Devotions

I have a friend who hit a point where he didn't know what was going to happen with his job, ministry or anything that was about to take place in his life. Around that time, he wrote to me and said, “My wife and I were in a meeting in New York City, and I was hoping that the meeting would go differently. Afterward, my wife and I were walking to Whole Foods right in midtown Manhattan.”

He said, “There was fear all over us, and as we were walking, there was a lady standing there begging for money. I was thinking about how scary our future was because of what would happen to me in the meeting literally just minutes before, and I guess my face said it all. This homeless woman with a cardboard sign looked at me and yelled, ‘Fix your face. God is good.’ I’d just been rebuked by a homeless woman, and I did realize that I can fix my face because God is good. Because God is good, not only should our faces be fixed, but our faith should be full. God can help us through every storm and wave that affects our lives.”

Fear is not from God. If fear is not of God, why would God choose to allow it into our lives? How is he using this method of communication to bring warning to our life?

Fear is a revelation. It prompts us to ask ourselves, “Am I focusing on the right thing?”

Paul wrote, “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:6-7, ESV). Think of that. When fear comes, it removes those three elements that are so important for every single day. We need power, love, and a sound mind to walk through every crisis that hits our lives, whether it’s a personal tragedy or a worldwide pandemic. When fear comes, it removes those three things and replaces them with weakness, selfishness and crazy narratives.

God says, “Fix your focus on me. I want to fix what's happening in you. I want to fix your faith.” If I believe that God is great and good, it not only begins to increase my faith, it begins to dissolve my fear.

^{After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.}

Many Christians read the Bible regularly, believing it is God’s revealed Word for their lives. Over and over in the pages of scripture, they read about generations who heard the voice of God. They read of God speaking to his people with this phrase repeated time after time: “And God said…” However, many of these same Christians live as though God doesn’t speak to his people today.

An entire generation of believers has come to make decisions completely on their own without praying or consulting God’s Word. Many simply decide what they want to do, then they ask God to validate it. They move ahead forcefully, their only prayer being, “Lord, if this is not your will, then stop me.”

We are now living in a time referred to as the “blink generation.” People are making major decisions in the blink of an eye. A best-selling book has been written on this concept, titled Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. The theory is “Trust your instincts. Blink-of-the-eye decisions prove to be the best.”

Think about all the hurried-up “blink language” we hear every day. “This is an offer of the century. You can make a bundle overnight, but you have only a short window of opportunity. Get on it now!” The driving spirit behind it all is “Don’t make a slow and thoughtful decision. Don’t get council from others who may tell you ‘no.’ Just do it!”

Such thinking has begun to infect the church, affecting the decisions made not just by “blink Christians” but by “blink ministers.” Scores of bewildered parishioners have written to us telling the same story. “Our pastor came back from a church-growth conference and immediately announced, ‘As of today, everything changes.’ He decided we would become one of the popular trend churches overnight. He didn’t even ask us to pray about it… We’re all confused.”

Just a few years ago, the watchword among Christians was “Did you pray about this matter? Are your brothers and sisters surrounding you in prayer? Have you received godly counsel?” Has this been your practice? In the past year, how many important decisions have you made where you honestly took the matter to God? The reason God wants full control of our lives is to save us from disasters, which is exactly where most of our “blink decisions” end up.

No matter how unsettled the world becomes, God's people can relax and keep their joy flowing because our Lord has promised special protection when it is most needed.

Didn't God have an emergency plan for the children of Israel during the worldwide famine? He sent Joseph ahead to Egypt, promoted him to prime minister and filled the warehouses with enough grain to last out the famine. He then transported his people within walking distance of those storehouses and fed them to the full through the raging famine.

Didn't God have emergency plans for Elijah? While his nation reeled under the impact of an economic collapse and food was scarce because of severe famine as well as a wicked king who had a ransom on his head, God put his emergency plan for Elijah into effect. The Lord hid his prophet by a quiet brook and fed him by having ravens deliver his food. The survival plan also included a widow’s oil and flour that never ran out.

What about Noah? What a detailed survival plan God had for him and his family! An ark kept him and his family floating safely above all the death and destruction of a worldwide flood.

God actually sent angels to personally pull Lot and his daughters out of the doomed city of Sodom. God's hands were tied until Lot was safely out of the suburbs. It was more than a loss of his job, the collapse of an economy or the downfall of a government. It was total annihilation of his society, but Lot was delivered safely.

Paul proved God's emergency contingencies over and over. This apostle was shipwrecked, chased by thieves, imprisoned, accused of treason and plotted against by assassins. In every crisis, God had a contingency plan for deliverance. Only when God determined his race was over did the Lord call in his last contingency plan. He called this apostle to his resurrection.

We too have an emergency plan for survival, designed specifically for each believer. Let there be no question about it; God will see us through every crisis!

Jesus is not in the drafting business; his army is all volunteer. You can be a believer without carrying a cross, but you cannot be a disciple.

I see many believers have opted for the good life with its prosperity, material gain, popularity and success. I’m sure that many of them will make it to heaven. They will have saved their skins, but they will not have learned Christ. Having rejected the suffering and sorrow of true discipleship, they will not have the capacity to know and enjoy him in eternity. This is opposed to all the saints who have entered into the fellowship of the suffering.

You will have to carry your cross until you learn to deny the one thing that constantly hinders God's work in our lives: self. Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24, NKJV). We are misinterpreting this message if we emphasize the rejection of unlawful things. Jesus was not calling upon us to learn self-discipline before we take up our cross. It is far more severe than that.

Millions of professing Christians boast of their self-denial. They don't drink, smoke, curse or fornicate; they are examples of tremendous self-discipline. Not in a hundred years would they admit, though, that it was accomplished by anything other than their own willpower. In some ways, we are all like that. We experience spurts of holiness, accompanied by feelings of purity. Good works usually produce good feelings, but God will not allow us to think our good works and clean habits can save us. That is why we need a cross.

Don't take up your cross until you are ready to reject any thought of becoming a holy disciple as a result of your own effort. Before you take up your cross, be ready to face a moment of truth. Be ready to experience a crisis by which you will learn to deny your self-will, self-righteousness, self-sufficiency and self-authority.

You can rise up and follow Christ as a true disciple only when you can freely admit you can do nothing in your own strength. You cannot overcome sin through your own willpower. You cannot work things out by your own intellect. Your love for Jesus can put you on your knees, but your cross will put you on your face.

“Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’” (Matthew 16:24, NKJV). However, Jesus could not carry his cross all alone, and neither can you!

It may sound almost sacrilegious to suggest Jesus did not carry his own cross, but that is the truth. As Jesus bore his cross to Golgotha, he was too weak and frail to carry it the whole way. When he had reached the end of his endurance, his cross was laid on another's shoulder. Simon the Cyrene was compelled to pick it up and carry it to the place of crucifixion (see Matthew 27:32).

What does this mean to us? Would our Lord order us do something he could not do? Did he not say, “Whoever does not bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27)? Personally, it gives me great hope to know that Jesus could not bear his own cross entirely alone. It encourages me to know that I am not the only one burdened down at times, unable to go on in my own strength. Jesus knew exactly what he was saying when he called us to "take up our cross and follow him." He foreknew his own cross and that another would have to carry it for him.

Why then would he ask us to shoulder a cross that he knows will soon crush us to the ground? There is a truth hidden here that we must uncover, a truth so powerful that it could change the way we look at all our troubles and hurts.

God knows that not one of his children can carry the cross they take up when following Christ. We want to be good disciples by denying ourselves and taking up our cross, but we seem to forget that this same cross will one day bring us to the end of our human endurance. Would Jesus purposely ask us to take up a cross that he knows will sap all our human energies and leave us lying helpless? Absolutely yes! Jesus forewarns us, "Without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). So he asks us to take up our cross until we learn that lesson. This is what the Bible means when it says his strength is made perfect in our weakness.