Devotions

John 14 contains two magnificent promises. First, Jesus states, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to my Father. And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:12–14, NKJV). Jesus makes it plain and simple in the last verse: “Ask anything in my name, and I’ll do it for you.”

Two verses later, Jesus promises, “I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that he may abide with you forever — the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16–17). Here Christ is saying, “I’m going to give you the Spirit of Truth, and his power will abide in you.”

These are two incredible promises from Jesus. Yet, notice the one verse that’s sandwiched between them: “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Why does this statement appear here?

Christ is telling us, “There is a matter of obedience connected to these promises.” In short, both promises have to do with keeping and obeying God’s Word. They were given to be fulfilled, so that nothing would hinder us from claiming the power that is Christ.

I’m convinced that asking little or nothing in Jesus’ name is a reproach to him. Year after year, many Christians settle for less and less. Finally, they settle for salvation only. They have no expectations other than making it to heaven someday.

Have you come to the end of your expectations for Christ? Do you expect nothing more than to be saved by his power and grace? Does ‘your Christ’ end at just enough strength to make it through another day? Does he end for you at a place of occasional peace and joy in a life lived mostly under Satan’s harassment? All of these passages in God’s Word persuade me that ‘my Jesus’ is no bigger than my requests. Sadly, many believers make Christ look insignificant and powerless by their unbelief.

Beloved, I don’t want Christ to be limited in my heart. Instead, I want every devil in hell to know how big my God is by how big my requests are. I want more out of Christ. I want him to be bigger than ever in my life.

In Jeremiah 5, God pleaded, “Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem; see now and know; and seek in her open places if you can find a man, if there is anyone who executes judgment, who seeks the truth, and I will pardon her” (Jeremiah 5:1, NKJV). The Lord was saying, in essence, “I’ll be merciful, if I can find just one person who’ll seek me.”

During the Babylonian captivity, God found such a man in Daniel. When the Holy Ghost came to Daniel, the prophet was reading the book of Jeremiah and asking why God was not delivering Israel after the promised 70 years. When the revelation came that Israel had not repented, Daniel was provoked to pray, “I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession” (Daniel 9:3-4).

Daniel knew God’s people had failed, yet did the prophet lambaste his peers for their sins? No. Daniel identified himself with the moral decay all around him. He declared, “We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and your judgments… O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you” (Daniel 9:5, 8).

God strongly desires to bless his people today, but if our minds are polluted with the spirit of this world, we are in no position to receive his blessings. Daniel made this powerful statement: “All this disaster has come upon us; yet we have not made our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand Your truth. Therefore the Lord has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the Lord our God is righteous in all the works which he does, though we have not obeyed his voice” (Daniel 9:13–14).

We must examine our own walk with the Lord and let the Holy Spirit show us areas of compromise. We should do more than pray for a backsliding nation. We should be crying out, “Oh, Lord, search my heart. Expose in me all of the spirit of the world that has crept into my soul.” Like Daniel, we could then set our faces to pray for the deliverance of our families and our nation.

In Genesis chapter 34, we’re following the events in the family of Jacob and his 12 sons who eventually became known as the 12 tribes of Israel. Levi was one of the 12 children of Jacob, and he had a sister named Dinah.

Now, Dinah was mistreated to the point of actually being raped by some men in a village near where they were living, so Levi and Simeon went into this village and enacted murderous revenge. When they came back, Jacob was so frustrated with them. A few chapters later, Jacob was dying. The tradition in those days was that you would gather your children and speak a blessing over them at the end of your life.

Here were his 12 sons, and he spoke 10 blessings. Instead of a blessing Levi and Simeon, he said, “Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7). I can’t help but imagine that their father really affected them, and it would seem so in scripture. The Bible doesn’t mention the tribe of Levi or Simeon very often in the next couple hundred years.

Finally, we find the tribe of Levi mentioned again. Moses went up on top of the mountain, God carved out the Ten Commandments, then Moses came back down off that mountain only to find Israel had put together this idol of a golden calf. They were dancing and partying and worshiping it. Moses was struck to the heart by this and how lightly they took the things of God. “Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, ‘Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me.’ And all the sons of Levi gathered around him” (Exodus 32:26).

People in the tribe of Levi were the first ones to step out of worldliness and stand with God’s chosen leader and the law.

Do you know what Moses said to them through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day” (Exodus 32:29).

God made the Levites into a dedicated tribe of priests to serve him in his temple. God can break generational curses and pain. Step into a relationship with him and bow to his truth, and he can transform anything.

“For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb. I will ever praise you. I have become a sign to many; you are my strong refuge. My mouth is filled with your praise, declaring your splendor all day long. Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone” (Psalm 71:5-9, NIV).

I have always found Psalm 71 extremely poignant. It is a cry from the heart of a man who was close to God all the way from his youth into his later years. He had accomplished great deeds and was even, in his day, considered a hero and role model by his peers. It is also the portrait of a man who, in the autumn of his life, now fears being forgotten.

This heart-deep cry is all the more overwhelming because it is the echo of a silent epidemic today, that millions of men and women of a good age feel like they have been put aside by a performance-based society that is disproportionately and cruelly focused on youth.

In modern parlance, the Psalmist would be concerned about the fact that his son only calls him once a year at Christmas, that his grandchildren are always too busy to come and visit him. He would fear losing his intellectual faculties, his memory or his autonomy.

Of course, government advertising campaigns make us aware of the afflictions of loneliness, neglect and sometimes even abuse that many seniors experience. Nevertheless, I believe that, as children of God, raising awareness is the least we can do. We are called to protect our seniors and to be a refuge for them. They are the ones who built the society in which we live as well as the churches in which we come together to live out our faith.

I encourage and challenge you to show respect, care and love for the elderly around you. I urge you to protect them from the loneliness and isolation and to honor them as God calls us to do.

^{Claude Houde is the lead pastor of Eglise Nouvelle Vie (New Life Church) in Montreal, Canada. Under his leadership New Life Church has grown from a handful of people to more than 3500 in a part of Canada with few successful Protestant churches.}

God is about to do something new and glorious. This new thing is beyond revival, beyond an awakening. It is a work of God that he alone initiates when he can no longer endure the polluting of his holy name. He says, “I acted for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned before the Gentiles, in whose sight I had brought them out” (Ezekiel 20:14, NKJV). 

There comes a time when God determines that his Word has been so trampled into the mire and abominations have so defiled what is called “the church” that he must rise up and defend his name before a lost world.

You can read it all in Ezekiel 36:21–38. God makes awe-inspiring statements about what he will do, most importantly to bring back the honor to his name. “’I will sanctify My great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord,’ says the Lord God, ‘when I am hallowed in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols’” (Ezekiel 36:23-25).

For his own name’s sake, God is going to do two mighty works. First, he is going to purge the nations and his church with awesome redemptive judgments. He is going to stop the invasion of his house by homosexuals and charlatans, and he is going to purify and cleanse the ministry and raise up shepherds after his own heart.

Second, God is going to glorify his holy name with a great intervention of mercy. In the throes of judgments being fulfilled, God is going to save the day by a supernatural “turning” of a remnant back to himself. What he did for Israel when they were being judged, he will do again in the days ahead.

Let us seek our Lord fervently in the prayer closet and look forward to the great and glorious redemptive work he is going to do for his name’s sake.