Here Comes the Judge!

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(Luke 12:57) And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?

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Jesus presented His question to crowds, the thousands of people who trampled each other to hear Him. Undoubtedly, their spectrum of wisdom ranged from insightful to clueless; yet Jesus charged each person to actively judge rightness for themselves. He was clear: God's will and God's Word were the standards for right. He was also clear that God holds them responsible for how they appliedy what measures of knowledge He gave them.

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Why don't I judge for myself what is right? Do I defer to others to escape being responsible and doing right? Do I look carefully at my life and community, and take both a stand and necessary action to do right, to broaden the span of my Master's influence. He is the Righteous Judge, the Prince of Peace--do I wisely live out all the insights He has generously given me (before I ask for more)?

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Master, Savior, thank You for Your patience and mercy on me. I don't want to use that as an excuse for neglecting what You want to do through me. Help me today to live the Truth You've shown me. Help me to be fully attentive to do everything that brings You pleasure as You observe me.

Passing through Fear

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(Isaiah 33:14) The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: "Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire...?"

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Isaiah described these people as selfishly permitting or participating in the mistreatment of others. Fear is an apt response because the Holy Spirit doesn't allow this behavior among His people. Jesus came to baptize us with His Holy Spirit, who is this consuming fire that removes these toxic tendencies from us.

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We are to fear God, but not to be afraid. So Jesus sent His disciples into a deadly squall, then He walked across the open sea to comfort them. Jesus arranged to be murdered--crucified--then He, in His resurrected body, walked through their house walls, right into the room where they were hiding. Jesus permits such frightening circumstances where only His presence can re-work the circumstances into good or into joy (Romans 5:1-5; 8:28,29; James 1:2-8).

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Lord, I welcome You and Your Holy Spirit's work in my life--whatever is needed. I give myself to You, and as fully as I understand how to do this, I am receptive to everything You want me to be or to do. Thank You for the faith to leave fear and to abide in Your peaceful, joyful, love.

Don't Steal My Cross!

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(Luke 9:23) And He [Jesus] said to all, " If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me."

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This teaching conversation began when Jesus was alone in prayer even though He was also alone with His disciples (verse 18). Such is the nature of prayer. From that safe intimacy, He chose to reveal that He was indeed God's Messiah, who was to succeed by suffering and dying before being resurrected, glorified, or honored. He then invited His disciples to die under the biting rejection of the ungodly religious, then to live in the over-compensating presence of God (verses 18-27).

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I need only one final death to commence my eternal resurrection with Jesus in Heaven (1 Corinthians 15). However, each day I need to take up my cross to follow Him. So many tempters and temptations try to steal my cross, to cheat me out of doing God's patient, loving will. I want no one to steal my opportunities to forgive, to love the unlovable, to become generous and merciful instead of mean and selfish.

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Dear Lamb of God, Messiah, yes. I say yes to Your invitation to joyfully carry my ever-shifting cross, which purges my selfishness fear. I say yes to walking boldly in Your light and love. I reject each shortcut and compromise, each luxury that makes me less Christ-like. Amen!

Strengthening the King

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(Daniel 11:1) And as for me [Daniel], in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him.

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Daniel's devotion to the King of king's allowed him to freely confirm and strengthen Darius. This ruler "introduced" himself to the Babylonians by his military invasion. When Daniel chose death by lions instead of death by godlessness (Daniel 6), he taught Darius to live. Daniel confirmed and strengthened Darius by communicating the richness and certainty of God's Word even though he didn't grasp all of its details (Daniel 9:1-23; 12:8-11).

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As a godly person, too, I have a responsibility to care for the souls of all governmental and political leaders whether I agree with their "ways and means," or their methods, motives, or morals. Although I don't share Daniel's political position, I do share his call to love and pray for leaders (1 Timothy 2:1-6).

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King Jesus, I confess that sometimes I wear my political convictions like an obnoxious shirt. I repent. Help me to still hold bold convictions, but above all else to communicate loving compassion for the well-being of all citizens. As I participate in the costly privilege of self-government, help me to represent Your kingdom well. Yours is the eternal kingdom.

Fully Redeemed

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(Psalm 130:7,8) O Israel [insert my name], hope in the Lord! For with the Lord, there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

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Israel represents God's people, people who willingly experience God's beneficence. Our relationship with Him ignites hope and a decedent outpouring of His redemption. Not only does He forgive us and remove the penalty of our disobediences, but He redeems us. He converts His people's miseries into hope and health.

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How do I maximize all the benefits He's made available to me? Verses 1 and 2 describe my fully engaged conversation with Him (i.e., prayer). Verses 3 and 4 describe my courageous stance in active goodness. Verses 5 and 6 describe my patient attention and reverence for God's Word. And the final two verses describe the joys of walking with Jesus.

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Thank You, Lord, for Your steadfast, unwavering, love toward me. It is superior to how I've loved You or others. It is superior to any other love I've experienced. You've proven and substantiated Your love by redeeming me from all (not just a couple) of my iniquities--THANK YOU!

Dwarfed by His Designs of Love

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(Ezekiel 42:2) The length of the building whose door faced north was a hundred cubits, and the breadth was fifty cubits.

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At least God knows what He's doing. His depth of detail, His breadth of design far exceeds humanity's comprehension, yet despite the gap between His knowledge and ourse, He does not require a secret handshake or a strange insight before we can appreciate and participate in His redemptive works. As complex as Ezekiel's temple visions seem, love is still the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:8).

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Paul prayed for me that I would know the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18,19). Ezekiel's temple discloses rich symbols of Christ's love, a few of them even crowded into my small understanding! The big lesson is that God knows what He's doing even though I don't ... and that's okay. I can learn of His loving designs at my own pace (phew)!

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Dear Prince of Peace, thank You for accompanying me as I worship You. I enter worship burdened and guilty, but leave still escorted and loved by You. And You lead me out to a new place, changed by the loss of my burden of shame, fear, and isolation. I love You (and thanks, too, for You message in Ezekiel 46:9,10).

Conquering Fear

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(Revelation 21:7) The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be My son.

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This heritage refers to dwelling with God who permanently removes sadness and pain from us, who continuously makes all things new, and who fully satisfies all our thirsts and appetites (verses 1-7). This heritage belongs to His children, who--like Him--conquers anything that distorts His goodness. to not be His is to be enslaved by fear, doubt, repulsiveness, killings, sexual confusion, evil manipulations, covetousness, twisted imaginations, and dishonesty (verses 7 and 8).

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I've learned that behind most of what wounds, cripples, and defeats me is fear. And fear (cowardliness) is simply a bad idea. That's all it is. It has no power of its own, but it tricks me into doing its dirty work. Ben Courson wrote: "But courage is not the absence of fear, it is being stronger than fear ... It understands that fear's only intrinsic power is making us believe it is omnipotent.... So it is in realizing that courage is greater than fear that fear is overcome."

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Lord, thank You for the experiences and choices that You allow into my life. The teach me and they train me to become a conqueror of fear and hopelessness... to become Your child.

Worthy of Great Praises

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(Psalm 145:3) Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.

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God is great. That fact seems to be as simple and extreme of an understatement as is possible. In this psalm, David introduces evidence for God's greatness, and our inevitable and irresistible response to truly understanding His greatness is to praise Him in our constant expression and conversation. David adds that God's greatness is of such excellence that an eternity of discovery is inadequate time to grasp the dimensions or details of the richness of who He is: He's unsearchable!

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Not only am I convicted by my ignorance of His greatness and goodness, but I all-too-often under-appreciate the role of His goodness in my life. He deserves my constant and great praises. How on earth can I praise Him greatly? What does poor praise look like in contrast to what He deserves from me?

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Lord, I'm uncertain about how to greatly praise You. I know that praise and appreciation for Your greatness vastly enhances my perspective and improves my choices. I desire to be one of Your followers who greatly praises You--could You show me how to do this well?

Ambivalent Allegiance

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(Ezekiel 37:22) And I will make them one nation in the land ... and one king shall be king over them all, and they shall be no longer ... divided into two kingdoms.

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This chapter describes the results of ambivalence towards God: concurrently loving and hating Him, concurrently revering and rejecting His kingdom. Ezekiel saw such people as being like a valley full of dried, scattered skeletons. Jesus said that kingdoms (or people) who are divided like that cannot stand and that no one can serve God while trying to also serve any other master (Matthew 6:24; 12:25).

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Thankfully, Jesus showed Ezekiel how this damage and death can be reversed (37:10-14): by proclamation of God's Word, by obedience to His commands, and by the empowering of His Holy Spirit. Although I'm sometimes aware of my ambivalence towards God, I also know that at such times I have a choice. My choice is to serve Jesus wholeheartedly, without compromise, without hesitation.

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Sovereign Lord, my prayer is that as you observe me you will find my heart continually seeking You, continually longing for Your presence and pleasure. Whenever You find me internally scattered and dried up like those skeletons, please send prophets with life-saving correction to me! I love You with all my heart!

Peace in the Barrenness

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(Ezekiel 34:25) I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.

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In this context, God reveals His design of being the shepherd for each of His sheep--He yearns to supervise and nurture us directly even though He often also uses people. He alone successfully abolishes our enemy's access to us (Satan and sin were successfully subjugated at the cross). Yet God doesn't automatically remove us from the wilderness (desert wastes). Instead He allows us to dwell securely there in total dependence on Him.

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This covenant of peace is always available for me to enjoy: freedom from all threats from my spiritual enemies as well as freedom to live and thrive in otherwise barren places of danger and abundant dissatisfaction. The wilderness speaks to me of deprivation and the woods speaks to me of getting lost or entangled (like Absalom). Both become safe and peaceful, though, because of the Good Shepherd's presence.

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Lord, You know how much I resist Your peace when I focus on barren settings and wild, undomesticated threats. Thank You for sending showers of refreshing in the right seasons, and even more miraculously, for letting me be a shower of blessing to others (verse 26). You are a truly great Shepherd!

Self-Imposed Poverty (Without Any Virtues)

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(Daniel 2:30) "...This mystery has been revealed to me, not because of any wisdom I have more than all the living, but in order that the interpretation [of the dream] may be made known to the king, and that you may know the thoughts of your mind."

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God captured King Nebuchadnezzar's attention by implanting dramatic thoughts in his head--a dream--but withholding His explanation for that drama. God's purpose was to help the king understand both the meaning and the context of his life as well as the contents of his thoughts. But as God often does, He had someone else convey that coveted information.

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Like Daniel, I need to learn to seek God and to recognize His voice. Also like Daniel, I want to remember that I need help from godly people: God uses them to help me organize and understand my thoughts. I prefer for Him to tell me directly. I'd rather be independent and without need for other peoples help, but that attitude is contrary to what God designed for people.

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Lord, I like to think that my own brain can solve my own problems, but the messes I've made should be ample proof for me that You're right, that I need to humble myself before You as well as to submit to others (1 Peter 5:1-7; Ephesians 5:14-20; James 4:6-10). Help me to be dependent on You, independent of sin, and interdependent with people.

Bringing the End Here

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(Lamentations 1:12) "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow ... which the Lord inflicted on the day of His fierce anger."

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The Holy Spirit presses us to deeply consider issues that we prefer to quickly pass by and ignore. Sorrow. Anger. These two terrors need to be overcome. The ultimate manifestation of these crashed together at the cross, which is where the Holy Spirit compels us to consider how God reconciled eternal sorrow and wrath. This left us with hope.

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How then do I best respond to the cross? It's so central that I could hardly miss. Through deep sorrow I learn to value the redemption of all that was lost. Through anger I learn to be strong in the power of His humility. Through fear of pain, I learn to value the wholeness that comes only by faithfully trusting the Savior. All my considerations of the cross lead me to worship Jesus, who so fully loved me.

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Most precious Redeemer, I want Your works to be everything to me. I want to learn Your holiness and righteousness just as much as I learn your love, joy, and peace. May my life, therefore, be filled with meaning, by that, I mean a completion of the fullness of all You wish for me. Your cross means everything to me.

Disrespectable

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(Ezekiel 25:3,6,12) Thus says the Lord God, "Because you said, 'Aha!' over my sanctuary... because you clapped your hands and stamped your feet and rejoiced with all malice within your soul... [and because you] acted revengefully and took vengeance with malice of soul to destroy in never-ending enmity..."

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In this series of condemnations of nations that were belligerent to God's people, we see how God measures and abhors the corruption of heart that fuels cruelties. Whenever people have dark dreams of revenge, their thoughts eventually gather enough momentum to corrupt their words and deeds, too.

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When gloating over "well deserved calamities" in others, I need help. The opposite of this attitude--the antidote to this toxicity--is love. Paul told the Corinthians that God's love never rejoices over wrong doings. Instead, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

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Lord, this love is easily applied to people I love and admire. It's much harder to love people who have earned my disrespect. Then I recall how merciful You have been to me, how merciful You are even at this moment, and how You have pledged your unfailing love to someone as "disrespectable" as me. I yield myself again to Your mercy and pray for an increased capacity for Your love.

Answered Prayers!

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(1 John 5:14,15) And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.


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This is not so much about God having selective hearing (that He chooses to ignore our prayers that miss the target of His will). Instead, it solidifies the Old Testament concept of hearing: The Hebrews understood hearing God's Word as being inseparably connected to heeding (doing) God's Word. One cannot truly hear God without also obeying God.

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This helps me understand how to walk with God and to enjoy Him. In the vast infinite-seeming possibilities of all that God wants (and He only does good things, Psalm 72:18), I get to co-create the process of bringing Heaven's joys to earth--may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10).

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Lord, I pray for for ears to hear Your voice, as evidenced by feet that follow You. I pray for eyes to see what needs to be done as is evidenced when my hands accomplish the tasks You long to see done. Lord, I pray for increased faith that liberates me to enjoy You in the midst of all that is yet to be done.

Resting in True Love

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(1 John 3:18) Little children, let us not love in word or in talk, but in deed and in truth.

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Truth: reality is the greatest measure of our love. And despite my opinions, God alone has a perfect understanding of truth, of reality. He helps us recognize truth by telling us to observe behaviors (deeds), which in turn gives us a more perfect understanding of love. Unfortunately, words and talk are too often cheap and deceptive claims that violate truth.

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If I could not speak the language of people around me, could my deeds accurately prove my love? Before answering that, I need to decide whether I am willing to love people to the extent of laying my life down for them (1 John 3:16). Despite popular religious quotations, words of love are tremendously valuable: redemption, salvation, and mental health rest on true words. I work to make my words believable by my works.

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Lord, may my deeds spring from Your love. May my words and deeds find rest in Your truth, and please wrest from me all false loves in word or in deed.