Devotions

Many Christians have only a vague notion of who the Holy Spirit is. They may have heard of him, but they struggle to understand his role. Although he is often overlooked or perhaps even neglected by many believers, he is just as divine as the Father and the Son (Acts 5:3-4). Consider these facts:

• He possesses a divine personality and personally chooses people for ministry assignments (Acts 13:2).  
• He communicates with us (Revelation 2:7) and searches out the deep things of God to make them known to believers (1 Corinthians 2:9-12).
• He is the one who makes Christ a living reality to the believer (Ephesians 3:16-17) and in fact he is called the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9).
• He is coequal with both the Father and Son as part of the mystery of the triune God.

Understanding these biblical facts about the Holy Spirit within the larger biblical story of who God is and how he relates to his people is important.

God’s plan in redemption was that we should live life full of the Holy Spirit: “Do not be drunk with wine, in which is [debauchery]; but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). When you consider that the Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Godhead, what does it mean to be filled with a person? He is not a gas or a liquid, he’s as much a person as the Father and the Son. So a better description of “being filled” is to say the Spirit controls us.

Would you like to love more deeply and more freely? Do you wish to have more self-discipline? Are your life and ministry producing fruit? In order for these things to happen, you must surrender to the Helper. The Holy Spirit is the only one who can produce self-discipline, love, and boldness in you: “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson.

Jeremiah the prophet was a man who set his heart to seek the Lord, and the Word of God came to him. Over and over we read of the prophet, “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.”

Many commentators call Jeremiah the weeping prophet, and that was certainly true of him. But he also brought us the happiest, most praiseworthy gospel in all the Old Testament. After all, he foretold the coming glory of the New Covenant: “I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good” (Jeremiah 32:40). “I will satiate the soul of the priests with abundance, and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the Lord” (31:14).

Now, that’s good news! The New Covenant is full of mercy, grace, joy, peace and goodness. But, the history behind each of Jeremiah’s words here includes a deep brokenness.

Jeremiah wrote, “O my soul, my soul! I am pained in my very heart! My heart makes a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because you have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war” (4:19).

Jeremiah was weeping with holy tears that were not his own. Indeed, the prophet actually heard God speak of his own broken heart. First, the Lord warned Jeremiah that he was going to send judgment on Israel. Then he told the prophet, “I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, and for the dwelling places of the wilderness a lamentation” (9:10). The word for “lamentation” here means weeping. God himself was weeping over the judgment to come upon his people.

The Lord shares with us his very mind and thoughts. We are living in life-and-death times right now and I urge you to set your heart to seek God with all diligence and determination. Then go to his Word with ever-increasing love and desire. He will be faithful to his Word and guide you into all that he wants to reveal to you.

Claiming power in Christ’s name is not some complicated, hidden theological truth. Libraries are full of books written solely on the subject of the name of Jesus which the authors wrote to help believers understand the deep implications hidden in Christ’s name. Yet, most of these books are so “deep,” they go right over the heads of the readers.

I believe the truth we are meant to grasp about Jesus’ name is so simple that a child could understand it. It is simply this: when we make our requests in Jesus’ name, we are to be fully persuaded that it is the same as if Jesus himself were petitioning the Father. How could that be true?

We know that God loved his Son. He spoke with Jesus and taught him during his time on earth, and God not only heard every request his Son made but he answered them. In short, the Father never denied his Son any request.

Today, all who believe in Jesus are clothed in his Sonship. And the heavenly Father receives us as intimately as he receives his own Son. Why? It’s because of our spiritual union with Christ. Through his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus has made us one with the Father. “That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us … I in them, and You in Me” (John 17:21 and 23).

Simply put, we are now family — one with the Father, and one with the Son. We have been adopted, with the full rights of inheritance possessed by any child. This means all the power and resources of heaven are made available to us — through Christ. And because we are clothed in Christ’s Sonship, we know our requests are also heard by the Father. He answers our requests, just as he answered those of the Son.

What an incredible authority we have been given when we pray in Jesus’ name.

You may have had a situation you were praying about but you didn’t seem to get an answer. You may say, “I prayed in faith, believing God, but he didn’t hear me. I waited and waited, but he never answered. How can I surrender my life to God if he doesn’t answer my prayers?”

You may not be angry with God but you have certainly lost confidence, which keeps you from committing your heart to him fully. Therefore, you have stopped prayer and you don’t enjoy the fullness of his blessings anymore.

James addresses this situation very clearly: “He who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind” (James 1:6). The King James Version uses the word “waver,” which means to be undecided. In their hearts, when the people made their requests, they put God on trial. In their hearts, they said, “Lord, if you answer me, I’ll serve you. I’ll give you everything! But if you don’t answer, I’ll live my life my way.”

God will not be bribed. He knows our hearts and he knows when we are undecided in our commitment to his Son. He reserves the power that is in Christ for those who have surrendered to him wholly.

True faith considers all the problems and pain of God’s people worldwide, all hopeless situations, and puts these sorrowful things on a scale on one side. Faith then puts Christ on the other side of the scale and rejoices when Christ overwhelms all the sins and afflictions of the world.

God never intended for us to let the devil overtake our hearts and homes. Rather, he intends for us to make a declaration that is loud and clear. We are to take our position in Christ and cry, “In the name of Jesus Christ!”

It is time for every believer to stand up and declare, “I’ve lived with fear long enough and in the name of Jesus Christ, I will no longer fear death, man or the devil.”

When I read about the exploits of godly men in the Old Testament, my heart burns. These servants were so burdened for the cause of God’s name, they did powerful works that baffle the minds of most Christians today.

One such saint was Ezra, a man of God who awakened his entire nation to God. Scripture says that God had his hand on Ezra, and Ezra testified, “So I was encouraged, as the hand of the Lord my God was upon me” (Ezra 7:28). God stretched out his hand, enveloped Ezra, and turned him into a different man.

Why would God do that? There were hundreds of scribes in Israel at the time and they all had the same calling to study and explain God’s Word to the people. The Scripture gives us the answer: “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:10). Ezra made a conscious decision to seek God’s Word above all and to obey it. And he never swerved from that decision.

Ezra didn’t have some supernatural experience that caused him to love the Scriptures. God didn’t tell him, “You’re going to lead 50,000 to repent and do my work, but in order to do that you’re going to need power, fortitude, purity, spiritual authority. Yet, this comes only by knowing and obeying my Word. Tomorrow, you’ll wake up with an ever-growing hunger to study the Word.”

No, that is not the way it happened at all. Ezra was diligent in searching the Scriptures long before God put his hand on him. He allowed himself to be examined by the Word, washed by it, and as a result, God anointed him.

Certainly, God’s anointing is supernatural, but he lays his hand on those who are wholly given to knowing and obeying his Word. That is where the anointing begins. No one can expect God’s touch if he isn’t passionate about the Scriptures.