What Kind of Prayer Pleases God?

 

“This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isaiah 66:2)

The first mark of the upright heart is that it trembles at the word of the Lord.

Isaiah 66 deals with the problem of some who worship in a way that pleases God and some who worship in a way that doesn’t. Verse 3 describes the wicked who bring their sacrifices, “He who slaughters an ox is like one who kills a man.” Their sacrifices are an abomination to God — on a par with murder. Why?

In verse 4 God explains, “When I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen.” Their sacrifices were abominations to God because the people were deaf to his voice. But what about those whose prayers God heard? God says in verse 2, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”

I conclude from this that the first mark of the upright, whose prayers are a delight to God, is that they tremble at God’s word. These are the people to whom the Lord will look.

So, the prayer of the upright that delights God comes from a heart that at first feels precarious in the presence of God. It trembles at the hearing of God’s word, because it feels so far from God’s ideal and so vulnerable to his judgment and so helpless and so sorry for its failings.

This is just what David said in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” The first thing that makes a prayer acceptable to God is the brokenness and humility of the one who prays. They tremble at his word.

THE POWER OF SPOKEN FAITH!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

THURSDAY JUNE 16, 2022.

SUBJECT : THE POWER OF SPOKEN FAITH!

Memory verse: "And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, "I believed and therefore I spoke," we also believe and therefore speak," (Second Corinthians 4 vs 13.)

READ: Matthew 8 vs 5 - 13:

8:5: Now when Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, pleading with Him,

8:6: saying, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented." 

8:7: And Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him."

8:8: The centurion answered and said, "Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed.

8:9: For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it."

8:10: When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! 

8:11: And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

8:12: But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

8:13: Then, Jesus said to the centurion, "Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you." And his servant was healed that same hour.

INTIMATION:

Believe in your heart and say with your mouth. Believing God and His Word is of great importance. But Jesus encourages us further to articulate, to say aloud, what we are believing God for. There is great power in the spoken word of faith.

Believing God is wonderful. But Jesus urged us to do one more thing: to speak the word of faith, to verbalize what we are seeking from God. Such a believer — who understands the power of speaking the Word of God with boldness and faith — "shall have whatsoever he saith". (Mark 11 vs 22 -23.) If one truly believes, then he will speak forth the word of God.

The passage we read today is about the faith of the Roman soldier, a 'Centurion.' I have always enjoyed meditating on the Bible story of this Roman soldier, and his faith. This Bible story sets forth all the ingredients of triumphant faith—the power of spoken faith in action. The centurion believed and spoke out his faith. He knew Jesus has authority over all things, including demons, and can exercise His authority from anywhere, just as he can, as a soldier over his subjects, and it is done. We, 'believers,' should do the same. 

The centurion believed in his heart and spoke it with his mouth, exercising the power of spoken faith, and Jesus highly commended him. In fact, He called it the greatest faith He had seen in all Israel. Let us all, therefore, as 'Believers,' speak with the same spirit of faith in the word. Our memory verse is the spoken faith of the anonymous psalmist in Psalm 116 vs 10, "I believed, therefore I spoke." He believed in God, spoke out to the LORD in his time of distress, and the LORD heard his voice and his supplication:

Salvation is the greatest of all God's gifts, and the opener of all other blessings of God. And it is obtained by us through believing in our hearts and confessing with our mouths that Jesus is the risen Lord. Salvation is as close as your own lips and heart: "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is the word of faith which we preach: that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." (Romans 10 vs 8 - 10.)

When we learn to speak the Word and not the problem, we are on the road to absolute victory. But we are defeated the moment we allow ourselves to start listing our burdens instead of counting our blessings. God is the Creator and Master over all things. He has given us the carte blanche to 'ask and receive, seek and find, and knock and the door will be opened to us.' But we must have faith in Him, and that faith must be spoken out. But as Christ said, "the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness." Many Christians will miss the kingdom because of not confessing their faith. Therefore, if you believe, then speak it.

Prayer: Abba Father, You are so faithful to Your promises, and cannot deny Yourself. I hold tightly to You and Your Word, my Redeemer and Savior. You have given me a mouth and wisdom which all my adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist. Help me to always declare boldly my faith in You at all times. As I believe so will I speak, in Jesus' Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD! 

Serve God with Your Thirst

 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (2 Corinthians 5:9)

What if you discovered (like the Pharisees did) that you had devoted your whole life to trying to please God, but all the while had been doing things that in God’s sight were abominations (Luke 16:14–15)?

Someone may question this and say, “I don’t think that’s possible; God wouldn’t reject a person who has been trying to please him.” But do you see what this questioner has done? He has based his conviction about what would please God on his idea of what God is like. That is precisely why we must begin with the character of God revealed in Scripture.

God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket. So, the great question is: How do you serve a spring? And: How do you serve a watering trough? How do you glorify God the way he really is?

If you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough, you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring, you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart’s satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell the people what you’ve found.

My hope as a desperate sinner hangs on this biblical truth: that God is the kind of God who will be pleased with the one thing I have to offer: my thirst. That’s why the sovereign freedom and self-sufficiency of God are so precious to me: they are the foundation of my hope that God is delighted not by the resourcefulness of bucket brigades, but by the bending down of broken sinners to drink at the fountain of grace.

By all means we should seek to please God, now and forever. But woe to us if our whole life proves to be based on a false view of what pleases God. The Lord is pleased not by those who treat him as a needy watering trough, but as an inexhaustible, all-satisfying spring. As Psalm 147:11 says, “The Lord takes pleasure . . . in those who hope in his steadfast love.”

The Honeymoon That Never Ends

 

As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. (Isaiah 62:5)

When God does good to his people, it is not so much like a reluctant judge showing kindness to a criminal whom he finds despicable. It is like a bridegroom showing affection to his bride.

Sometimes we joke and say about a marriage, “The honeymoon is over.” But that’s because we are finite. We can’t sustain a honeymoon level of intensity and affection. But God says that his joy over his people is like a bridegroom over a bride. And he doesn’t mean it starts out that way and then fades.

He is talking about honeymoon intensity and honeymoon pleasures and honeymoon energy and excitement and enthusiasm and enjoyment. He is trying to get into our hearts what he means when he says he rejoices over us with all his heart. Jeremiah 32:41, “I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.” Zephaniah 3:17, “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

With God the honeymoon never ends. He is infinite in power and wisdom and creativity so that there will be no boredom for the next trillion ages of millenniums.

THE CLEANSING BLOOD OF JESUS!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

WEDNESDAY JUNE 15, 2022.

SUBJECT : THE CLEANSING BLOOD OF JESUS!

Memory verse: "But if we in the light as He is in the light, we  have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." (First John 1 vs 7.)

READ: Hebrews 9 vs 22 - 26:

9:22: And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood; and without shedding of blood there is no remission.

9:23: Therefore, it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

9:24: For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;

9:25: not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another—

9:26: He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 

1:7:

INTIMATION:

Real cleansing from sin came with Jesus, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1 vs 29). Sin, by its very nature, brings death—that is a fact as certain as the law of gravity. Jesus did not die for His own sins; He had none. Instead, by a transaction that we may never fully understand, He died for the sins of the world. When we commit our life to Christ and thus identify ourselves with Him, His death becomes ours. He has paid the penalty of our sins, and His blood has purified us. Just as Christ rose from the grave, we rise to a new life of fellowship with Him (Romans 6 vs 4). 

The blood of Jesus Christ is the world’s greatest purifier because it removes the stain of sin. The Scripture, in Revelation 7 vs 14, says that the saints “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” It is difficult to imagine how blood could make any cloth white, but the blood of Jesus Christ did. White symbolizes sinless perfection or holiness, which can be given to people only by the death of the sinless Lamb of God on our behalf.

In the Old Testament times, God agreed to forgive people’s sins if they would bring animals for the priests to sacrifice. When this sacrificial system was inaugurated, the covenant between God and His people was sealed with the blood of animals (Exodus 24 bs 8). But animal blood did not in itself remove sin (only God can forgive sin), and animal sacrifices had to be repeated day after day and year after year. 

Jesus instituted a “new covenant” (agreement) between God and His people. Under the new covenant, Jesus would die in the place of sinners. Unlike the blood of animals, His blood (because He is God) would remove the sins of all who put their faith in Him. Jesus’ sacrifice would never have to be repeated; it would be good for all eternity (Hebrews 9 vs 23 - 28). 

Animal sacrifices could not take away sins; they provided only a temporary way to deal with sin until Jesus came to deal with sin permanently. Because the Old Testament believers were following God’s command to offer sacrifices, He graciously forgave them when, by faith, they made their sacrifices. But that practice looked forward to Christ’s perfect sacrifice. 

It is not possible that the blood of animals should take away sin because sin is between those who have been created after the image of God and God Himself. Sin is between God and man, and thus, only the One who was both God and man could mediate on behalf of both parties. Through grace, therefore, God was incarnate on behalf of man in order that an incarnate blood offering be made for the atonement of man’s sin (Titus 2 vs 11).

Sinful deeds are more than just wrong actions; ironically, these also include our attempts to reach God by being good enough! Our culture glorifies self-effort and personal achievement. It defines a successful person as one who obtains certain goals: financial security, health and fitness, and the respect of others. But the Bible gives us a different picture of successful living: accept Jesus’ sacrifice for your sin, abandon the futility of sinful deeds, and let the blood of Jesus purify your conscience (see Hebrews 10 vs 19 - 22). 

Many hesitate to witness about their faith in Christ because they don’t feel the change in their lives has been spectacular enough. But you qualify as a witness for Jesus because of what He has done for you, not because of what you have done for Him. Christ demonstrated His great love by setting us free from our sins through His death on the cross (“washed us from our sins in His own blood”), guaranteeing us a place in His kingdom, and making us priests to administer God’s love to others. The fact that the all-powerful God has offered eternal life to you is nothing short of spectacular. 

Christ has already finished the work for us in redemption. Ours is to believe in our hearts the finished work and confess with our mouth our rich heritage in Him. When you acknowledge Him as your Lord, then God becomes automatically your very Father. All the resources of heaven are at your disposal. You become a partaker of His Nature, and of His ability. God's ability becomes your ability. God's Strength becomes your strength, and Jesus is the surety of that New Covenant for you. (Hebrews 7 vs. 22.)

Prayer: Abba Father, thank You for what You wrought for me in redemption through Christ. You are the LORD over my life. I am in Christ, and Christ in You, therefore, Satan has no portion in me. My Sonship with You have given me victory as an overcomer of the world through my faith in You. In You I live, move, and have my being, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

How Much God Wants to Bless You

 

“The Lord will again take delight in prospering you.” (Deuteronomy 30:9)

God does not bless us begrudgingly. There is a kind of eagerness about the beneficence of God. He does not wait for us to come to him. He seeks us out, because it is his pleasure to do us good. God is not waiting for us; he is pursuing us. That, in fact, is the literal translation of Psalm 23:6, “Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life.”

God loves to show mercy. Let me say it again. God loves to show mercy. He is not hesitant or indecisive or tentative in his desires to do good to his people. His anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger. That’s what he meant when he came down on Mount Sinai and said to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Exodus 34:6). It’s what he meant when he said in Jeremiah 9:24, “I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

God is never irritable or edgy. His anger never has a short fuse. Instead he is infinitely energetic with absolutely unbounded and unending enthusiasm for the fulfillment of his delights.

This is hard for us to comprehend, because we have to sleep every day just to cope, not to mention thrive. Our emotions go up and down. We get bored and discouraged one day and feel hopeful and excited another.

We are like little geysers that gurgle and sputter and pop erratically. But God is like a great Niagara Falls — you look at 186,000 tons of water crashing over the precipice every minute, and think: Surely this can’t keep going at this force year after year after year. Yet it does.

That’s the way God is about doing us good. He never grows weary of it. It never gets boring to him. The Niagara of his grace has no end.

GOD CONVICTS, AND NEVER CONDEMNS!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

TUESDAY JUNE 14, 2022.

SUBJECT : GOD CONVICTS, AND NEVER CONDEMNS! 

Memory verse: "And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement." (John 16 vs 8.) 

READ: John 3 vs 17 - 19:

3:17: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.

3:18: He who believes in Him is not condemned: but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

3:19: And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 

INTIMATION:

In the passage we read today, Jesus said He didn't come into this world to send sinners to their death (to condemn the world), but to deliver them from sin so that they could be saved, and live the abundant life. This could only happen when He convicts us of our sins. The Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin through the truth that He would reveal to the believers. The truth that would be revealed would be the standard by which sin, righteousness, and judgement would be determined. The truth would be the words of Jesus by which He would judge the world. 

God uses the Holy Spirit indwelling all believers to achieve the three important tasks: (1) convicting the world of its sin and calling it to remembrance. Those who do not accept the atoning sacrifice of Jesus for their sins will remain in a state of condemnation because of sin, (2) revealing the standard of God's righteousness to anyone who believes. Because Christ would no longer be physically present on earth, through the preaching of the believers, the world would be convicted of not doing that which is right in the eyes of God, and (3) demonstrating Christ's judgement over Satan. Through the believers, the Holy Spirit would reveal that all men must give account of their behavior before God. 

Now, in the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 vs 1 - 11, Jesus demonstrated to the crowd His mission in this world; He didn't come into this world to send sinners to their death, but to deliver them from sin. The woman caught in adultery was given the opportunity to rest in the safety of Christ's name. By law she was guilty of breaking a commandment from God, and the Pharisees wanted to stone her. Jesus showed the crowd that they were all guilty of breaking the law in some way. He invited the woman's accusers to proceed with the stoning, but only if they themselves were guiltless of breaking the law. 

The Scripture says: "Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, "Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Had no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said to her, neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." (John 8 vs 9 - 11.)

Jesus didn't condemn the woman accused of adultery, and He also did not ignore nor condone her sin. He told her to 'go and sin no more.' Jesus stands ready to forgive any sin in our lives, but we must do our part; confession and repentance of our sins, indicating a change of heart. With God's help, we can accept Christ's forgiveness and stop our wrongdoing. Jesus proved that condemnation only leads to death, but conviction delivers us to a new life free from sin. The accusers were convicted of their own sins in their consciences until one by one, from the oldest to the last, they learned not to judge the woman caught breaking the law.

The Holy Spirit works to enlighten our awareness of what we are doing that leads to death, and what we need to do to enjoy the abundant life. Condemnation is the work of the devil, 'the accuser of our brethren,' whose main aim is "to steal, and to kill, and to destroy." But thanks be to God for He sent His Son into the world that the world through Him might be saved, and have life, and abundant life indeed! (See John 10 vs 10.)

The Holy Spirit speaks to our conscience—our inner man—to convict us of sin and convince us of righteousness. His conviction is intended to convince us to repent, which means to turn and go in the right direction rather than the wrong one in which we are currently going. The devil's condemnation fills people with hopelessness and futility. The devil, through condemnation, wants to steal, or kill, or destroy anything good in your life, and most especially your relationship and trust in the Lord. His aim is to severe your relationship with God, to win you over to his side.

It's important for believers to discern the difference between conviction and condemnation. Many Christians still have the two mixed up. They think they are being condemned when they are being convicted. The more time we spend in the presence of God, the more aware we become of His love for us, and the more sensitive we become of our own actions that do not reflect God's heart. 

Prayer: Abba Father, show me my sin. Convict me of what I am doing wrong that breaks Your law. Convict me when I deviate from Your precepts. Keep my inner man tender to hear Your voice. Give me power to walk in Your precepts, and be free from sin, in Jesus' Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!