How to Plead for Unbelievers

 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)

Paul prays that God would convert Israel. He prays for her salvation! He does not pray for ineffectual influences, but for effectual influences. And that is how we should pray too.

We should take the new covenant promises of God and plead with God to bring them to pass in our children and our neighbors and on all the mission fields of the world.

God, take out of their flesh the heart of stone and give them a new heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 11:19)
Circumcise their heart so that they love you! (Deuteronomy 30:6)
Father, put your Spirit within them and cause them to walk in your statutes. (Ezekiel 36:27)
Grant them repentance and a knowledge of the truth that they may escape from the snare of the devil. (2 Timothy 2:25–26)
Open their hearts so that they believe the gospel! (Acts 16:14)

When we believe in the sovereignty of God — in the right and power of God to elect and then bring hardened sinners to faith and salvation — then we will be able to pray with no inconsistency, and with the confidence of great biblical promises for the conversion of the lost.

Thus, God has pleasure in this kind of praying because it ascribes to him the right and honor to be the free and sovereign God that he is in election and salvation.

THE SOURCE OF STRIFE IN US!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

FRIDAY JUNE 17, 2022.

SUBJECT : THE SOURCE OF STRIFE IN US!

Memory verse: "Where do wars and fights come among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?  (James 4 vs 1.) 

READ: James 4 vs 1 - 3:

4:1: Where do wars and fights come among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?

4:2: You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

4:3: You ask and you do not receive,,because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

4:4: Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend to the world makes himself an enemy of God.

4:5: Or do you not think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"?

4:6: But He gives more grace. Therefore He says "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

INTIMATION:

Christians or Believers ought to be members of the Body of Christ - one body. But quarrels, strife, fights, competition, and so on, is found amongst Christians. Instead of members of one body of Christ existing and working together: "For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ" (First Corinthians 12 vs 12).

The Body of Christ (The Body of Believers)—the Church, is composed of many types of people from a variety of backgrounds with a multitude of gifts and abilities. It is easy for these differences to divide people, as is the case amongst believers today. But despite the differences, all believers have one thing in common; faith in Christ. On this essential truth the church finds unity.

Quarrels and fights among believers are always harmful, and results from evil desires battling within us. We want more possessions, more members of our church, more money, higher status, more recognition. Such competitions drive us into fights, and quarrels in order to have it. How does all this disturbance get started within us? We know that it is not God's will for us because His thoughts for us is for good and not of evil (Jeremiah 29 vs 11). The Lord does not want His children to live in the midst of a constant interior war zone. 

That is the nature of this world in which we live, but it is not supposed to be the nature of the Kingdom of God. Jesus has told us that the Kingdom of God is within us. (Luke 17 vs 21.) The Kingdom of God is not like an earthly kingdom with geographical boundaries. Instead, it begins with the work of God's Spirit in our lives and in our relationships. 

One reason you and I came to Christ in the first place is because we want to escape all that kind of endless strife and conflict. That is why we became citizens of the Kingdom of God. The Bible tells us that the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost (Romans 14 vs 17). As followers of Jesus Christ, that is our heritage and our inheritance. 

Why is it, then, that so many of us who truly love God, who are going to heaven, who are called according to His divine purpose, still spend our earthly existence in the midst of what we are trying so desperately to escape from? What is the source of this strife? Where does it originate?

But notice the second part of the verse. James tells us that all these negative things arise from the sensual desires that are ever warring in our members. Do you know that you and I can get into conflict by wanting something that is clearly God's will for us? If we go about trying to get it in the wrong way, we will only produce strife and war and conflict.

The apostle James portrays divisive attitudes that centered around selfish ambition and materialism. As James turns to portray the carnal hearts of the materialists, he is stern by using words that clearly identify the selfish hearts of those who manifest wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and demonic. He reveals the struggles that go on among those who harbor attitudes that are earthly, sensual, and demonic. 

Strife and conflict arise within us because our desires, even our righteous desires, are warring in our bodily members because we want to achieve them by our own efforts outside the grace of God, and this is impossible. Consequently, we do not ask, and even when we ask, we ask for wrong reasons.

The Scripture observes that it is pride that causes our not asking from the Maker and Owner of those things we desire. Instead we strive to do it our own way. And even when we ask, pride makes us ask for wrong reasons; to spend in our pleasures. "God resist the proud," therefore, the grace to obtain that which you desire, and is known to God as your need, is not given to you.

The cure for the evil desires is humility. Pride makes us self-centered and leads us to conflicts with others. We can be released from our self-centered desires by humbling ourselves before God, realizing that all we really need is His approval. 

Prayer: Abba Father, Your thought for us is of good, and it is Your will we live in peace with one another. Give me the grace to eschew strifes and quarrels with other people, but rather live in peace with one another, and helping one another, in Jesus' Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

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!