Our regular daily emails have not gone out for the last several days because I have been ill and unable to set these up. I hope to resume them tomorrow. We will have to “catch up” the mailings that you have missed, so for the next few days you will probably receive more than one message each day, until we have caught up with the current date.
Also, a word about the audio recordings. I decided to “test” these for a month or so and see (1) how much time it would take me to do them and (2) what the response would be from readers. The response has been good, but the time was more than expected. So I have decided not to try to do these this year. I plan to start recording “Diligently Seeking God” and “Reaching Forward” at the start of next year, and then do the “Enthusiastic Ideas” recordings the year after that.
Thanks for your patience during this illness. Last weekend, I got vicious case of food poisoning in a well-known fast food restaurant and have been pretty well incapacitated for most of the week. I am doing a little better, but still have a ways to go. Please say a prayer, since I am scheduled to start a speaking engagement in Atlanta on Sunday.
“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15,16).
WE HAVE ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF DAYS TO LIVE IN THIS WORLD, AND IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE THE CONFIDENCE THAT WE’VE SPENT THEM WELL. We need to be able to go to bed each night knowing that we’ve used the resources of that day to the best of our personal abilities and have “redeemed” the time.
This doesn’t mean that every single day must be spent in full-throttle, no-time-for-leisure “work.” The best use of some days is to rest. In the Law of Moses, it should be noted, God REQUIRED the people of Israel to rest one day out of every seven. And though the Sabbath law does not apply directly to us today, the point should not be missed: God understands our need for rest and replenishment, and the CORRECT use of many days is to engage in those very things. “Days well spent” does not mean “all work and no play.”
On any given day, however, whatever should be done with THAT day — whether work, play, or some combination of the two — that is what we should do. As the days come and go, we need to have the good feeling that we’re using life as God wants us to use it, rather than wasting it doing things that were never meant to be done or things that were meant for someone else to do.
For fallible creatures like us, living the godly life comes down to the business of making regular IMPROVEMENT. Reaching forward means doing a little better with each day than was done with the day before. If we take a moment or two at the end of the day to reflect on what we’ve done (and it’s wise to make that a habit), it’s a wonderful feeling to know that, with that day, we’ve taken a step forward in our stewardship of life — we’ve brought another thing or two under the benevolence of God’s will and made ourselves a bit more completely the vessels of God’s glory. In an age obsessed with “self-esteem,” we should understand that healthy self-respect can only come from hearing God say to us at day’s end, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21).
“Begin well and go on to better. Do everything for the glory of God and the benefit of others. Consider time lost if you do not use it to at least think of the glory of God and seek for a way to do something for someone else’s advantage” (John Bradford).
“You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (James 5:8).
ON THE EVE OF HIS CRUCIFIXION, JESUS SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES, “LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED; YOU BELIEVE IN GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME” (JOHN 14:1). No doubt He would say the same thing to us. If His followers needed to hold on and keep hope alive back then, it’s no less important for us to keep a steady head during the difficulties of the present day. Whatever comes to pass in this frustrating world, we must not let it throw us into doubt or despair. The King is coming back to set things straight, and it may be sooner rather than later. “Be patient,” James wrote. “Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”
We are taught in the gospel to be a people of hope, and the hope we can have is much more than wishful thinking or blind optimism. It’s an optimism based on solid, historical evidence that God can be counted on to keep His word. After Jesus was buried, His tomb was found empty, just as He had promised it would be. That empty tomb has never had any adequate explanation — except that Jesus was actually raised from the dead. And if the Resurrection is true, then He’s everything He claimed to be: our God, our Savior, and our Lord. If the Resurrection is true, there is hope! “In the world you will have tribulation,” He once said, “but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Wisdom, then, is a bittersweet thing. Solomon said, “In much wisdom is much grief” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). The more we know of the world, the sadder it is to contemplate the tragedy of our sin and its consequences. But the brokenness of the world, as sad as it is, is not the whole story. Jesus has defeated our enemy and taken the sting out of his worst weapon. If we’ve obeyed the gospel faithfully, then “our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also EAGERLY WAIT FOR THE SAVIOR, THE LORD JESUS CHRIST” (Philippians 3:20).
God hasn’t finished redeeming us yet, but there’s no doubt that He will. Our responsibility is to wait — and to do so with delight rather than dreariness. However many things there are to endure, there are even more to enjoy. Among these, there is the strong love of a Savior who said, “Let not your heart be troubled.”
“All human wisdom is summed up in two words — wait and hope” (Alexander Dumas).
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
WATCHFULNESS IS AN ATTITUDE WE CAN HARDLY DO WITHOUT. God happens to have a great adversary, and if we take God’s side, that means we have the same adversary that God does. In his arrogant rebellion against God, Satan is bent on the destruction of every personal being God ever made. To the battlefield of the human heart, the devil brings weapons of considerable craftiness, and our spiritual survival will be extremely unlikely, if not impossible, if we don’t wake up and watch out. “Be sober, be vigilant,” is what Peter said, and he wasn’t wasting words.
Yet negligence is a widespread problem, and not only among those who are foolish and indifferent. All too often, those who’ve been around long enough to know better still show little concern. Consider two “occasions” when we may let our guard down:
SPIRITUAL MATURITY. Curiously enough, the more mature we become in the Lord, the less we sometimes see the need for a humble and cautious mentality. Secretly, we may even pride ourselves on our ability to handle certain temptations — temptations that we wouldn’t advise the less mature to expose themselves to. But don’t we see the difference between courage and foolhardiness?
OLD AGE. As we get closer to heaven, it’s natural that we cease to be actively concerned about certain dangers. We begin to face life, as Mark Twain said, “with the serene confidence of a gambler with an ace up his sleeve.” Yet we still need to be careful. Daniel was ninety years old or more when he had his lion’s den experience (Daniel 6:1-23). And Abraham was at least a hundred and ten before the Lord decided it was time for the most excruciating test of his faith (Genesis 22:1-19). At their age, who would have thought such struggles would still have to be endured? Is our enemy so blinded by his hatred that he refuses to give up?
As for God, His victory is absolutely certain. The decisive battle was painfully fought at the Cross and decisively won in the Resurrection. But as for us, WE’VE NOT YET MADE OUR FINAL CHOICE. “Be faithful until death” (Revelation 2:10) is not a command that can be put on autopilot, and right now is no time for negligence.
“You must watch, pray, and fight. Expect your last battle to be the most difficult, for the enemy’s fiercest charge is reserved for the end of the day” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).
“For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now” (Romans 8:22).
WHEN BAD DAYS COME, WE NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE REMINDER THAT WE’RE BEING GIVEN. Good days are reminders too, of course; they remind us that God created the world. But bad days should remind us that the present world, tragically broken by our own sinfulness, is a dangerous place to settle down.
If our hearts are set on God, we are on our way to a place that can truly be called home. A “rest” awaits us, if we’re among the “people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). But we haven’t yet reached our rest, and until we do, we are sojourners — temporary residents in a country not our own, strangers in a strange land.
But we tend to forget, don’t we? We forget that we’re aliens, and we fall into the habit of thinking like permanent citizens who’re quite at home here and have no desire to leave.
Because that’s a dangerous tendency, God sees to it that the fields of our thinking get plowed up from time to time. In the lives of some, it may be a “thorn in the flesh.” For others, it may the tragic loss of something they thought they couldn’t bear to lose. It may be the unending difficulty of some unpleasantness that won’t go away. It may be temptation. It may be failure. It may be sickness or the specter of death. But God loves His faithful people too much to let them forget the home that He has prepared for them.
What do we do with these reminders, as painful as they often are? At the very least, we should be grateful for them. But also, we should bear them with humility, dignity, and courage. And above all, we should not fail to let them have their intended effect on us. If God is reminding us, we should let ourselves be reminded and not waste the care that He’s bestowing upon us.
Moses spoke powerfully when he recalled Israel’s hardships: “[God] humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Some things we dare not forget, and from time to time, these things God will “make us know.”
“Happy is the trouble that loosens our grip of earth” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).
“And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. So Jesus answered and said, ‘Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?’” (Luke 17:15-18).
IT IS BETTER TO SEEK GOD WITH GRATITUDE THAN WITH DESPERATE DEMANDS. However much we seek Him when we’re in need of help that He can give us, we need to continue to seek Him after the help has been given. Like the lone Samaritan who returned to give thanks for having been cleansed of his leprosy, we need to feel as deep a longing to show our appreciation to the Lord as we felt a longing for His help in the first place. We are a selfish people indeed if the only time we have any use for God is when we’re unable to get what we want on our own. It must be in times of comfort, no less than times of crisis, that we seek our Father’s face.
It’s important to remember that we’re never really able to get what we want “on our own.” Even when life is going well and we seem to be motoring along without much help, that is never actually the case. Without God’s help each instant, we would perish. There is not a single moment when we’re not completely dependent on His support, and only a fool would distinguish between times when we need God and times when we don’t. The truth is, we need Him — no, we REQUIRE Him — at all times (Acts 17:28).
If we are to make steady progress toward God, it will help us to work on the CONSISTENCY with which we seek Him. Having learned a little of His greatness, we need to seek His glory day in and day out. God is our King, period. That fact is not altered by the fluctuations in our circumstances or our feelings, and the amount of attention we pay to Him ought not to depend on these things either. If we seek Him FOR HIS SAKE, that reason will be present twenty-four hours of every day, whether we feel needy or not. For most of us, this consistency takes some learning, but we can do it. Paul said, “Everywhere and in all things I HAVE LEARNED both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need” (Philippians 4:12). It’s not easy, but like him, we can learn how to abound without forgetting God or failing to give thanks.
“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance” (Kahlil Gibran).
“Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matthew 22:35-40).
WE ARE FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS, BUT WE ARE NOT FREE TO CHOOSE THE CONSEQUENCES OF THOSE THOUGHTS. For example, suppose that in a certain situation we’re faced with the choice of whether to think generous thoughts or selfish thoughts. We’re free to go either way, but having chosen, we need not think that we can get the results that would have come from the other choice. Ideas always have consequences, sooner or later, and we need to see the importance of governing our thinking so as to get the consequences we desire . . . and avoid all the others.
In today’s text, Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love God and the second most important, to love our neighbor. At the very least, this teaching gives us the key to constructive thinking. If we make the love of God and our neighbor the primary points around which our minds revolve, good results must surely follow. If, as the Scriptures teach, we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7,8), there is no better sowing than to focus our love on these two objects. When we do this, the law of cause and effect will work to our benefit rather than to our detriment.
But look at the price we pay when we DON’T have our hearts focused rightly: (1) Our ENERGY is dissipated. (2) Our LOVE is distracted. (3) Our JOY is diluted. When we fritter ourselves away in the pursuit of worldly values, we set in motion a train of very undesirable consequences. By letting our minds take the course of least resistance, we forfeit the very best that life has to offer.
There is an important sense in which we are held captive by the thoughts we choose to think. To be liberated from enslavement to sinful thoughts, then, we must let ourselves be captivated by higher values: the love of God and His creatures. For us, freedom does not mean having no master; it means having a wise and loving Master. To bind ourselves to Him — WITH COMMITTED LOVE — is to be set free from the consequences of every lesser love.
“If thou intend not nor seek nothing else but the pleasing of God and the profit of thy neighbor thou shalt have inward liberty” (Thomas a Kempis).
“Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distresses. He calms the storm, so that its waves are still. Then they are glad because they are quiet; so He guides them to their desired haven” (Psalm 107:28-30).
THOSE WHO TAKE THE TIME TO VISUALIZE THEIR GOAL ARE NOT MERE DREAMERS; THEY ARE THE REAL DOERS. It’s not a waste of time for us to contemplate where we’re going. In fact, if we don’t make that a part of our daily devotional discipline, it’s not likely that we’ll get to our destination. If we desire it, we must think about it. We must think about it frequently and fondly.
Thinking vividly about our goal keeps it from slipping down on our list of priorities. If we don’t stop throughout the day to remember and remind ourselves what we want most, the time will come when something else takes the place of heaven in our hearts. There are simply too many distractions around us. It’s dangerous to let a day go by without refreshing our focus on eternity.
None of us has the wisdom to get to our destination without guidance, and although you may not have thought about it much, there’s a link between goal-meditation and guidance. The more vividly we envision our goal, the more open we will be to God’s instructions about how to get there. For one thing, meditating on where we’re going helps us see the great gap between where we are and where we want to be. It humbles us and helps us see the superiority of His plan for getting us across the distance.
Fervently contemplating the end of our journey also has a steadying influence on us. With spiritual goals, it is the same as with earthly goals: the people who can endure the most hardship are those who keep their goal most clearly in mind. So losing our focus is a dangerous thing. It robs us of our perseverance.
But concerning our goal, the thing, above all, that must be kept clear is that our goal is God. He Himself is the end of our journey. Being conformed to His character is what we desire, and being able, when the time comes, to see His face is what we long for. It does not matter, at least not much, whether our passage is comfortable. What matters is that we are making progress and that our progress is toward God. In the end, those who are pure in heart will see God. “He guides them to their desired haven.”
“The clearer your target, the better you will weather emotional storms” (Thomas a Kempis).
“If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself” (1 Timothy 6:3-5).
IN THE GODLY PERSON’S LIFE, A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF CONFLICT IS UNAVOIDABLE, YET IF WE FIND IT “THRILLING,” WE PROBABLY NEED TO TAKE AN HONEST INVENTORY OF OURSELVES. If we enjoy engaging an opponent (as many do, quite frankly), we may find ourselves substituting combat for the building of character. At least some of the time, we may have to admit that we’re pursuing mere polemics rather than God Himself. Living in a society where competition in all its myriad forms is almost a national obsession, we need to watch out. When we find ourselves in conflict with another person over some spiritual matter, what are our real motives for waging war? What is it that we’re really seeking? And if we act insulted when anyone questions our management of controversy, we probably need to be cautioned more than the average person.
WARNING NO. 1. We should minimize controversies that are merely verbal in nature. Not every conflict is equally significant, and those that are simply arguments over the proper definition of words are among the least significant. Paul warned against those who are “obsessed with disputes and arguments over words.” We need to have the good sense and the honesty to admit when a disagreement is more semantic than it is substantive.
WARNING NO. 2. We should take care not to confuse victims of the enemy with the enemy himself. Even when controversy is necessary, it helps to remember that our human opponent is, at worst, a victim of the enemy (2 Timothy 2:24-26). The real enemy is the devil, and that’s where our fury needs to be focused.
In the end, our religion must be more than words. The Lord would surely say to us the same thing Paul said to the Corinthians, “I will come to you shortly . . . and I will know, not the words of those who are puffed up, but the power” (1 Corinthians 4:19).
“Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth; he was Truth — truth through and through, for truth is a thing not of words but of life and being” (Frederick William Robertson).
“Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:12).
THOSE WHO WISH TO “LAY HOLD ON ETERNAL LIFE” MUST “FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT OF FAITH.” There is no path to heaven that doesn’t lead through territory occupied by the devil. If we’re to reach our desired destination, we’re going to have to fight. Indeed, it sometimes seems that we have to fight every step of the way.
We should be careful in our conclusions, though. Just because we’re experiencing conflict, that does not by itself guarantee that we’re on the right path. There is such a thing as carnal combat, and those who engage in it often don’t have the honesty to see that their agenda is their own rather than God’s. But even so, there is no denying that warfare is inevitable if we’re serious about seeking God. To reach forward, we have to STRUGGLE WITH SIN.
ARE WE COWARDLY? If we’re too timid to fight for what’s right, we won’t make it to heaven. In Revelation 21:8, the list of those who will be lost eternally is headed by the “cowardly.” If we take the course of least resistance, we’ll end up somewhere other than the realm where God is. It takes courage to seek Him truthfully.
ARE WE CARELESS? Considering the intensity and intelligence of our adversary, we ought not to be naive. We’re being nothing more than silly if we think we can serve God faithfully and never experience any difficulty. Peter said, “GIRD UP THE LOINS OF YOUR MIND, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13).
Unfortunately, we often think of the “good fight of faith” as a war against other people who (we presume) are not as committed to God’s truth as we are. As often as not, however, the thing that must be fought is not an outward foe but some inward temptation. The good fight of faith is, first and foremost, a PERSONAL STRUGGLE against what the devil is trying to do to US. We need, then, to “resist him” (1 Peter 5:9). We need to fight for our lives with commitment and courage. We need, with real indignation, to draw the line and refuse to yield a single inch to our adversary.
“Jesus invited us, not to a picnic, but to a pilgrimage; not to a frolic, but to a fight” (Billy Graham).
