Devotions

In Acts 3, we find Peter and John going to the temple to worship. Just outside the temple gate sat a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Peter told him to stand and walk in the name of Jesus, and the man was healed!

When Peter and John saw crowds gathering to marvel at the miracle, they began preaching Christ. Thousands were saved. While Peter and John were preaching, the synagogue rulers asked the disciples, “By what power or by what name have you done this?” (Acts 4:7,  NKJV). Peter was emboldened by the Holy Ghost and essentially told them, “His name is Jesus Christ, the man you crucified three weeks ago. God raised him from the dead, and now he’s the power that healed this man. No one can be saved by any other name than Christ’s name” (see Acts 4:10–12).

The rulers sat stunned. “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). What was the mark that distinguished Peter and John? It was the presence of Jesus. They had Christ’s own likeness and Spirit.

Those who spend time with Jesus can’t get enough of him. Their hearts continually cry out to know the Master better and draw closer to him. Paul states, “To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Ephesians 4:7). What is this measure? It means a limited amount. In other words, we’ve all received a certain amount of the saving knowledge of Christ.

For some believers, this initial measure is all they ever desire. They want just enough of Jesus to escape judgment, to feel forgiven, to keep a good reputation and to endure an hour of church each Sunday. Such people are in “maintenance mode,” and they give Jesus only the bare requirements.

God has given you spiritual gifts not so you can maintain your life as it is! He wants you to be filled up with Christ’s Spirit. This is crucial because deceivers are coming to rob you of your faith. If you’re rooted in Christ and maturing in him, no deceptive doctrine will ever sway you. The only way to grow to such maturity, though, is by wanting more of Jesus until you are distinguished even to unbelievers by his mark.

Joseph had a vision that his life would be used mightily by God, but that vision seemed like a pipe dream after his jealous brothers sold him into slavery. The following years of Joseph’s life were filled with hardship and injustice. Just when Joseph seemed to get back on his feet, he was falsely accused of attempted rape and sent to prison. Finally, after years of turmoil, Joseph ended up serving in Pharaoh’s house. Pharaoh eventually appointed Joseph ruler over all of Egypt.

Beloved, that’s how God works; he was preparing a man to save a remnant. Indeed, in every generation, the Lord raises up a ‘Joseph Company.’ He takes these devoted servants through years of trouble and trials to prove and strengthen their faith.

What does this mean? Scripture says, “He sent a man before them—Joseph—who was sold as a slave. They hurt his feet with fetters, he was laid in irons. Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him” (Psalm 105:17–19, NKJV).

Joseph told his brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt” (Genesis 45:7–8).

What an incredible revelation for Joseph, yet what is the lesson here for God’s people today? It is this: Our Lord has preserved us in the past, and he will preserve us in the days ahead. Most importantly of all, he preserved you because he has a purpose for you. He has laid out a divine work ahead of you, and only a tested and proven believer can accomplish it.

The Joseph Company are godly men and women whom God has touched and called. They don’t seek fame or fortune. All they want is to live and die fulfilling the calling God has placed on them, and the Lord promised their lives would count for his kingdom.

This is not a time for timid faith. It’s a time when every Christian who has endured great testing must step forward. Our captain is calling us to stand up amidst a fearful society and engage in “power faith.”

We who know Christ’s righteousness are not to live as those who are without hope. We have been blessed with both the love and the fear of God.

What does God want his people to know in light of this truth? He says it all in one verse, “So the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness; sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isaiah 51:11, NKJV). In other words: “I’m going to have a people who return to me with trust, faith and confidence. They’ll take their eyes off the conditions surrounding them, and they’ll get back their song of joy.”

God’s will for us in the darkest, most terrible times to obtain his joy and gladness. Even as we see judgment falling around us, we’re to sing and rejoice, not because judgment has come but in spite of it.

Isaiah 51:11 begins with a Hebrew word that means “In light of what I’ve just said.” What had the prophet just said? He was speaking to God: “Are you not the one who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of the sea a road for the redeemed to cross over?” (Isaiah 51:10). Isaiah was reminding Israel that God had promised them and demonstrated his passion to save them. This verse is saying, “I’m still the Lord, the Ancient of Days, the worker of miracles. My arm is still strong to deliver you.”

Next, the joy that God’s people experience won’t be just for a Sunday morning, or a week or a month. It is everlasting, and that means it will go on through the years, through hard times, even to the very end. God looked down through the ages and said, “I’m going to have a people who will obtain joy and possess it. They’ll lay hold of it, and it will be theirs.”

Finally, this doesn’t mean all our suffering will end. It means our trust in the Lord will put us above every pain and trial. If we embrace this, nothing will be able to rob us of our joy and gladness in Christ.

There are at least six or seven different things that a skeptic would say to you when you have a word from God. Let’s say you’re on the wrong side of the Jordan, on the wandering side of life, but you are being called across. God is ready to launch you into a Promised Land. There will never be a time in your life when you will experience more anxiety and uncertainty than the time when you are right on the border of possessing what God has for your life.

If you would, take a little journey with me and just picture one of Joshua’s trusted confidents, a co-worker or maybe a general in his army. They come to him and say, “Joshua, I want to talk with you.” Picture this man being a skeptic in Joshua’s life, someone who came to him and said, “Joshua, I see the plan of God. I see the vision, and I hear the passion in your heart, but you have to be wise about where we’re headed. We need to be cautious; we need to be careful.”

The first thing I believe that the skeptic says is “It’s easier where you are.” It is always easier on this side of the Jordan. Why? Because you’ve been there for a while; it’s as simple as that. It’s familiar, even if you are in an uncomfortable place.

Many Christians live under a subtly deceptive belief that if a calling is too much work then it must not be God. If it’s from God, it’s going to be comfortable and easy, and it won’t demand a spirit of fortitude and vitality. That’s a deception from the enemy because he’s going to try to get you to say, “It’s getting too hard; it’s time to give up. It’s getting to be too much work now, and I want to stop laboring.”

Sometimes it’s easier to stay in a bad place, to be settled, comfortable and stuck because you are familiar with the place.

When God calls for movement and we cling to our comfort, we often find ourselves becoming more uncomfortable with the things that had once comforted us. We would actually be less discomforted if we’d gone into the things God called us to pursue. Clinging to the comfortable can become the ruin of the call of God on your life.

Today we are a nation that is headed toward tragedy unless we turn tragedy into triumph. I know that this is true, and I'm going to share what scripture says is the solution. Beginning in the book of Jeremiah, God had called the prophet into his service, and Jeremiah had to go and speak to a nation that had largely rejected God. They had reimaged God into a different kind of deity and had brought in false religions and false practices.

God, through Jeremiah, repeatedly called them back to him for 40 years. God told them over and over, “If you don't come back to me, I'll allow your sins to correct you. If you will not be corrected, then a tragedy will befall this nation.”

America is called a Christian nation, but if you've been listening, if you've been watching, even more if you've been discerning by the Holy Spirit according to God's word, you will know that we really are a post-Christian society and that we are in a downward spiral. There are the following three kinds of people in every nation: the rejecters of God, the religious toward God and the relational with God. If those who are relational with God dwindle, a society very quickly gets into a bad spot. So how do we turn tragedy into triumph?

After Israel had rejected the Lord, broken so many commandments, brought all these defiling practices into their society and broken the Father’s heart, “[God] said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to me.’” (Jeremiah 3:7, NKJV).

Isn't that wonderful? God says, “Just acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the Lord your God. If you will do this, if you will truly confess your sins, if you will come to me with your whole heart, I will heal you.”

Paul captured the right response to this in his writings, with a heart of anguish and repentance. “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25). Today, we have to hear this word of Christ: “Return to me!” This is it. It's simplicity, my friends. All that America has done and is doing right now that is rushing us toward judgment. The word of God says still, “Turn and repent. Return to me.”