Category: Devotions

Easter : Times of Refreshing

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Before him all the nations are as nothing;
they are regarded by him as worthless
and less than nothing. (Isaiah 40:17)

If you take today’s opening verse in isolation it sure sounds like God is just mad and hates us. Often in Scripture, before people can hear the good news, they need a warning about the bad news.

So, this is not going to be a downer blog post. There will be good news today: despite God’s rant in this verse, God still loves us and calls out a redeemed people!

Today’s verse, while not a permanent condemnation by God, is a caution against pride. What if a nation or an individual think that they are self-sufficient, superior, and have succeeded at doing life their own way? They need a healthy dose of divine pessimism about what happens when you try to stand on your own. So, today’s divine correction brings us to the good news:

Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. (Acts 3:19-20)

Repentance brings us out from under God’s stern warning, and into something delightful. What a picture the word “refreshing” gives of the Christian life. How different from the erroneous idea that being a Christian is a grim, ascetic grind. Indeed, Jesus said I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10b)

As we look forward to Easter, if you do not know him yet, turn to Jesus the Messiah, who loves you and is for you! And if you do know him, may your own joy in him keep increasing and abounding.

Be a Blessing

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Now the Lord said to Abram…. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing….and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3

This week’s picture is the Facebook icon of “feeling blessed”.…but what does “blessing” mean…really?

One dictionary definition of blessing is “anything promoting or contributing to happiness, well-being, or prosperity.” As Christians, we might change that to say that blessing is “anything that Christ provides promoting or contributing to happiness, well-being, or prosperity.”

In today’s passage, we see that blessing goes in two directions. One is receiving a blessing. And the other is being a blessing. So, what you see in the Facebook icon is fine, but it’s only half the picture.

Some of you may remember the radio talks of Robert Cook, former head of King’s College. Each day he would conclude with “Walk with the King today and be a blessing!”

What? Me? How can I possibly be a blessing? The first part of Cook’s declaration gives the answer. It springs from how we walk with King Jesus.

Look at what Paul says: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3).

In this verse we see how Jesus personifies blessing…he is the blessing, but if we are walking with him, and he is living in us, then so are we a blessing! We get to bring down some of that “heavenly” stuff and live it out and pass it on to people here on earth. My favorite is quiet behind the scenes stuff—kindnesses that might not get you written up as “Christian of the Year” but that really are loving deeds done in the name of Jesus.

So, as Jesus-in-me happens, not only will I “feel blessed”, but I will, empowered by the Spirit, truly walk with the King and be a blessing.

God Is Our Refuge

God is your refuge

You may have learned the definition of metaphor as a direct comparison without using like or as, and seen examples of it in novels and poems. You may be surprised that someone could write a whole book about metaphors (or read one!) But yes, I read Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

Parts of the book went to one of two extremes: either very obvious or very technical. But, while not a Christian book, the book made one amazing claim that relates to our own Christian lives: we each have our own personal metaphors that can impact how we live!

Yes, our personal metaphors are story lines that we believe about our lives, and whether we realize it or not, we are living out these stories. Some of these stories can be quite worthwhile and biblical; and others quite destructive, unbiblical, and horrible.

Do you ever complain about your job?

My attitude when working on my last job was “Oh, I’m a Christian; I don’t complain.” I started my last year at the job with a very nice metaphor: My job is an endurance race that I will finish well……But without realizing it, I exchanged that good metaphor for a crummy one —

Yes, after I retired, the Lord used the metaphor book to show the metaphor that was really in my heart that last year: “My job is a prison”. If I had seen that real attitude earlier and repented of it, then I would have had more joy in my last year at work!

Scripture provides great antidotes for crummy metaphors. Here’s an example of how that works. The crummy metaphor is: “My life is a wilderness.”

Remember, the Israelites wandered for 40 years in the wilderness—until Moses finally led them to the promised land. Similarly, our own life without Jesus is a wilderness. But Jesus, the greater Moses, leads us out of the wilderness ….

And when he leads us out of the wilderness, that leads straight to today’s metaphor from Psalm 46:1:
God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
When we leave our wilderness, God is the place of refuge in today’s picture.

Here’s another example: If you think “I am a victim”, then Jesus says you can replace that with “I am a light”.

I could go on, but can you think of a destructive metaphor you have that can be traded in for a worthwhile and helpful one? To choose to walk in this new metaphor would influence how you live.

And note well: It’s the power of the Spirit that allows us to live our new metaphor, giving it far more impact than a mere self-help slogan.

Jesus Is Enough

jesus is enough

Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord. (Leviticus 18:5)

This Leviticus verse is a typical Old Testament command. Very direct. But doable? Unfortunately, throughout the Old Testament, people’s obedience was too poor to be able to live up to this directive. They would try and fail. Try and fail. Over and over.

But there is one great Old Testament character, Abraham, who shows us a different and better way :

So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. (Galatians 3:6,9)

This truth started with Abraham 4,000 years ago. Then 2,000 years later, Paul showed how we can get that same credit. We get it through faith in Jesus Christ—if I believe God through Christ, that gives me a turbocharged deposit of righteousness credited to my own account.

That free deposit is the exact opposite of the default mode that I work in: a voice inside me asks whether I am doing “enough” good deeds. How easy it is to drift into the bogus view that being a Christian means that we must do more and more and more and more—- rather than having simple faith. When I get caught up in the “more and more” mentality, sometimes it is so exhausting that I am tempted to say, “Why bother?”

Paul knew how impossible it is to keep the commands on our own. We must die to our futile attempts at law keeping.

“For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God (Galatians 2:19)

If “do more and more and more” Christianity is my law, I must die to that law so that Christ may live in me.

Then, I can discern what it means to live by faith in exactly the body, time, and environment that I have been placed into. I can then walk in the freedom of being set free to do good things because of the faith Christ has given to me and the power of Christ working in me.

What a delightful difference – – – instead of struggling to do “enough” good deeds as a slave to the law, I can now cheerfully do just the good that Christ tells me to.

Living by grace instead of law is a wonderful way to live! Today, dwell on this beautiful paradox: we are simultaneously personally bankrupt and fully empowered to have an abundant life through Christ.