The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.—Psalm 34:18 (ESV)
In the solitude of autumn, recognize that the Lord is near. Embrace this season as an opportunity for introspection and connection with the One who heals your hurts and directs you toward a fulfilling life. As the trees shed their leaves, let go of your burdens and find comfort in His presence.
Lord, may the beauty of Your presence fill the lonely places of my heart and spirit.
[Jesus] shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death. Hebrews 2:14
Today’s Scripture
Hebrews 2:7-15
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Today’s Devotional
In his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig offers a collection of new words, each invented to give a name to complicated feelings we previously lacked a word for. His book includes words like dés vu, “the awareness that this moment will become a memory,” and onism, “the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at one time.” Koenig says his mission is to shed light on all of the unique and strange experiences of being human, so that people can feel less alone in those experiences.
While we might not always be able to find a word for what we’re going through, believers in Jesus can take great comfort in knowing that God values and understands what it’s like to be human. He values people so much that He chose to entrust humanity with caring for creation (Hebrews 2:7-8). And because of Jesus, God understands completely what it’s like to live as a human. Christ is God made fully human, which means other believers are called Jesus’ “brothers and sisters” (v. 12).
Christ not only understands all our experiences and temptations (4:15) but He has also broken “the power of death” over our lives (2:14). Because of Him, our experiences need not cause us to feel afraid or alone. Instead, we can celebrate the gift of being human.
Reflect & Pray
What experiences do you sometimes struggle to find words for? How does it encourage you to know God understands and values your experience?
Dear God, thank You that You value being human and empathize with all that I experience.
Discover more by reading One of Us.
Today’s Insights
Hebrews 2:6-8 references Psalm 8:4-6. In this psalm, David is in awe of God for creating and caring for creation, particularly people: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (v. 4). It likewise amazes the psalmist that God entrusted the creation into our care (vv. 5-8). The author of Hebrews references Psalm 8 to point to Jesus, who, by becoming a man, lowered Himself so that He could die for our sins (Hebrews 2:7, 9). He loves us that much—and understands all we’re going through!
For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.
2 Timothy 1:7 (AMPC)
In this passage of Scripture, Paul was encouraging Timothy and saying, “You may feel like giving up, but you have everything you need to succeed. The Holy Spirit gives you peace and the power to face anything. Press on without fear!”
You may not understand what is going on in the world around you, but you must trust God through it all. You can pray and ask God for answers, but when heaven is silent you need to keep doing what God has told us to do and just trust Him. God will make all the pieces work together for His purpose, even when you don’t see tomorrow clearly. Tomorrow’s answers usually don’t come until tomorrow.
Prayer of the Day: Lord, when I feel like giving up, remind me Your Spirit gives me peace, strength, and courage. Help me trust You fully and press on without fear.
The Louvre museum in Paris was closed again yesterday after four thieves broke into a gallery containing the French Crown Jewels on Sunday morning, stealing eight pieces of Napoleonic jewelry. Disguised as museum workers, they rode a truck-mounted basket lift up the famed museum’s exterior and forcibly entered through a window thirty minutes after the Louve had opened for the day. After smashing display cases, they fled the scene on motorbikes.
One of the stolen pieces was an emerald necklace containing 1,138 diamonds gifted by Napoleon to his second wife. According to art detective Arthur Brand, the authorities have a week before the thieves will likely melt the silver and gold down and dismantle the diamonds, causing the priceless items to “disappear forever.”
So far, no suspects have been identified publicly. A manhunt for them is continuing at this writing.
I remember standing in line some years ago to see the British crown jewels at the Tower of London. I finally made it into the Jewel House and onto a moving walkway that carried me past St. Edward’s Crown (worn when the monarch is crowned), the Imperial State Crown (worn by the monarch at the end of the coronation), and a variety of other regalia. I was permitted only a momentary look at them through bombproof glass while surrounded by armed guards.
I have never felt more like a commoner and less like royalty.
If life has you feeling the same way today, I have some very good news.
“That all men are created equal”
In John 11, Lazarus’s sisters sent word to him regarding their sick brother: “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (v. 3). But as John makes clear, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister” as well (v. 5).
Here’s what’s amazing: he loves you and me as much as he loved them, because God “is” love (1 John 4:8). In fact, as St. Augustine noted, he loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
This astounding fact underlies our nation’s democratic republic. As we noted yesterday, historian Elaine Pagels has shown that the founders’ belief that “all men are created equal” was virtually unprecedented in human history. Their belief in human equality drove their Declaration of Independence and its commitment to build a nation that would secure our “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Here’s the problem: the equality of humans is, in the Declaration’s view, a “self-evident” right. And what is evident to you may not be evident to me.
If the “pursuit of happiness” means that a mother chooses an elective abortion, what about the “life” of the unborn child? If someone transitions their gender, marries someone of the same sex, or seeks euthanasia, what about the religious “liberty” of those who disagree?
How are we to manage, much less “secure,” our equality when our post-truth culture no longer embraces the consensual morality presumed by the Founders?
“That they are endowed by their Creator”
The right way to interpret the fact that we are “equal” is to focus on the word in the Declaration preceding it: “created.” Not by evolutionary chance or chaotic coincidence: as Thomas Jefferson wrote, we are “created” by our “Creator.” Note the present tense: he wrote not that we “were created” (at the beginning of history) but we “are created” still today.
What does the Creator say about his creation?
As Jefferson added, we are created with “inalienable” rights to:
All of this is what we were designed and intended by God to experience. But none of it is possible apart from the transforming work of Christ in our hearts and lives.
Why is this?
“This is the summit of pure love”
The good news is also the bad news: part of being created in God’s image is being endowed with the freedom our democratic republic is intended to defend.
Rejecting our racial equality led to four million enslaved people in the US, around 700,000 deaths in the Civil War, and the plague of systemic racism today. Rejecting our equality at conception has led to more than sixty-three million deaths in the womb. Rejecting our equality in governance has led to nearly two billion people oppressed under Communism.
But when Jesus is our Lord, his Spirit manifests the “fruit” of his unconditional love in our hearts and we love all people as he loves us (Galatians 5:22). Such love turned the early church into the mightiest spiritual movement the world had ever seen, breaking down barriers of race, gender, culture, and religion (cf. Acts 10:34). Such love so impressed the pagans that, according to the second-century apologist Tertullian, they marveled: “See how they love one another.”
Such love “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) then, and does so still today.
To this end, let’s consider an observation from St. Paul of the Cross, the Italian preacher and theologian who died 250 years ago last Sunday. I invite you to read his reflection slowly:
Love is a unifying virtue which takes upon itself the torments of its beloved Lord. It is a fire reaching through to the inmost soul. It transforms the lover into the one loved. More deeply, love intermingles with grief, and grief with love, and a certain blending of love and grief occurs. They become so united that we can no longer distinguish love from grief nor grief from love. Thus the loving heart rejoices in its sorrow and exults in its grieving love.
Therefore, be constant in practicing every virtue, and especially in imitating the patience of our dear Jesus, for this is the summit of pure love.
The finale of the marvelous musical Les Misérables claims, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” The Italian St. Paul would amend this famous line to say,
To love another person is to show the face of God.
Who will see your Father’s face in yours today?
Quote for the day:
“We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” —St. Clare of Assisi
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by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1).
This was the first command God gave to mankind in the new world after the Flood. Actually, it simply renewed the first command given to Adam and Eve in the primeval world. “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28). The Old English word “replenish” means simply “fill,” and the same is true of the Hebrew word (mala) from which it is translated. In fact, of its 220 occurrences, the King James translators rendered it “replenish” only seven times. Almost always they translated it as “fill,” or the equivalent.
Thus, God’s first command to men and women was to multiply until the earth was filled. Despite our latter-day concerns about exploding populations, this goal is far from accomplishment today. “Filling,” of course, would imply filling only to the optimum capacity for productive human stewardship of the earth under God.
The pre-Flood earth was filled in only 1,656 years, but it was “filled with violence through them,” and God finally had to “destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:13).
In spite of man’s failures, the Lord has given a gracious promise: “And the LORD said,…as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD” (Numbers 14:20-21). This will not be man’s doing, however. When Christ returns in power and great glory as the destroying Stone, then “the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). The new earth will finally be filled with an innumerable multitude of the redeemed (Revelation 7:9), and “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). HMM
The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit. — Romans 8:16
We are in danger of getting into a negotiating mindset with God, of trying to haggle him into giving us the testimony of the Spirit before we’ve done what he tells us to do. “Why isn’t the Spirit testifying with my spirit?” you ask. “Why doesn’t God reveal himself to me?” The answer is that he won’t, not as long as you are in his way, refusing to abandon yourself to him. The instant you do abandon, God begins to testify to himself. He can’t testify to you—that is, to your human nature. Rather, he testifies to his own nature inside you, the nature you received when you were baptized by the Holy Spirit.
If you were to receive the testimony of the Spirit before the Spirit was a reality inside you, it would end in sentimental emotion. But the moment you stop debating and complete the spiritual transaction, the moment you ask for the Holy Spirit and receive him, God gives you the testimony. When you abandon intellectual reasoning and argument and hand yourself in faith to God, you will be amazed at your impertinence in having kept him waiting so long.
If you are debating the question of whether God can deliver you from sin, either let him do it or tell him he can’t. Don’t come at him with evidence, quoting this or that expert. Instead, try Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.” Come, when you are burdened with doubt. Ask, if you know you are evil: “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13).
The simplicity that characterizes commonsense decisions is easy to mistake for the testimony of the Spirit. But the Spirit testifies only to his own nature and to the work of redemption, never to our human reason. If we try to make him testify to our reason, it is no wonder we remain in darkness and perplexity. Fling your doubting and debating overboard, trust in God, and his Spirit will give the testimony.
Wisdom from Oswald
It is in the middle that human choices are made; the beginning and the end remain with God. The decrees of God are birth and death, and in between those limits man makes his own distress or joy. Shade of His Hand, 1223 L
So it is that we are saved by faith in Christ and not by the good things we do.
—Romans 3:28 (TLB)
Many people still cling to the notion that man is naturally good. We did not get this from the Greeks. Aristotle said, “There is no good in mankind.” We did not get it from Judaism. Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
We did not get it from Christian teachings. The Apostle Paul said, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We got this illusion, I believe, from the philosophers and psychologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who taught the false doctrine that man is a helpless victim of his environment.
The Bible says that man is not naturally good. All human experience confirms it. Man is rebellious by nature. This first rebellion in history happened in the Garden of Eden, where the environment was perfect and there was no heredity on which to blame it!
Prayer for the day
Each time I become obsessed by the idea that my deeds are so noble, let me remember the magnanimity of Your perfect life.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.—1 John 4:8 (NIV)
At the core of understanding the divine, you find love—a love so profound and pure it defines the very nature of God. Accept His invitation to turn each moment into an opportunity to reflect His heart. Embrace this truth and share the transformative power of His love.
Heavenly Father, help me to be a true reflection of Your loving heart to everyone I encounter.
Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? Mark 4:40
Today’s Scripture
Mark 4:35-41
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Today’s Devotional
My three-year-old niece is beginning to understand that she can trust Jesus in any situation. One night as she prayed before bedtime during a thunderstorm, she pressed her hands together, closed her eyes, and said, “Dear Jesus, I know You’re here with us. I know You love us. And I know that the storm will stop when You tell it to stop.”
I suspect she had recently heard the story of Jesus and the disciples as they crossed the Sea of Galilee. It’s the one where Jesus fell asleep in the back of the boat just before a squall nearly capsized the vessel. The disciples woke Him and said, “Don’t you care if we drown?” Jesus didn’t speak to them but instead addressed the natural world: “Quiet! Be still!” (Mark 4:38-39).
Immediately the water stopped splashing into the boat. The howling wind subsided. There in the silence, Jesus looked at His followers and said, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (v. 40). I imagine their wide eyes staring back at Him as water coursed down their faces and dripped from their beards.
What if we could live today with the awe the disciples felt in that moment? What if we could view every concern with a fresh awareness of Jesus’ authority and power? Maybe then our childlike faith would chase away our fear. Maybe then we would believe that each storm we face is at His mercy.
Reflect & Pray
What are the barriers to faith in your life? How can you recapture a sense of wonder of Jesus?
Dear Jesus, please increase my faith as I meditate on Your power and presence.
Check out this video on The Compassion of Jesus.
Today’s Insights
The story of Jesus calming the storm in Mark 4:35-41 is the first in a series of four miracles in chapters 4-5 that demonstrate Christ’s power. In stilling the sea, He demonstrates His power over the chaos of nature. The disciples ask, “Don’t you care if we drown?” (4:38). Jesus’ calming of the storm is a concession to their doubt (v. 40).
But the next three miracles show that Christ does, indeed, care for the plight of the hurting, the desperate, and the grieving. He demonstrates His authority over demons (5:1-20), over illness (vv. 21-34), and over death itself (vv. 35-43). He expends His power not to gain influence or fame but to serve those who are suffering. Jesus’ miracles point to a future where, one day, fear and pain will completely disappear. When we face difficulties and trials today, we can trust His same power and presence to help us.
For if you forgive people their trespasses [their reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment], your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
Matthew 6:14 (AMPC)
Unforgiveness will ruin your day. If someone hurts you, pray quickly, “God, I forgive them in Jesus’ name.” If your emotions feel strained when you see that person, stand firm in your decision to forgive them.
Pray for them, asking God to show you how to bless them. Do whatever God leads you to do for them and let God’s love work through you to heal the rift between you. If you do your part, God will bring your feelings in line with your decision, and you will enjoy your day and your life.
Prayer of the Day: Lord, I choose to forgive quickly. Help me release hurt, bless those who wrong me, and let Your love heal relationships and bring peace to my heart, amen.
by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min.
“In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:3)
Paul had just promised Christians that they would be endowed with the “riches of the full assurance of understanding” that would enable them to possess an acknowledgment of the triune Godhead. The ability to understand and the profound awareness of the Trinity is possible because all “the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are in Christ—who is in us!
In Colossians 1:9, Paul prays that they “might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,” a sufficient awareness of information that will enable them to have “understanding in all things” (2 Timothy 2:7). Jesus explained to His apostles that His parables were devices to reveal to them “the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand” (Luke 8:10).
This wisdom and knowledge is the “treasure” of the Lord Jesus, not of the world (1 Corinthians 1:17-31), nor is it contained in the intellect of the “natural” man (1 Corinthians 2:6-16). The understanding and acknowledgment that comes through the world’s philosophy out of the reasoning of the unsaved mind is “earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15).
Thankfully, “the wisdom that is from above 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). God’s work is “very good.” When the creation of our new man is executed (Ephesians 4:24), we are given the “mind of Christ”—not His omniscience but the kind of mind that can now understand spiritual matters (1 Corinthians 2:16). Truly, we have been made friends with God. Jesus said, “For all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15). HMM III
Building yourselves up in your most holy faith . . . — Jude 1:20
There was nothing impulsive and nothing cold-blooded about our Lord, just a calm strength that never got into a panic. Most of us develop our Christianity along the line of our own impulses rather than along the line of God. Impulsiveness is a natural human trait, but our Lord always ignores it, because it hinders the development of the life of a disciple.
Watch how the Spirit of God checks our impulses. His checks bring a rush of self-consciousness that instantly makes us want to vindicate ourselves. Impulsiveness is fine in a child but disastrous in a man or a woman; an impulsive adult is always a petulant adult. Impulsiveness has to be trained into intuition by discipline.
Discipleship has no impulsiveness in it; it is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. Walking on water is easy in an impulsive burst of courage, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Jesus Christ is a different thing. Peter walked on the water to go to Jesus (Matthew 14:29)—but he also walked far with Jesus on the land. We don’t need the supernatural grace of God in order to weather crises; human nature and pride are sufficient for that. But we do need his grace in order to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a child of God, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus Christ. We think that we have to do exceptional things for God, but this isn’t true. We have to be exceptional in ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, and this isn’t learned in five minutes.
Wisdom from Oswald
God created man to be master of the life in the earth and sea and sky, and the reason he is not is because he took the law into his own hands, and became master of himself, but of nothing else. The Shadow of an Agony, 1163 L
Christ in your hearts is your only hope of glory.
—Colossians 1:27 (TLB)
The age-old issue, “Can man save himself, or does he need God?” is still raging across the world as furiously as ever. As long as the world goes on, people will build towers of Babel, fashion their graven images, and invent their own ideologies. Now, as in every period of history, people think they can manage without God.
Economically, they may manage; intellectually, they may manage; socially, they may get by. But down underneath the surface of rational man is a vacuum-a void that can be met only through Jesus Christ. The most astounding fact of all history is that the great and almighty God of heaven can live in your heart. It makes no difference who you are.
Prayer for the day
You fill the emptiness and longing of my soul. I need the presence of Your Spirit, dear Lord.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.—Ephesians 4:32 (NIV)
As you navigate your day, let compassion be your guide. Recognize the shared grace that binds us all. Open your heart to understand the struggles of others, offering empathy and forgiveness as Christ has done for you.
Lord, may Your spirit of compassion flow through me, softening my heart and extending grace to those around me.
The United States of America is a nation conceived by and birthed through prayer. From the first colony of Pilgrims led by William Bradford that settled in Plymouth, MA to our first President, George Washington, who risked his life to secure the freedom we enjoy today, prayer was regarded as an indispensable part of daily life. Universally understood by countless generations of Americans has been the belief that any chance of prosperity and any hope in preserving the American way of life for our families, communities, and government, depends on our continual dependence upon God for His divine providence and protection.
So evident is this belief that the words “In God we Trust” are stamped on our currency, “One nation under God” is echoed in our Pledge of Allegiance, and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence from which our American liberty has been proclaimed.
The Decline of Prayer in a Nation in Crisis
Inherent in acknowledging God’s involvement in the affairs of our nation is the necessity to petition His favor through prayer for the provision of our needs, wisdom for our leaders, and security of our people. While this may be obvious to many American Christians who steadfastly uphold our homeland in prayer, a recent Pew Research Study has shown that prayer has steadily declined over the last several years with “fewer than half of Americans (44%) who say they pray each day.” This heartbreaking statistic is troubling when considering the growing, increasingly complex challenges and issues threatening to unravel the fabric of our society.
For decades, America has taken comfort in being a paragon of military strength and a vanguard for technological innovation, fostering a sense of security and stability that many have taken for granted. Americans have taken pride in the collective self-sufficiency of our leaders, our servicemen and servicewomen, and our state-of-the-art weaponry to defend the interests of the United States against internal threats and those from abroad.
At the same time, the predominant Judeo-Christian worldview that once underpinned the foundational beliefs of our society has steadily declined, resulting in an erosion of Biblical values and morals, growing hostility towards Christ-centered standards, principles, and wisdom, and an abandonment of prayer. The result is evident in perversion in classrooms, chaos in the streets, lawlessness in government, and the tearing apart of nuclear families—all of which testify to the degradation of our society.
Looking forward, the question we must ask ourselves is, how will we as Christians respond to factors threatening to unravel this great nation in which we live? When faced with external dangers such as hostile foreign entities, cyber warfare, nanotechnology, bioengineered diseases, and terrorism, or when confronted with internal perils such as inflation, racial division, socialism, and political corruption, will we be content to rely upon our own intellectual prowess and military fortitude to protect our people, to retain societal stability, or even bring cultural, and dare I say spiritual, reform?
If history is any sort of teacher, it demonstrates that this is nothing short of a misplaced sense of security and a false hope. Time and again, nations have fallen, and cultures have collapsed due to trusting in their own self-reliance.
Rediscovering Our Spiritual Weapon
The time has come for America to return to the Christian heritage of our forefathers and utilize a weapon so often neglected. It’s time for prayer to be restored as a regular component of the daily lives of Americans. I’m thankful for the wisdom of President Harry S. Truman and the US Congress who established a National Day of Prayer in 1952, recognizing the importance and necessity for prayer to be incorporated into the fabric of our nation.
It’s wonderful that the citizens of our country are reminded once a year to fight on their knees through prayer on behalf of our homeland. Yet praying once a year simply isn’t enough if we want to see America continue being a beacon of light, hope, and freedom among the nations of the world. We as American Christians need to seek God’s face in prayer daily to guide our leaders, protect our families, and uphold the godly values that have made this remarkable nation unlike any other in history. Every day ought to be a National Day of Prayer!
By now you’re probably wondering why I am referring to prayer as a weapon. Isn’t prayer more of a request for provision, a plea for help, an expression of gratitude, a gesture of faith, or a declaration of worship to God? Yes, absolutely! Prayer is every one of these things. In addition to these, prayer is a tool granted by God to believers for obtaining His protection as well as for assaulting the kingdom of darkness. It’s an instrument given to His followers to both confront and defend against evil.
In other words, prayer may be appropriately viewed as a weapon. As followers of Jesus engaged in a great spiritual battle (Ep. 6:12), I am reminded and encouraged by Paul’s words to the Corinthian believers, that “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” (2 Co. 10:4-5). Such weapons undoubtedly include prayer!
Tactically speaking, when you think about any type of weaponry, it’s important to recognize that a weapon may be used for either offensive or defensive purposes, or both. We see this in Scripture when David used a sling and a stone to offensively attack the giant, Goliath, who defied the God of Israel (1 Sa. 17:45-50). We also see this in Nehemiah when the people who rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem did construction with one hand while simultaneously carrying swords in their other hand, ready to defend themselves against potential attacks from their enemies (Neh. 4:17).
The same principles are true with prayer. As we pray, we can come before the Lord with an offensive mindset, appealing to Him to proactively destroy evil agendas, ideologies, behaviors, and works which seem to manifest themselves with increasing frequency, threatening the stability of our country and culture.
It is suitable and beneficial for Christians to pray that God would prevent or eradicate initiatives, laws, or causes that are contrary to His will, His character, and His Word. It’s fitting that believers would ask God to change the hearts of our fellow countrymen and those hostile toward godly values and morals. Jesus Himself instructed His followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Mt. 5:44).
Equally applicable is coming to God in prayer with a defensive mindset, seeking His protection from dangers and threats having the potential to bring disruption, division, or destruction. As the flow of illegal drugs into our country persists, as homicide of the preborn is celebrated, as sexual perversion proliferates, as atheism, spiritualism, and demonic doctrines embed themselves into entertainment, education, commerce, and politics, the need for God to shield America with His protective hand from internal and external dangers is woefully apparent. Our need for God to fight on our behalf to retain, restore, and defend the Biblical roots of our nation is greater than ever!
The Power of Prayer Cannot Be Neglected
As Christians, it isn’t enough to simply rely on political, military, or academic leaders to solve our nation’s problems or protect our freedoms. We need to recognize that the most powerful weapon at our disposal is the one faithfully proven to be effective time and again throughout the pages of Scripture.
When Moses cried out to God in prayer, the Red Sea was parted to save the Israelites from destruction (Ex. 14:15). When Elijah prayed, the heresy of religious leaders who corrupted God’s people was laid bare through God’s consuming fire from heaven (1 Ki. 18:38-40). When Daniel prayed, revelation was given from God to declare and interpret King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, leading the world’s most powerful leader at the time to acknowledge God’s supremacy (Da. 2:26-47). And when Jesus prayed, it strengthened Him to endure what no other man could, enabling Him to obtain salvation for humanity through His death, burial, and resurrection (Lu. 22:41-44).
Clearly, in each of these instances, the might and power of prayer was shown to obtain deliverance, counter false ideologies, change the mindset of powerful leaders, and provide strength needed to overcome sin and evil. What a mighty weapon indeed!
Commit to Pray for America Today
If heroes of the faith like these understood and valued the importance of prayer, we too as followers of Christ should do no less. We cannot afford not to pray! I am reminded of the words written by the Apostle James, “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (Ja. 5:16b).
Would you join me and commit to praying for America? Starting today, will you partner with me in praying daily for our families, our communities, our churches, our culture, and our leaders? Let’s join together and make every day a National Day of Prayer where we Christians in America collectively seek God to defend the interests of our fellow countrymen and turn the heart of our nation back to Jesus!
Let’s not neglect one of the mightiest weapons in our arsenal but rather deploy it as we stand in opposition against the schemes of the devil! As we fight together on our knees, we may just be surprised to see how powerfully God will move in our nation. Let’s pray!
The Lord said, . . . “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh?” Jonah 4:10-11
Today’s Scripture
Jonah 4:5-11
Listen to Today’s Devotional
Today’s Devotional
How could God possibly care about all these people? The thought hit me as I stepped off a busy train platform in a crowded city, thousands of miles from home. I was a teenager traveling abroad for the first time, and I was overwhelmed by the size of the world around me. I felt small by comparison and wondered how God could love so many people.
I had yet to understand the broad reach of God’s perfect love. In Scripture, the prophet Jonah couldn’t fathom this either. When Jonah finally obeyed God’s call to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh, the capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire that had oppressed his native Israel, he didn’t want God to forgive them. But the city did repent, and when God didn’t destroy them, Jonah was angry. God provided shelter for Jonah through a fast-growing plant but then took his shade away, which angered him all the more. Jonah complained, but God responded, “You have been concerned about this plant . . . . And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people?” (Jonah 4:10-11).
God’s so great that He’s able to care deeply for those who are far from Him. His love goes to the lengths of the cross and empty tomb of Jesus to meet our ultimate need. His greatness manifests itself in goodness, and He longs to draw us near.
Reflect & Pray
How does it comfort you to know God cares for you? How will you respond to His love?
Loving God, thank You for coming to save me. Please help me to love others like You do.
For further study, read The Pouting Prophet.
Today’s Insights
Jonah 4 shows just how hardened the prophet’s heart had become. While it’s true that the people of Nineveh were far from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we see that Jonah himself was also very far from God’s heart. Having been God’s instrument to bring about a national revival in Nineveh (3:5-10), Jonah was angry at Him for rescuing his enemies. God’s love for Nineveh could’ve been a learning opportunity for him, but his heart was so filled with hate that all he could feel was his own rage. Still God loved and cared for the prophet (4:6), just as He loves and cares for us in spite of our hardened hearts.
Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you….
2 Corinthians 13:5 (NKJV)
The Bible tells us to examine ourselves, and I wholeheartedly agree that we need to do so. We should examine ourselves to see if we have sin, and if so, we should sincerely repent, then move on to living without that sin in our lives.
There is a great difference between examination and condemnation. Examination helps us prove to ourselves that we are in Christ and He is in us, and that in Him we have been set free from sin. Condemnation keeps us mired in the very sin we feel condemned about. It does not deliver us—it traps us! It weakens us and saps all our spiritual strength. We give our energy to feeling condemned rather than living righteously.
There is such a thing as excessive self-examination, and I personally believe it opens the door for much of the unbalance we see today in this area among God’s children. To be overly introspective and continually examining our every move opens a door to Satan. In the past I experienced multiple problems in this area, and I know for a fact that you and I will never be confident in prayer until the problem is dealt with thoroughly and completely.
Prayer of the Day: Lord, I ask You to search my heart and expose any sin in my life. I refuse to get trapped in endless introspection and condemnation. Set me free from all sin, amen.
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
When Winston Churchill made this statement in 1947, he had led England to victory in World War II as its prime minister, lost his bid for reelection in a landslide, and returned to Parliament as one of its 640 members. He had experienced personally the vagaries of democracy.
If he were writing today’s article, he might make the same observation (though far more eloquently than I can). Consider:
The “sacred inheritance of every human being”
My thoughts today are motivated by the historian Elaine Pagels’s fascinating recent essay in The Atlantic. She notes that democracy was unknown to humanity for thousands of years: ancient empires were ruled by emperors; Hindu societies enshrined the ruler as one who embodied the divine order of the gods; Greek philosophers argued that rulers were innately different and thus capable of ruling others.
By contrast, America’s founders believed that “all men are created equal,” an assertion that formed the foundation for the democratic republic they built.
I have witnessed personally the alternatives in Cuba, China, and Russia. My father and grandfather fought in world wars to defend our democracy. Today, millions of women and men are defending our freedom in military posts around the world and deserve our undying gratitude.
But as the news demonstrates daily, the key to the success of a democracy lies not with its system but with the people it serves and those they elect to serve them. Thomas Jefferson observed, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” This is because living in a democracy doesn’t change people—people change democracy.
Some of the godliest people I have ever known live in the oppression of autocracies in Cuba and China. I have witnessed personally the courage of Russian evangelicals who meet for worship despite the opposition of their government. Conversely, the ongoing clergy crisis in America shows that our democracy cannot ensure the character even of religious leaders, much less irreligious ones.
Elaine Pagels observes that our “inalienable” human rights are the “sacred inheritance of every human being, grounded in a transcendent reality.” But these rights must be grounded in that reality if they are to prevail.
How to “rejoice and be glad” today
Psalm 118 is one of the most remarkable songs of worship in Scripture. It was sung at the Feast of Tabernacles and at Passover. The crowds recited it when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (v. 26; Matthew 21:9); it will be sung again at his second coming (Matthew 23:39).
The psalmist declares, “The Lᴏʀᴅ is on my side; I will not fear,” and then asks, “What can man do to me?” (Psalm 118:6). If you had Secret Service protection, would you fear a street mugging?
He then makes my point today: “It is better to take refuge in the Lᴏʀᴅ than to trust in man” (v. 8). “Man” translates the Hebrew adam, referring here to “mankind.” This encompasses every human being, including ourselves.
Solomon warned us: “Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool” (Proverbs 28:26). James explained why: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (James 1:14), which leads to sin and eventual death (v. 15).
By contrast, the psalmist testifies, “The Lᴏʀᴅ is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation” (Psalm 118:14). He could therefore declare, “This is the day that the Lᴏʀᴅ has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (v. 24). If we see today as a gift we have received rather than a possession we deserve, we will use it to love and serve our Father and our neighbor (Mark 12:30–31).
“All earthly cities are vulnerable”
The future of America’s democracy depends on the character of America’s people. However, only Jesus can transform our fallen nature into the divine likeness for which we are designed and intended (Genesis 1:27). Only he can impart to us his holiness (cf. 1 Peter 1:16).
Think of a democracy composed of Christlike citizens and leaders. Imagine the good it could do for its people and the world.
Our part is to “take refuge in the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Psalm 118:8). A refuge only helps those who stay within its shelter. The Spirit can sanctify only those who stay connected to him in worship, prayer, and obedience.
This is why we are commanded to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Not to live with our eyes closed and our hands folded, but to consciously practice the presence of Jesus through the day: to talk with him along the way, to listen to his Spirit as he guides us, to experience his power as he strengthens us, to seek and receive his pardon as he forgives our failures, to manifest the first glimmers of that miraculous day when “we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
When Rome was sacked in AD 410, St. Augustine told his flock,
All earthly cities are vulnerable. Men build them and men destroy them. At the same time there is the City of God which men did not build and cannot destroy and which is everlasting.
Which “city” will you serve today?
Quote for the day:
“One prominent spiritual leader insists, ‘The only way to have genuine spiritual revival is to have legislative reform.’ Could he have that backwards?” —Philip Yancey
Our latest website resources:
by Henry M. Morris III, D.Min.
“That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.” (Colossians 2:2)
There are two key aspects to this message. Our hearts need encouragement by “being knit together.” The result will produce a “full assurance of understanding” and an acknowledgment of the mystery of the triune Godhead.
The comforted hearts are to be “knit together.” The Greek term sumbibazo means “to force together, to compact.” Paul uses this term to illustrate the impossibility of teaching God anything. “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” (1 Corinthians 2:16). Positively, the strength of the church body comes from being “joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth” (Ephesians 4:16). Those “joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God” (Colossians 2:19).
The result of the encouragement is wonderful: we should attain to the riches of “full assurance.” The Greek term plerophorias is only used four times: promising understanding in our text, a full assurance of the gospel (1 Thessalonians 1:5) and of hope (Hebrews 6:11), and the full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:22).
The Greek synonym plerophoreo identifies “sure belief” among us (Luke 1:1), being “fully persuaded” of God’s promises (Romans 4:21). We should be “fully persuaded” in our own mind (Romans 14:5) while making “full proof” of our ministry (2 Timothy 4:5). All of this makes our testimony “fully known” in the world (2 Timothy 4:17). Perhaps the goal of “full assurance” is that we “may speak boldly, as [we] ought to speak” (Ephesians 6:20). HMM III
It is God’s will that you should be sanctified. — 1 Thessalonians 4:3
My sanctification isn’t a question of whether God is willing to sanctify me. The question is, Am I willing? Am I willing to let God do in me all that has been made possible by the atonement? Am I willing to let the life of Jesus Christ manifest itself in my mortal flesh?
Beware of saying, “I’m longing to be sanctified.” Stop longing and treat it as a transaction, a simple matter of asking and receiving. Ask God for the Holy Spirit on the basis of Luke 11:13: “How much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Then, in implicit faith, receive Jesus Christ to be made sanctification to you, and the great marvel of the atonement will be made real in you.
All that Jesus Christ made possible is mine because of one thing and one thing only: the free, loving gift of God. My attitude as a saved and sanctified soul must be one of profound, humble holiness. (There’s no such thing as proud holiness.) I recognize what Jesus has done for me with agonizing repentance and a sense of unspeakable shame and degradation. I have the amazing realization that even when I cared nothing for God, his love for me was so great that he completed everything for my salvation and sanctification.
No wonder Paul says that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Sanctification makes me one with Jesus Christ, and in him one with God. This is done only through the atonement of Christ, which is the cause of my holiness. Never confuse the cause and the effect. My holiness and obedience and service and prayer are all effects—the outcome of speechless thanks and adoration for the sanctification worked in me by the atonement.
Isaiah 59-61; 2 Thessalonians 3
Wisdom from Oswald
The life of Abraham is an illustration of two things: of unreserved surrender to God, and of God’s complete possession of a child of His for His own highest end.Not Knowing Whither, 901 R
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