Devotions

Paul knew some Judaizers had come to the early church and had told them, “Don’t listen to Paul. He’s a chump.” So he had to write and defend himself, as he often did. “You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first,” —this is a humble confession— “and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. …Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (Galatians 4:13-14,16, ESV).

The Bible has all kinds of incidents where a prophet would come to a king and speak a message from the Lord, but it was a corrective Word. The king would respond, “What did you just say?” Then to his guards, “Would you arrest him and put him in a cell. Oh, and two days later, go ahead and cut his head off.”

Why? Because we don’t like to be corrected. When we walk in pride, we are fools, and Proverbs says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid” (Proverbs 12:1). If you don’t want people to get upset at you, you got to tell them what they want to hear.

A lot of churches run this way. Avoid any verses in the Bible that are corrective and might make people feel uncomfortable. If they’re practicing some sin like racial animosity, don’t tell a white person that everybody’s the same and that we’re to love everyone. No, they don’t want to hear that if they’re in certain parts of the country or part of certain mindsets. Don’t tell black people that they have to love white people even though the history of this country is not so pretty. No, they do not want to hear that. Don’t tell anybody anything they don’t want to hear because pride doesn’t like to be corrected.

People think, “I’m going to do things my way, and if you correct me, that means you don’t like me!” The scripture say, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). Don’t we all need a baptism of humility? Lord, give me humility so that I don’t see anyone who corrects me as an enemy.

^{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.} 

What does it all mean when prayers go unanswered? When hurts linger and God seems to be doing nothing in response to our faith? Often God is loving us more supremely at that time than ever before. The Word says, “For whom the Lord loves He chastens” (Hebrews 12:6, NKJV). A chastening of love takes precedence over every act of faith, prayer or promise. What I see as hurting me could be his loving me. It could be his gentle hand spanking me out of my stubbornness and pride.

We place more emphasis on the power of our prayers than we do on getting his power into us. We want to figure out God so we can read him like a book. We don't want to be surprised or bewildered; and when things happen contrary to our concept of God, we say, “This can't be God. That's not the way he works.”

We are so busy working on God that we forget he is trying to work on us. This is what this life is all about, God working on us and trying to remake us into vessels of glory. We are so busy praying to change things that we have little time to allow prayer to change us. God has not put prayer and faith in our hands as if they were two secret tools by which a select group of ‘experts’ learn to pry something out of him. God said he is more willing to give than we are to receive. God is not some eternal, divine tease. He has not surrounded himself in riddles for men to unravel, as if to say, “Only the most clever will get the prize.”

We are so mixed up on this matter of prayer and faith. We think of faith as a way to corner God on his promises. We shout, "Lord, you can't go back on your promise. I want what is coming to me. You must do it, or else your Word is not true."

This is why we miss the true meaning of prayer and faith. We see God only as the giver and us as the receivers, but prayer and faith are the avenues by which we become givers to God. They are not to be used as ways to get things from God but rather as a way to offer him our hearts, minds and lives to be transformed as he wills.

Have you noticed there is very little talk nowadays about heaven or about leaving this old world behind? Instead, we are bombarded with messages on how to use our faith to acquire more things. “The next revival,” said one well-known teacher, “will be a financial revival. God is going to pour out financial blessing on all believers.”

Any message about death bothers us. We try to ignore even thinking about it and think that those who discuss it are morbid. Occasionally, we will talk about what heaven must be like, but most of the time the subject of death is taboo.

Nowadays, death is considered an intruder that cuts us off from the good life to which we have become accustomed. We have so cluttered our lives with material things that we are bogged down. We can no longer bear the thought of leaving our beautiful homes, our lovely things, our charming sweethearts. We seem to be thinking, “Dying now would be too great a loss. I love the Lord, but I need time to enjoy my real estate. I married a wife. I want to see what our children do with their lives. I need more time."

What a stunted concept of God's eternal purposes! No wonder so many Christians are frightened by the thought of death. The truth is that we are far from understanding Christ's call to forsake the world and all its entanglements. He calls us to die without building memorials to ourselves, to die without worrying how we should be remembered. Jesus left no autobiography, no headquarters, no university or Bible college. He left nothing to perpetuate his memory but the bread and the wine.

How different the first Christians were. Paul spoke much about death. In fact, our resurrection from the dead is referred to in the New Testament as our blessed hope.

What is the greatest revelation of faith, and how is it to be exercised? You will find it in Hebrews. “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. …But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them" (Hebrews 11:13,16, NKJV).

These mortal bodies of ours are but mere shells. The shell is not for keeping but a temporary confine that enshrouds an ever-growing, ever-maturing life force. The body is a shell that acts as a transient guardian of the life inside. The shell is synthetic in comparison to the eternal life it clothes.

This is how Paul could say, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21, NKJV). Was Paul morbid? Did he have an unhealthy fixation on death? Did Paul show a lack of respect for the life God had blessed him with? Absolutely not!

Paul lived life to the fullest. He said, “For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you” (Philippians 1:23-24). To him, life was a gift, and he had used it well to fight a good fight. However, he had also overcome the fear of the ‘sting of death’ and could now say, “It's better to die and be with the Lord than to stay in the flesh.” That kind of talk is absolutely foreign to our modern, spiritual vocabularies. We have become such life worshippers that we have very little desire to depart to be with the Lord.

Death is a mere breaking of the fragile shell. At the precise moment our Lord decides our shell has fulfilled its function, God's people must abandon their old, corrupt bodies back to the dust from which they came. Who would think of picking up the fragmented pieces of shell and forcing the newborn chick back into its original state? Who would think of asking a departed loved one to give up his glorified body made in Christ's own image and return to the decaying husk from which he or she broke free?

Every true Christian has been imbued with eternal life. It is planted as a seed in our mortal bodies and is constantly maturing. It is within us an ever-growing, ever-expanding process of development; and it must eventually break out of the shell to become a new form of life. This glorious life of God in us exerts pressure on the shell, and at the very moment resurrection life is mature, the shell breaks. The artificial bounds are broken, and the soul is freed from its prison. Praise the Lord!

Faith is something you do based on what you know. Knowledge means nothing unless it is acted upon. Consider this example. The children of Israel received the good word that God had given them Canaan for a homeland. That information would have meant nothing at all to them, though, if they had remained in Egypt as slaves. The Bible says, “By faith [Moses] forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. …By faith [Israel] passed through the Red Sea as by dry land…” (Hebrews 11:27, 29, NKJV).

The Israelites did not march to the border of Canaan, fire one volley of arrows and expect all the enemy armies to drop dead. The land was theirs, but they had to possess it one step at a time.

Christ settled the issue of slavery to sin by declaring you emancipated from its dominion, but you have to believe it to the point that you do something about it. It is not enough to say, "Yes, I believe Christ forgives sin. I believe he is Lord. I know he can break the power of sin in my life." You are mentally consenting to what you heard, but faith is more than that. Faith is stepping out on that promise of freedom and acting upon it.

Scripture says, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:3-4 NKJV).

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever” (1 Peter 5:8-11 NKJV).

Believers overcome the evil power of this world through faith. True faith is the only thing that can help you stand up with confidence against the powers of temptation. Self-control is possible only when, by faith, the truth about our freedom in Christ is accepted.