Devotions

A promise is never better or worse than the character of the one who's making it. A believer's faith can never rise higher than who he sees God to be. If we're sitting here singing songs that we're going to see a victory, then the blood shall never lose its power. If these are words and songs that we actually believe because we believe in the character of God, then our faith begins to rise up with that.

An inadequate view of God has to result in weak faith because faith depends upon the character of God, and that's why this is so important.

In the book of Isaiah, the prophet wrote that fear was beginning to fill the land. Isaiah knew the men who were stepping into power and that many of them were corrupt; the people didn't know what to do, and backsliding was taking place in their nation. They were being faced with outside enemies from Assyria and Babylon. With all of this mounting up, the people were starting to fear.

He said, “Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’” (Isaiah 40:9, ESV). In the next 20 to 25 verses, Isaiah began to unpack the greatness of God, saying stuff like “Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” (Isaiah 40:10-12).

From verse 13 down, Isaiah listed over and over again how great and powerful God is, and this links back to our ability to trust God’s promises. Remember what Isaiah said in verse nine. "Do not be afraid. Here is your God.” When fear begins to grip our minds and hearts, this is how we respond. We lift our eyes to the great God who saves.

_{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.}

God has revealed to us a sure way to become holy and perfect in his sight, whereby all his children can live in absolute peace and joy, knowing God looks on them as pure.

“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:21-24, NKJV).

This is all a free gift! His gift of holiness can never be a reward for anything we have done. It is an unearned, undeserved favor. “Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness” (Romans 4:4-5).

Submission is the only way into God's holiness, submitting to the righteousness of Christ through faith. To submit means “to surrender the power of your will.” With God there is no such thing as willpower; all power is his, and he will permit no other power than his own. God demands absolute holiness so that we will be humbled by this demand. He watches over our struggles to be holy with patience, waiting for us to fail so miserably that we will run to his throne, fall on our knees, and cry out, “It's hopeless! I am weak, sensuous, sinful. I have no good in me at all.” The kind of repentance that God is looking for is the confession of our futile efforts.

You can never be clothed in Christ's holiness until you fall on your face before God's throne. You must once and for all admit that you have nothing to offer the Lord but a broken-down lump of clay. You must be given holiness as a gift.

The greatest gift you can give to God is your faith that he will give you his holiness. We will exult then like Isaiah who said, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10).

Three months after Israel left Egypt, they arrived at the base of Mt. Sinai and set up camp. Moses climbed the rugged mountain to commune with the Lord and God called to him saying, “I am going to come to you in the form of a dark cloud so the people can hear when I talk to you. Then they will always believe you. Go down and get them ready for my visit. Sanctify them.”

On the morning of the third day, an awesome thunder and lightning storm descended on Mt. Sinai. As a cloud covered the mountain and Jehovah descended in fire, the earth shook with a violent earthquake. A trumpet sounded loud and long, Moses spoke, and God answered. His message that day to Moses and the children of Israel was clear: “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation...” (Exodus 19:6).

Just as he did that day on Mt. Sinai, God promised to speak once more. A prophecy recorded in Hebrews says, “See that you do not refuse him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven...'Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven.'” (Hebrews 12:25-26). Today God is speaking from heaven with the same powerful message that he spoke in Moses’ day: “As he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:15-16).

How do we stay holy in this wicked age? Who can keep himself from being contaminated by it all? No one — in his own strength, that is. Only God has the power to keep us holy, to present us to himself a holy people without spot or wrinkle.

The God who gives us his holiness has the power to keep us in it! The safest place on earth is at the foot of the cross, humbled before God’s throne. The more wicked the times, the more we need to stay yielded to him!

I believe in Holy Ghost timing. Our prayers will be answered, one way or another, in God’s own time. However, we are often afraid to submit our prayers to Holy Ghost scrutiny. Some of those prayers need to be purged because our faith can be misspent on requests that are not mature. We do not know how to pray “your will be done” (see Matthew 6:10). We don’t want his will as much as we want the things permitted by his will.

Abraham exercised his faith to remind himself that he was a stranger on this earth. His blessing pact produced only a tent to dwell in because he put his faith in that city “whose builder and maker is God” (see Hebrews 11:10).

Were some of these faith warriors not living in faith? Did God refuse to answer some of their prayers? After all, not all of them were delivered and not all lived to see answers to their prayers. Some were tortured. Others were “stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins…destitute, afflicted, tormented…in dens and caves of the earth…” (see Hebrews 11:36-38).

Some who had a reputation for having great faith “did not receive the promise” (see Hebrews 11:39). Those who did receive the promise used their faith to work righteousness, to gain strength in times of weakness and to put the enemy to flight.

Don’t worry about whether God will grant your request, and don’t depend on faith formulas and methods. Commit every prayer to Jesus with confidence. Say, “He is all I need. He will answer in his time and in his way. No matter what happens, I have faith in his faithfulness.”

May God forgive us if we are more concerned about having our prayers answered than about learning total submission to Christ. We do not learn obedience by the things we obtain but by the things we suffer.

Are you willing to learn by suffering a little longer with what appears to be an unanswered prayer? Will you rest in his love while patiently waiting for the promise?

God gave our forefather Abraham the land of Canaan “as an everlasting possession…” (Genesis 17:8, NKJV). In Hebrew, the word everlasting means never-ending. You might think that Abraham had to rejoice over this. God promised his descendants a permanent homeland, as far as they could see, and it would last into eternity. However, the New Testament tells us the world will be destroyed by fire, burnt completely out of existence, after which the Lord will bring about a new heaven and earth.

How could God’s “everlasting possession” to Abraham be a mere piece of real estate? How could it be eternal? God was saying that this land of promise was symbolic of a place beyond the earth. I believe Abraham knew this. The Bible says that as Abraham moved about in Canaan, he always felt alien: “By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9). Abraham’s heart longed for something beyond the land itself.

“He waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10). Abraham could see the true significance of the land blessing and he realized, “This place isn’t the real possession. It’s just an illustrated sermon of the great blessing to come.” Abraham grasped the true meaning of the Promised Land; he knew Canaan represented the coming Messiah. Jesus himself tells us, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).

The Holy Spirit enabled this patriarch to see down through the years, to the day of Christ. He knew that the meaning of his Promised Land meant a place of total peace and rest, and that this place of rest is Jesus Christ himself. That’s right, the Lord Jesus is our promised possession. We are his, but he is ours as well. God invites us to obtain our everlasting possession by simple faith.