Category: devotional

In John 14, the Lord Jesus told his disciples not to be troubled. He was about to leave them, to return to the Father, and to prepare for his church their eternal home. The disciples were not to be troubled because this in fact had always been the mission of the Savior. Without Jesus going to the cross, there would be no heaven for the children of God.

 

Jesus also told his disciples that they knew the way to go where Jesus was ultimately going. They knew the way to heaven. And that causes a bit of an odd question from Thomas. Thomas wants directions, since he does not think he knows the way. But Jesus has something far better than a map for Thomas.

 

John 14:4-6 – 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

 

What is the way to get to God? How do we become right with God? The way is Jesus. Verse 6, of course, is a verse that highlights the exclusivity of Christ. No person gets to God other than through the person and finished work of Jesus. And sometimes we focus on that aspect of what the Savior said so much that we miss the import of the first thing he said to Thomas. Jesus is the way.

 

How do you get to God? Go with Jesus. You do not need a set of directions. There is no series of ceremonies that you have to work through to make it to heaven. There is no secret handshake or mystery to unveil. No, if you want to be with God, you simply follow the way. The way is not a path, but a person. The way is Jesus. Follow Jesus, and you will arrive. Follow anything other than Jesus and you will miss.

 

How do we follow Jesus to heaven? We follow what he has told us in his word. Believe in the Lord Jesus in repentance to be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Son of god who lived a perfect life, died a sacrificial death, rose from the grave, and promises to return. Believe that he is your only hope for forgiveness. Entrust your very soul to the person and finished work of Jesus. That is the way to God. 

 

And once we are saved, we still follow Jesus as the way. He has shown us how to please the Lord. He has revealed himself and his purposes in the Scriptures. So we worship, we unite with the church, we serve the Lord, and we do it all based on the inspired word of God, the revelation of Christ to us. WE pray. We trust God to lead us through his Spirit. And we follow Jesus. We do not follow a map or a dead set of directions. WE follow the Lord, via his Spirit, through his living and perfectly inspired word.

It may be shallow of me, but there are times when I am comforted by the fact that I am not the only one with certain flaws. It’s nice to know that I am not the only crazy one in the world who makes certain mistakes. Is that true of you too?

 

Here is one that I found comforting while reading through Matthew. Jesus and his disciples were having a conversation. Of course, the disciples missed something that Jesus was saying, and they got worried. They thought he was rebuking them for forgetting to pack supplies for a trip. The Savior, of course, was talking about something completely different.

 

But in that exchange, there is a failing that the disciples have that I think we often have too. Look at the story, and see if you can find yourself in it.

 

Matthew 16:5-12 – 5 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. 6 Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 7 And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, “We brought no bread.” 8 But Jesus, aware of this, said, “O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? 9 Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 10 Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 11 How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” 12 Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

 

For the purposes of this post alone, don’t think about the religious implication of the Pharisees and Sadducees here. Instead, look at the other failing of the disciples. They were worried about their bread supply. This worry comes even though the disciples have twice seen Jesus miraculously feed crowds of thousands with only food enough to feed one or two people. They have seen Jesus’ power. They have seen Jesus’ kindness. They have seen Jesus’ provision. But, when they are looking at a potential lack, they forget.

 

Forgetting the great faithfulness and provision of the Lord is something that I think is a common Christian failing. It is an ugly one, to be sure, but it is common. For some reason, we can see that the Lord provides for us at points in our lives. WE can rejoice in that provision. We can even tell others about the great faithfulness and power of God. But when the next struggle comes, if we are not careful, we will look like the faithless disciples wondering if we are going to go hungry.

 

Dear friends, let us not be like the disciples here. Let us not be like we often are. Instead, let us remember the faithfulness of god in the past. Let us remember his promises in his word. Let us remember how he has always cared for us. And let us trust the Savior, knowing that he will always accomplish his will in our lives for his glory and our good.

What Marks Us as Christians?What things should a church do in order to prove to the world that we are truly the people of God? How should we structure and shape the ministry of the church so that those who do not know God will recognize us as true disciples of the Savior? I would think these questions are important. If Jesus told us how to be marked as his, following that directive would be essential to our function as the body of Christ here in a lost world.

 

John 13:35 – By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

 

Jesus says to us that there is a way that the world will recognize and understand that we belong to Jesus. Note, however, that it is not what we see many churches making primary. In fact, if we are not careful, we will see that what Jesus gives us in this verse is actually something that many churches think of as a side ministry or simply take for granted.

 

Jesus says that we will show the world that we are his if we love one another. In the verse prior, he told us to love each other as he has loved us. That indicates a powerful, self-sacrificial commitment to the good of another. Jesus demonstrated his love for us by laying down his life for us. And we are to be that committed to each other in order to show the world that we belong to Christ.

 

So, Christians, stop and think. How are you communicating to the world around you that you belong to Jesus? If your answer to that question does not include a deep personal love for other believers and commitment to the local church, you are missing what Jesus shows us here is his way to prove that we belong to him. Yes, you will share your faith. Yes, you will worship the Lord. Yes, you will care for those in need. But the words of the Savior here in the upper room tell us that the real way that the world will know you are his, know in a way that Jesus promises, is if you are a Christian who loves the believers with whom you are connected. Love the people in the body of Christ, and you demonstrate that you are truly a follower of Jesus.

 

Loving one another cannot be a side function of the church. Loving one another cannot be something we do if we have time after all the other stuff, the important stuff. If we are truly people of Scripture, if we are under Jesus’ lordship, it would make sense that we would see to it that our lives are structured in such a way, even organized in the church, to be sure that we are loving one another as Christ has loved us. This will take time. This will take church resources. This may mean that we do not wear out the body so much in other events that there is no longer time and energy for events that focus us on knowing and caring for each other. How will the world know we belong to Jesus? They will know by how we love each other. Are we really ready to believe the Savior enough that we change the way we do things to make this as central as the Savior seems to make it right here?

The book of Lamentations is a poetic cry as the prophet Jeremiah watches the destruction of the city of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. It was a time of horror, of death, and of destruction. Jeremiah hurt, and he hurt deeply, personally.

 

Lamentations 3:1-3

 

1 I am the man who has seen affliction

under the rod of his wrath;

2 he has driven and brought me

into darkness without any light;

3 surely against me he turns his hand

again and again the whole day long.

 

Jeremiah knows that he is suffering. And he knows that he is suffering because the Lord is judging Jerusalem. The prophet knows that the Lord is doing rightly, but that does not stop the pain.

 

Does the pain cause Jeremiah to turn away from the Lord? Will his suffering and the sufferings of his people lead him to hate the God who would judge them?

 

Lamentations 3:21-24

 

21 But this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

his mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

 

Great is your faithfulness! Have you ever stopped to think that the hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” is based on a biblical cry from a desperately suffering prophet? Jeremiah does not declare that God is faithful only when things are good and easy. Jeremiah sees pain, sees no way out, sees struggles, and still knows that the Lord is his only hope. Only God is faithful. Only God’s love is enough to sustain Jeremiah, a love that never ceases.

 

Do you hurt? Of course you will in this life. Maybe this is an easy season. Maybe things are going well. But we live in a fallen world. We see evils perpetrated all around us. We are disappointed by friends and opposed by enemies. WE long for revival, restoration, rejuvenation. We want to see Jesus return and set right what is wrong in this world. And we still know that our job is to live in the here and now no matter how easy or how hard things get.

 

So what do we do? We need to speak truth just like Jeremiah did. WE need to tell God what is on our hearts; he already knows anyway. We need to then speak words of truth about the character of God. His love never fails. His mercies are new every day. Great is his faithfulness. And the Lord, in his perfect character, is our hope. Speaking those truths and believing them is how we make it in a fallen world.

While reading through the Proverbs, I found myself thinking about modern methods of communication and even argument. Just for fun, then, here are a few thoughts that cross my mind, simply in verse order, from Proverbs 26 which I think could help me, and perhaps you, in our interactions.

 

Proverbs 26:2 – Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.

 

First we see this gem. In life, we will have people, from time to time, speak out against us, Perhaps we will have someone hurl an insult our way. The question we should ask ourselves before taking the insult to heart is this: Is it true? Is what the person has said about you accurate? If a person hurls an insult or curse your way, but in truth, the insult has no basis in reality, you should happily be able to let it go. It is like a bird that flies over your head and never lands. An undeserved curse does not come to rest.

 

Proverbs 26:4-5 – 4 Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself. 5 Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.

 

These two verses must be taken in tandem. If you look at them together, you see a problem. Verse 4 tells you not to answer a fool according to his folly. Verse 5 tells you that you must answer a fool according to his folly. Some try to read a difference in the two kinds of answers given. But I think that there is something simpler going on here. The Lord is telling us that there is often not a correct way to answer when a person is a fool. Fools put you in impossible situations. If you do not answer, they think they are wise. If you do answer, you end up being dragged into the mud.

 

In your social interactions, try not to be this fool. Try not to spout off and put people in the awkward position of having to weigh the pros and cons of correcting the careless things you say or post. The Lord does not want us to be foolish, and that is quite often the point of verses in Proverbs.

 

Proverbs 26:17 – Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.

 

It is almost never helpful to jump into a social media argument. The proverb here tells us that it is almost never safe to jump into anyone else’s argument. If a person seizes a dog by the ears, he is likely to find himself in pain. Similarly, when we jump into the arguments of others, we are likely to find ourselves attacked.

 

So, when living life, especially on social media, recognize that diving into a thread of conversation has a good likelihood of going wrong. In my own experience, I have seldom seen a comment thread that leads to people agreeing on a topic where they started off at odds. But I certainly have seen those threads get nasty and personal. So, the point is to beware. Don’t jump in without knowing the risk. And thus be sure that you know that you only jump in when it matters. Otherwise, see verses 2 and 4 above.

 

Proverbs 26:18-19 – 18 Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death 19 is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, “I am only joking!”

 

Have you ever noticed how people today like to say insulting or harsh things and then think they can make it all OK by indicating that they are joking? Consider how many ugly text messages that you have received that end with “LOL” or some sort of emoji. This proverb says to us that a person who does such a thing is a person who does major damage. Do not shoot from cover, hurt people, and then think you are OK because you ended a nasty comment with a smilie. Be honest, and do not try to cover up your actions by pretending humor that is really not there. And be careful with humor, as it is extremely difficult to communicate your heart or your tone in writing.

 

We could come up with many more points for interaction from the Proverbs. IN fact, I could have written several more from this chapter alone. But Let us simply allow these cautions to lead us to consider well how we interact. Let’s be wise. Let’s confront when it is necessary. But Let’s also be gracious and take seriously how we speak to one another, even from a keyboard. Sometimes, ignoring a thread is better than jumping in. Sometimes a phone call would be better than a text that cannot communicate your heart. 

“La la la la , I can’t hear you!” I think we all have seen a child, or an adult being silly, pretending not to hear something he or she does not want to think about. But, I also think we all know that this does not work in real issues of real life.

 

In the days of the prophet Jeremiah, a king of Judah tried to play this game, not with an annoying advisor, but with the word of God. And the Lord let him know this would not work.

 

Jeremiah 36:22-30

 

²² It was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter house, and there was a fire burning in the fire pot before him. ²³ As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire in the fire pot, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the fire pot. ²⁴ Yet neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words was afraid, nor did they tear their garments. ²⁵ Even when Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. ²⁶ And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king’s son and Seraiah the son of Azriel and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel to seize Baruch the secretary and Jeremiah the prophet, but the LORD hid them.

²⁷ Now after the king had burned the scroll with the words that Baruch wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: ²⁸ “Take another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah has burned. ²⁹ And concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah you shall say, ‘Thus says the LORD, You have burned this scroll, saying, “Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land, and will cut off from it man and beast?” ³⁰ Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: He shall have none to sit on the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out to the heat by day and the frost by night.

 

Jehoiakim did not like the word of God. Jeremiah had been inspired to speak the truth of the Lord to warn the people and to call them to repentance. Part of that truth was the fact that the nation would be taken by the Babylonian Empire for several decades. But since the king hated that word, he burned the scroll on which it was written in the fire.

 

But the Lord makes it abundantly clear that Jehoiakim cannot avoid the plan of God simply by ignoring his word. And, if we are wise, we will realize that we also cannot avoid the truth of the word of God simply by ignoring what was written. God is over all. God’s word tells us of the Lord and his ways. You can ignore that word if you wish, but you cannot change the truth of who the Lord is or what the Lord requires or what the Lord will do.

 

May we be wise enough not to pretend that we cannot hear the Lord. Instead, may we be honest enough to consider the word, submit to the truth of God, and surrender to the Lord and his ways.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of the simple stuff. We need someone to show us how we ought to think about things we have not considered in a while.

 

With that, I pose the question, “Why care about Scripture?” There are hundreds of reasons, of course, but let’s see one. This reason should help us to think well as Christians. It should also cause those who are unsure about the faith to think twice.

 

Psalm 119:73 – Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.

 

David, in a song devoted to the praise of God and his word, writes for us a reason that we may not always consider as to why the Bible matters. God made us. Because God made us, he can speak best about who we are, why we exist, and how we can have life and fulfillment.

 

Stop and consider. If you were playing the latest game on your gaming system of choice—Switch, X-Box, whatever—and you found yourself in a place where you were stuck, what would help you solve the problem? What if you had, sitting on your couch next to you, the person who programmed the game. The guy who wrote the code is right there. If he told you the sequence of moves to solve the puzzle or defeat the boss, might it not be a good idea to listen to him?

 

We have better than the video game programmer sitting next to us. We have the One who created us within reach. God has spoken to us. The very God who knit our bodies together and designed our souls has chosen to reveal himself to us. He has shown us how to live. He has shown us how to know him. He has shown us what will bring us ultimate joy. And he has put all of that information in his holy word, a book which he has declared perfect and sufficient and living.

 

So, we, like David, should recognize that, if God put us together, we should care about his word. And if you find yourself saying that you do not think God made you, I simply pose the question of where you came from. Is there anything that gives you meaning, hope, and help in life to actually guide you through this existence? God’s word is solid, revealing to us our true Creator. That is one reason to take it very seriously.

How do you evaluate humanity? How do you and I evaluate our own goodness? By what standard do we measure ourselves? I fear that our measure of our goodness or badness, our strength or our weakness, is not the same as the measure of the Lord.

 

Isaiah wrote to the people of Israel, reminding them that they were not as strong as they thought themselves to be. His words are part of a prayer of confession as he asks for the mercy of the Lord.

 

Isaiah 64:5-6

 

5 You meet him who joyfully works righteousness,

those who remember you in your ways.

Behold, you were angry, and we sinned;

in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?

6 We have all become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf,

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

 

The word that is most terrifying in Isaiah’s prayer of confession is “righteous.” In verse 6, one line says, “and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”  We have to get this to see our great need for the mercy of the Lord. It is not our badness that looks like a filthy garment in the sight of the Lord. It is the best we can do that still amounts to something nasty in God’s sight.

 

Do not misunderstand me or the word of God here. The Lord is not saying that it is bad for people to do right things. When we donate to relieve those who have suffered an earthquake, a hurricane, or an evil attack, what we do is good. It is so wonderful to see cities come together, help the needy, and give of their time, their money, and even their blood to aid others. This is not a bad thing.

 

But, and this is vital for our souls to grasp, when compared to the absolute perfection of the Lord, we cannot let ourselves think that we have made ourselves good by our own strength. When held up against the holiness of God, even our best work, our most righteous deeds, still look dirty. The point is to convince us of our helplessness before the Lord. WE have never been good on our own. We can never be good on our own. We are too stained by the sin of the world and the evil in our own hearts. We must have a Savior.

 

This is where the gospel is good news. Whereas every other world religion tells us to do good in order to earn the favor of the deity, biblical Christianity says to us that there is no good that we can perform to earn God’s favor. But Christianity also tells us that Jesus has done the work, all of the work, necessary to cleanse us from our sin and to make us righteous in the sight of the Lord. Jesus has taken the punishment for sin we all deserve. Jesus has performed perfect acts of righteousness to actually be able to donate to us, to credit to our accounts, acts of righteousness that are not filthy garments in the sight of the Lord. Jesus has covered the negative and freely given the positive that is required for us to be forgiven our sin and welcomed into God’s family.

 

Friends, we are not good. We are not strong. We do not bring good to the table, even when we do great things in this world. Our only hope is that God-sized good and God-sized grace are given to us. And those God-sized things are done by the Son of god, the only one who really could do them in the first place. And this is wherein our hope lies. WE trust in the finished work of Jesus and ask him to apply it to us. We bow to him in humility, and we receive his mercy as a gift. We are strong, never in ourselves, but only in the almighty strength and perfect righteousness of the Son of God.

How can you tell if a person is genuinely participating in worship? Be careful with your answer. I have known many who believe that the way to gage the worship of a believer is to look at their face for emotion. Are they weeping? Are they really into the music? Those things must be worship.

 

If you think that many do not measure worship by such a rule, consider how the churches you have attended shape the worship service. How many of them work to set a particular mood, to play on particular heart strings, in order to call you into their particular form of worship? How many utilize every ploy they can to heighten your emotions to encourage you to feel deeply? Obviously, the assumption is that the more moved you are by the experience, the more you have worshipped. These emotions might be strong joy as the band really cranks it up or they may be deep and touching emotion as the lighting switches, softer music plays, and the video screen reminds you of the depths of God’s love.

 

Now, before moving on, let me say that I do not oppose media, music, or emotion in worship. But, and this is important, I believe we need to grasp that our emotions are not the measure of whether or not our worship is true. You can be as into the music as anybody, and you can fail in worship. You can weep until you have no more tears to weep, and you may not at all have turned your tear-streaked face to the Lord.

 

Hebrews 12:28-29 – 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire.

 

Note that here, in Hebrews, there is a call for acceptable worship. What is it? It is not a call to offer acceptable worship, so you better get into the music even if it is not your style. Nor is it a call to get more emotional than your constitution is cut out for. Instead, the call is to respond to the Lord with reverence and awe. Revere the Lord. Bow before him as King. Speak, sing, hear, and believe true things about the Lord that make you honor him. This can be done with deep emotion, but the emotion is not at all central—it certainly is not as important as truth.

 

Look to the Lord in awe. Be amazed by God. Be stunned by his power, his perfections, and his grace. How do we do that? WE do not do this by manipulating emotions with the same kinds of things that happen here in Vegas when a showman wants to tweak the feelings of the audience. No, we bring about awe by communicating truth about who the Lord is. He is a consuming fire. He is the Holy One. God is our Creator, our King, our Savior, and this truth, if rightly understood, should lead us to reverence and awe.

 

No, I’m not here trying to rant against modern tech in worship. Nor am I pointing to any particular group. But what I want is for us as Christians to recognize that acceptable worship is not measured by the implicit standards that many are now using. Acceptable worship is about truth, about God, about revering him and being in aw of him. This is not something drummed up by our tech, our music, our drama, our poetry, or anything else. The only way to have genuine awe of the Lord is to know the Lord and to have his word, his revelation of himself, rightly proclaimed. So let our worship be more about the Lord and his word and the truth being spoken, sung, and received. That will be a worship that leads us to reverence and awe.

When I was growing up, we sang about heaven in the church. I expected, on any given Sunday, to sing with a southern gospel twist, songs like “When We All Get to Heaven,” “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” or “Victory in Jesus.” And there was both a goodness and something not-so-good with the way that all went.

 

On the negative side, so many of the songs that we sang about heaven had a sadly misplaced focus. There was a fascination with golden streets and reunion with long lost relatives that, as I grew older, bothered me. It was as if the songs removed the focus from the presence of the Lord, the prime focus of heaven, and majored on the accoutrement’s of heaven. So, of course, as I grew, and while I was far too full of myself and my own wisdom, I found myself turning away from wanting to sing those kinds of songs.

 

But there is a problem. Singing about heaven is good. Focusing on the eternal life to come is, without question, a Christian salve to soothe our burdened souls in the here and now. Focusing on things above is a godly spiritual discipline. And my turning up my nose at the songs that made me think of heaven did not help.

 

Hebrews 11:13-16 – 13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

 

People who speak of their eternity being bound up in heaven please the Lord. People who sing of the joys to come when we are freed from this sin-cursed world to stand face-to-face with our Savior do him honor. People who recognize that we can let go of pleasures in this life for the sake of the pleasures of the life to come give the Lord an honor that the world around us cannot and will not understand.

 

So, my conclusion is that we need more heaven. We need more heaven in our thinking. We need more heaven in our singing. No, I’m not suggesting that we pick up weak songs that focus more on gold, jewels, and grandma than they do on Jesus. But there has to be something better than throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We need heaven in our songs. We need heaven in our hearts. WE need heaven on our lips. WE need heaven in our minds. WE need heaven in our motivation. We need heaven to give us comfort in our sorrow. We need heaven to drive us to obedience to the word of God. We need heaven to fill our lives so that people will know that we live, not for this world’s rewards, but for the rewards of the world to come when Jesus will make all things new.

 

So, we should sing of heaven. We should consider heaven. We should study heaven. We should dream of heaven. We should not remove the focus from the focus of heaven, the presence of the Lord in his glory. Nor should we ignore the other joys of heaven. But we, modern, thinking, growing, studying Christians should be sure that heaven is at the center of our hearts just as it was for those who pleased the Lord as the author of Hebrews showed us.