May 6
Some people have utmost disregard for the things of God. They lie with impunity. They are utterly contemptuous of anyone who strives to live righteously. They mock God and eschew His law. Their lives are totally wanton. Their licentiousness is boundless. They are totally governed by the lust of the moment rather than by God’s eternal law.
Although there is a place of forgiveness for them, they don’t want it. Their complete disdain for the notion of a Holy God leaves them without eyes to see Him or ears to hear Him. They are completely satisfied when pursuing “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life” I John 2:16.
But should such a one repent of his sinful lifestyle, should he begin to indulge within himself the gnawing conviction that there is something more, something better than living a life that is totally self-absorbed, the Word offers hope. There is no pit so deep that God’s hand cannot reach down and lift a man out. There is no mind so perverted that God cannot cleanse it. There is no sin so grievous that Christ’s blood cannot cover it.
In I Corinthians 10:13 Paul, the Apostle who had persecuted believers unto death tells us, “No temptation has seized you except that is common to man; and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can endure. When you are tempted, He will provide a way of escape so you will not fall under it.” Sin doesn’t hold man. Man holds sin—and whenever man decides to let it go, God will help him overcome it.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Saturday, May 5, 2012
The Lord's Measure of Blessings
May 5
I have a friend who says, “God does not always pay His debts on Tuesday.” What she is conveying in her homespun fashion is the truth that God might not be on our schedule. We have an expectancy when we pray that God will, like a genie in a bottle, emerge from His Throne Room in Heaven, and supply the thing for which we pray.
Indeed, the Word assures us that we may, “Ask anything in My (Jesus’) name and it will be done” John 16:23, so we are not off base when we beseech the Father in the name of the Son, in the behalf of those we love or in order that our own needs be met, therefore it can be frustrating to find the answers to our prayers unrealized.
We tend to forget that God’s schedule may be different from ours. We may be asking for a prayer He desires to grant—it just might not be the right time. Our frustration compounds when we look about us and see others who do not seem to wrestle with our difficulties—even though they do not appear to have the same heart of surrender to the Lord that we think we possess. When we evaluate others, we are succumbing to the comparison that the Word admonishes us against (see II Corinthians 10:12).
But above all, we must be aware that the Lord measures His blessings and the granting of them in the realm of the spirit rather than in the natural realm. While we may anticipate that He will grant us temporal possessions and earthly power, He longs to empower us to walk after the things of the Holy Spirit, for His ultimate goal for us is that we, “…live according to the Spirit, putting to death the futile things of the flesh, so we may live and not die because of the works of the sinful nature” Romans 8:13.
I have a friend who says, “God does not always pay His debts on Tuesday.” What she is conveying in her homespun fashion is the truth that God might not be on our schedule. We have an expectancy when we pray that God will, like a genie in a bottle, emerge from His Throne Room in Heaven, and supply the thing for which we pray.
Indeed, the Word assures us that we may, “Ask anything in My (Jesus’) name and it will be done” John 16:23, so we are not off base when we beseech the Father in the name of the Son, in the behalf of those we love or in order that our own needs be met, therefore it can be frustrating to find the answers to our prayers unrealized.
We tend to forget that God’s schedule may be different from ours. We may be asking for a prayer He desires to grant—it just might not be the right time. Our frustration compounds when we look about us and see others who do not seem to wrestle with our difficulties—even though they do not appear to have the same heart of surrender to the Lord that we think we possess. When we evaluate others, we are succumbing to the comparison that the Word admonishes us against (see II Corinthians 10:12).
But above all, we must be aware that the Lord measures His blessings and the granting of them in the realm of the spirit rather than in the natural realm. While we may anticipate that He will grant us temporal possessions and earthly power, He longs to empower us to walk after the things of the Holy Spirit, for His ultimate goal for us is that we, “…live according to the Spirit, putting to death the futile things of the flesh, so we may live and not die because of the works of the sinful nature” Romans 8:13.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Preoccupation
May 4
Are you among the horrified drivers who have been negotiating through traffic and suddenly noticed someone piloting the car beside you while talking on a cell phone? Or, worse yet, while ‘texting’! This certainly doesn’t instill confidence in the notion that drivers are focused on the task of obeying traffic signs or navigating through traffic!
How can anyone be in control of a 2000 pound vehicle when his eyes are on a small, hand-held device and his mind and fingers are endeavoring to compose an intelligible message to someone? If your doctor were focused on the current stock report while examining you, you’d feel you were getting the shaft from a paid professional.
When a driver is focused on anything other than the responsibility of maneuvering his vehicle safely, he is giving short shrift to other drivers, to their passengers, and to their families who will be devastated when their unfocused attention does its awful work. When a driver is too busy to execute his driving responsibilities safely, he is risking not only his own life but the lives of everyone sharing the highway with him. Just as driving responsibly is a life and death issue, so is navigating through the pit-falls the enemy of your soul endeavors to use to trip you up spiritually.
Jesus Himself said in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray so you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” We must ever be on guard against the snares of the evil one, for he, “…goes about seeking whom he may devour” I Peter 5:8. How better to destroy a man—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually—than to use his preoccupation with sin, with the cares of life, even with social media to take his life and the lives of others around him who are in the proverbial ‘wrong place at the wrong time’!
Are you among the horrified drivers who have been negotiating through traffic and suddenly noticed someone piloting the car beside you while talking on a cell phone? Or, worse yet, while ‘texting’! This certainly doesn’t instill confidence in the notion that drivers are focused on the task of obeying traffic signs or navigating through traffic!
How can anyone be in control of a 2000 pound vehicle when his eyes are on a small, hand-held device and his mind and fingers are endeavoring to compose an intelligible message to someone? If your doctor were focused on the current stock report while examining you, you’d feel you were getting the shaft from a paid professional.
When a driver is focused on anything other than the responsibility of maneuvering his vehicle safely, he is giving short shrift to other drivers, to their passengers, and to their families who will be devastated when their unfocused attention does its awful work. When a driver is too busy to execute his driving responsibilities safely, he is risking not only his own life but the lives of everyone sharing the highway with him. Just as driving responsibly is a life and death issue, so is navigating through the pit-falls the enemy of your soul endeavors to use to trip you up spiritually.
Jesus Himself said in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray so you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” We must ever be on guard against the snares of the evil one, for he, “…goes about seeking whom he may devour” I Peter 5:8. How better to destroy a man—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually—than to use his preoccupation with sin, with the cares of life, even with social media to take his life and the lives of others around him who are in the proverbial ‘wrong place at the wrong time’!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Challenged Intent
May 3
Betrayal is a difficult thing with which to deal. An outright attack against us is perhaps easier to accept than one that comes through subterfuge. The thief lying in wait in the night is more readily recognized as a criminal of ill intent than is the embezzler, but the work of the latter can accrue costs the former cannot.
The overt thief takes only what is immediately at hand and the amount of the loss is easily calculable. The embezzler sustains his theft over time and much of what he steals must be tabulated in entities that go beyond the monetary—what he takes is our trust, our honor, our confidence to relinquish our significant resources to the care of another.
Jesus fully understood this deeper betrayal. Although it is told to us in the scriptures that Judas was “…the keeper of the bag…” (John 12:6) and had been stealing from the resources of the Lord and His disciples, the theft the betrayer perpetrated extended far beyond that of tangible resources. Judas was preying upon the trust Jesus had invested in him, in his integrity, which Jesus was allowing him to evidence through honest management--or to betray through theft.
So, when Jesus said in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation, for, indeed, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” He was expressing His perfect understanding of the frailty of human nature and its bent toward succumbing to its own foibles. Our Lord was saying that even when it is ones desire to do right, the lure of sin—whether betrayal or its myriad manifestations—will challenge the intent of fallen man.
Betrayal is a difficult thing with which to deal. An outright attack against us is perhaps easier to accept than one that comes through subterfuge. The thief lying in wait in the night is more readily recognized as a criminal of ill intent than is the embezzler, but the work of the latter can accrue costs the former cannot.
The overt thief takes only what is immediately at hand and the amount of the loss is easily calculable. The embezzler sustains his theft over time and much of what he steals must be tabulated in entities that go beyond the monetary—what he takes is our trust, our honor, our confidence to relinquish our significant resources to the care of another.
Jesus fully understood this deeper betrayal. Although it is told to us in the scriptures that Judas was “…the keeper of the bag…” (John 12:6) and had been stealing from the resources of the Lord and His disciples, the theft the betrayer perpetrated extended far beyond that of tangible resources. Judas was preying upon the trust Jesus had invested in him, in his integrity, which Jesus was allowing him to evidence through honest management--or to betray through theft.
So, when Jesus said in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation, for, indeed, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” He was expressing His perfect understanding of the frailty of human nature and its bent toward succumbing to its own foibles. Our Lord was saying that even when it is ones desire to do right, the lure of sin—whether betrayal or its myriad manifestations—will challenge the intent of fallen man.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Our Armor
May 2
Good intentions can go awry. In fact, the unfortunate reversal of our best efforts to ‘do the right thing’ is so universal that we have an old saying that sums it up – ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ Our track record for accomplishing the better things of our nature is abysmal—because our fallen nature gets in the way.
The reality is that there is a war being waged within us. Paul describes it succinctly in Romans 7:19-21, “The good that I desire to do, I do not do, but the evil I would not do, I actually do…when I would do good, evil is present with me.” Paul concludes this thought in verse 24: “O, wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from this death?”
There is no recourse within the natural man who is steeped in the depravity of his fallen nature. He cannot overcome himself any more than the proverbial individual who has fallen can 'pull himself up by his boot straps.' There is a remedy for our dilemma and Paul shares it with us in verse 25: “I thank God (for deliverance) through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I Thessalonians 5:8 elaborates on the solution Jesus has provided to the sin problem that clouds our effort to live rightly. Here Paul says, “Let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet.” We wear the accouterments of our salvation as our armor against our proclivity to sin!
Good intentions can go awry. In fact, the unfortunate reversal of our best efforts to ‘do the right thing’ is so universal that we have an old saying that sums it up – ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ Our track record for accomplishing the better things of our nature is abysmal—because our fallen nature gets in the way.
The reality is that there is a war being waged within us. Paul describes it succinctly in Romans 7:19-21, “The good that I desire to do, I do not do, but the evil I would not do, I actually do…when I would do good, evil is present with me.” Paul concludes this thought in verse 24: “O, wretched man that I am! Who can deliver me from this death?”
There is no recourse within the natural man who is steeped in the depravity of his fallen nature. He cannot overcome himself any more than the proverbial individual who has fallen can 'pull himself up by his boot straps.' There is a remedy for our dilemma and Paul shares it with us in verse 25: “I thank God (for deliverance) through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
I Thessalonians 5:8 elaborates on the solution Jesus has provided to the sin problem that clouds our effort to live rightly. Here Paul says, “Let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet.” We wear the accouterments of our salvation as our armor against our proclivity to sin!
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Equipped
May 1
Without prayer, man is left helpless in a hostile environment. Anyone who ventures into the sphere of nature known as the wilderness—to scale high peaks or to enjoy the verdant beauty of the forest—has been counseled to carry a weapon to assure safety from attack by the predators that inhabit those places.
It would be ill-advised on the part of anyone to presume that a hike into the habitat of wild creatures might not pose the threat of danger. Although it’s true that bears and mountain lions prefer to avoid contact with humans, there are those times when, for some inexplicable reason, they choose to engage.
The fallen world in which mankind finds himself is a wilderness. It is a locale that is inhabited by a predator whose intent is to undo the one who is tempted to sin, the one who is a seeker of truth, even the one who is a blood-bought child of God. This evil entity places allurements before the one whose will is weak so he becomes ensnared by temptation; he places deception before the searcher to confuse his quest for truth; he sets a snare to trip the feet of the one who’d resolved to walk the path of truth.
But in I Peter 4:7 the Word supplies a weapon against the ploys of the stalker who inhabits the darkness. Here he says, “The end of all things is near, therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can watch unto prayer.” Watch. Pray. Because we know we are in a wilderness fraught with the dangers of temptation, and deception, that the evil one has set as a snare to trip our feet; we must employ the defensive weapon we have at hand—prayer in the mighty name of Jesus.
Without prayer, man is left helpless in a hostile environment. Anyone who ventures into the sphere of nature known as the wilderness—to scale high peaks or to enjoy the verdant beauty of the forest—has been counseled to carry a weapon to assure safety from attack by the predators that inhabit those places.
It would be ill-advised on the part of anyone to presume that a hike into the habitat of wild creatures might not pose the threat of danger. Although it’s true that bears and mountain lions prefer to avoid contact with humans, there are those times when, for some inexplicable reason, they choose to engage.
The fallen world in which mankind finds himself is a wilderness. It is a locale that is inhabited by a predator whose intent is to undo the one who is tempted to sin, the one who is a seeker of truth, even the one who is a blood-bought child of God. This evil entity places allurements before the one whose will is weak so he becomes ensnared by temptation; he places deception before the searcher to confuse his quest for truth; he sets a snare to trip the feet of the one who’d resolved to walk the path of truth.
But in I Peter 4:7 the Word supplies a weapon against the ploys of the stalker who inhabits the darkness. Here he says, “The end of all things is near, therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can watch unto prayer.” Watch. Pray. Because we know we are in a wilderness fraught with the dangers of temptation, and deception, that the evil one has set as a snare to trip our feet; we must employ the defensive weapon we have at hand—prayer in the mighty name of Jesus.
Equipped
May 1
Without prayer, man is left helpless in a hostile environment. Anyone who ventures into the sphere of nature known as the wilderness—to scale high peaks or to enjoy the verdant beauty of the forest—has been counseled to carry a weapon to assure safety from attack by the predators that inhabit those places.
It would be ill-advised on the part of anyone to presume that a hike into the habitat of wild creatures might not pose the threat of danger. Although it’s true that bears and mountain lions prefer to avoid contact with humans, there are those times when, for some inexplicable reason, they choose to engage.
The fallen world in which mankind finds himself is a wilderness. It is a locale that is inhabited by a predator whose intent is to undo the one who is tempted to sin, the one who is a seeker of truth, even the one who is a blood-bought child of God. This evil entity places allurements before the one whose will is weak so he becomes ensnared by temptation; he places deception before the searcher to confuse his quest for truth; he sets a snare to trip the feet of the one who’d resolved to walk the path of truth.
But in I Peter 4:7 the Word supplies a weapon against the ploys of the stalker who inhabits the darkness. Here he says, “The end of all things is near, therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can watch unto prayer.” Watch. Pray. Because we know we are in a wilderness fraught with the dangers of temptation, and deception; that the evil one has set as a snare to trip our feet, we must employ the defensive weapon we have at hand—prayer in the mighty name of Jesus.
Without prayer, man is left helpless in a hostile environment. Anyone who ventures into the sphere of nature known as the wilderness—to scale high peaks or to enjoy the verdant beauty of the forest—has been counseled to carry a weapon to assure safety from attack by the predators that inhabit those places.
It would be ill-advised on the part of anyone to presume that a hike into the habitat of wild creatures might not pose the threat of danger. Although it’s true that bears and mountain lions prefer to avoid contact with humans, there are those times when, for some inexplicable reason, they choose to engage.
The fallen world in which mankind finds himself is a wilderness. It is a locale that is inhabited by a predator whose intent is to undo the one who is tempted to sin, the one who is a seeker of truth, even the one who is a blood-bought child of God. This evil entity places allurements before the one whose will is weak so he becomes ensnared by temptation; he places deception before the searcher to confuse his quest for truth; he sets a snare to trip the feet of the one who’d resolved to walk the path of truth.
But in I Peter 4:7 the Word supplies a weapon against the ploys of the stalker who inhabits the darkness. Here he says, “The end of all things is near, therefore, be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can watch unto prayer.” Watch. Pray. Because we know we are in a wilderness fraught with the dangers of temptation, and deception; that the evil one has set as a snare to trip our feet, we must employ the defensive weapon we have at hand—prayer in the mighty name of Jesus.
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