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Archive for the ‘God’ Category

Are You an Overcomer?

Posted in 1 John, Books of the Bible, Devotional, God, Overcomer, tagged , , , on April 28, 2010|

The Apostle John, in his first epistle (letter) calls believers “overcomers”.  This term is also used by John in the Book of Revelation.  In 1 John 4:4, John says, ” You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”  In 1 John 5:4, he says, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world–our faith.  Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

To summarize:

  • When we are born of God,  by faith in Jesus Christ as our LORD and Savior, we are overcomers.
  • An overcomer is he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God
  • Faith in Jesus allows the believer to overcome the world
  • By one’s faith in Jesus, Jesus gives power to overcome because Jesus is all-powerful (omnipotent)
  • Overcoming the world means having victory in all things through Jesus

May you take comfort from your position as an overcomer.   We have overcome the world because our Champion, Jesus, has overcome  it.

If you have not committed your life to Christ yet, don’t waste anymore time.  Become an overcomer today!

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How Shall I Go On?

Posted in Crying out to God, Exhortation, God, Hope, In times of difficulty, Jehovah Jireh, Psalms, Relationship with God, Waiting on God, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2010|

Perhaps you have had a day (or two) when you asked the LORD, “How shall I go on?”  Perhaps it is illness, drug addiction, abusive relationship, fear, enemies who would seek to destroy you or just a sense of overwhelming fatigue . . . in looking at your circumstances, did you turn to God and ask, “How shall I go on?”  And what did He say?

  • Wait? Sometimes the LORD says to wait.  Don’t go forward or back.  Don’t go to the left or the right.  Don’t seek to change your circumstances, just wait.  Sometimes, the waiting is the hardest part.  But we wait because He is God.  Like a parent who tells a child to stay on the curb because a car is coming, God tells us to wait because He sees all things and knows all things.  He tells us to wait because that is best for us.  He promises “strengthen your heart” while you wait.  (Ps. 27:14)  Psalm 37:9 promises that ” those who wait on the LORD, They shall inherit the earth.”    Isaiah says, “who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.”   (Isa. 40:31)  As you wait, the LORD may give you new strength.  He may allow you to soar above your troubles, keeping them from disturbing your peace.   He may take away your fatigue, allowing you to go a little further.
  • Cry out? Sometimes the LORD would have us to cry out to Him, recognizing that He is Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides everything.  There is certainly lots of scriptural support for crying out to God in times of trouble.  Psalm 18:6 tells us, “In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry came before Him, even to His ears.”  In Psalm 34:17, we read, “the righteous cry out, and the LORD hears, And delivers them out of all their troubles.”  Psalm 56:9 tells us when ” I cry out to You, Then my enemies will turn back; This I know, because God is for me.  In Psalm 57:2, it says, “I will cry out to God Most High, To God who performs all things for me.”   He is a God who hears and answers, so maybe He would have you to cry out, expecting His response.

Whether you wait or you cry, or you cry out while you are waiting, waiting and crying out are done in expectation, in faith.  I wait for God to deliver me, to strengthen me.  I wait because there is none other like Him.   “LORD, what do I wait for?  My hope is in You.”  (Ps. 39:7)   He alone has the words of eternal life.  When I cry out, I cry out to God in faith because God alone knows my circumstances.  God alone has power over all things.  I cry out to God because He alone is God.

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Possess Your Possessions

Posted in Deuteronomy, Devotional, Exhortation, God, In times of difficulty, the LORD, tagged , , , on March 18, 2010|

In Deuteronomy 31, Moses teaches the strategy for overcoming the enemies in your life.  I believe this strategy can be applied to enemies of any kind including enemies from within.  Essentially, if you read Deuteronomy 31, you will immediately notice one important element of the strategy – God.

Deut. 31:3-6 “The LORD your God Himself crosses over before you; He will destroy these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua himself crosses over before you, just as the LORD has said.  And the LORD will do to them as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites and their land, when He destroyed them.  The LORD will give them over to you, that you may do to them according to every commandment which I have commanded you.  Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.”

Almost all of the doing is being done by God:
  • He goes first
  • He does the work of rooting out the enemy
  • We just walk into the land He has already made ready for us to possess

This is a strategy I can live with.  All the heavy lifting is done by God.  He destroys all the enemies and gives me what they had.  He promises to always be with me.  I need only do what He has commanded – walk in the paths He has laid for me.

Remember, “The eternal God is your refuge, And underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you, And will say, ‘Destroy!  Then Israel shall dwell in safety, The fountain of Jacob alone, In a land of grain and new wine; His heavens shall also drop dew.  Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD, The shield of your help And the sword of your majesty! Your enemies shall submit to you, And you shall tread down their high places.”  Deut. 33:27-29

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Looking for Rest?

Posted in Devotional, God, Hope, Jesus, Lover of my soul, Matthew, Relationship with God, salvation, tagged , , , , , , , on March 15, 2010|

Matthew 11:28-30   (Jesus Speaking) says,  “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

This scripture speaks to us of 2 aspects of the promise of rest in this scripture.
1. Eternal aspect of the promise of Rest:  Salvation and Eternal life with God
  • The Bible, teaches that it is appointed man once to die and then the judgment.  You will not be able to take your “protections” with you.  Things will not keep you safe from the judgment of God. One day, you will stand totally exposed before the Holiness of God to answer for your life, to answer the questions, “What have you done with my Son, Jesus?”  What will you say?  Not knowing for sure or trying to earn your way can leave your weary and in need of rest.  This is the rest that Jesus is offering.
  • If you haven’t dealt with the issue of eternity, it is likely you have not dealt with your sin.  The older we get, the more are failures and mistakes seem to increase.    Are you weary and heavy laden from carrying the burden of failed marriages?  Failed relationships with family?   Failed parenting?  Failed careers?  Failed attempts to overcome self-destructive addictions or behaviors?  Failed religious experiences?  Despite all your bravado, your jokes, your defenses, do you know deep down that you have fallen short of God’s perfection and there is nothing you can do to bridge that gap?  Does sin weigh on you?  Are your failures heavy?  Have you gone too far?  Have you been too bad, hurt too many, fallen to far?  Even for God?
  • Do you long for rest – to settle with God the issue of your sin – to accept the gift of His Son – the perfect sacrifice – the atonement for your sin?   There is good news!   Jesus offers hope.
  • Jesus will take all you have – all the evil, the sin, failures, pride, self-reliance, arrogance, rage, revenge, abuse.   He’ll trade all your garbage – and for that, He’ll give you rest.
2. A life of rest is characterized by walking by the power and under the direction of the Holy Spirit  There are 6 places you can find rest (6 essential truths – when understood and incorporated into our life, will allow rest)
  • At the cross
  • In the acceptance of God’s Grace
  • In Surrender to Lordship of Jesus
  • In obedience to God
  • In fellowship with God (knowing Him and His promises – spending time with Him)
  • In walking yoked with the Holy Spirit

May you find the rest today that is available through Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross.  There is much to be busy about, but Jesus told us that the “good part” was sitting at His feet.

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Is God Your BFF?

Posted in Exhortation, Friend, God, In times of difficulty, Psalms, Relationship with God, the Father, the LORD, the provider, worship, tagged , , on February 25, 2010| 2 Comments »

I re-read a journal entry that I had written about an extended trial I was going through.  In the entry, I was crying out to God asking how I would ever be able to go forward.  I was tired and out of strength.  The path was totally hidden from view by the fog of uncertainty.  The LORD showed me Psalm 20:1-6.  The message was that He would minister to me out of my existing relationship with Him.

I think the message for all of us is to always (whether in trials or in times of peace) be in close relationship with God.  Is God your BFF (Best Friend Forever)?  He should be.

Psalm 20:1 says, “May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble; May the name of the God of Jacob defend you.”  To answer you, the LORD must hear you.  For God’s name to defend you, you must be associated with or be called by God’s name.  To be called by God’s name is to be in close relationship with God, even as close as a child.

Psalm 20:2 provides, “May He send you help from the sanctuary, And strengthen you out of Zion.”  To send you help, He must know what you need and where to deliver it.  The Sanctuary was the Old Testament place where God was (c.f. the New Testament where God’s spirit dwells in the believer).  This statement can best be understood as a promise that God will send you help from where He dwells.  He will send believers to be your help, your brothers and sisters in Christ will be ministers of God to you.  Also God will minister directly to you by His spirit dwelling within you as a believer.

Psalm 20:3 goes on to say, “May He remember all your offerings, And accept your burnt sacrifice.”  The offerings were part of the worship of God in the Old Testament.  It would be like saying today, “May God remember all the sincere worship in which you engaged.”  The burnt sacrifice was the sacrifice to deal with sin.  It is described in the Old Testament as “a sweet aroma to the LORD.”  God is pleased by the sweet smell of our offerings.  As we lay our lives down for others in obedience, as we practice gentleness, self-control, patience, long-suffering and love, we sacrifice up our flesh and what it wants.  That sacrifice is pleasing to God.  He promises to remember that.

In the next 3 verses, Psalm 20:4-6, we read the following:  “May He grant you according to your heart’s desire, And fulfill all your purpose.  We will rejoice in your salvation, And in the name of our God we will set up our banners! May the LORD fulfill all your petitions.  Now I know that the LORD saves His anointed; He will answer him from His holy heaven With the saving strength of His right hand.”   From the relationship with God, comes fulfillment.  This is not just the idea of getting what you want, but rather of having the one who hears, answers, claims, defends, helps, strengthens and remembers you bring to you the best things – things that will satisfy your deepest longing and fulfill your very reason for being.  That is what God does daily for those who are called according to His purposes and called according to His name.

May the God of all creation be your BFF!

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Why is the Gospel Important?

Posted in Exhortation, God, salvation, tagged , on February 20, 2010|

The gospel is important because it confronts us, shows us our sin, our moral helplessness, our intellectual blindness, God’s wrath against us.

The gospel assures us that God has a deep and committed love for sinners, that He desires fellowship with us, that He even went so far as to provide a substitutionary sacrifice for our sin, payment in blood, the blood of His son.

The gospel is a call.  We are summoned by God to turn from our sin and to trust in God, to give ourselves over wholly to His plan and provision – the Lamb’s way.

We respond to the gospel.  We go with God, agree with God about our sin.  We repent and are saved.

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Promises of Hope

Posted in God, Hope, the LORD, the provider on January 23, 2010|

ISAIAH 58:11

The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.


This verse is filled with great promises that give hope.
The Lord will :
  1. guide you continually,
  2. satisfy your soul in drought,
  3. strengthen your bones,
  4. make you a flourishing garden, and
  5. make you a never-failing spring of water.

1) The Lord will guide.  He is not setting us on a twisting, curving path with a maze of roads to choose from without help.  He is with us.  He will guide us continually.  With God, the connection is never broken.  He is on task with us, ready to help us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  He takes no vacations.

2) The Lord will satisfy your soul in drought.  Before I was walking with the Lord, I sometimes felt a longing in my soul for something that would satisfy.   The emptiness was, I now know, my soul calling out to be filled by God, with the things of God, His Word, fellowship with God and other believers, and the Holy Spirit.  In times of drought which occur even after we believe and walk with God, God will bring satisfaction to our soul.  He feeds our souls with “God things”, e.g. His presence, His Word, and His blessings.

3) The Lord will strengthen your bones.  He will strengthen us physically, healing us and giving us the stamina to serve Him.  When we ask to be strengthened for His work, His call, He gives us the strength and energy to do good works in His name.  If we need healing in our bodies, He will do that work.

4) He promises to make us watered gardens, lush with fruit (of the spirit) and never lacking in the living water (Jesus Christ).   Psalm 1:3 says that the man who delights and meditates in God’s law “shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall prosper.”  Jeremiah 17:7-8 says, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, And whose hope is the LORD.  For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.”

5) He promises we will be springs of water that never fail.   In John 7:38, Jesus promised “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”  He gives us what we could never give or obtain for ourselves.  What He gives to us, He will cause to bubble up out of us to overflow to those around us.  It is out of that overflow that we are able to minister His love and mercy to others.

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A Father’s Love

Posted in Exhortation, God, John, the Father on January 16, 2010| 1 Comment »

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.   John 3:16

It would seem God gave us the picture of a father and his son, so we could better understand his love. For who is it that God would call to be saved who wouldn’t have a parent, even if that parent were absent, abusive or neglectful. We all are someone’s child, and many of us have our own children. We all understand, even if not from personal experience, that the parent- child relationship is intended to be a life-long bond that withstands all attacks, a bond of the heart.

I lost my father at the age of three. Despite having a step-father for most of my life, the loss of my father colored my life. Every major life step or accomplishment, I thought of him and wondered what he would say. His absence was noticeable. Every Father’s Day, I am reminded of what I lost.

The point is that God wanted us to understand the depth of his love for us, the love of a parent, a loving father who considers what is best for us, who wants to protect and nurture us. It is also this father who will sacrifice the most important thing for us – his son. We understand the depth of the sacrifice as reflected in the relationship lost, father losing son. We can only begin to understand this love of God for us by looking at the sacrifice.

Consider the story of Abraham and Issac, a Biblical illustration of a father’s call by God to sacrifice his son. It can be found in Genesis 22 starting in verse 1. Abraham is a type of God the Father and Issac, a type of Jesus. Abraham loved Issac. He had waited many years for God to fulfill his promise to give him a son. Sarah was Abraham’s wife whom he loved very much. This was the only child of their union, received some 60 plus years into their marriage. He was a treasure to his father in his old age.

Issac was likely a grown man at the time that these events took place. He followed his father’s instructions to go up with him to the mountain. Issac would have known that a sacrifice was needed when he set off on the journey with his father. Scripture tells us that once up on the mountain, Abraham bound Issac. We know that Issac would have had to have gone along with it since he was a grown man and Abraham was well over 100 years old at the time. After binding him, Abraham laid him upon the altar of wood. Imagine that act. Put yourself in Abraham’s place. Picture yourself building an altar, binding up your grown child and taking out a knife and preparing to slay your child, the love of your life. I have trouble walking myself through it even in my mind’s eye when I see the face of my child peering at me from the pile of wood, asking me with her eyes what I am intending. In the end, God stops Abraham short of the sacrifice and accounts Abraham’s faith and obedience as righteousness. Abraham does not need to sacrifice his son to show his love for God; however, God did have to sacrifice His Son to show His love to a lost world and to pay the price for their sin.

The relationship between father and son is used to show us about our relationship with God, e.g. the intimacy, the reverence, the provision, protection and other attributes of God; however, it is also used to evidence for us the depth of the sacrifice that God made in securing our salvation, and the obedience of the son to the father in walking out that plan.

The death of Jesus on the cross some 2000+ years ago was no accident, no unforeseen consequence, rather He willingly gave up His life, became the sacrifice for me and for you. Matthew 20:28 says, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Paul confirms this in his first letter to Timothy, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” 1 Tim. 2:5.

Meditate on the sacrificial love described in John 3:16 and the other scriptures discussed here, and ask the Lord to reveal to you what He would have you to understand about His great love for you.

Write down 3 ways God has manifest his great love for you in your life. This could include ways he has protected you, opened the way for you, comforted you in time of trial or pain, restored you, etc.)

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What does Biblical forgiveness look like?

Posted in Bible, Forgiveness, God, tagged , , , on January 1, 2010|

God’s forgiveness of my sin (and your sin) is definitely a clear example of what biblical forgiveness looks like.  God does not forgive my sins because He has to or needs to but because He wants to.  God has provided a way (Jesus), so He can forgive my sins and redeem me from the curse (death) of them.  His forgiveness of my sins is not something that I have earned or that I deserve, and so it will be with those whom I forgive.  They will not have to do anything to earn it, they will likely not deserve it, but I must forgive them as God has forgiven me.

God forgives sin because it is part of His nature to be merciful.  He forgives the sins of those who have repented of their sins, applied the adequate sacrifice (the blood of Jesus) to their sin and submitted to the Lordship of Jesus.  I forgive because I am a bond servant of Christ, and His spirit dwells within me and compels me to be like Him, to show mercy as He shows mercy.  And so I must forgive those who trespass against me, against my loved ones.

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