February 8 – An All-the Time God (Job 2:7-10)

“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
(Job 2:10)

IN WORD:
The casual relationship with God takes Him to be a good-luck charm. The world is full of people who will pray to God, praise His goodness, speak of His plans, and call themselves His children. Yet when trouble comes, they complain that He is not treating them well. They wonder what they have done to deserve His disfavor. He isn’t serving them as they expected.
God is not a good-luck charm. He is not the amulet we hold in our hands as we play the roulette wheel or the stock market. He is not the great coach in the sky who was on our side when our team won but was not when we lost. Our prayers are not the mantras we chant so that we won’t have any trouble this day. He is not the big Santa Claus upstairs who keeps track of all our wishes in case we’re good. And His Word is not our horoscope, telling us all the tricks we must do to be successful in all our ventures.
No, all of these approaches to God have elements of truth, but end up as lies. He is more than a dispensable “blesser,” available when we want to use Him and irrelevant when we don’t. He is the Governor of our lives, the Sovereign who directs us in every way we should go, the Blesser who measures His blessings by the depths of His grace, the Shepherd who will lead us both through comfortable plains and difficult valleys. He is the God of real life.

IN DEED:
Real life has troubles. God will protect us from many of them, but He will also walk us through many of them. He will do what is best for us, not what our shallow hearts dictate to Him. Like Job’s wife, we have a hard time understanding that. We worship Him more desperately in a storm than in a calm.
It’s good for us to know, when times are tough, that God is sovereign over our circumstances. He has allowed them, because there was something good in them to allow; something good that could come out of them. We have a lesson to learn and a Savior to lean on. We need to trust that He has you there for just those reasons.

“Oh, for a spirit that bows always before the sovereignty of God.” -Charles Spurgeon-

February 7 – The Opinion That Matters

“Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”(Proverbs 29:25)

IN WORD:
The need to impress. The desire to stay out of trouble. The tendency to compare ourselves to others. The urge to maneuver & manipulate. All of these are products of our natural fear of man. If “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), the fear of man is the end of it. We cannot serve Him well with our eyes on popular opinion.
We do all sorts of strange things because of an inbred dependence on the approval of others. We may not actually be afraid of others, but every person alive tends to be concerned with how others think of us. When we are, our welfare rises & falls with the trends of our culture, the variances of human opinion, and the moods of the people closest to us. We have no firm footing in such an uncertain world. Our human-centered living proves to be a snare. We find ourselves trapped in a sinful society’s norms.
God’s desire is to remove us entirely from this no-win situation. He does not want us in a futile search for popular approval or an obsessive fear of rejection. He never asks us to compare ourselves to others. No, God wants His opinion alone to matter to us.He calls us to place our identity entirely in Him. When we do, our behavior will be godly because we have an audience of One, and we know our audience is forgiving, strengthening, and gentle. We have nothing to lose when we approach Him in humility and honesty.

IN DEED:
God commands us to resist the urge to run with the crowd. It’s an urge based on insecurity, rooted in our former alienation from our Creator. But once we are reconciled to our Creator, we have no need for human approval. There is no crowd to please, no culture to accommodate, no hoops to jump through for the momentary applause of a fickle audience. Best of all, there is no snare to fall into. Living Godward lives, we are kept safe from the false values of this world.

“I’d rather be a fool in the eyes of men than a fool in the eyes of God.” -Anonymous-

February 6 – New Clothes (Ephesians 4:17-24)

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self . . . And to put on the new self.”
(Ephesians 4:22, 24)

IN WORD:
Living the Christian life should become as natural to us as changing clothes. We take off the old and we put on the new. The old may have been comfortable, but it is dirty and horribly out of fashion in our new kingdom. The new is the permanent style of the Kingdom of Heaven, and it will cause us to resemble God increasingly. Our responsibility is to continually shed what is no longer appropriate and put on the clothes we have been given.
But many of us walk an unwise path. We claim citizenship in the new kingdom but continue to wear the fashions of the old. In trying to fit in everywhere, we find that we fit in nowhere. We may blend into the old kingdom, but we no longer have proper ID there. We have a new ID for the new kingdom but we’re slow to fit in. Either way, it’s an awkward situation to be in.
What is our reluctance? Why do we hesitate to put on our new clothes? Because we know we will experience rejection, and no one likes rejection. But rejection will come to everyone, either from the world or from the Kingdom of Heaven. The question is not whether we can avoid it, but whose we most want to avoid. Wisdom calls for a choice. Trying to dress for both kingdoms is not a viable option.

IN DEED:
Are you reluctant to place both feet firmly in the Kingdom of God? Do you try to hang on to remnants of your former citizenship? Let them go. Shed them like an old set of ragged clothes. The way to settle into your new kingdom and advance in it is to be reclothed. It’s a daily process. We deny deceitful desires (v. 22) and saturate ourselves in a new attitude (v. 23). We become like God in righteousness and holiness (v. 24). There is no greater wisdom than this.

“We cannot help conforming ourselves to what we love.”
-St. Francis De Sales-

February 5 – A Selfish View of God

“A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the Lord.” (Proverbs 19:3)

IN WORD:
The problem is almost universal. As participants in the human rebellion, we have all acted foolishly. Any time we have lived without thought of the Lord’s will in a matter, any time we have not stirred up our love for Him, and any time we have intentionally acted in our own best interests without concern for the consequences to others, we have welcomed a sense of separation between us and our Creator. It is part & parcel of fallen human nature to put distance between God and ourselves. We can serve ourselves better that way. In our times of independence, we don’t want Him getting too close.
But when trouble comes, we cry out to God as though we’re the most helpless of victims. What’s worse, we often cry out with a hint of accusation: “Why are You doing this to me?” We frequently fail to make a vital connection between our willful independence in our times of self-sufficiency and the seeming absence of God in our times of need. It doesn’t occur to us that when we keep God on the periphery of out lives, we have no business accusing Him of not “being there” for us when we need Him.
Proverbs calls this “folly.” It is utter foolishness to set ourselves up as self-directed people when times are easy, get ourselves into trouble, and then appeal to God’s fatherly obligations. But we inherited foolishness in the Fall of humanity. We are genetically prone to want a convenient God who is there when we need Him and will leave us alone when we don’t.

IN DEED:
What is the solution to this selfish view of God? It isn’t to stop calling on Him in times of trouble. He welcomes that — even commands it. The solution is to let Him be the integral and intimate foundation of our lives now, before trouble comes. Then our cries to Him will be will be the pleasing voice of a treasured child, and when we need Him, He will show Himself strong on our behalf.

“Some folks treat God like a lawyer. They go to Him only when they are in trouble.” -Anonymous-

February 4 – Displaying Jesus (Colossians 3:23-25)

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”(Colossians 3:23)

IN WORD:
There is a deeper issue here than working with the right attitude. It is a question of life orientation. Whom do you belong to? Who is sovereign over your circumstances? Who is really in control?
Multitudes of people do not enjoy their jobs. The un-believing would simply rather be doing something else. As believers, we often see our work as an interference in our lives of faith. We would enjoy our lives more without it. We would have time to study God’s Word more if we didn’t have to put in our 40-hour weeks. We would have more time to build important relationships. We easily feel as if we are in the wrong place when we are working at the things we have to do. At the bottom of that feeling is a questioning of God’s sovereignty in our lives. We wonder why He has put us where He has.
God has not placed us where we are simply for the output we can produce, whether it is at a factory, at a desk, at school, or at home with children. He has put us there because that is a context in which He wants to display Himself. Our work is about Him, even if it’s entirely secular in our minds. We are there because God wants to put godliness on display for others to see. He wants to infiltrate the culture we work in.

IN DEED:
Is godliness at work in your preoccupation? If you’re like many people, you may be preoccupied by the unpleasantness of being there. You may feel like your work is pointless, your boss is unfair, or your coworkers are petty. Never mind. None of those things are the point. The point is for the Holy Spirit to dwell in you there, wherever you happen to be. And in that sense, you are working for God, not for the one who signs your paycheck. Whatever you do, have this in mind: You are doing it not just because God wants you to be there, but because He wants to be there too.

“Work without a love relationship spells burnout.”
-Lloyd John. Ogilvie-

February 3 – Representing Jesus (Colossians 3:23-25)

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.”(Colossians 3:23)

IN WORD:
We see our lives in terms of activity and achievement. We interpret our success in terms of what we’ve accomplished. So it only makes sense that when we work, we define its quality by externals — what we’ve done, whom we’ve done it for, and what results it will have.
God has his eye on other criteria. He sees our lives in terms of fruit, which may include activities and achievements but encompasses so much more. Fruit involves those qualities the Holy Spirit cultivates in us — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5: 22-23). So when God sees us at work, He is more interested in how the work is being done than in what it accomplishes. He looks at motives and attitudes. Most of all, He looks to see if our motivation is derived from Him or if He is peripheral to what we do. And if He is peripheral, He is grieved.
Ultimately, every inch of our lives is God’s, even our work. If He wants to be Lord of our thoughts and our relationships, He clearly would also want to be Lord of our employment, or whatever vocation occupies our time. We do not cease being His disciples when we punch a time clock. If He is truly our Lord, then everything we do is for Him.

IN DEED:
Do you work for an employer? Perhaps so, but the impression you make on him or her is entirely God’s business. He is zealous for the reputation of His name. If you have claimed His name, He is therefore zealous for your reputation. Your character and His go hand in hand. If other people — believers and non-believers alike — observe godly qualities in you, then God is glorified. If they don’t, He isn’t. We literally represent Jesus wherever we are, including the workplace. Represent Him with all your heart.

“A dairy maid can milk cows to the glory of God.”
-Martin Luther-

February 2 – In Sync With God (Isaiah 59:2)

“If anyone turns a deaf ear to the law, even his prayers are detestable.”(Proverbs 28:9)

IN WORD:
No one wants detestable prayers. The very thought is strong enough warning to keep us faithful to God. But the prescription for acceptable prayers is hard for us to live with. Legalism? Is that really what God wants from us?
Scripture never tells us that God only hears our prayers when we keep His law perfectly. It does, however, exhort us to have our hearts turned toward him and to be zealous about our obedience. We often learn the negatives by heart — “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2), for example — but positive encouragement is stressed in Scripture at least as often, if not more so. A heart inclined toward God opens the way for Him to have ears inclined toward us. He can answer our prayers a lot more frequently when He’s not disciplining us for ungodly behavior.
Any time the Old Testament Law is stressed in Scripture, we get uptight about legalism, as though obedience in order to earn righteousness might be confused with obedience as a result of faith. They may look the same on the surface, but their motivations are poles apart. So we can relax: God never tells us that legalism is the means to a vibrant prayer life. He only tells us that those who accept the order and standards woven into His creation are qualified to ask Him to intervene in it. A heart in sync with God’s heart results in prayers in sync with His plan.

IN DEED:
Have you struggled with unanswered prayer? There are numerous possible reasons that God may withhold His answers, but consider this one: Have you submitted to His authority? It only makes sense that if we are going to appeal to His authority that we would be expected to live under it. When we rebel against His will and then ask Him to accomplish His will, we are contradicting ourselves. But when we submit to His will, we are lining ourselves up with the flowing current of creation. We are ready to experience the power of prayer.

“He who runs from God in the morning, will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.” -John Bunyan-

February 1 – God’s Value System (2 Timothy 3:12)

“When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies live at peace with him.”(Proverbs 16:7)

IN WORD:
The wisdom literature of the Scriptures contains certain principles of life that we do not always see in our experience. Consider the verse above, for example. Yet we know that the ways of Jesus, and even of Stephen, Paul, Peter, and many other victims of aggression, were pleasing to the Lord — and their enemies did not live at peace with them. What are we to do when we find principles like this that are overwhelmingly affirmed in Scripture and so often NOT affirmed in experience? Shall we deny the truth of the Bible?
Obviously not. The Bible is our Word of life. It has never proven false. What we see in the wisdom books of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, among others, is a description of the way life is supposed to work. They are not always absolute statements of cause & effect; they are often guiding principles of God’s value system. If they contain promises, the promises will be fulfilled. How could it be otherwise? They come from the Faithful One. But they may not be fulfilled today. You may first have adversaries. Your good may be repaid with evil. You may live the principles of God and still see the aggression of the enemy — for a time.

IN DEED:
The wisdom of Scripture is deeper than we think. These are not superficial platitudes. They are truths to be mined like precious jewels. We need to explore the truths of God’s wisdom deeply and let it be written into our hearts. We must know His value system inside & out.
Do not be discouraged when you encounter verses that have not been realized in your own life. Trust that they will be. Be patient, and have constant faith in God, and you will eventually see the promise as facts. God’s value system will prevail, and His light will penetrate all darkness. Those who hold to His Word will be vindicated in the end.

“God’s promises are like the stars; the darker the night, the brighter they shine.” -David Nicholas-

January 31 – Bound By Debt (Proverbs 22:7; Romans 13:8)

“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7)

IN WORD:
A recent survey indicated that the bulk of debt in the U.S. is credit card debt. That is one of many signs that modern societies, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, are driven to acquire at all costs. We accumulate the stuff of our material world at alarming rates. One of the prevailing shortfalls of our generation is that we are always “spending” more than we earn. We are called “consumers” because we consume — a lot.
Biblical wisdom orders us to be extremely careful with our indebtedness. Why? Because “the borrower is servant to the lender.” We are held captive — or at least restrained — by the debts we are obligated to pay. When those debts mount, we are limited in our choices. If God tells us to pick up & move somewhere else, we may not be in a position to do so. If He tells us to embark on a different career path, we may not have the resources. We put ourselves in a position to limit His work in our lives.
We are bound by the laws of our government and by the morals of our faith to pay what we’ve promised to pay. God would have us do that faithfully and zealously. But He would prefer that we never find ourselves in such a limited position. When we do, we may have made some inaccurate assumptions. We have assumed that tomorrow’s income will be at least as high as today’s, if not higher. We’ve tried to lock God into His bounty as though it were our right to receive rather than His right to give. We assume too much about tomorrow.

IN DEED:
The Bible does not absolutely forbid indebtedness. Each believer must determine as a matter of conscience and of the Spirit who works within us which debts are scripturally sound and which ones are not. But we are given strong warnings. God wants His people to be free from the world and bound only to Him. We must be careful: We should serve others because we are called by His name, not because we are obligated by our frequent signatures.

“Are we as willing to go into debt for the work of God as we are for a vacation to Hawaii?” -Erwin Lutzer-