Philippians 3:7-14

What three goals would you set for your life if you knew that you could achieve them? Would any of them be spiritual in nature? The apostle Paul was one of the most goal-oriented people in the Bible, yet he understood which pursuits were the most important. His chief ambition was to know Christ, His resurrection power, and the fellowship of His suffering (v. 10).

We’d all do well to adopt these goals, but they sound so broad. How do we put them into practice? First, it’s important to comprehend that a goal is a purpose or direction toward which we work. This concept is fairly easy to understand when we’re talking about specific objectives like going to bed earlier or losing ten pounds, but what steps would you need to take in order to achieve spiritual goals like Paul’s?

Success requires choosing steps that are specific, reasonable, and measurable. For example, if you want to know Christ more intimately, you might commit to spending 30 minutes each day praying and reading His Word. After developing your plan and the steps to accomplish it, put your desire into action. If you don’t take the necessary steps, it will simply remain a wish. No one develops intimacy with Christ through good intentions; it takes commitment, diligence, and perseverance.

If you feel as if your faith is lacking vitality, it may be that you’ve become spiritually lazy. No one intends to slip into complacency. But unless you set some specific goals and work to achieve them, you’ll drift through life and miss the greatest accomplishment of all–learning to know Christ intimately.

Hindsight is 20/20.  We know the truth of the expression from experience. “If only I would have taken a different street, I wouldn’t be stuck in traffic.” “If only I would have quit while I was ahead, I wouldn’t be stuck in this situation.” Such thoughts are unending: If I would have paid closer attention, if I would have pushed a little harder, if I would have stopped pushing… if only I knew then what I know now, things would have turned out differently.      

Quite probably in many cases that is true. If we knew beforehand what we know after the fact, things could have very well turned out differently. Yet equally wrapped up somewhere within this “if only” mindset is the thought that things would not only have turned out differently but that they would also have turned out better. Knowing this would take much more than 20/20 vision. Standing on the other side of knowing gives us a different perspective, to be sure. But to assume that because of that perspective we now see perfectly is likely a perilous oversight.

The Israelites often cried out to God in the belief that they were seeing perfectly. The shackles that bound them to Egypt and misery were broken off before their eyes. God moved them from slavery to freedom via the floor of the Red Sea, putting before his people a sign momentous enough to make an impression upon each day ahead of them. Yet walking through the adversities of the desert, they cried out as if never having seen the hand that was leading them. “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert! Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Numbers 14:2-3).

It seems the view from hindsight can be as misleading as it is insightful. The Israelite’s mistreatment at the hands of the Egyptians was overlooked in their perception of the other side of the Red Sea. Moreover, their deliverance at the hands of God in hindsight was seen as unremarkable and unrelated to their need for God in the present.

The cry of “if only” is all too often a cry of distrust.  The seemingly harmless expression insists that we know best, that we know what is better, that we know what we need. Like the Israelites in their forgetful wailing we are often certain that we not only know what will make our situations better, but what will finally make us happy. We always seem to know just the thing our lives are missing.  “If only we had meat to eat” the Israelites insisted, “we would be satisfied.” But they were not, and we are no more successful. In reality, what we need is often a far cry from what we think we need. For good reason many Christians can look back to a prayer and thank God that it wasn’t answered.

G.K. Chesterton speaks in a poem of the posture we often forget when the cry to change the past or achieve the perfect future emerges from our lips.  He writes,

Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,

If I must travail in a night of wrath,

Thank God my tears will never vex a moth,

Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.

Instead, the Christian is given the freedom of thankfulness that the one listening to her prayers sits with wisdom far greater than her own. For even Job who cried, “If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave” found in the end that he had spoken out of turn. But we can thank God that God’s thoughts are beyond our own, that God knows the longings we express and the ones we do not know to express. We can thank God for the promise that all things work together for good—our trials, our mistakes, our past, our future.

God is at work even in the moments when we would cry “if only.” And his own “if only’s” are far more sobering. As Christ approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace” (Luke 19:41). Rest assured, God knows your need and so reveals Himself that you might also.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Morning   “The Lord shut him in.”    Genesis 7:16

Noah was shut in away from all the world by the hand of divine love. The door of

electing purpose interposes between us and the world which lieth in the wicked

one. We are not of the world even as our Lord Jesus was not of the world. Into

the sin, the gaiety, the pursuits of the multitude we cannot enter; we cannot

play in the streets of Vanity Fair with the children of darkness, for our

heavenly Father has shut us in. Noah was shut in with his God. “Come thou into

the ark,” was the Lord’s invitation, by which he clearly showed that he himself

intended to dwell in the ark with his servant and his family. Thus all the

chosen dwell in God and God in them. Happy people to be enclosed in the

same circle which contains God in the Trinity of his persons, Father, Son, and

Spirit. Let us never be inattentive to that gracious call, “Come, my people,

enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, and hide thyself as

it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpast.” Noah was so shut

in that no evil could reach him. Floods did but lift him heavenward, and winds

did but waft him on his way. Outside of the ark all was ruin, but inside all was

rest and peace. Without Christ we perish, but in Christ Jesus there is perfect

safety. Noah was so shut in that he could not even desire to come out, and those

who are in Christ Jesus are in him forever. They shall go no

more out forever, for eternal faithfulness has shut them in, and infernal

malice cannot drag them out. The Prince of the house of David shutteth and no

man openeth; and when once in the last days as Master of the house he shall rise

up and shut the door, it will be in vain for mere professors to knock, and cry

Lord, Lord open unto us, for that same door which shuts in the wise virgins will

shut out the foolish forever. Lord, shut me in by thy grace.

 

Evening   “He that loveth not knoweth not God.”   1 John 4:8

The distinguishing mark of a Christian is his confidence in the love of Christ,

and the yielding of his affections to Christ in return. First, faith sets her

seal upon the man by enabling the soul to say with the apostle, “Christ loved me

and gave himself for me.” Then love gives the countersign, and stamps upon the

heart gratitude and love to Jesus in return. “We love him because he first loved

us.” In those grand old ages, which are the heroic period of the Christian

religion, this double mark was clearly to be seen in all believers in Jesus;

they were men who knew the love of Christ, and rested upon it as a man leaneth

upon a staff whose trustiness he has tried. The love which they felt

towards the Lord was not a quiet emotion which they hid within themselves in

the secret chamber of their souls, and which they only spake of in their private

assemblies when they met on the first day of the week, and sang hymns in honour

of Christ Jesus the crucified, but it was a passion with them of such a vehement

and all-consuming energy, that it was visible in all their actions, spoke in

their common talk, and looked out of their eyes even in their commonest glances.

Love to Jesus was a flame which fed upon the core and heart of their being; and,

therefore, from its own force burned its way into the outer man, and shone

there. Zeal for the glory of King Jesus was the seal and mark of

all genuine Christians. Because of their dependence upon Christ’s love they

dared much, and because of their love to Christ they did much, and it is the

same now. The children of God are ruled in their inmost powers by love–the love

of Christ constraineth them; they rejoice that divine love is set upon them,

they feel it shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto

them, and then by force of gratitude they love the Saviour with a pure heart,

fervently. My reader, do you love him? Ere you sleep give an honest answer to a

weighty question!

 

. . . Taken up in glory.   1 Timothy 3:16

We have seen the Lord Jesus in the days of His flesh, humiliated and scorned: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”1 He whose brightness is as the morning wore the sackcloth of sorrow as His daily dress: Shame was His belt, and reproach was His cloak. Yet now that He has triumphed over all the powers of darkness upon the bloody tree, our faith sees Him returning, robed in the splendor of victory.

How glorious He must have been in the eyes of seraphs, when a cloud received Him out of sight and He ascended to heaven! Now He wears the glory that He had with God before creation, and yet another glory above all—that which He has earned in the fight against sin, death, and hell. As victor He wears the illustrious crown. Listen to the swelling song! It is a new and sweeter song: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, for by Your blood You ransomed people for God!” He wears the glory of an Intercessor who can never fail, of a Prince who can never be defeated, of a Conqueror who has defeated every foe, of a Lord who has the allegiance of every subject.

Jesus wears all the glory that heaven can bestow upon Him, all that ten thousand times ten thousand angels can minister to Him. You cannot with the utmost stretch of imagination conceive of His exceeding greatness; yet there will be a further revelation of it when He shall descend from heaven in great power, with all the holy angels—”Then he will sit on his glorious throne.”2 The splendor of that glory seen will ravish the hearts of His people. This isn’t the end, for eternity will sound His praise. “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever!”3 Reader, if you would rejoice in Christ’s glory then, He must be glorious in your sight now. So, is He?

1Isaiah 53:3 2Matthew 25:31 3Psalm 45:6

The family reading plan for June 4, 2012

Isaiah 36 | Revelation 6