Devotions

“Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ‘These people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’” (Matthew 15:7-8, NKJV). 

I want to talk to you about mental distractions during prayer and worship, especially in the house of God. Jesus called people hypocrites who came into his presence mouthing words of praise but whose minds and hearts were preoccupied. He was essentially saying, “You give me your mouth and your lips, but your mind is somewhere else. Your heart is nowhere near me!” 

What about you? Most likely, you are present in God’s house for an hour every week. Your body is in church, but where is your mind? Your mouth says, “I worship you, Lord,” but is your heart a thousand miles away? Where do your thoughts take you during worship and praise? 

Do you become preoccupied with family concerns or a business matter that’s been hounding you? How distracted do you get during that hour in church as the congregation draws near to God’s majesty? 

It is dangerous to come into God’s house and enter into his presence lightly. “And Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord spoke, saying: ‘By those who come near me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified’” (Leviticus 10:3).

The Lord said to Aaron, “I will not be treated as an ordinary person. If you’re going to come into my presence, you must come before me sanctified. All who approach my holiness must do so with carefulness and thoughtfulness because of my glory and majesty.” 

If your heart is not engaged during worship and your thoughts are not captive to the obedience of Christ, you might as well put a straw man in your seat. At least that is more honest than coming into God’s house with no mind and no heart. 

Many Christians do not worship with power, excitement and zeal because they have no intimacy with Jesus at home. Those who have learned to worship and focus privately bring their own fire; a fire ignited in the secret closet of prayer. True worshipers can’t wait to get to church to praise the Lord among his people. 

“Why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us’” (Psalm 2:1-3, ESV). 

Note what the psalmist said about the leaders of nations. “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together…” (Psalm 2:2). 

Today, we see something similar as rulers set themselves against the Lord with regulations and mandates that limit religious liberty or even institute evil. Some nations look to rid themselves of all public mention of God and limit faith to private expression. 

“Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). The picture here is of someone trying to break free from a terrible bondage. What is underneath that desire, however, is a lust to be free of all restraints that only begin with God’s law.  

Here is the good news: The whole world may rage, but God will have his turn. However terribly the world may rage, God endures patiently. What is his response to all the clamoring voices that oppose him? The psalmist wrote, “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.” (Psalm 2:4). 

God’s laughter over the nations isn’t that of amusement. It is laughter of ridicule. The thought of someone overthrowing God is ludicrous. He simply laughs at the vanity of such plotting. Note the word “sits” in this verse. High above all human scheming, God sits in sovereign power. What a powerful contrast to those who sit in the lowly seat of the scornful and who plot and plan against him.

As the world rages, the Lord doesn’t pace around worried, anxious or stressed. He simply sits. This image serves to reassure every righteous person who frets over the chaos swirling through the world. The psalmist advised, in essence, “Don’t lose your trusting heart. God sits over and above it all.” You may be troubled by the world’s chaos, but because Christ is with you in all things, you won’t be overcome. Trust God in times of crisis. 

^{This devotional has been adapted from Gary Wilkerson’s book, The Altar of Our Hearts: An Expository Devotional on the Psalms.}

Let’s look at a word that God gives Eli, one of his priests, about the man’s sons. “…the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, so that there will not be an old man in your house.’” (1 Samuel 2:30-31, ESV). 

Wow! Why did God say this about Eli’s sons? Because they profaned God’s house; they did sacrilegious stuff there like using their power to abuse the women in the temple, and Eli knew about it but didn’t restrain them. 

God is a God of grace, but he’s also a God of judgment. This wasn’t just an Old Testament thing either. It happened in the New Testament too (see Acts 5:1-11). A man and his wife lied to the Holy Spirit, and they both dropped dead in church. 

When you’re involved in sacred things and you have access to a lot of light, God takes it seriously when you know something evil is going on and you let it go. You turn a blind eye. “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48). That’s what Eli was judged for, and all his future descendants were cut out of the priesthood. You know God spoke to Eli’s conscience before this, and people came to Eli about what his sons were doing. God’s judgment didn’t come out of the blue. 

We live in a day where anything can be justified if we’re a victim of our circumstances, but God doesn’t look at it that way. If God’s given us warnings and we have light through his Word, God will judge us accordingly. We need to watch out to make sure we don’t turn a blind eye to evil just because its our family or race or denomination. God hates dishonest scales. If we have the ability to stop something evil that’s going on, let’s do our utmost to stop it.  

“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, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29). 

^{Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson.}

Abram was called by God to leave his home, his land, his father, his mother, his upbringing, his heritage. He left it all and went to a land of God’s leading (see Genesis 12).

What faith! It takes amazing faith to leave everything behind and respond immediately, wholeheartedly to the word that one is hearing in his heart, whether it is an audible or an inner voice. Abram did so, though, and he left and took with him his young nephew named Lot.

“Then Abram said to Lot, ‘Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.’” (Genesis 13:8-9, ESV).

Abram was employing what I call a passive faith. I don’t mean passive in the sense of “I don’t care” or “Que sera, sera — whatever will be, will be.” This type of passive faith says that you are not going to take action on your own behalf. You are not going to try to make things happen by the will of man. You will allow God to orchestrate the events in your life in such a way that his plan will be accomplished.

There are times in life where we need to have that type of passive faith, when there’s nothing else we can do but say, “God, your will be done, not mine.”

Passive faith looks at situations that seem impossible and says, “God, I don’t know how this will ever be worked out. I don’t know how any of these difficulties and troubles that I’m facing will ever be resolved, but I put my trust in you.”

Abram had the confidence that God was looking out for his best interests and that God knew what was better for him than he himself knew. Abram did not just rest in the Lord, but he trusted that God was going to make the right decision for him.

If you say you’re a Christian and that you love Jesus and walk in obedience to him yet you neglect him day after day by not praying, you really don’t know him. Your house is not on the rock; it’s on sand, and it’s going to collapse completely in hard times.

You cannot get to know Jesus only by going to church. You must have a day-by-day, hour-by-hour conversation with the Lord. You must get to know him, grow to love him, and desire to know what pleases him.

Too often, we consider the Lord’s commandments to be something burdensome, restricting to our personal freedom. Rather than embracing his words to us, we look for ways to escape them. We distort God’s grace by making it out to be some kind of tunnel out of the prison of his law, but grace is actually a teacher of holiness. “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age” (Titus 2:11-12, NKJV).

The man on the rock embraces and joyfully fulfills the Lord’s commands. He doesn’t see God as someone with a belt in his hand, always ready to chastise him. No, he sees the Lord as one with arms outstretched to him, saying, “Come to me and receive life, receive strength. I’ll carry you through.” God’s Word shows us what it takes to build upon the rock of our salvation.

Enoch obeyed God with the sole objective of pleasing him. “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch was translated because he pleased the Lord.

The apostle John says, “And whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight” (1 John 3:22), or “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created” (Revelation 4:11).