He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.—Isaiah 40:29 (NIV)
Give yourself the green light to meander, absorb, and soak in the joy of stumbling upon something new. Perhaps it’s a new hobby or planning a vacation to someplace you’ve never been. Don’t let fear dissuade you. God is with you, giving you the strength to discover uncharted territories.
Lord, grant me the courage to embrace new beginnings.
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. Isaiah 38:2
Today’s Scripture
Isaiah 38:1-6
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Today’s Devotional
My friend Christine and her husband sat down to dinner at their aunt and uncle’s house. Her aunt had recently been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Before anyone started to eat, her uncle asked, “Does anyone have anything to say?” Christine smiled because she knew he meant, “Does anyone want to pray?” He wasn’t a believer in Jesus, but he knew Christine was, so this was his way to invite prayer. Speaking from her heart, she gave thanks to God for His care and requested that He would perform a miracle for her aunt.
King Hezekiah became ill and had something on his heart to say to God after the prophet Isaiah told him he was going to die (Isaiah 38:1). He “wept bitterly” and pleaded, “Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion” (v. 3). His was an honest, desperate appeal for deliverance. Even though healing isn’t dependent on our “goodness,” and God doesn’t always heal, He chose to extend the king’s life by fifteen years (v. 5). After his recovery, Hezekiah thanked and praised Him (v. 16).
God invites us to pray—whether it’s for an urgent need or to thank Him for something small or significant. He hears our prayers, sees our tears, and will answer according to His plan. Our place is to “walk humbly all [our] years” with Him (v. 15).
Reflect & Pray
What concerns do you have to bring to God? How can you place your trust in Him?
Loving Father, thank You for wanting to hear my heart. I trust that You’re powerful and able to bring about Your good will in my life and in those I love.
Today’s Insights
In Isaiah 36-37, Hezekiah is portrayed as a man of faith, but after the miraculous defeat of the Assyrian army and Hezekiah’s miraculous healing, he becomes more characterized by pride. In fact, that pride would lead to disaster for the nation. Hezekiah proudly took representatives of Babylon to see the treasure storehouses of the kingdom, and that act would lead to divine discipline. In 39:5-8, the prophet Isaiah declares that everything in Hezekiah’s treasures and all the treasures of the land would be carried away to Babylon, which resulted in the Babylonian captivity. The flaw of Hezekiah’s heart is seen when, in spite of the prophet’s dire warning, he was happy that his own life would know “peace and security” (v. 8). God answered Hezekiah’s prayers, but his pride would bring calamity to the nation. Today, God invites us to bring our concerns to Him in prayer. We can be assured that He hears us (38:5) and will answer according to His plan.
[For out of His fullness (abundance) we have all received [all had a share and we were all supplied with] one grace after another and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing and even favor upon favor and gift [heaped] upon gift.
John 1:16 (AMPC)
Again and again, the Bible speaks of receiving from God. He is always pouring out His favor and His blessing. In order to experience that favor and blessing—and in order to live in close fellowship with God—it is important that we choose to freely receive all that He offers us. One of our biggest challenges is that we do not trust the word free. We quickly find out in the world’s system that things really are not free. Even when we are told they are free, there is usually a hidden cost somewhere.
But God’s kingdom of grace and love is not like the worlds. God’s wondrous love is a gift He freely gives us. All we need to do is open our hearts, believe His Word, and receive it with thankfulness.
No matter what the situation around you looks like today, stand on the Word of God and trust that His goodness and grace are being poured out over your life. Believe it and receive it today.
Prayer of the Day: Father, thank You for freely pouring out Your love and blessings. Help me open my heart, trust Your Word, and receive all that You desire to give me today.
In a democratic republic, politics and politicians will always play an outsized role in our culture. For example, this morning’s announcement that former US Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of eighty-four is making headlines even though his term in office ended sixteen years ago.
Today’s political races are dominating the news as well, from the mayoral contest in New York City to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to a redistricting vote in California. By my calculations, these elections will directly affect 80.3 million people, which is obviously a very significant number of people, but less than a quarter of our national population.
The larger story is what they mean for our own larger story.
We are not surprised by reports that Iranians are taught to hate America. But it is distressing that so many Americans are taught the same. In cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan’s latest blog, the Oxford and Harvard PhD graduate summarizes a new report on American higher education:
On race in American history, for example, only one viewpoint is actually taught: that the US is a white supremacist state that murders and imprisons black people as its core goal, that its real founding was 1619, its Constitution is a form of white tyranny, and racial “progress” is a lie designed to obscure this permanent reality.
Sullivan grieves for recent generations who have been indoctrinated in Critical Theory and its resultant anti-Americanism. Clearly, we live in a divided and divisive time in great need of a positive path toward a unified future.
The good news is that this path is as available and transforming as it has ever been.
“They are generally the same people”
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv thirty years ago today. I flew home from Israel that morning and heard the news upon landing in the US. In the years since, I have been many times to Rabin Square, the site that commemorates his tragic death. He was murdered not by an Islamic terrorist but by a Jewish extremist opposed to Mr. Rabin’s peace initiatives with Palestinians.
His death illustrates G. K. Chesterton’s maxim: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
We are clearly to love both. Jesus insisted: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). His words can be translated literally from the Greek, “Continually and unconditionally love those who hate you and ask God for their best even as they are persecuting you.”
Our Lord went even further when he taught us, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). To translate again, “To the exact same degree that I have loved you, you also are to continually love one another.”
Our Savior’s love was unconditional (Romans 8:35–39), sacrificial (1 John 3:16), and empathetic (John 11:35). Now we are commanded to love others, including those who hate us, in the same way.
Imagine the difference in America if every American Christian obeyed his command.
When I love my neighbor well
Of course, as we noted in discussing our love for God yesterday, such love for others is impossible in human agency. I cannot love my neighbor, much less my enemy, as Jesus loves me. I am a sinner, but God “is” love (1 John 4:8).
However, Jesus never intended me to do so. He wants to continue his earthly ministry through me as his “body” (1 Corinthians 12:27), which includes his ministry of love. He wants to forgive those who sin, comfort those who grieve, and heal those who hurt through me.
My part is to stay submitted to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and then measure success by what Jesus does through me (John 15:5). When my words and deeds express his love for those I serve, I love my neighbor well. When they do not, I do not.
This works in every dimension of life. If you’re a teacher, Jesus loves your students and wants to love them through you. If you’re a doctor, lawyer, pastor, or business person, he wants to love your patients, clients, congregation, and customers through you. If you’re a parent, he wants to love your children through you. If you’ve been hurt by someone, he wants to love even your enemy through you.
And he wants such love to transform not only our divisive and discouraged culture but our hearts as well.
Forgiving a concentration camp guard
In her classic autobiography The Hiding Place, Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom told this remarkable story:
It was at a church service in Munich, Germany, that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbrück. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. Suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking guards, the heaps of clothing, [her sister] Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, he has washed my sins away!”
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. “Lord Jesus,” I prayed, “forgive me and help me to forgive him.”
I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. Again, I breathed a silent prayer, “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.”
As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself.
Why do you need her discovery today?
Quote for the day:
“If God should have no more mercy on us than we have charity to one another, what would become of us?” —Thomas Fuller (1608–61)
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by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min.
“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” (Colossians 3:2)
The command of this verse is contained in the Greek word phroneo. The noun form has an emphasis on the emotive side of our thoughts. Its use in secular Greek literature favors what we might call our gut reactions or our intuition. Obviously, the verb is recorded in the imperative mode, making the term both intensive and authoritative. It could well be translated “direct your reactions so that they respond to” heavenly matters.
The Lord Jesus rebuked Peter because he did not “savor” the things of God (Matthew 16:23). In many other places, the translators have chosen “mind” as the term’s best rendering (e.g., Philippians 2:2, 5; 3:15-16; 4:2). But in each case, the emphasis appears to be on the way we react to our relationship to God’s Word or to each other.
And in each case, as in our text for today, the emphasis is always for us to focus on the matters of eternity, not on our earthly circumstances. Paul’s great teaching throughout Romans 6, 7, and 8 gives a wonderful comparison and contrast between the flesh and the spirit, concluding in chapter 8 that “they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).
Insisting that the believers in the Philippian church follow his own life’s example, Paul agonizes over many among them who walk so “that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:18-19).
A worldly lifestyle is very dangerous for a believer. Please remember the warning that “whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). HMM III
Come near to God and he will come near to you. —James 4:8
It’s essential for us, as ministers of the gospel, to give people a chance to act on the truth of God. We might wish we could act for them, but no individual can act for another. Our role is to share the evangelical message, a message which can and should lead to action. But the ultimate responsibility must be left with the individual. The paralysis of refusing to act leaves people exactly where they were before. Once they act, they are never the same again.
Acting on the truth of God can look like foolishness in the eyes of the world. Because of this, many who have been convicted by the Holy Spirit refuse to act. And yet the very second I act, I live; all the rest is mere existence. The moments when I truly live are the moments when I act with my whole will.
Never allow a truth of God that is brought home to your soul to pass without acting on it—not necessarily physically, but in your will. Record it with ink or with blood. The weakest saint is emancipated the instant she acts. In that instant, all the power of God Almighty is on her side.
We back down from acting on God’s truth all the time. We come up to the truth, confess we are wrong, then turn back. We do this over and over again, until we learn that we have no business going back. We have to transact business with our Lord on the truth he is showing us, whatever it may be. When he tells us, “Come,” he really means “transact with me.”
“Come near to God.” The last thing we’ll do is come to God, but all who do come know that the instant they come, the supernatural life of God invades them. The dominating power of the world and the flesh and the devil is paralyzed, not by their act of coming but because that act has linked them to God and his redemptive power.
Wisdom from Oswald
To read the Bible according to God’s providential order in your circumstances is the only way to read it, viz., in the blood and passion of personal life.Disciples Indeed, 387 R
All of us used to be just as they [nonbelievers] are, our lives expressing the evil within us … But God is so rich in mercy … he gave us back our lives again when he raised Christ from the dead …
—Ephesians 2:3–5 (TLB)
I am reminded of a period when all the agonies that afflict modern minds were felt by another generation, the young people who lived during the first century after Christ. They too sought change, but they directed their efforts at individuals, not at the Roman Empire, not at City Hall. And eventually the whole social and political structure felt their impact. In short, those renewed men and women became filled with a unique dynamic force.
Today this same force is available to all people. Over the centuries it has worked in the lives of millions. I personally have seen thousands of people changed. Jesus called it “a new birth.” The Scripture tells us that you need not continue as you are. You can become a new person. Whatever your hang-up—guilt, anxiety, fear, hatred—God can handle it.
Prayer for the day
I delight in knowing, Lord Jesus, that there is nothing in my life that is incapable of being changed through Your redemptive power.
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.—Luke 16:10 (NIV)
It’s been said that trust is the glue that holds relationships together. Ask God for the strength and integrity to be a rock-solid source of trust, honoring Him with every word and action. Commit to be someone others can count on.
Dear Lord, help me build a strong foundation of trust in every corner of my life.
In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. Ephesians 2:21
Today’s Scripture
Ephesians 2:12-22
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Today’s Devotional
Andy Goldsworthy’s Grand Rapids Arch sits on the side of a road as if striding alongside travelers. The artist created the eighteen-foot-tall, free-standing arch with thirty-six blocks of Scottish sandstone without using mortar or pins. The ascending angled stones, each one different and cut to fit together, depend on pressure created by a wedge-shaped keystone—the top center stone—to remain perfectly intact. The keystone is essential to holding the structure together, much like a cornerstone.
The sculpture reminded me of how Jesus serves as “the chief cornerstone” of His diverse church (Ephesians 2:20). The gentiles—all non-Jewish people—were once “excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (v. 12). Jesus made “the two groups one” and “destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (v. 14). He created “one new humanity,” and “in one body [reconciled] both of them to God through the cross,” giving them all “access to the Father by one Spirit” (vv. 15-16, 18).
Christ builds us up as a church “in which God lives by his Spirit” (v. 22). He sculpts each unique person, connects us to Him and to each other through Him, and walks with us. The church is joined by Jesus.
Reflect & Pray
What hinders you from connecting to Jesus as Messiah, the one who unites the church? How has He helped you connect to His diverse church?
Dear Jesus, please strengthen my connection with You and the members of Your diverse family.
Learn more about having a personal relationship with God.
Today’s Insights
The joining together of Jews and gentiles through Jesus is the clear focus of Ephesians 2:12-20. This passage moves from estrangement (“separate,” “excluded,” “foreigners,” “without hope and without God,” “far away,” vv. 12-13) to reconciliation (v. 16). Using body and building metaphors (vv. 16, 19-22), Paul captures the unifying work of Christ. Of note are two rarely used Greek New Testament words: akrogōniaios (“chief cornerstone,” v. 20) and synarmologeō (“joined together,” v. 21). Jesus is the chief cornerstone who holds the whole building—Jews and gentiles—together.
A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.
Matthew 12:35 (NLT)
You don’t always have to verbalize your thoughts for people to see them. Think about how you act on a first date with someone you like. You show signs of acceptance and approval. You smile a lot, and you encourage him or her with your eyes and head nods to show your interest. You haven’t said a word, but your body language says: “I like you!” Now think about how you act when you are in the grocery line, and the cashier is taking forever. You shift your weight from side to side, cross your arms, huff, or even roll your eyes. Again, your posture speaks for you. You may think your thoughts are hidden, but your thoughts show up in your attitudes, body language, words, and actions. Make sure you display a good attitude.
Prayer of the Day: Lord, help me be mindful of my thoughts and attitudes. Let my actions, words, and body language reflect Your love and kindness to everyone I encounter today.
by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min.
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.” (Colossians 3:1)
Christians have been raised with Christ, and the “new man” is effectively positioned with Christ in glory. We have been made alive “together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5) and in the eternal reality of our Creator, who “made us sit together in heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6).
Thus, the command to seek the “above” realities is not merely a theological idea but rather a profound order to embrace the reality of our new empowerment to walk with Christ in a new life (Romans 6:4). Indeed, we have been newly created by the Creator in “righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Therefore, since we are God’s workmanship, it is not possible for God to create His children for any other purpose than “good works” (Ephesians 2:10).
Obviously, our Lord knows that we are still in “earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7). That is precisely why He promised to provide all of our earthly needs if we would but “seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33)—including our necessary “patient continuance in well doing” (Romans 2:7). Remember, “God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
The environment of the world constantly opposes the reality of “above.” Even the wisdom of above seems counterintuitive; it is “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17). Yet we are still expected to seek to live like we are above because “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). HMM III
I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. —Galatians 2:20
These words mean breaking my independence with my own hand and surrendering myself to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ. No one else can do this for me; I must do it myself. God may bring me to the point of surrender three hundred sixty-five times a year, but he can’t push me through. Surrender means breaking the shell of my individual independence from God. It means the emancipation of my personality into oneness with him—not for any agenda of my own, but for absolute loyalty to Jesus. Very few of us know anything about this kind of loyalty. “Whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel . . .” (Mark 8:35): that is what makes an iron saint.
Has the break with my independence come? The one thing I must decide is, Will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, making no conditions? I must be broken of the desire for self-realization. Once this point is reached, supernatural identification with my Lord takes place immediately, and the witness of the Spirit of God within me is unmistakable: “I have been crucified with Christ.”
The passion of Christianity is that I deliberately sign away my rights and become a bond servant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I cannot begin to be a saint. When I have done it, God is able to help himself to my life. Will I let him? Or do I have my own ideas of what I’m going to be?
Wisdom from Oswald
We are in danger of being stern where God is tender, and of being tender where God is stern. The Love of God—The Message of Invincible Consolation, 673 L
Keep yourselves in the love of God …
—Jude 21
The Bible is a revelation of the fact that God is love. Many people misunderstand the attribute of God’s nature which is love. “God is love” does not mean that everything is sweet, beautiful, and happy, and that God’s love could not possibly allow punishment for sin.
When we preach justice, it is justice tempered with love. When we preach righteousness, it is righteousness founded on love. When we preach atonement, it is atonement planned by love, provided by love, given by love, finished by love, necessitated because of love. When we preach the resurrection of Christ, we are preaching the miracle of love. When we preach the return of Christ, we are preaching the fulfillment of love.
No matter what sin you have committed, or how terrible, dirty, or shameful it may be, God loves you. This love of God is immeasurable, unmistakable, and unending!
Prayer for the day
My heartfelt gratitude to You, Father, for Your forgiveness and love. I must be acutely aware that in all my dealing with others the only yardstick I have is Your immeasurable love.
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.—Psalm 25:9 (NIV)
Just as road signs provide direction on a journey, God places signs along life’s path that offer guidance and insight. Pay attention to subtle cues, unexpected encounters, and moments of clarity. These are the signs God lovingly places to help guide you.
Lord, give me the faith and courage to follow Your illuminating path.
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