Devotions

If you say you’re a Christian and that you love Jesus and walk in obedience to him yet you neglect him day after day by not praying, you really don’t know him. Your house is not on the rock; it’s on sand, and it’s going to collapse completely in hard times.

You cannot get to know Jesus only by going to church. You must have a day-by-day, hour-by-hour conversation with the Lord. You must get to know him, grow to love him, and desire to know what pleases him.

Too often, we consider the Lord’s commandments to be something burdensome, restricting to our personal freedom. Rather than embracing his words to us, we look for ways to escape them. We distort God’s grace by making it out to be some kind of tunnel out of the prison of his law, but grace is actually a teacher of holiness. “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age” (Titus 2:11-12, NKJV).

The man on the rock embraces and joyfully fulfills the Lord’s commands. He doesn’t see God as someone with a belt in his hand, always ready to chastise him. No, he sees the Lord as one with arms outstretched to him, saying, “Come to me and receive life, receive strength. I’ll carry you through.” God’s Word shows us what it takes to build upon the rock of our salvation.

Enoch obeyed God with the sole objective of pleasing him. “By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him’; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). Enoch was translated because he pleased the Lord.

The apostle John says, “And whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight” (1 John 3:22), or “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for you created all things, and by your will they exist and were created” (Revelation 4:11).

“But everyone who hears these sayings of mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall” (Matthew 7:26-27, NKJV).

The law is not intended for the person whose obedience springs out of a desire to please God. He is not concerned about what is legal or illegal, what is permitted or forbidden. He has only one criterion: “What does my Lord desire?”

You can lay out all the law before him with all the rules, regulations and prohibitions, and he will say, “You don’t have to tell me not to do those things. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt my Father. I love him. I’ve already forsaken the world and its lusts to go after him whom my heart desires. Show me what he wants, not just what he forbids. I want his heart’s desire to become my actions. I want to know his mind and obey it. Sure, I love his law, but that’s for the lawless, for those who haven’t come into a knowledge of intimacy with Christ. I have another law at work in my heart. It’s the law of love, one that says, ‘Lord, what can I do to please you today?’“

Such a person isn’t moved by threats of hellfire or even by rewards. He needs no prophet to shake him, no warnings of judgment. He is in love with Jesus, and his obedience to God’s Word is a natural outgrowth of this love. It is as natural to him as breathing.

On the other hand, the person who builds his house on sand does so only for show. It is a temporary lifestyle. You see, this person doesn’t believe a storm is coming. That is the way the world deals with eternity; they simply don’t think about it. A Christian celebrity once asked one of the late-night talk show hosts, “What do you think about eternity?” He answered, “I try to put it out of my mind.”

Tragically, a lot of Christians also try to put eternity out of their minds. They try not to think that judgment is at the door. If you’ve caught yourself thinking only of the present, turn your eyes once more to your first love!

Jesus Christ has left me an inheritance, and I claim it as mine. Scripture says, “The righteous are bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1, NKJV). If you can accept this truth of the perfect righteousness of Christ, you will have the boldness of a lion. You will never again fear any person or look at someone else’s life and feel unworthy. You can say, “I have the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ credited to me by faith. No, it’s not mine. It’s his, but it’s accounted to me by Jesus himself, so I may call it my own!”

It is time to stop your struggling. If the devil comes to you and says, “You’re no good. You have no righteousness”, you can answer, “I know I’m no good. I have no righteousness in myself, but I do have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I’ve failed God, but I have an advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the righteous.”

When you stand before the Lord, you will not have to tremble, thinking, “What am I going to offer him? What did I do right or wrong?” No, you will be thinking, “I have nothing in myself to offer him because I have his righteousness by faith.”

Does this mean Christians are not obligated to do good works? Not at all. Justification by faith and the imputed righteousness of Christ sets the soul free to walk in holiness and do good works. Good works done in slavish fear bring no glory to God; they must flow out of a loving heart. Walking in true holiness is possible only to those who have laid hold of their inheritance, which is Christ’s perfect righteousness, because they are no longer imprisoned by fear and condemnation.

His perfect righteousness is mine by faith, and now I am free and released to serve him as a bondservant of love. Now by the power of the Holy Spirit promised in the New Covenant, he turns me from all iniquity and empowers me to live out the righteousness he credits to me.

Don’t settle for partial victories just because you are weary, frustrated or feeling helpless. God never stops at half a victory. The moment you feel so tired that you can’t take one more step is often the moment he is about to give the greatest victory and breakthrough.

The church is not meant to be composed of masses and crowds who want comfort, pleasure and everything handed to them on a silver platter. The church is meant to be full of warriors who say, “God, I know this is going to be a fight. I know it is going to be wearisome and will even cause tears to flow; but, God, I’m with you in this battle!”

You may feel that you have prayed the last prayer you’re ever going to be able to pray about the need that is pressing you. You are exhausted, but you must stay in the fight. Don’t stop praying, and don’t give up. Yes, it has been a long day! Nighttime is coming, and inside you are saying, “It’s time for me to sleep.” Instead, God says, “No, no, the fight is just starting.”

What has happened to the all-night prayer meetings in churches? What has happened to people waiting on God? What has happened to people who fast and pray for a breakthrough?

The church was called into battle. It was not begun just to have good services and a nice building with lights that go off and on during the music. That’s not why we’re here. We are here to do battle against the gates of hell because we have a promise that hell will not prevail (see Matthew 16:18). We do not have a promise that it won’t be strenuous or that all we have to do is whisper and the gates of hell will not prevail. No, there is going to be a battle, and Satan is not going to give up easily, but we have a promise.

It’s going to take a battle! Are you ready to fight?

Our lives are so crowded these days that it’s not uncommon for us to think things like “Oh, we didn’t get to go to Jim’s wedding. How unfortunate. We’ll send them a gift card.” In biblical times, being invited to a wedding meant a lot. If you were invited to the marriage feast of someone prominent, though, and missed it, that was intensely shameful. 

With that understanding, let’s look at a biblical story with new eyes. “And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come… Then he said to his servants, “The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.”’” (Matthew 22:1-3, 8-9, ESV).

These commoners were minimalizing the joy of the king for his son, and that was incredibly shameful. The language here is very similar to when Jesus invited people to follow him, and they gave excuses like “Oh, I have to bury my father” or “Let me straighten things out at my house first” (see Luke 9:59-61). Jesus’s answer is “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). 

Jesus’s response to these people may seem harsh if we don’t understand that this was an invitation to the wedding feast of God, and nothing could be more important than that royal invitation to God’s kingdom. 

Everyone is invited inside, but we’re not allowed in on our own terms. Most people, even in this day and age, would be appalled if someone wrote the bride and groom to ask them if they could move their wedding to a ‘more convenient’ location or date. Similarly, we don’t get to do that with God. He sets the place, the time, the invite list and the dress code. It is our honor to accept his invitation. Let’s not let any excuse stand in the way! 

^{Joshua West serves as the Pastor's Network Director at World Challenge helping equip and empower pastors all over the world. Joshua’s desire is to raise up ministers who will correctly and boldly preach the word with passion and integrity. The point of all his work and writings is to preach the gospel, glorify God and to teach sound doctrine.}