Devotions

I sought the Lord in prayer and I asked him, “What is the most important aspect of your making us your temple?” Here’s what came to me: access with boldness and confidence.

Paul says of Christ, “in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him” (Ephesians 3:12).

In the Jewish temple, there was very little access to God. In fact, such access was available only to the high priest, and then only once a year. When the time came, the priest entered God’s presence in the temple with fear and trembling. He knew he could be struck down for approaching the mercy seat with unforgiven sin in his heart.

Today God has emerged from that small, restricted room. And he has come directly to us in all our disgrace and corruption. He tells us, “I’ve come to live in you. You don’t have to hide your filth and despair from me. I’ve chosen you because I want you and I’m about to turn your body into my home, my dwelling place, my residence.

“I’ll send my Holy Spirit, who will sanctify you. He’s going to clean and sweep out every room, to prepare your heart as my bride, but that’s not all. I’m going to seat you right next to me and I’ll urge you to come boldly to my throne, with confidence. You see, I want you to ask me for power, grace, strength, everything you need. I’ve brought heaven down into your souls, so you can have access to it all. You’re rich, yet you don’t even realize it. You’re an heir to all my glory.”

The sole reason your body is holy is because the Holy Ghost lives there. And it’s kept holy only by his continual presence and power. You can’t do it. You’d become a nervous wreck just trying to guard all the entrances. You’d get discouraged when you failed to keep out all the dust and filth that blows in. You’d get weary by running from room to room, sweeping and polishing, trying to make things look good.

Every Christian ought to rejoice in this fact: God is in you! And he is with you always, so who can be against you?

The evangelists George Whitefield and John Wesley were two of the greatest preachers in history. These men preached to thousands in open meetings, on the streets, in parks and prisons, and through their ministries many were brought to Christ. But a doctrinal dispute arose between the two men over how a person is sanctified. Both doctrinal camps defended their positions strongly, and some vicious words were exchanged, with the followers of both men arguing in unseemly fashion.

A follower of Whitefield came to him one day and asked, “Will we see John Wesley in heaven?” He was asking, in effect, “How can Wesley be saved if he’s preaching such error?”

Whitefield answered, “No, we will not see John Wesley in heaven. He will be so high up near Christ’s throne, so close to the Lord, that we won’t be able to see him.”

Paul called this kind of spirit “enlargement of heart.” And he had it himself as he wrote to the Corinthians, a church in which some had accused him of hardness and who had sneered at his preaching. Paul assured them, “O Corinthians! We have spoken openly to you, our heart is wide open” (2 Corinthians 6:11).

When God enlarges your heart, suddenly so many limits and barriers are removed! You don’t see through a narrow lens anymore. Instead, you find yourself being directed by the Holy Spirit to those who are hurting. And the hurting are drawn to your compassionate spirit by the Holy Ghost’s magnetic pull.

So, do you have a gentleness of heart when you see hurting people? When you see a brother or sister who has stumbled in sin or may be having problems, are you tempted to tell them what’s wrong in their lives? Paul says that hurting ones need to be restored in a spirit of meekness and gentleness. They need to encounter the spirit that Jesus demonstrated.

May the cry of our hearts be: “God, take away all narrowness from my heart. I want your spirit of compassion for those who are hurting…your spirit of forgiveness when I see someone who’s fallen…your spirit of restoration, to take away their reproach. Take away all exclusiveness from my heart, and enlarge my capacity to love my enemies.”

The early church not only faced temptation to become numb to the perversions of the world around it, it also faced the possibility of numbness toward God. They could go through the motions, sing their songs, preach their sermons, give their tithes and offerings, have their meals together, but the presence of God could still be missing from their assemblies.

The most frightening aspect of this is that it can happen and hardly be noticed. If you know your church history, you’ll know that there was a 400 year silence between the book of Malachi, the minor prophets, and the book of Matthew.

There was a long season where God seemed silent and the windows of heaven seemed shut, and the church was simply going through the motions. On the outside, they had a strong religion. They looked very faithful and godly, but they were missing the heart and what it really meant to be a follower of God. Then Christ came, God in the flesh among mankind, and many of them missed him too. 

But some of them went into the Upper Room, and they waited for God’s power to descend, and it came in the form of the Holy Spirit and tongues of fire. These anointed believers burst onto the scene.

“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:4, ESV), and those who heard them said, “‘We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God’” (Acts 2:11).

In the middle of a broken culture and a dead church, the Spirit began to move. It is in the midst of the darkest hour that the Holy Spirit shines his brightest light. 

One of your biggest responsibilities is towards your family. God calls you to grow personally because it is impossible to help your children grow if, as parents, you are not growing.

Right from the start, we have tendency to favor or to neglect certain areas of knowledge according to our backgrounds, personalities and lives. We must, therefore, ask God to help us find and maintain a balanced personality, in order to guide our family members in their growth.

However, I would like to point out two terrible lies that the enemy of our souls uses to suffocate us and curb our growth as well as that of our family.

Together, we have to expose and overthrow them in order to free ourselves and keep hope in our family. The first one is “It’s too late” where you end convincing yourself that nothing can change in a particular situation. It is a danger, a temptation and a lie that drives us to give up in our relationships and spirituality.

The second lie is “I don't need to change.” It takes root in our pride and convinces us that it is up to others to change.

I cannot help my spouse to grow if I don’t grow myself. With Jesus, I am called to grow in four spheres:

• In wisdom, whether intellectually, according to my education, my knowledge and learning, my maturity.
• In stature, either by adopting good habits in life or physically in a healthy lifestyle.
• In favor with all men, my social development in terms of interpersonal skills.
• In favor before God, spiritually by nurturing our personal knowledge of God, the Word, his nature, his promises and his plans.

Today, your family needs to hear you say, "Lord, keep changing me. I confess my pride to you. I still need to change. I stand humbly before you and ask you to mold me into the image of your son, Jesus. I want to grow in you and be used by you to inspire and help each member of my family grow in you.”

^{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.}

Paul warned Timothy that a time was coming when some of God’s people “will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

History records that this happened just as Paul had predicted. After the apostles died—and the generation that sat under their teaching had passed away—a conspiracy of wicked error flooded the church. Believers were seduced by strange doctrines, and science and philosophy eroded the truth of Christ’s gospel.

Consider what Paul said of the purity of Christ’s church: “Christ…loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

God’s great concern is not about the apostate church. Even apostasies will not be able to kill or destroy the church of Jesus Christ. In spite of these problems, God has everything under control, and his mystical, invisible, overcoming church is not dying. Rather, the river of the Holy Spirit is flowing into the “dead sea” of apostate churches, exposing iniquity and lukewarmness. And it’s causing new life to spring up.

Those who are turned from the dead, lifeless churches may be but just a remnant. Nevertheless, Jesus declared: “The fields are ripe for harvest. And there is still time for laborers to go forth.” Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Holy Spirit has fled the scene, leaving behind a withered harvest. God’s Spirit is still at work, convicting, wooing and drawing the lost to Christ, including those in apostasy.

The cloud of heavenly witnesses would tell us not to look for judgment, not to focus on “holding the fort.” It is still the day of the Holy Spirit, who is waiting to fill every willing vessel.

God still loves his church, blemishes and all!