Devotions

When Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me,” he wasn’t speaking about self-flagellation. The cross is the Holy Spirit showing us how to live through the mind of Christ. It is a lifelong process of shedding our need for control and daily giving our will to God.

Say you’re a new Christian and are hit with a serious adversity, a life-threatening illness, tragedy or financial loss. Not only does it hit, but it begins to drag out. “This isn’t fair,” you might say.  “I’m a little mad at God for allowing this to overtake my life.” We’re so full of questions and bereft of answers that we want to turn away. God seems insufficient and uninterested in our welfare.

Although we feel faithless, this is the time to stay faithful. These times of holding on to God rather than ourselves are when wisdom and maturity are established deep within us. This is the taking up of the cross of Christ.

Throughout our lives, giving up our own will and submitting to God will include seasons of heartache and soul-searching. There will be pressure from the enemy to pull away and reclaim our self-will. Satan wants nothing more than to separate us from the power of the cross. It is a certainty that we will become discouraged, tired, frustrated and sorely tempted.

Jesus addressed this on two fronts. “He said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’” (Luke 9:23-24, ESV). First, he said to take up his cross every day. Our life in Christ is renewed every morning and requires the nourishment of prayer and time in the Word. This helps us to be alert to the nudges of the Spirit as well as the subtle attacks of the enemy.

Second, Jesus reminds us that the Christ-life is a kingdom upside down: controlling your own life will cause you to lose it; giving your will over to the mind of Christ will save your soul. The reward is a life rich with wisdom and the gaining of an understanding of God that is only accessed through adversity. Not only that, it provides us with opportunities to lift up fellow men and women who also struggle with letting go.

A water baptism announces to everyone who you are following, but it doesn’t make you a Christian any more than a wedding ring on your finger makes you married. The ring is a symbol, and baptism is a symbol. To make it anything more than a symbol is dangerous, but it is an important second step in our faith journey.

Communion and water baptism are mini-dramas of salvation using props like water, bread and wine. They are sacred moments for God to speak to us. That’s what happened to Jesus. “When Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” (Matthew 3:16-17, ESV)

We live in a world crowded with voices all shouting at us, “You’re not good enough! You’re not skinny enough! You don’t make enough money! You’re not married! You don’t have kids!” Those voices label you over what you’re not.

The biggest temptation today is to seek an alternative identity to who God created us to be. We see it in the ways we answer the question “Who am I?”

“I am what I do; my job and career define me.” When you get old and can no longer do a job and retire, you then lose your identity.

“I am what others say about me. People’s words about me have power, especially depending on who is talking about me.” You’re good when the talk about you is good, but you lose your identity when it’s negative.

“I am what I have. I have a degree, health, good parents, good children, good salary and security.” When you lose any of those things, you lose your identity.

We need to listen to and hear the voice that Jesus heard at his baptism. As Steven Furtick writes, “The voice you believe will determine the future you experience.” God’s voice is where our identity is truly found and the searching stops. Proverbs tells us, “Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track” (Proverbs 3:6, MSG)—because you are his beloved.

_{After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.}

The account of the prodigal son is well known, so I won’t go into the details of the story. However, this story is not primarily about a lost son. Rather, it is about the delight of the father.

Yes, the parable of the prodigal son is about returning (see Luke 15:11-31), but it is not just about the son’s finally coming home. It is also about what keeps the son home. It is about grace, forgiveness and restoration. Read the story again, and you’ll note that the story doesn’t end when he returns. This is significant.

What is it that keeps the son home? It is the knowledge that his father delights in him! “’For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry” (Luke 15:24-25, NKJV).

The prodigal’s father never rebuked him, never condemned him, never even spoke about his running away. Instead, he threw a great party and invited all the family’s friends and neighbors. This father had been longing for his son to come home, and now it had come to pass.

The prodigal protested at first, telling his dad, “No, no, I’m unworthy.” Nonetheless, his father called for a robe to be put on his shoulders, rings on his fingers and shoes on his feet. Everything that the father owned was once again made available to the son. There was great rejoicing with music, dancing and feasting.

I believe that love brought this young man home, but it was the father’s delight that kept him there. This lost and broken young man came home to stay because he woke up each day to see that his dad was pleased to have him home. His father delighted at having him present with him. Moreover, everything in that young man’s life that had been destroyed was being restored.

I have known many former addicts who are like the prodigal. They can focus only on what was lost years ago because of their habit: a spouse, children, a ministry. They feel the Lord’s chastening, and that can be grievous, but Jesus tells them, “Nothing is lost in my kingdom. You are going to be made stronger through this. You are home now, and my grace will restore you in full.”

God shows us how we can live without fear. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear…” (1 John 4:18, NKJV). In short, if we are living in fear, we are ignorant of perfect love. John is not saying, “Perfect love for God casts out all fear.” He is saying that perfect love begins with abundant and generous love for one another.

It is a fact beyond doubt that we love God, but consider what John says about perfect love earlier in the chapter. “If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). According to John, the first consideration of perfect love is unconditional love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

A Christian can say that he loves God, is doing the Lord’s will and is faithfully performing the work of the kingdom. Such a person may be a worshipper and even a teacher of the Word. However, if he holds a grudge or speaks against another, if he shuts out anyone in the body of Christ, he walks in darkness, and a spirit of death is on him. All life, all good works, are out of order in this person. Consider what John says of him: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now” (1 John 2:9).

If you are interested in living a life without fear, John tells us we must first deal with our relationships in the body of Christ. Indeed, to partake of the perfect love that drives out all fear, this is the first step we must take: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11).

What is meant by this kind of love? It is more than forgiveness, much more. It means to forgive all transgressions toward us and then offer our fellowship. We are to esteem the ones who sinned against us as highly as we do other members of the body. When we let God’s love dwell in us and perfect us, all fear will be cast out.

“We have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:16-17, NKJV).

Note the last part of this passage. John tells us we are now living as the Lord lived, forgiving and loving our enemies. There is nothing left in us of revenge, grudges or racial prejudice, so we can now fully receive the love of God toward us.

“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Do you see what John is saying? Our love for God is a given, but perfect love also means knowing and believing his love toward us.

There must be no fear or doubt in this love. If we doubt, we’ll live in torment: “Fear involves torment” (see 1 John 4:18). Believing in God’s love means knowing he is patient with our failures day in and day out. He hears our every cry, bottles every tear, feels our anguish of heart and is moved with compassion.

This aspect of God’s love is vividly illustrated in Exodus, where the Lord sought to reveal his loving nature to his people. He told Moses, “I am going to deliver Israel,” and scripture says, “Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God” (Exodus 2:23).

“And the Lord said: ‘I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land…to a land flowing with milk and honey’” (Exodus 3:7-8).

Do you believe God sees your need just as he did with Israel? We often glibly say, “Christ is all,” yet when we face a crisis we succumb to fear. Let us embrace the knowledge that God never forsakes his children in their time of anguish, even when things seem absolutely hopeless. We can trust him!