Tag: believe

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10.13.24. God is God!

Psalm 115-116 Give God Honor

Listen you people of the land; return to Me says the Lord so that I can bless you. Instead, they follow the gods of the land and not He who is in heaven. These have no life, ears but cannot hear, eyes but cannot see. Why would you bow down to them? These are questions I ask of my family member who bows down to Buddha but not the Everlasting God Almighty, ruler of heaven and earth. She responds; what is good for you is good, what is good for me, is good. Or the other family member who says, the OT is just history but is not relevant to today.  The God of the OT is not like the God of the NT. The God of the OT is revengeful and the God of the NT is peaceful and loving. I reject the OT because of that. 

Perhaps you can relate to these pictures. So how do we respond? First we see  the truth of 2 Cor 4:4 “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so they cannot see the glorious image of Christ.” 

Pray beloved, pray for the scales to fall from their eyes so they can see and then can proclaim as the psalmist: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name bring honor,for the sake of your loyal love and faithfulness.” [Ps 115:1]

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Prepare but also Pray

Ezra 7-10 What would you ask for if you sat under a king and had lived in exile for several years? One king asked that question of his queen, Esther, with the promise of half of his kingdom. Ezra, on the other hand, only wanted to go to Jerusalem and teach the Law of Moses as a priest and a scribe. Some of us “twiddle our thumbs,” but Ezra had set aside time to study the Law of Moses in preparation.

Not only was he skilled as a priest and scribe, but he also boldly asked for provisions for a five months journey, and he brashly told the king he didn’t need soldiers to protect him and his entourage because he was embarrassed and had said: “the good hand of our God is on everyone who is seeking him.” [Ezra 8:22] Yes, Ezra was not just bold but brash! And God answered each prayer.

Sometimes we want things, but we are cautious and even sometimes ashamed to ask God for His protection and deliverance, but not Ezra! Perhaps Ezra claimed Ps 17:8 “Protect me/us as you would protect the pupil of your eye.” That would have been a powerful prayer and one we can pray as well. Where do you need God’s protection today, and will you be as bold as Ezra? 

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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

James 4 mirror2If you are not too old you  remember the fairytale story of Snow White  depicting good and evil. The evil part is played by, you guessed it, a prominent queen, much like Queen Athaliah of OT fame; obsessed with beauty and power. To be sure she was always the most beautiful she would stand before the magical mirror each day and ask: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” and would hear “Thou, O Queen art the fairest of them all,’—that is—-until the day it responded: “Snow White is the fairest of them all.” Immediately her false façade was shattered and her pride was revealed.  The reader sees the real queen, beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside. Both the fictional queen and the real queen Athaliah were intent upon proving the mirror wrong, Both set out to destroy their rivals.

Sometimes we are like the queen. When God’s mirror,  His Word,  reveals our true person,  we seek to cover our warts, scars. and imperfections because we don’t like what God’s Word reveals. We do not want to admit our imperfections and we seek to cover them through works without faith much like the Laodicean church.  But, the fact remains, we still have imperfections, called sin,  because God’s mirror does not lie. He still sees us as we truly are.

On the one hand we say, yes I am a believer but we live as if we are not. But if we want the mirror to say we are ‘perfect, wanting nothing,’ then we must submit to God and stop saying we haven’t sinned.  To say we have no sin is essentially saying God is a liar for He hath said: “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”   Could that be a reason God does not answer our prayers?  Could it be that our motives and our inner person  are like the queen’s? We want to hear we are the fairest of them all  but fail to admit our shortcomings and change our ways.

God’s mirror answers who is the fairest of them all. It is the ABC’s: One who admits their sin, believes that God’s plan for sin redemption is through His son and confesses their sin seeking forgiveness and cleansing from God.

The question remains: Are you like the queen or Snow White? What is God’s mirror revealing about you?

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The Time is Now!!!

ImageClara Scott authored the hymn “Open my eyes that I May See”. The first stanza reads as : “Open my eyes, that I may see, glimpses of truth thou hast for me…” As we read Revelation 6 more than ever we need to see with spiritual eyes for the truth within is almost more than one can digest. In reading this chapter one verse keeps coming back to mind: John 3:16 “For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” It is when we view God’s love in sharp contrast to the hate of Satan, which is sovereignly allowed upon men in this chapter, that we bow the knee and are overwhelmed with gratitude of God’s gift of His Son’s sacrifice on the cross and our salvation.

John 3:16 says that the gift God has for those who will bow the knee is eternal life. However, in this chapter we find that just as the Israel and the religious leaders during the time of Jesus rejected the evidence: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news proclaimed to them, so too men in the last stages of the clock of time, men will not cry out to God for His peace, love and salvation but will continue to reject.  That is a frightening thought which should drive us to share the good news of salvation to everyone who is divinely brought across our path that they may not have to face the judgment of God. 

In Chapter 6, John shows us what God revealed. It will not be His grace but horror upon horror to show men the power of evil and hate in the form of war, famine, death, disease. They respond by calling out  to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, because the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to withstand it?” In reading this another verse came flooding back to this author: Rom  1:32 “Although they fully know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die..” Isn’t it ironic that these men fully understand God’s judgment and his wrath but choose mountains and rocks to  the path of goodness, love and peace which only God can provide? We stop and ask “why?” Why do men reject God? Again we turn to the words of John: John 3:19 “people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.”

Beloved, if you have not done so I implore you now to open your eyes and allow the Holy Spirit to illumine you and bring God’s love and peace to your heart. It is not too late—but do not delay, we do not know when God will choose to allow the events of chapter 6 to unfold in all of their reality. Keep in mind God’s clock is running down; have you called upon Him?

 

 

 

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Today’s Devotional: From One Wilderness to Another….

ImageOne thought grabbed my attention in preparing the summary reading for today. We remember that Jesus began his public ministry after being in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by the evil one, Satan himself. After 11 chapters of John’s observations of what transpired after that moment in time we find that the evil one is once again “ on the prowl looking for someone to devour.” [1Pet 5:8]. This time it is Jesus himself. Satan wants to destroy the very Son of God and will use the blind unbelieving Pharisees as his instruments to carry out his will, but before the Savior is brought to the cross, Jesus is once again seeking the wilderness where he can be nourished by the ones nearest and dearest to him, the disciples and His Father. 

Where do you/I seek nourishment when we know a trial is ahead? With whom do we receive refreshment?

We seem to busy ourselves but not so our Lord. He is being refreshed there for his heart is heavy. Some saw the miracle of the raising of Lazarus and gave God glory but some returned to tell the Pharisees. Why did they go? Was it purely unbelief? We may never know the true heart reason but we do then read of the prophecy given by the high priest Caiaphas: “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.” Later in chapter 12 we find that the religious leaders compounded their sinful intentions by planning to kill the risen Lazarus as well.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive” [Sir. W. Scott] This is the setting in Chapter 12 as we see the web being woven to entrap and murder the miracle worker, Son of David, Son of God as well as Lazarus. In the midst of this we hear the Savior say: ““The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” Although Jesus had performed and offered many signs to authenticate Himself, they still refused to believe in him. Isaiah wrote about these unbelievers saying that God has blinded their eyes, hardened their heart so that they would not see, understand with their heart, and turn to God for healing. “Jesus said in John 3:18, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” The unbelief of Israel is a guilty unbelief. Our unbelief is a guilty unbelief.” [Piper]

After this John notes: 12:42/43 “Nevertheless, even among the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Pharisees they would not confess Jesus to be the Christ, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue. For they loved praise from men more than praise from God.”

Beloved Reader, There are several unanswered questions before us: (1) Where do we find ourselves in the time of trial?  Do we retreat to the wilderness to be refreshed? (2) What about our decision to follow? Is it in a closet for fear of men or do you openly proclaim? (3)Where do we find our heart today? Are we like those who saw and believed or like the blind Pharisees and other unbelieving Jews?

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