James 1:2-4,12
“Consider it all joy . . . when you encounter various trials” (James 1:2)—what a preposterous statement! How can that make sense when joy and trials don’t fit together? But James is presenting a divine vantage point, not a human one. There are some surprising benefits in suffering, which aren’t easy to discern.
First of all, we need to understand that these verses are not telling us to be happy in our pain, but rather to rejoice in the blessings that accompany suffering. The word consider is an accounting term that means “to evaluate.” When we look at hardships from God’s perspective and place the proper value on them, we can rejoice in the beneficial outcome, even while experiencing pain. Humanly speaking, trials hurt; but from the Lord’s point of view, they help.
The only way to rejoice during trials is to understand what God wants them to accomplish. Regardless of the difficulty’s source, we can know that the Lord wants to use it to test our faith and thereby produce endurance and spiritual maturity. In every trial, He has hidden a precious character gem, but whether we receive it depends upon our response. Those who want to be transformed into the image of Christ can rejoice in the many benefits that accompany suffering.
How about you? Does your hunger to know the Lord and be transformed by Him exceed your dread of suffering? None of us want to experience pain, but since it’s an unavoidable reality in this fallen world, why not respond in a way that produces eternal benefit? Let’s not waste our suffering.
Daily Archives: September 16, 2014
Our Daily Bread — A Heart For Prayer
Psalm 27:7-14
When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, Lord, I will seek.” —Psalm 27:8
While traveling on an airplane with her 4- and 2-year-old daughters, a young mom worked at keeping them busy so they wouldn’t disturb others. When the pilot’s voice came over the intercom for an announcement, Catherine, the younger girl, paused from her activities and put her head down. When the pilot finished, she whispered, “Amen.” Perhaps because there had been a recent natural disaster, she thought the pilot was praying.
Like that little girl, I want a heart that turns my thoughts toward prayer quickly. I think it would be fair to say that the psalmist David had that kind of heart. We get hints of that in Psalm 27 as he speaks of facing difficult foes (v.2). He said, “Your face, Lord, I will seek” (v.8). Some say that David was remembering the time he was fleeing from Saul (1 Sam. 21:10) or from his son Absalom (2 Sam. 15:13-14) when he wrote this psalm. Prayer and dependence on God were in the forefront of David’s thinking, and he found Him to be his sanctuary (Ps. 27:4-5).
We need a sanctuary as well. Perhaps reading or praying this psalm and others could help us to develop that closeness to our Father-God. As God becomes our sanctuary, we’ll more readily turn our hearts toward Him in prayer. —Anne Cetas
Teach me, Father, what it means to run to
and have You as my sanctuary. Help me not to
worry about the words I say, but just to express my
heart to You and to nestle down close to You.
In prayer, God can still our hearts and quiet our minds.
Bible in a year: Proverbs 25-26; 2 Corinthians 9
Ravi – A Different Healing
Why Won’t God Heal Amputees? is a popular website and one-time viral YouTube video. The basic premise of the content is that God doesn’t answer prayer since God has never healed an amputee, and by extension doesn’t heal every person of every infirmity. God, therefore, does not really exist.
While there are obvious false assumptions made about God, prayer, and healing (how does one know that in the whole world God has not healed an amputee, for starters) many who do pray for healing often fail to experience it in the way they expect. Healing rarely parallels a conventional or traditional sense of that word. Loved ones die of cancer, friends are killed in car accidents, economic catastrophe befalls even the most frugal, and people in much of the developing world die from diseases long cured in the West. Beyond the realm of physical healing, many experience emotional and psychological trauma that leave open and festering wounds. Or, there are those perpetual personality ticks and quirks that seem beyond the reach of the supernatural. Given all of this contrary experience, what does it mean to receive healing, and should one hold out hope that healing can come in this world? Specifically, for those who pray, and for those who believe that God does heal, how might the persistence of wounds—psychological, emotional and physical—be understood?
In a recent New York Times article, Marcia Mount Shoop writes of her horrific rape as a fifteen year-old girl.(1) A descendant of three generations of ministers, she ran to the safest place she knew—the church. Yet as she stood amid the congregants singing hymns and reciting creeds, she felt no relief. Even her favorite verse from Romans—”And we know that in all things God works for good with those who love him”—sounded hollow and brought little comfort. How could she ever be healed of this horrific act of violence perpetrated against her will?
Once at home, alone with the secret of her rape, Marcia Shoop found something that enabled her to survive. “I felt Jesus so close,” she recalled in an interview. “It wasn’t the same Jesus I experienced at church. It was this tiny, audible whisper that said, ‘I know what happened. I understand.’ And it kept me alive, that frayed little thread.” (2)
The hope that Jesus was physically close to her in her pain led Ms. Shoop to become a minister herself more than a quarter century after her horrific rape. It also led her to more deeply connect her body with her soul and mind. This reconnection of the body with soul and with mind is where she experienced what she would call “healing.” God was with her in the living, breathing, physical reality of Jesus who likewise continued to bear the wounds of his own crucifixion and torture after the gospel writers testify to him having been raised from the dead.
The Gospel of John records the risen Jesus as inviting Thomas to “reach your finger and see my hands; and reach your hand, and put it into my side.”(3) Jesus was not a disembodied spirit without flesh and blood as a result of his resurrection from the dead. He was a body, and a body that was wounded. Even the resurrection did not take away his bodily scars! This reality can bring great hope to those who follow Jesus and to those who wonder about how they might find healing at all. For healing did not equate a lack of wounding, or physical perfection—being untouched by the sorrow and suffering of a world gone horribly wrong—even for Jesus.
For Ms. Shoop, healing didn’t mean the total erasure of the pain and horror of her rape, as difficult as it was to bear that wound. But it meant that she encountered the wounded God in the person of Jesus who continued to bear the scars and wounds of his crucifixion. As she recalled, “What happened to me wasn’t “for the good,” referring again to her favorite passage in Romans. But God took the garbage, the stench [of that horrible event] and gently, tenderly, indignantly wove it into this moment of redemption. What a gift.”(4)
Healing is not a gift that comes instantly, nor does it always look like what we expect. It is often a slow, painful journey through the void and desolation of suffering. It will not erase our wounds. Yet, the promise of resurrection, of new life that comes even with wounded hands and sides, offers another picture of healing where being an ‘amputee’ might be honored and redeemed.
Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.
(1) Samuel G. Freedman, “A Rape Survivor Now Ministers Body and Soul,” The New York Times Online, June 29, 2012, accessed June 29, 2012.
(2) Ibid.
(3) John 20:27.
(4) Samuel G. Freedman, “A Rape Survivor Now Ministers Body and Soul,” The New York Times Online, June 29, 2012, accessed June 29, 2012.
Alistair Begg – More Rebellious than the Sea
Am I the sea, or a sea monster, that you set a guard over me? Job 7:12
This was a strange question for Job to ask the Lord. He felt himself to be too insignificant to be so strictly watched and chastened, and he hoped that he was not so unruly as to need to be restrained. The inquiry was natural from one surrounded by such miseries, but after all, it is capable of a very humbling answer.
It is true that man is not the sea, but he is even more troublesome and unruly. The sea obediently respects its boundary, and it does not overleap the limit, even though it is just a belt of sand. Mighty as it is, it hears the divine “thus far,” and when raging with tempest it still respects the word. Self-willed man, however, defies heaven and oppresses earth, and there is no end to his rebellious rage. The sea, obedient to the moon, ebbs and flows with ceaseless regularity and so renders an active as well as a passive obedience; but man, restless beyond his sphere, sleeps within the lines of duty, lazy where he should be active. He neither comes nor goes at the divine command but sullenly prefers to do what he should not and to leave undone what is required of him. Every drop in the ocean, every beaded bubble, and every yeasty foam-flake, every shell and pebble, feel the power of law and yield or move at once.
It is true that man is not the sea, but he is even more troublesome and unruly. The sea obediently respects its boundary, and it does not overleap the limit, even though it is just a belt of sand. Mighty as it is, it hears the divine “thus far,” and when raging with tempest it still respects the word. Self-willed man, however, defies heaven and oppresses earth, and there is no end to his rebellious rage. The sea, obedient to the moon, ebbs and flows with ceaseless regularity and so renders an active as well as a passive obedience; but man, restless beyond his sphere, sleeps within the lines of duty, lazy where he should be active. He neither comes nor goes at the divine command but sullenly prefers to do what he should not and to leave undone what is required of him. Every drop in the ocean, every beaded bubble, and every yeasty foam-flake, every shell and pebble, feel the power of law and yield or move at once.
Today’s Broadcast by Alistair Begg
Prelude to Giving (Part 2 of 2)
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Today’s Bible Reading
The family reading plan for September 16, 2014
* Ezekiel 19
* Psalm 64, 65
Devotional material is taken from “Morning and Evening,” written by C.H. Spurgeon, revised and updated by Alistair Begg.
Charles Spurgeon – Storming the battlements
“Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end; take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.” Jeremiah 5:10
Suggested Further Reading: Galatians 5:25-6: 5
We sometimes trust too much in evidences and good works. Ralph Erskine did not say amiss when he remarked, “I have got more hurt by my good works than my bad ones.” That seems something like Antinomianism, but it is true; we find it so by experience. “My bad works,” said Erskine, “Always drove me to the Saviour for mercy; my good works often kept me from him, and I began to trust in myself.” Is it not so with us? We often get a pleasing opinion of ourselves; we are preaching so many times a week; we attend so many prayer meetings; we are doing good in the Sabbath-school; we are valuable deacons; important members of the church; we are giving away so much in charity; and we say, “Surely I am a child of God—I must be. I am an heir of heaven. Look at me! See what robes I wear. Have I not indeed a righteousness about me that proves me to be a child of God?” Then we begin to trust in ourselves, and say, “Surely I cannot be moved; my mountain stands firm and fast.” Do you know what is the usual rule of heaven when we boast? Why the command is given to the foe—”Go up against him; take away his battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.” And what is the consequence? Why, perhaps God suffers us to fall into sin, and down goes self-sufficiency. Many a Christian owes his falls to a presumptuous confidence in his graces. I conceive that outward sin is not more abhorred by our God than this most wicked sin of reliance on ourselves. May none of you ever learn your own weakness by reading a black book of your own backslidings.
For meditation: If pride and boasting are listed as sins of the unbeliever (Romans 1:30; 2 Timothy 3:2), they are just as much sins when the believer falls into them. Our good works should lead others to glorify God (Matthew 5:16) and should surely have the same effect upon us.
Sermon no. 38
16 September (1855)
John MacArthur – A Righteousness That Glorifies God
“Stand firm therefore . . . having put on the breastplate of righteousness” (Eph. 6:14).
A righteous life testifies to God’s transforming power and brings Him glory.
We’ve seen the importance of donning the breastplate of righteousness, but Scripture also discusses the consequences of failing to do so. These consequences serve as warnings to anyone who is prone to neglect righteousness.
If you’re not committed to righteousness, you not only make yourself spiritually vulnerable, but also forfeit some of God’s wonderful blessings. David prayed, “Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation” (Ps. 51:13). His sin had robbed him of his joy and assurance. That’s true of us as well because joy is directly proportional to obedience. If you’re pursuing greater righteousness, you’ll know greater joy.
You might also forfeit some of your heavenly reward. John said, “Watch yourselves, that you might not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward” (1 John 8). I believe that New Testament rewards are various capacities for service in heaven. The greater your reward, the greater your capacity to serve God. Somehow your current righteousness and faithfulness to God affect what you will do for all eternity. Don’t allow sin and negligence to diminish your reward!
Without righteousness you will also suffer loss of opportunity to glorify God. When thinking or behaving unrighteously, you violate your reason for existence, which is to glorify God in everything (1 Cor. 10:31). Instead of exalting Him, you bring reproach on His name. Instead of causing others to see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16), you breed confusion and mockery.
Peter says to us, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that . . . they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation” (1 Pet. 2:11). When unbelievers scrutinize your life, what do they see? Does your righteousness testify of God’s saving and sanctifying grace?
Suggestions for Prayer; Ask God to give you an increased hunger and thirst for righteousness as you seek to live to His glory today.
For Further Study ; Memorize 2 Corinthians 5:21 as a reminder of God’s marvelous grace to you.
Joyce Meyer – Learn from Jesus’ Prayers
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. —Luke 23:34
I believe that the way people pray and the things they pray about reveal lot character and spiritual maturity. There was a time when my prayer life did not indicate much spiritual maturity. Even though I was a born-again, filled with the Holy Spirit and teaching God’s Word, my prayers were pathetically carnal. When I prayed, I had a list of requests I thought God had to say yes to before I could be happy—and all of them were natural things: “Lord, make my ministry grow. Give us a new car; do this; do that. Make Dave change. Make the kids behave,” and so on.
In response, God simply said to me, “I want you to examine the prayers of Jesus and the prayers of Paul. Then we’ll talk about your prayer life.” Of course, there are many prayers throughout the Bible, especially in Psalms, but God told me to pray the prayers of Jesus, which are found in the gospels and the prayers of Paul, which are found in the epistles.
When I began to pray the way Jesus prayed, I discovered that there really is no more powerful way to pray than to pray the Word of God because it shows us what is important to Him. He prayed prayers such as we read in today’s verse and many others, including His prayer to, “Sanctify them [purify, consecrate, separate them for Yourself, make them holy] by the Truth; Your Word is Truth” ( John 17:17); His prayer for unity among his people (see John 17:23); and His prayer for Peter: “But I have prayed especially for you [Peter], that your [own] faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32).
I encourage you to read the gospels and see how Jesus prayed, then pray similarly as you talk and listen to God.
Campus Crusade – The Bond of Love
“Let me assure you that no one has ever given up anything – home, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, or property – for love of Me and to tell others the Good News, who won’t be given back, a hundred times over, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and land – with persecution! All these will be his here on earth, and in the world to come he shall have eternal life” (Mark 10:29,30).
Having admonished His disciples to follow Him even at the cost of leaving everything – including mothers and families – behind, Christ is now affirming His consistency with the disciples. Obviously He loved His own mother dearly – one of His last acts before He died on the cross was to be sure that the apostle John would take care of her. Yet the bond of love which Jesus felt toward His disciples, a bond which continues today toward those who truly seek Him with all their hearts, transcends even the bond of love which one experiences in flesh-and-blood relationships, unless those relationships are also rooted in the love of Christ.
Romans 5:8 explains the basis for this bond. The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit ignites the hearts of true disciples with supernatural love, (agape)in action. That bond of love builds a spiritual family relationship that transcends all others, a relationship that is truly supernatural. In this way our Lord fulfills His promise that everything that is given up to follow Him will be given back a hundred times over in this life.
Bible Reading: Matthew 12:46-50
TODAY’S ACTION POINT: In every way I will seek to obey the commands of my Father in heaven with the certainty that greater bonds of love will unite my heart with many brothers and sisters. This will demonstrate to the world the validity of the revolutionary, supernatural power of the love of God ignited in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Presidential Prayer Team – C.H. – No Turning Back
According to a recent study, an estimated two-thirds of American prisoners were arrested for a new crime within three years of prison release, while three-quarters were arrested within five years. Recidivism, the act of a person repeating a crime or undesirable behavior, is a real problem in the United States today.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1
While recidivism may currently be a buzzword in the justice system, it’s not a new problem. Paul speaks of it in today’s key verse. He refers to the old behavior as a yoke of slavery. “Jesus answered them, ‘Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.’” (John 8:34) Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned.” So if everyone sins and is, therefore, a slave to it, where’s the freedom? Today’s verse says freedom comes from Christ. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36)
From America’s past to its present, there’s a pattern of unrighteous behavior, but this nation can have freedom in Jesus. Rise up, oh Christian! Rise up and pray for freedom from bondage. Ask God to break the chains holding Americans and its leaders in the slavery of sin.
Recommended Reading: John 8:31-38
Greg Laurie – Thorn in the Flesh
To keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.—2 Corinthians 12:7
Paul’s thorn in the flesh that he mentioned in 2 Corinthians 12 could have been some kind of disability, something he’d been born with. More likely, it was something he incurred later in life as a result of his many beatings, shipwrecks, or the time he was stoned and left for dead.
Whatever it was, it bothered him greatly—to the point that he asked the Lord on three separate occasions to take it away. Each time, however, the Lord said no, telling Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you” (verse 9). Effectively Jesus was saying, “Paul, I’m not giving you healing this time. I’m giving you Me. I’m giving you My presence, and that is My answer to you.”
Sometimes when we have physical afflictions, the healing will come. By all means pray for it, and pray more than once. Ask the Lord to touch you, heal you, restore you. But there are times in our lives too when He will say, “My grace is sufficient.” And instead of a healing, He personally will be there for you in a unique and sufficient way.
God is with you regardless of what hardship, heartache, or storm you may be enduring right now. You are not alone.
I remember teaching my granddaughter Stella some Bible verses when she was only twoand-a-half. One was: “Jesus said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ ” Stella did pretty good with it, even though she said “porsake” instead of “forsake.” I don’t think she even understands what it means yet. But that’s okay; she is hearing God’s Word and getting it into her little heart.
What a truth to hang on to! What a handhold in any storm! He will never leave or forsake you . . . even when tragedy hits . . . even when your company downsizes, and you get the dreaded pink slip . . . even when the doctor calls and says, “The test results are back, and I need you to come to my office immediately” . . . even when the phone rings and someone says, “There’s been an accident.”
You aren’t alone. The Lord is standing next to you. He cares. He will be there.
Today’s devotional is an excerpt from Every Day with Jesus by Greg Laurie, 2013
Max Lucado – A New Plan
As children, the minute we got home from school we would hit the pavement. The kid across the street had a dad with a great arm and a strong addiction to football. He couldn’t resist when we would yell for him to play ball. He’d always ask, “Which team is losing?” Then he’d join that team, which often seemed to be mine. His appearance changed the whole ball game. He was confident, strong, and most of all, had a plan. “Okay boys, here’s what we are going to do.” You see, we not only had a new plan, we had a new leader. He brought new life to our team.
God does precisely the same. We didn’t need a new play; we needed a new plan. We needed a new player, Jesus Christ, God’s firstborn Son. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he’s a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”
From In the Grip of Grace
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 