January 20 – A Heart & a Song (Psalm 57)

“My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music.”(Psalm 57:7)

IN WORD:
Reading the Psalms, you get the impression that life for its writers, especially David, was one tumultuous episode after another. There are psalms of praise & joy, of grief & defeat, of deep meditation & inspiring victory. But regardless of the focus of each psalm, it is hard not to notice that many of them — most, in fact — are written in the context of crisis (see v. 1, for example). Cries to God come out of the crucible, and God’s response comes into it.
One thing God looks for when we are in the crucible is a steadfast heart — a heart that will not, under any circumstances, fall away. No matter what uproar is going on around us, no matter how much pressure is applied, God will wait to answer us until it is clear to Him, to us, and to those who observe us, that our heart is resolutely fixed on Him. And more than just steadfastness of hope is required; it is a steadfastness of worship, too. The heart that learns to make music in its darkest moments is the heart that is delivered.
The deliverance usually comes twice. First, a worshipful heart has risen above oppressive circumstances, even when the circumstances remain. It is an inward liberation that can find deep joy regardless of what’s happening on the outside. But a resolved, singing heart then finds deliverance in a God who responds. He frequently invades circumstances and scatters our enemies, sometimes dramatically. The wait may be long, but the victory is sure. God does not remain silent in His love when we do not remain silent in our worship.

IN DEED:
When circumstances oppress, the battle rages, and the heat of the crucible rises, where is your heart? Is it steadfast in its worship? Does it sing of the God who reigns above every cloud? If so, expect deliverance. Expect it within and without. You can sing your song of victory before victory even comes. In the most important sense, it already has.

“Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.” -Robert Robinson-

January 19 – Guarded Tongues (Proverbs 4:20-27)

“Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.” (Proverbs 4:24)

IN WORD:
Words are powerful. They can wound the spirit of another, often leaving permanent scars. They can sow seeds of corruption in innocent or wavering minds. They can soil good reputations and they can foil good plans. They can carry a profound blessing; but they can also carry a powerful curse.

Peter learned about the power of words one day. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” he told Jesus (Matthew 16:16). Those were potent words. The church would be built on that declaration. But moments later, Peter contradicted the will of God with a thoughtless rebuke of the Lord. His words were a stumbling block, a product of the kingdom of darkness. They were corrupt in a way not many of us consider; they did not reflect God’s reality.
Is Proverbs telling us simply to avoid vulgarities in our speech? Probably not. There are many forms of corruption and perversity in addition to coarse vulgarities: gossip, deception, mindless chatter, rumors, negativity, bitterness, insults, and many more. All of these contradict the revealed truth of God. They run against the current of His will. In a very real sense, they slander and misrepresent the reality and beauty of His Kingdom and His character.

IN DEED:
Scripture tells us to do away with irrelevant and improper speech. Our words will carry a certain amount of power with them, whether for good or for bad. It is our responsibility to make sure they carry power that builds up rather than tears down; that reflects glory rather than corrupts the image of God; that honors truth rather than falsehood.
Do you guard your mouth? Many passages of Scripture warn us of the importance of doing so. The tongue is no small weapon. It wields a power few of us realize. Use it honorably and with extreme care.

“Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.” -Anonymous-

January 18 – Guarded Feet (Proverbs 4:20-27)

“Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.”(Proverbs 4:26)

IN WORD:
The advice in this verse is not unusual wisdom; it could be heard from the mouth of almost any father, from any military training camp, or from any advice column. The issue for us as believers is how to define its terms. What does “level” mean? Which ways are firm?
We will find a vast disagreement between what the world considers to be level or firm and the directions God leads us in. Take Abraham, for example. He thought he was choosing the level and firm path when he had a son through Hagar, trying to fulfill God’s promise (Genesis 16). It seemed like the only rational way. But God’s way, though not rational by man’s standards, was a far surer path. Or look at Jesus for another example. Which of His disciples would have told Him that the way of the Cross was the way of wisdom? By their standards, it was foolishness and disaster. By God’s, it was the ultimate expression of faithfulness and truth.
When this verse commands us to make level paths and to take firm ways, it is not telling us to follow conventional wisdom. This is not a suggestion to play it safe. It is an order to follow God, to heed His wisdom and trust His guidance, no matter how foolish it looks to a skeptical and watching world. It is a call to base our lives in the ultimate reality of Scripture rather than the finite understanding of human logic. We must understand that the level and firm paths are the ones that are level & firm in God’s sight — not ours, and not anyone else’s either.

IN DEED:
When you seek a direction for your life, give no attention to whether your path is safe or risky, conventional or unconventional. Consider only whether it is based in God’s truth, sensitive to His voice, and reflecting His purposes as revealed in His Word. This is ultimately the only safe, level, firm way there is.

“The center of God’s will is our only safety.”
-Betsie Ten Boom-

January 17 – Guarded Eyes (Proverbs 4:20-27)

“Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.”(Proverbs 4:25)

IN WORD:
Many sins begin with the eyes. What the eyes gaze upon, the heart begins to crave. They are like personal advertisers letting us know all the options available to us. Their range is great, but they are not naturally discerning. They take in everything, and in our weakness, we let them make too many demands. They can lead us to holy cravings for God & truth, but they also lead us in paths of coveting and lust.
Jesus shocked His disciples with a warning about our eyes. If one of them causes us to sin, we should gouge it out and throw it away (Matthew 5:29). Is the eye really that corrupt? No, but sin is that serious. It must be dealt with. And the first practical way to deal with it is to guard the eyes.
Just as we are responsible for the things that fill our hearts and the words that roll off our tongues, we are also responsible for the gaze of our eyes. Too many lives on a straight course in God’s will have been turned aside by an irrelevant stare. A glimpse turns into a gaze, a gaze turns into a craving, a craving turns the heart to the side, and a misdirected heart wreaks havoc on godliness and service. Glances can quickly become compulsions, and compulsions quickly become idols.

IN DEED:
Take an inventory of what you stare at. The results will tell you a lot about what is important to you. In all likelihood, you will find some things that are inappropriately significant to you — a hobby too time-consuming, an unholy desire, a passion contrary to God’s revealed direction for your life. All fall short of God’s will for us.
A tendency to look aside indicates a dissatisfaction with what you already have. If you are dissatisfied, the answer is not looking in new directions; it is in strengthening your gaze on the Savior and His ways. Fix your eyes on what is ultimately worthy of your attention. Gaze at Jesus.

“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”
-John Piper-

January 16 – Guarded Hearts
(Proverbs 4:20-27)

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
(Proverbs 4:23)

IN WORD:
Our hearts, the well springs of our lives, are given free reign by most of us. We’re under the illusion that we can’t help how we feel; our emotions are considered the foundation of who we are. And as our feelings rise & fall as often as the wind changes direction, so does our life. We are guided by feelings far more often than we’d like to think. We make decisions based on feelings and then rationalize them, rather than making decisions based on reality and then letting the feelings fall in behind. We let our emotions define us. That is a dangerous way to live.
David could testify to that. His extraordinarily Godward heart usually led him into the Father’s will. But it also led him into temptation and a sin with catastrophic results. Even his heart, so often in sync with God’s, was fickle. And fickle hearts produce misdirected people.
We think, when we turn our hearts over to God, that He governs us and shapes us automatically. That’s not what Scripture says in the above verse, however. That verse is a command. We are to guard our hearts. We are to be careful about what we let into them. Our hearts cannot be an open door to unbiblical and ungodly influences. We are not to be captive to them; they are to be captive to the Word of God. We are given the responsibility of being vigilant about their content.

IN DEED:
Does your heart ride along with your feelings like an anchor-less ship on the waves? Is it subject to deep swells and rapidly changing courses? If so, finding direction from God may be a challenge. You may be waiting for Him to shape your heart, while He is waiting for your to guard it! He will do His part, but only YOU can do yours. The wisdom of Proverbs makes your vigilance the highest priority: “above all else.” That is the attention we are to give to our emotional swells. It is paramount. BE ON GUARD!

“Oh, study your hearts, watch your hearts, keep your hearts!”
-John Flavel-

January 15 – Guarded Lives (Proverbs 4:20-27)

“Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body.”(Proverbs 4:21-22)

IN WORD:
The godly life is not lived passively. It is not random, and it is not a life of wandering. Those who wait for God’s Word to change them will only find it so doing when they actively feed themselves with it. Those who expect the sermons they hear and the words they read to make them godly will be entirely frustrated unless they are diligent in meditating on the truth and applying it to their lives. Simply sitting in a pew week after week will do nothing radical in a believer’s life. Wisdom is not gained by passive absorption or osmosis. It must be consumed and savored. It must become the focal point of our thinking.
Those who hear words of wisdom and do not apply them are like the receivers of the seed in Jesus’ parable of the 4 soils (Matthew 13:20-22). They hear the truth. They understand it. They even agree with it. But it has no benefit for them. It isn’t real faith. James concurs (James 1:22-24): Hearing, understanding, and agreeing without application is a self-deceptive dynamic. It appears to be faith, but it effects no change in the life of the hearer. Something more is needed — diligence, for example. And action. God and His truth are to be treasured more than any other affection of our heart.

IN DEED:
Where do your affections lie? Do you hear the truth and then turn your heart to other things? We will not retain what we’ve heard or read unless we dwell on it for a while, turning it over in our minds and locking it within our hearts. We will not be changed and we will not grow by passive hearing. We must set our affections on God’s wisdom, act on it, and beat away any philosophical or material rivals. The promise for doing that is amazing: life & health. Truth & righteousness are powerful; they are the substance of our lives.

“One gem from the ocean [the Bible] is worth all the pebbles from earthly streams.” -Robert Murray M’Cheyne-

January 14 – Heavenly Sacrifice (Mark 10:42-45)

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”(Mark 10:43)

IN WORD:
When we have the mind of Christ, we have a servant mind. “Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,” Jesus proclaimed (v. 45). Even Him. That’s what His kingdom is all about — sacrifice and service, giving and sharing, considering the needs of others at least equal to, if not greater than, the needs of ourselves.
It’s a pleasant thought, isn’t it? But it’s a difficult process. Why? Because we are used to thinking of our talents and gifts in terms of what they can accomplish for us. Deep down inside, we want to get ahead. We are driven with an ambition to accomplish something, and sin has distorted that drive to make it self-serving. Like the architects of the Tower of Babel, we want to “build ourselves a city” and “make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). Our desired “city” is often an impressive reputation and the praise of those who will recognize it. Such a drive does not naturally lead us into service.

But Jesus never asked us to do what comes naturally. The mind that He cultivates within us will have nothing to do with self-serving accomplishment. It will have drive and ambition, to be sure, but not in the direction we once pursued. No, we will be consumed with a vision for heavenly unity, and we will realize that the only way to have it is to serve. We will not care about our own reputations nearly as much as we care for the reputation of the Kingdom of God. Instead of making a name for ourselves, we will make a name for His Kingdom. And it will be a humble, sacrificial name.

IN DEED:
God Almighty clothed Himself in human flesh and served sinful people. We could learn from His example. In fact, we must! It is a command. But it is a command with an unexpected promise: This service means greatness in God’s Kingdom. As surely as self-interest drives us away from Him and others, self-sacrifice draws us in and closer to others. Our gifts and our talents become useful tools for the benefit of others.

“The only life that counts is the life that costs.”
-Frederick P. Wood

January 13 – Rich Toward God (Luke 12:13-21)

“I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”
(Luke 12:19)

IN WORD:
When we sit in God’s presence and seek His mind, His Spirit will convince us of the treasure we have in His name. Ephesians 1, one of the great chapters on what it means to be “in Christ,” tells us that we have “every spiritual blessing in Christ” (v.3) — redemption, forgiveness, knowledge, hope, the Holy Spirit, security, and an incorruptible inheritance. God has lavished such imperishable gifts on us. They cannot be taken away, they are immediately accessible, and they could not possibly be any greater. We are very much highly favored.
Yet, the problem from our present perspective is this: We don’t know how to access these precious gifts. We see our physical needs as much more urgent and our heavenly riches as much more distant. We’re happy about the salvation we’ve been given, but it won’t help us take that much-needed vacation today. We’re excited about the prospect of heaven, but it won’t pay the mortgage this month. We’re thrilled to be seated with Jesus by God’s throne, but that doesn’t secure the position we need to advance our career. Or does it?
It all depends on how we see our mortgages and careers. Are they tools for godly living? Or are they a means to secure our heaven now? Do we leverage the goods of this world for eternal purposes? Or do we spend them on our momentary satisfaction? Where are we really investing? Does our full portfolio major on spiritual realities? Have we learned that current investments can have everlasting returns? If so, our income and expenses are really very spiritual. They build God’s Kingdom!

IN DEED:
Materialism is deceptive. We are encouraged at every turn to live the high life, go for the gusto, grab life by the horns, and hang on to what we’ve got. We are obsessive about our upward mobility. Our problem is that we’ve forgotten how to define “upward.”
Know your citizenship is in heaven and invest in that. Take care of your physical needs and the needs of others, and then live in the Kingdom of God. It will forever pay dividends.

“A man there was, though some did count him mad; the more he cast away, the more he had.” -John Bunyan-

January 12 – The City With Foundations (Hebrews 11:8-10)

“He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”(Hebrews 11:10)

IN WORD:
Those who sit in God’s fellowship regularly, meditating on His mind and accepting His love, will begin to view time in terms of eternity rather than the brief life we live on this broken planet. Rather than trying to build heaven in our few decades here, we will be freed to make sacrifices now, knowing that an everlasting heaven awaits us. We will make decisions not with present security and future retirement in mind, but with “forever” in full view. The Spirit of the eternal God will fill us with eternal thoughts.
What stands in the way of this perspective? FEAR. We are often afraid that we will not have enough to take care of our families and ourselves if we live “all out” for God. We wonder if God will lead us to hard fields or violent crosses as He did our Savior and His disciples. We fear the consequences of a completely Godward life. And so we build houses for now and hope for the eternal mansion down the road.
God’s promises allow us to go ahead and consider the mansion down the road as ours. We don’t have to obsess about our security now when we are assured of an everlasting home that cannot be taken away. We can put up with a few years of sacrifice, toil, pain, and service with the calm confidence that our ultimate citizenship is elsewhere. We are free to serve God at whatever cost, because nothing can cost us our inheritance. We know where this life is going to lead us and that it will never end.

IN DEED:
Forsake fear. Every Christian has in the back of his or her mind, from time to time, a little voice that cautions against a completely sacrificial life. That’s NOT God’s voice! His mind, which He shares with us, will overcome such thoughts. His Spirit, if we trust Him, will assure us that His promises are certain and that this present place is a place of joyful sacrifice. How do we receive such assurance? With an eternal perspective. We know what counts, and we can live with our sights set on the city with eternal foundations.

“The only way to get our values right is . . . To see things not in the light of time, but in the light of eternity.” -William Barclay-

January 11 – The Renewed Mind (Romans 12:1-2)

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

IN WORD:
How will we see things when God’s wisdom has become a part of our own thinking? What should this renewed, transformed mind of the believer look like? There are 3 radical re-orientations that we must undergo. We will begin to understand our time, our treasures, and our talents differently. We will stand in a dramatically different place than we once stood, and our perspective will reflect that change. Our eyes will gaze on new heights and our desires will lean in new directions. We are a new creation; we will learn to live as one.

How do we get there? Do we change suddenly or little by little? Is it by the diligence of our effort or by the merciful gift of God? Is it a matter of hard study or spiritual osmosis? The answer is “all of the above.” God will give us His mind — we can be sure of that. It comes from Him out of the mercies of His good will, and He is generous with all of His children. But it also requires a diligence that will search His Word, seek His guidance, cooperate with His plan, receive His correction, and wait patiently for His providence. We are to boldly persevere in our ambitious drive to receive the completely free gift of God’s wisdom.

IN DEED:
If you became a Christian as a child and do not remember well the difference between your new life and your old, you may have lost sight of the radical nature of the new mind. Or, if you once knew the power of transformation but have since let it slide into a hybrid life of the new and the old, you may have lost sight of the constant call of the new creation. In either case, let your mind be transformed and your life renewed again & again. It is a lifelong process for the believer, a work that God will complete the day He takes you into His presence for eternity. Never settle for the status quo. Never grow complacent or stale. Never lose sight of the upward call of God out of the ways of this world and into the heart of His will.

“The difference between worldliness and godliness is a renewed mind.” -Erwin Lutzer-