Calvary paid the price for all man’s sin. There is no other blood that must be shed. No other blood can pay the price that’s been paid. “In Jesus we have redemption …the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God’s grace,” Ephesians 1:7. In Jesus are we saved--completely, eternally.
Friday, July 15, 2011
He Forgets to Remember
July 15
We don’t want to hold grudges. We like to think that we are among the rare few truly honorable people on the planet who can genuinely ‘forgive and forget.’ But the reality is that most of us aren’t like that at all. When we think we’ve totally let go of the pain of someone’s barbed comment or unkind action, it still stings upon reflection.
Not only does the memory cause discomfiture, it also causes distrust. We are reluctant to interact in the same way with someone whose trustworthiness has come in question. How blessed we are that the Lord, the Holy One, the Righteous God doesn’t harbor the same attitude toward us!
We have offended Him time and again. Our sins against Him, our ‘weaknesses,’ have reared their ugly head repeatedly. The magnitude of our sins may vary—we tend to see them as significant and insignificant transgressions, as venial or mortal sins—but in His eyes, all sin is the breaking of His immutable law. Breaking it in one ‘jot or tittle’ makes us worthy of punishment, condemns us to eternal death. But, Jesus has paid the price! He sees us washed clean by the power of His shed blood that was spilled in our behalf!
As Paul said, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through HIM, the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death” Romans 8:1,2. God cleanses us because of Christ and then chooses to forget each recurring transgression when we simply ask Him to do so. Jeremiah 31:34 declares, “…all men shall know Me…I shall forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” How blessed we are that He remembers to forgive our sins then forgets to remember them!
We don’t want to hold grudges. We like to think that we are among the rare few truly honorable people on the planet who can genuinely ‘forgive and forget.’ But the reality is that most of us aren’t like that at all. When we think we’ve totally let go of the pain of someone’s barbed comment or unkind action, it still stings upon reflection.
Not only does the memory cause discomfiture, it also causes distrust. We are reluctant to interact in the same way with someone whose trustworthiness has come in question. How blessed we are that the Lord, the Holy One, the Righteous God doesn’t harbor the same attitude toward us!
We have offended Him time and again. Our sins against Him, our ‘weaknesses,’ have reared their ugly head repeatedly. The magnitude of our sins may vary—we tend to see them as significant and insignificant transgressions, as venial or mortal sins—but in His eyes, all sin is the breaking of His immutable law. Breaking it in one ‘jot or tittle’ makes us worthy of punishment, condemns us to eternal death. But, Jesus has paid the price! He sees us washed clean by the power of His shed blood that was spilled in our behalf!
As Paul said, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through HIM, the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death” Romans 8:1,2. God cleanses us because of Christ and then chooses to forget each recurring transgression when we simply ask Him to do so. Jeremiah 31:34 declares, “…all men shall know Me…I shall forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.” How blessed we are that He remembers to forgive our sins then forgets to remember them!
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