David Wilkerson Devotions

You may say, “I think I’m well prepared for any storm. After all, I’m a faithful witness for the Lord. I’m not ashamed of the gospel and I live a clean, moral life. I tithe, I read my Bible, and I attend church regularly.”

It is possible to be a believer and yet remain distant from the Lord. The fact is, if you don’t spend time with Him — if you don’t draw on His strength — your heart will faint. Your words will have little or no power or results and your testimony will be lifeless. Why? Because you will have drifted away from your source of strength.

The devil greatly fears the Lord’s presence in our lives. He trembles at the very thought of a believer’s nearness to Jesus. So, when his demonic hordes see you breathing out prayers and drawing near to the presence of your heavenly Father, all hell takes note: “The Lord is with this believer. He has obtained the divine presence. What can we do against him now?”

Satan will do everything in his power to rob you of the Lord’s presence. It is why he makes so many attempts to bog down your soul with worries about the future.

When the world seems to be shaking, a people will arise who know how to maintain their strength in the midst of it all. These are people who draw near to the Lord in times of crisis.

According to Scripture, it won’t matter to these people if the moon and stars fall from the sky, or if the mountains quake and fall into the sea. They will still have faith in the Lord to save them, and they will not have their faith shaken by anything that comes.

When I personally need some measure of hope, I want to speak to someone I know, someone who has experience with enduring tribulation and pain. I don’t want someone who will offer me hollow platitudes, such as, “Just hang in there,” or “Just trust God.” My suffering soul cannot be moved or touched by words of mere human sympathy.

Rather, I would love to talk for half an hour with the believer who emailed me about having to watch his wife slowly die of Lou Gehrig’s disease. As this man described to me the depth of his pain, he said, “God is good. He is seeing me through.”

I received an e-mail from a pastor who had quit his church. This poor man had fallen into deep sin and lost his wife and children. His whole life fell apart and he found himself staring at death.

In his darkest hour, he fell on his knees and cried for help. Jesus came to this broken, desperate man and breathed new life into him. Soon afterward, the man’s wife called him, saying, “I miss Jesus. Can we try again?”

God means it when He says, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

Throughout Romans 8, Paul outlines the destructive realities of sin. He states, “If you live after the flesh, you will die. To be lust-driven, to live only by the senses, leads to death. The body is dead because of sin.”

In short, death means having no life. And only Jesus provides life, declaring, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).

On one occasion Paul was preaching in Ephesus, a city that worshiped the goddess Diana. The silversmiths in Ephesus had made fortunes selling little replicas of the goddess. But when Paul came on the scene, he preached, “Your god is false. There is only one true God. And His Son lived and died so that those who are dead in sin might live.”

Enraged, the silver merchants realized their livelihood was at stake. So they stirred up a mob to take hold of Paul, determined to kill him (see Acts 19:24-31).

As Christians, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After the Lord’s crucifixion, the Holy Spirit entered the tomb where He lay and raised Him up. This is why we sing on Easter that Christ rose from the grave, victorious over His foes, and now reigns forever with the saints.

Tragically, the religious world has been divided for centuries. Down through the generations, terrible divisions have pitted Christians against each other. Brother has come against brother, sister against sister, and entire denominations have been ruined.

The world needs illustrated sermons — powerful personal examples — of God’s love.

In John 17:21, Jesus prayed: “That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” (my italics).