Devotions

“Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows. Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 10:31-33).

For years I quoted this passage in my citywide crusades! I said it at the altar call to provoke people to come forward and confess Christ. But trusting God is so much more than making a public confession: “Jesus, forgive my sins. I believe in You!” Well-meaning millions have made that kind of “confession” and yet it did not stick.

The key to understanding what Jesus is saying is in Psalm 31:19. “Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou has wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!”

This “confession” is something the world must see and not just hear! “And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord” (Psalm 40:3).

We often talk about “witnessing for Jesus,” and we picture it as street preaching, passing out tracts, and telling friends and strangers that Jesus loves them. Beloved, that is only part of it!

The world is not looking for more doctrinal proof of the reality of God! It is not looking for greater proof of the resurrection or better arguments about creation. The world is looking for Christians who can stand up to every crisis, fear, trouble and difficulty and remain calm and at rest in the midst of it all. The world needs to see God’s children trusting wholly in their Lord.

The world must be able to point to a Christian and say, “There goes one who is not a complainer! He doesn’t fret or fear or run in times of trouble. He isn’t worried about tomorrow! His faith holds at all times!”
 

David said, “Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to usward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered” (Psalm 40:5).

God spoke to the Israelites in Babylonian captivity: “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jeremiah 29:11).

God thought of you before you were born! He thought of you when your life was breathed into a cell . . . when you were still in the womb!

“Thine eyes did see my [unformed] substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written . . . when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16).

We accept that He cares for our body, but He goes much farther—counting every hair, bone, muscle, cell, fiber. He is aware of every tear you have shed—He has counted and bottled them all. “Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle; are they not in thy book?” (Psalm 56:8). I can’t comprehend it all. He counts my hairs; He counts my tears and He bottles and saves them. Think of it—not a wasted tear of sorrow, joy or repentance.

He thinks of us when we lie down in bed and when we rise. He thinks of us with every step we take. He knows and understands every thought we think. It is written, “Jesus perceived their thoughts” (Luke 5:22).

Heaven is populated with highly intelligent, created beings—angels, seraphim, cherubim and the four-and-twenty elders. They are witnesses to the faithfulness of our God. They know of all the promises He has made to us concerning His attention toward every detail. They hear Him tell of His minute, total provision to keep and watch over us! All of heaven praises God, throwing their crowns at His feet, which is proof that they behold and believe in His faithfulness.

God can be trusted to do all He said He would!
 

Some of you reading this devotional have taken a vacation from “fighting the good fight.” You are weary of heart and have said to yourself, “I’ve got to ease up or crack up! I’m not going to love the Lord any less and I’ll stay faithful. But I must follow my heart and my heart is telling me to relax.”

Beloved, your timing could not be worse! Spiritual relaxation or letting up is the final spring in the devil’s trap. You are choosing midnight to go on vacation. “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:11-12).

If the night were far spent and the day of the Lord near when this was written, then how much nearer must it be now! There can be no relaxing in this last-days warfare. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist steadfast in the faith” (1 Peter 5:8-9). Satan will not relax; he will increase his efforts. We dare not sleep!

All through the New Testament, God is calling us to be awake, to be vigilant and aware, and to put on the whole armour. We are not to sleep as others, but we are to be looking for and hastening the day of the Lord.

Relax in this war, and you are dead. Relax, and you are going to be caught in the devil’s trap. That call to relax is right out of hell! It is the siren call of Satan himself. Be warned because it is high time to awaken!

“Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me, and the [traps] of the workers of iniquity” (Psalm 141:9).
 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John’s main audience for his gospel was the Greek culture. That’s why he immediately identified Jesus as “the Word,” referring to the Greek term logos. Greeks had been examining this concept of logos for centuries, an idea that spoke of wisdom; knowledge; reason; the meaning of life; the philosophy of human existence.

Now John challenged them: “Do you really want to know the meaning of life, to understand all human purpose on this earth? The logos you search for is found in the literal Word of God—His Son, Jesus. Christ is the logos everyone hungers for! You seek knowledge, but logos— real, knowable wisdom and life—is fully expressed in Jesus.”

When I was about twelve I overheard a newspaper reporter interviewing a Teen Challenge resident. She asked him, “What’s different about this program? What does it offer that you wouldn’t find at a secular treatment center?” The young man answered, “We get the Holy Ghost in the morning, Jesus in the afternoon and the Father at night.” That response may sound canned today, but it didn’t forty years ago. I remember the young man’s excitement as he told the reporter, “Teen Challenge is all about God. Only He can set me free this way. Only He can give me purpose and hope and make me happy. Lady, this is real!”

That’s the very word John used to describe Jesus to the Greeks: real. “The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9, ESV). From the Greek, John uses the word “alethinos,” meaning “real.” The Greeks thought “logos” was unknowable, but John told them, “God isn’t hiding Himself. He came to earth to live among us. The mystery of God has been revealed to you in Jesus!”

How exactly is this mystery revealed? Jesus chooses to make Himself known to the world through His people. When John says Christ comes to dwell in us, the verb He uses means “tabernacle.” Jesus “tabernacles” in us, just as God did in the Old Testament—His glory descending from heaven to dwell among His people. He chooses to make His home in us, making us—both individuals and congregations—the dwelling place of His glory.

This was a core truth for my father, David Wilkerson, who often said, “I don’t want a visitation from God. I want a habitation.” That truth came straight from John, who told the Greeks, “The logos is more than information, more than mental assent to an idea. It is God Himself coming to dwell within you!”
 

Have you ever felt that something is missing in your prayers—that somehow they are not as deep or as effective as they ought to be? After all, there is a great difference between prayer that is driven by human effort and prayer that is divine and truly lays hold of God. For example, consider the prayer of the famous Scottish reformer, John Knox, who stood on a mountaintop and cried, “God, give me Scotland or I die!” Before long, people began to come out into the streets under the conviction of God.

I want to pray that kind of prayer! I want something that goes beyond merely coming into God’s presence every day with a list: God, bless my home, bless my finances, bless my mother, bless my father, bless my children. I want to pray prayers that will move men toward God; prayers that will bring the Church of Jesus Christ back to life! I want the kind of prayer that God instructed Ezekiel to pray: “Call out to the breath of God to breathe upon these dry bones and raise the dead back to life” (Ezekiel 37:9). Those are the type of prayers I want to pray!

We see in the Scriptures that Jesus’ own disciples had a similar yearning. One day as Jesus was praying, their hearts were stirred. “And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1).

Keep in mind that the disciples were no strangers to prayer. They had seen Jesus pray and miraculously multiply loaves and fishes. Some were even with Jesus as He prayed on a mountaintop and they saw His countenance completely transfigured. Without a doubt, the disciples themselves also prayed as they personally walked with Jesus. However, this time they saw Jesus go into a certain place to pray, and it caused them to conclude that there was still something they had to understand about prayer. I can picture the disciples getting together and nudging each other, “You ask Him!” “No, you ask Him!” There was something in Jesus’ prayer that made it evident that prayer was much deeper than they had experienced up to that point.

“Lord, teach us to pray!” one of His disciples finally implored Him. So Jesus began to teach them, saying “When ye pray, say, Our Father which are in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil” (Luke 11:2-4).

Carter Conlon joined the pastoral staff of Times Square Church in 1994 at the invitation of the founding pastor, David Wilkerson, and was appointed Senior Pastor in 2001. A strong, compassionate leader, he is a frequent speaker at the Expect Church Leadership Conferences conducted by World Challenge throughout the world.