Isaiah 55:8-9

When adversity hits you like a ton of bricks, it could easily throw you into a pit of discouragement and despair. Although you may consider difficulties as setbacks, the Lord sees them as times for great advancement. His purpose for allowing them is not to destroy you but to stimulate your spiritual growth. In His great wisdom, the Lord knows how to take an awful situation and use it to transform you into the image of Christ and equip you to carry out His will.

Every adversity that comes into your life is sifted through God’s permissive will. That doesn’t mean the difficulty itself is His perfect will, but He’s allowed the trial to touch you so that He can use it to accomplish His wonderful purposes for your life. Although some of the suffering we see and experience seems senseless or blatantly evil, we must recognize that we have a very limited perspective and cannot always understand what the Lord is doing.

Our heavenly Father sees every aspect of life, but our view is restricted to what is right before us. His plans include not only you but all of His creation, and they reach from the beginning of time to eternity future. Though we’ll never grasp the infinite mind of God, we can know His faithfulness and love.

When you can’t understand God’s ways, focus on His perfect knowledge, wisdom, and power rather than the magnitude of your sorrow. Remember, He sees the entire picture and loves you more than you can imagine. This is a time to walk by faith, as perfect understanding comes only in heaven.

 “Isn’t she a doll?” “Have you ever seen a more loveable face?”

 The two hour flight was filled with attempts to persuade me. To these new grandparents, working on the convictions of those around them was an involuntarily part of the job. Loving their grand daughter seemed to include the act of telling others to love her. Their admiration alone was not enough. They find their adored two-year old thoroughly worth the adoration of many. 

 I suspect it is a behavior recognizable to more than proud parents and beaming grandparents. We delight to commend what we enjoy not only because it expresses our enjoyment but because it also seems somehow to complete it. “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,” the song goes. Saying it aloud, bidding others to see what we see, sharing it with friend or stranger, somehow magnifies our delight. Ravi Zacharias tells a story about standing at the southernmost point of Africa where the Indian Ocean thunderously collides with the Atlantic. Not having his wife there to share in the grandeur of the scene, he was overcome with the longing to carve her name on a rock beside him. 

Like any of us who have ever commanded in excitement “Look at that!” the psalmist wants everyone to see what he sees. He not only praises God with his own song, but asks others to join him. “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy. How awesome is the LORD Most High, the great King over all the earth!” (Psalm 47:2-3). In his delight, David calls on others to taste and see the goodness of God. “O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together” (Psalm 34:3). He has found God worthy of praise even beyond his own.   

 Yet to many this call to praise is problematic. Friedrich Nietzsche once stated, “I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.” C.S. Lewis stated a similar difficulty in his own coming to belief in God. He found troubling the thought that God ordained his own praise. He was also irritated by the clamorous demand of believing people to join them in praise of their God.  

 It is true that such invocations to praise are often heard, and heard also in the mouth of God. “The people whom I formed for myself will declare my praise,” God says through the prophet Isaiah. It is a demand at which we would cringe in the mouth of man, woman, or child. If the 2-year-old my traveling grandparents find so loveable suddenly demanded that they continually fawn over her delightfulness, they would likely find her something other than delightful. But what if she approached them with arms extended and the edict on her lips “love me”? The command to love would only further be intertwined with their delight of her. 

 How much more so might this be true of one who is worthy to receive glory, honor, and power?

 The first inquiry of the Westminster Catechism concludes that the chief end of humanity is to love God and enjoy God forever. As praise is the spontaneous by-product of delight, the command to love and the promise to enjoy are paired inseparably. It is this hopeful alliance that C.S. Lewis eventually came to see. Knowledge of God brims forth in us the overwhelming desire to praise God, while God’s worthiness stirs within us a longing for all to join in.  

 Similarly, it is not insignificant that the Father’s love and approval of the Son was a declaration He chose to share with the world. When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and God declared: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”(1) The Father shared with the world his love for the Son by the Spirit so that we might take notice and come to delight in him also. Christ’s worthiness is a truth God wanted all to hear and know—and subsequently, to praise along with Him. 

 Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

 (1) Matthew 3:17.

 Morning

“Sanctified by God the Father.”  Jude 1

 “Sanctified in Christ Jesus.”  1 Corinthians 1:2

 “Through sanctification of the Spirit.” 1 Peter 1:2

 Mark the union of the Three Divine Persons in all their gracious acts. How

unwisely do those believers talk who make preferences in the Persons of the

Trinity; who think of Jesus as if he were the embodiment of everything lovely

and gracious, while the Father they regard as severely just, but destitute of

kindness. Equally wrong are those who magnify the decree of the Father, and

the atonement of the Son, so as to depreciate the work of the Spirit. In deeds

of grace none of the Persons of the Trinity act apart from the rest. They are

as united in their deeds as in their essence. In their love towards the chosen

they are one, and in the actions which flow from that great central source

they are still undivided. Specially notice this in the matter of

sanctification. While we may without mistake speak of sanctification as the

work of the Spirit, yet we must take heed that we do not view it as if the

Father and the Son had no part therein. It is correct to speak of

sanctification as the work of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit. Still

doth Jehovah say, “Let us make man in our own image after our likeness,” and

thus we are “his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which

God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” See the value which God

sets upon real holiness, since the Three Persons in the Trinity are

represented as co-working to produce a Church without “spot, or wrinkle, or

any such thing.” And you, believer, as the follower of Christ, must also set a

high value on holiness–upon purity of life and godliness of conversation.

Value the blood of Christ as the foundation of your hope, but never speak

disparagingly of the work of the Spirit which is your meetness for the

inheritance of the saints in light. This day let us so live as to manifest the

work of the Triune God in us.

 

Evening

“His heavenly kingdom.” / 2 Timothy 4:18

 Yonder city of the great King is a place of active service. Ransomed spirits

serve him day and night in his temple. They never cease to fulfil the good

pleasure of their King. They always “rest,” so far as ease and freedom from

care is concerned; and never “rest,” in the sense of indolence or inactivity.

Jerusalem the golden is the place of communion with all the people of God. We

shall sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in eternal fellowship. We shall hold

high converse with the noble host of the elect, all reigning with him who by

his love and his potent arm has brought them safely home. We shall not sing

solos, but in chorus shall we praise our King. Heaven is a place of victory

realized. Whenever, Christian, thou hast achieved a victory over thy

lusts–whenever after hard struggling, thou hast laid a temptation dead at thy

feet–thou hast in that hour a foretaste of the joy that awaits thee when the

Lord shall shortly tread Satan under thy feet, and thou shalt find thyself

more than conqueror through him who hath loved thee. Paradise is a place of

security. When you enjoy the full assurance of faith, you have the pledge of

that glorious security which shall be yours when you are a perfect citizen of

the heavenly Jerusalem. O my sweet home, Jerusalem, thou happy harbour of my

soul! Thanks, even now, to him whose love hath taught me to long for thee; but

louder thanks in eternity, when I shall possess thee.

 “My soul has tasted of the grapes,

 And now it longs to go

 Where my dear Lord his vineyard keeps

 And all the clusters grow.

 “Upon the true and living vine,

 My famish’d soul would feast,

 And banquet on the fruit divine,

 An everlasting guest.”

Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.   Joel 1:3 

In this simple way, by God’s grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land: The beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the Gospel and the covenant to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first duty; we are to begin at the family hearth: He is a bad preacher who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has a prior claim, and woe to those who reverse the order of the Lord’s arrangements.

To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot delegate it to Sunday school teachers or other friendly helpers. These can assist us but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation; substitutes and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: Mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High.

Parental teaching is a natural duty. Who is better fitted to look after the child’s well-being than those who are the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our children is worse than brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots empty religion is secretly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is routinely neglected—namely, the instruction of our children in the faith. It is time for parents to awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children through the parents’ prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this volume shall come honor the Lord and receive His smile.

Family Reading Plan Jeremiah 7 Matthew 21