Devotions

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:28-31).

These are powerful words from the prophet Isaiah. Right now the world seems to be shaking and the people of God need to know how to maintain their strength in the midst of it all. Drawing near to God in times of crisis is necessary in order to sustain stability and effectiveness. 

The psalmist David says, “Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You in the presence of the sons of men! You shall hide them in the secret place of Your presence from the plots of man; you shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues” (Psalm 31:19-20).

This is profound! David is telling us, in essence: “All true strength comes from drawing near to the Lord. Indeed, the measure of our strength is proportionate to our nearness to him.” Simply put, the closer we are to Jesus, the stronger we are going to be. In fact, all the strength we are ever going to need will come through our secret life of prayer.

The enemy of your soul wants you drained of all strength and he will use anything he can, even “good” things, to keep you from spending time alone with Jesus. He knows your time with the Savior enables you to endure fear and anxiety, even in this worrisome season. We are facing difficult times and are headed for incredible changes.

Each one of us must ask, “How near am I to Jesus in this hour?” Spend time alone with him daily and seek his face in prayer. He promises to hear your every cry and meet your every need.

We cannot serve Jesus properly unless we know the depths of his love for us. As John writes, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, ESV). We absolutely must receive the Lord’s love into our hearts — and it’s vital that we love him back.

This is beautifully illustrated for us in the story of a woman who showed up at a dinner Jesus was attending. “One of the Pharisees asked [Jesus] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner … brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment” (Luke 7:36-38).

This is one of the most moving scenes in all of God’s Word. This “woman of the streets” had apparently crashed a dinner party hosted by an upstanding religious leader. It was an awkward moment, yet it had everything to do with John’s statement, “We love because he first loved us.”

“When the Pharisee who had invited [Jesus] saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.’ And Jesus answering said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ And he answered, ‘Say it, Teacher.’

“‘A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.’ And he said to him, ‘You have judged rightly’” (7:39-43).

Jesus’ point to Simon is clear. He explains, “I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven — for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little” (7:47).

This woman, emotionally ravaged by the life she led, felt God’s loving grace so powerfully that she had to love Jesus back. So, she initiated a sacrificial act of love — one that cost her a lot. She gladly paid the price not just in terms of the expensive ointment, but also her own dignity. The others at the table may have been embarrassed, but she is celebrated for the ages for her profound tenderness to the Savior.

The way to be powerful and effective is through fervent prayer. On the night when Jesus was wrestling in prayer with his mission to die on the cross, his disciples couldn’t keep their eyes open, much less support him in prayer. So Jesus said to them, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The Spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).

Prayer is a fundamental, indispensable weapon in our struggle against evil spiritual forces. In the book of James, we read that “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (5:16). A simple prayer can rally the forces of heaven to protect us from harm. Through prayer we gain the strength and knowledge we need to overcome temptation, discern God’s will, or receive anything else we need. God gives supernatural wisdom and power to those who trust him and he longs to do just that.

It's sad when believers see prayer as nothing more than the recitation of a wish list or a last-ditch call for help. So many people spend their prayer times begging God for things they want, asking him to fulfill their selfish desires. God doesn’t promise to answer those kinds of prayer. But when we pray according to his will, and for what we truly need in advancing the kingdom, he answers.

When we move in God’s will, we can depend on him to open doors for us — to make a path and guide us as we go along. We can feel his constant presence as we go about our daily tasks. He is there to help us through personal crises: financial attacks, sickness, so much more. We can always be assured that he will never leave us alone or forsake us.

Fervent prayer is a lifestyle of going to God with every need and concern and question, then learning to obey when we sense him answering. It is petitioning God for direction before we move and then going in the direction where we see him pointing. I am convinced that if we do that, if we live our lives in earnest wisdom and try to move in the direction he leads, then even if we go the wrong way from time to time, God will eventually make it right.

^{Nicky Cruz, internationally known evangelist and prolific author, turned to Jesus Christ from a life of violence and crime after meeting David Wilkerson in New York City in 1958. The story of his dramatic conversion was told first in The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and then later in his own best-selling book Run, Baby, Run.}

In Psalm 27, David beseeches God in an intense urgent prayer. He pleads in verse 7, “Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.” His prayer is focused on one desire, one ambition, something that has become all consuming for him: “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after” (27:4).

David is testifying, “I have one prayer, Lord, one request. It is my single most important goal in life, my constant prayer, the one thing I desire. And I will seek after it with all that’s within me. This one thing consumes me as my goal.”

What was this one thing that David desired above all else, the object he’d set his heart on obtaining? He tells us: “That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple” (27:4).

Make no mistake: David was no ascetic, shunning the outside world. He wasn’t a hermit, seeking to hide away in a lonely desert place. No, David was a passionate man of action. He was a great warrior, with huge throngs singing of his victories in battle. He was also passionate in his prayer and devotion, with a heart that yearned after God. And the Lord had blessed David with so many of the desires of his heart.

Indeed, David tasted everything a man could want in life. He had known riches and wealth, power and authority. He had received the respect, praises and adulation of men. God had given him Jerusalem as the capital for the kingdom and he was surrounded by devoted men who were willing to die for him.

Most of all, David was a worshiper. He was a praising man who gave thanks to God for all his blessings. He testified, “The Lord laid blessings on me daily.”

David was saying, in effect, “There is a way of living I seek now—a settled place in the Lord that my soul longs for. I want uninterrupted spiritual intimacy with my God.” This was what David meant when he prayed, “That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple” (27:4).

In ancient Israel, the ark of the covenant represented the mercy of the Lord, a powerful truth that came to be embodied in Christ. We are to receive his mercy, trust in the saving blood of his mercy, and be saved eternally. So, you can ridicule the law, you can mock holiness, you can tear down everything that speaks of God. But when you mock or ridicule God’s mercy, judgment comes—and swiftly. If you trample on his blood of mercy, you face his awful wrath.

That’s exactly what happened to the Philistines when they stole the ark. Deadly destruction came down on them until they had to admit, “This isn’t just chance or happenstance. God’s hand is clearly against us.” Consider what happened when the ark was taken into the heathen temple of Dagon, to mock and challenge Israel’s God. In the middle of the night, the mercy seat on the ark became a rod of judgment. The next day, the idol Dagon was found fallen on its face before the ark, its head and hands cut off (see 1 Samuel 5:2-5).

Beloved, this is where America should be today. We should have been judged long ago. I say to all who mock and challenge the mercy of God: Go ahead, try all you want to bring Christ’s church under the power of secularism or agnosticism. But if you mock the mercy of Christ, God will cast all your power and authority to the ground. Jeremiah says, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not” (Lamentations 3:22). Yet when men make a mockery of that great mercy which is Christ, judgment is sure.

It is only the mercy of the Lord that delays judgment. And right now America is benefiting from that mercy. Incredibly, our country is in a race with the rest of the world to remove God and Christ from society. Yet the Lord will not be mocked; his mercies endure forever, and he loves this nation. I believe that is why he’s still pouring out blessings on us. His desire is that goodness will lead us to repentance (see Romans 2:4).

We are not to despair over the present condition in America. We grieve over the awful corruption, mockery and sin, but we have hope, knowing God is in full control. We know the mercies of God endure forever.