Devotions

We hear a lot about the favor of God these days, which is a good thing. Without the favor of the Lord, we would not be able to breathe, stand or find true life anywhere. Our loving, compassionate God looks to bless us with his amazing favor.

Sadly, today the teaching of God’s favor is being twisted by some. They use it as a means to gain material, physical and emotional blessings from God. That’s tragic — because it reduces the Lord to just another American commodity. They tell you to invest a little church attendance here, sow a bit of financial seed there, claim the power of your tongue to confess your way into the life you dream of, and — bingo! — you are favored.

But that is not God’s way. He cares for us much more than that. If we get everything we dream of, that’s not favor, that’s lust. True favor is not found in the blessing itself, it’s found in the One who does the blessing — our loving heavenly Father. Seeking him, not things, is the hunger that dwells in the core of every human heart. We were made to find our life in him.

God is jealous, in a righteous way: He will not allow himself to be used as a means of fulfilling our lusts and self-gain. He will destroy all the idols we set up in our hearts so that he alone stands as our greatest desire.

This doesn’t mean we should not want to see God’s blessings flow in our lives. Out of his loving grace and kindness, our Father delights to give good gifts to his children. Some leaders have twisted biblical doctrines in the so-called prosperity movement but that does not mean the idea of God’s favor should be thrown out. Rather, it should be rescued!

God loves to bless us because he is amazingly good. I encourage you to seek him first and watch how he pours out his favor on you. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).

Satan lives in the past. He is the prince of what once was, the king of regret and guilt. He lives to keep us there, to remind us of what we have done and how horrible we have been. His mind is consumed by thoughts of past victories; of the times he caused us to sin, to stumble, to fall for his lies. Because in his heart he knows that the past is all he has.

When salvation comes, Satan’s hold is over and his only hope is to make us think we are still captive. He can no longer have our souls, but he can make us miserable and ineffective as God’s children.

Don’t let him do it. Don’t let him fill your mind with doubt and confusion, with thoughts of past sins — sins that God has chosen to forget. Sins that we need to forget before we can truly move forward.

It is not enough that we accept Jesus and ask for his forgiveness; we must also reject who we once were and completely embrace the new day — the day of our salvation. The day of a renewed heart, mind, and soul.

It is important to note that there is a huge difference between the masses who follow Christ and those few followers who live each day with a burning passion for Jesus! They have done more than accept salvation; they have embraced a completely new future. They have chosen to forgive themselves and look forward.

“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

Do not let Satan fill your mind with doubt and confusion, with thoughts of past sins — sins that God has chosen to forget. He gives you a new heart, one that has no past, only a bright and glorious future.

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.

“We do not lose heart … but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Corinthians 4:1-2). The apostle Paul states that we are called to be a manifestation of the truth. Of course, we know Jesus is this truth. So, what does Paul mean by saying, in essence, that we are to manifest Jesus? 

A manifestation is a “shining forth” that makes something clear and understandable. So, in short, Paul is saying we are called to make Jesus known and understood to all people. In each of our lives, there should be a shining forth of the very nature and likeness of Christ.

Paul takes this concept of manifesting Christ even further. He says we are actually God’s letters to the world: “You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men … written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3).

The carnal mind simply cannot comprehend spiritual things. It considers them foolish. So God chose to make his Son known to sinners in a most effective way: by revealing him in flesh-and-blood epistles, living messages that can be read by everyone. This happens only by the work of the Spirit. At the moment we are saved, the Holy Spirit imprints in us the very image of Jesus and he continues shaping this image in us. The Spirit’s mission is to form in us an image of Christ that is so truthful and accurate that it will actually pierce people’s consciences.

The Holy Spirit accomplishes this by taking hold of our redeemed hearts and surrendered bodies and continually drawing us into Jesus’ presence. There we are compelled to holy living.

As you spend more time with him, his image in you will grow and your life will become such a powerful manifestation of Jesus that those around you will be touched and moved.

Moses was possessed by God. When he lived in Pharaoh’s house, he refused to be called Pharaoh’s son: “Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward” (Hebrews 11:25-26).

There is no doubting God’s touch on Moses’ life while he was in Egypt. He knew he was called to deliver Israel; in fact, he assumed the Israelites would recognize him as their deliverer when he killed the Egyptian slave driver. Stephen testified of this: “[He] struck down the Egyptian. For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand” (Acts 7:24-25).

Instead, Moses had to flee Egypt because of his action. By the time he left he was totally sold out to God, although he had no idea he was about to hide on the back side of a desert for forty years.

What does this wilderness period in Moses’ life represent? It is a time that many God-possessed servants face. You may be one of them, feeling that you are stuck in a place far beneath your abilities. Moses was just such a servant. He had a mighty call on his life and he dreamed of doing great works for God, yet he was in a wasteland with no apparent future.  

While Moses was convinced he had no voice and no message, God was working behind the scenes. One day he set a bush on fire and spoke from it, “Take off your shoes, Moses. You’re on holy ground! Now you are about to see great things in your service to me.” 

That burning bush was the fire of the Holy Spirit moving through a natural object. Likewise today, God wants to reveal more of himself to you so that others around you will realize, “That person has been with Jesus.” As you seek him with renewed intensity, you will be turned into a new man, a new woman. Just as it was with Moses, your best days are still ahead. 

The apostle Paul instructs us, “Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually” (1 Corinthians 12:27). In another place he says more specifically, “The body is one and has many members, but all the members … are one body, so also is Christ” (12:12).

Paul is telling us, in essence, “Take a look at your own body. You have hands, feet, eyes, ears. You’re not just an isolated brain, unattached to the other members.” It is the same with Christ. He is not just a head; he has a body and we comprise its members. We are connected to Jesus, our head, but we are also joined to each other.

Paul drives this point home, saying, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). Simply put, we are all fed by the same food: Christ, the manna from heaven. “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33).

Some Christians do not want to be connected to other members of the body. They commune with Jesus but they deliberately isolate themselves from other believers. But a body cannot be comprised of just a single member and Christ’s body cannot be made up of a head alone. We simply cannot be one with Christ without being one with his body.

Believers are knit together not only by their need for Jesus, but by their need for each other. Paul states, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21).

Our head says we are all important, even necessary, to the functioning of his body. This is especially true of members who may be bruised and hurting. The Lord himself says, “I have need of you. You are a vital member of my body and absolutely necessary for it to function.”