October 21 – The Pleasure of God (Psalm 63:1-8)

“My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you.”(Psalm 63:5)

IN WORDS:
When we speak of learning God’s wisdom and having the mind of Christ, it often sounds like we’re sitting in a sterile classroom environment. We assume that we’re being mentally trained in a new way of life. We are, but it’s not in a cold, calculated transfer of information; it’s a warm, wonderful learning experience, a hand-in-hand adventure with a loving Father who wants us to be like Him.
With God, familiarity does not breed contempt. It breeds passion and pleasure. We can dispense with the idea that we serve a cold, hard master. We can let go of the image of the ever-unsatisfied holiness of our Creator. He has satisfied His holy requirements himself in the person of Jesus. What’s left for us is an affectionate Father who laughs when we laugh and cries when we cry. The more we get to know Him, the more we come to love Him. It is, of course, a holy and respectful kind of love — He is entirely above us and worthy of our awe. But there is a warmth to Him that many people never feel. And we are called to feel it deeply.

IN DEED:
How would you characterize your relationship with God? Cold and sterile? Distant and frustrating? It need not be any of these. It can actually be — dare we suggest it? — fun.
Yes, the wisdom of God — His mind, His ways, His character — can be beautiful and charming. He is not the cruel killjoy we often make Him out to be. And that’s the great tragedy of sin: It fails to understand the amazing implications of knowing Him. It turns Him into someone He’s not.
Learning the wisdom of God is not just an intellectual pursuit. It is a heartfelt pleasure in His personality. The presence of the Almighty can be an emotionally satisfying affection. His character is lovely, His words winsome. Abandon the image of the stern, distant God. His wrath toward us, though entirely legitimate, was poured out on Jesus. It has been fully satisfied. Our only response is to be fully satisfied in Him.

“We never better enjoy ourselves than when we most enjoy God.” -Benjamin Whichcote-

October 20 – Seeing His Face (Matthew 25:21)

“When a king’s face brightens, it means life; his favor is like a rain cloud in spring.”(Proverbs 16:15)

IN WORD:
Perhaps we don’t enter the courts of kings as they did in the ancient world. Maybe we don’t understand the implications of a king’s expression when he sees us. But the king’s acceptance once meant the difference between life and death, or at least the difference between blessing and misery. When his face lit up, his servants could rest easy. To their great relief, his good mood would result in the glory of his favor. It would bring joy to the heart.
So how is this relevant to us? Aren’t we rarely privileged to enter the halls of national authority or the courts of sovereigns? No, the privilege has been granted to us. We are to come into the throne room of the Most High God — the ultimate authority in all of existence — and voice our concerns. We are allowed to serve in His fields. We are allowed to consult with the wisdom of eternity for our daily endeavors. And we are blessed to become partakers of His glory. He shares his kingdom with us! There is no greater joy.
But what do we see on His face? Is it brightened by our presence? Many are afraid not. Many see a rightfully angry god on the throne when they pray. Many feel the holy disappointment of our pure and perfect Father. Many believe that God could never love them as He loves a treasured child. Until we believe otherwise, we will not know His favor. Knowing His delight is contingent on our being absolutely convinced of His good will toward men. His favor falls on us when we know from whom it falls.

IN DEED:
When God sees you, does He see Jesus? If you believe in the Savior, God will consider his life a substitute for yours. And as you serve the Savior, God will fill your life with His Spirit. Your life and the life of Jesus will become so intertwined, so connected, that in heaven there can be no distinction between the two. As a husband and wife are “one flesh,” the Savior and His bride are “one Spirit.” The two have become one, and that One is a delight to His King. Accept the King’s delight with gratitude.

“Christianity is about acceptance, and if God accepts me as I am, then I had better do the same.” -Hugh Montefiore-

October 19 – Choices (Deuteronomy 30:19)

“The way of the sluggard is blocked with thorns, but the path of the upright is a highway.”(Proverbs 15:19)

IN WORD:
Every single moment of our lives, we face a choice. We choose when to speak and when to keep silent, when to sit and when to stand, when to breathe and when to hold our breath. We could get incredibly detailed about all of our many momentary options if we wanted to. But that’s an excruciating exercise, sort of like listening to every beat of our heart. It requires too much attention and stress. We prefer to let things happen naturally and automatically.
But Proverbs urges us to step back and look at our choices from time to time — not just the major ones, but also the little ones that determine the subtle directions of our lives each day. And its message is consistent: Righteous choices, while sometimes harder in the short term, are always easier in the long run. They lead to life. Laziness and evil put us on hard roads. The path of least resistance is often the path of greatest grief.
That doesn’t mean that righteous choices will always make things easy for us. Anytime we seek to obey God diligently and serve him with devotion, there will be obstacles. But God always paves a way for our path of discipleship. He doesn’t ever make rebellion or laziness profitable in the end.

IN DEED:
What level of diligence guides your life? Are you proactive about your choices — even the small ones — or are you herded like livestock through the fields of life, unwittingly pushed and pulled by those around you? Do you feel that God is firmly directing your steps? Or do you feel that you’re just floating with the current and conforming to the expectations of this world?
God calls for diligence. Laziness and discipleship do not mix. He doesn’t mean for us to obsess about every minor choice, but He expects us to draw a line in the sand and refuse to let the demands of the culture dictate our lives. We are to guard his plan for our lives with zeal. Don’t get off the highway. Let Him be Lord of your choices.

“Every day the choice between good and evil is presented to us in simple ways.” -William Sangster-

October 18 – New Clothes (1 Peter 5:5-7)

“Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.”
(1 Peter 5:5)

IN WORD:
At the heart of the temptation in the Garden of Eden, at the heart of the human rebellion and its slithering instigator, is a foundation of pride. Many have said that pride is behind every sin. It is pride that tells us to ignore God’s will and follow our own. It is pride that tells us to enthrone our pleasures and pursuits within our hearts. And it is pride that places us in a heated competition with every other person on the planet — for status, for goods, and for glory.
God is emphatic throughout Scripture: He “opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Proud kings and priests in the Bible found themselves humiliated by God Himself. Humble supplicants were lifted up into His presence. And so the principle continues today. God becomes the archenemy of any who diminish Him by magnifying themselves.
That’s why Peter tells us to put on new clothes. We are to strip ourselves of that fantasy that we are self-made souls and adorn ourselves with God’s grace. We are to cast out our old clothes like they were last decade’s fashions and stock up on the plain elegance of reality. Our new wardrobe is far more beautiful in its simplicity than was our old wardrobe in its attention-grabbing styles. Gaudiness does not fit in the Kingdom of God, and it does not unite us with others. Humility blends in perfectly.

IN DEED:
Your attitude toward others will largely determine, in a practical way, how united you are with the body of Christ. Are you often at the center of discord? Is it because of a lack of humility? Dress yourself in new clothes.
Humility takes the first step, even when it is confronted with the pride of others. When it does, it disarms the proud like nothing else. Prideful people feed off of each other and stir up more pride. A step of humility undermines the whole process. It defuses the root of our sin and opens the way for the glory of God. It gives us an entirely new look.

“Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil’s reach as humility.” -Jonathan Edwards-

October 17 – A Community of Grace

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16)

IN WORD:
Wisdom is always lived in community. The popular image of the guru hidden in a mountain monastery or of the sage out in the wilderness is intriguing, but it is not the biblical pattern. God has gifted His people with interdependent gifts. They can only be exercised in the body of believers.
What does this body look like? It’s the body of Christ, His physical presence in this world, so it should look like Him. The picture Paul paints is ideal: A fellowship that is rich in the Word, sharpening each other’s understanding, singing with joy and gratitude — not just when the leader directs, but out of the overflow of the heart — is the kind of fellowship that reflects the peace and perfection of Jesus. But is it real? Don’t we question the validity of such a spectacle and accuse it of superficiality? Don’t we just know there are deeper issues that the community is suppressing?
That’s the beauty of the body of Christ. If it’s real, there is no suppression. It is a more realistic danger for Christians to suppress the joy of faith in order to fit better with this world than to suppress the ways of the world in order to express joy. And gratitude, singing, and mutual admonition do not imply that there are no problems in life. In fact, they depend on the problems. God has entered the context of this broken planet to show mercy, love, and peace. The fellowship that really believes is one that lets Him show those things within it.

IN DEED:
Cultivate this kind of community. It simply must begin with individuals, and we might as well be those individuals. Has God been gracious? Be gracious. Has God forgiven? Forgive. Has God healed? Then heal. The church is to mirror the Savior — the Bible calls it a reflection of His glory. The result is a community of grace. It lives grace, breathes grace, speaks grace. And it begins when someone decides, as Paul says, to “let it.”

“Grace is love that cares and stoops and rescues.”
-John Stott-

October 16 – A World of Hate (1 John 3:11-16)

“Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.”
(1 John 3:13)

IN WORD:
It has been the way of the world from the beginning. Cain was jealous of Abel, his jealousy turned to hatred, and his hatred turned violent. The tradition has been carried on by Joseph’s brothers, Pharoah’s soldiers, Jews and Romans who hated the incarnate God and His followers, and on and on. People are killed simply for claiming Jesus. And we should not be surprised at all.
Why this enmity? Go back to the Garden of Eden. The serpent and the seed of God’s children have been at odds since day one. There is a cosmic war raging, and we’re in the middle of it. Now that the Messiah has defeated death and raised us to unspeakable heights, the enemy’s sense of vengeance runs deeper than ever. We were born into that bad environment (Ephesians 2:1-3), but we’ve been delivered. And there is no halfway house. We chose sides. That didn’t go unnoticed in the shadows of this world.
But it is a strange phenomenon that the world doesn’t believe it is at enmity with God. Scripture is emphatic about its hatred (James 4:4, for example), but our culture thinks that tolerance for the possibility of a Creator is the same as friendship with Him. The truth of its hatred only comes out when His Lordship is asserted, never before. We think God’s people are at peace with an unbelieving society until righteousness is preached. Then things get ugly, and we’re surprised.

IN DEED:
Don’t be. Abandon the illusion that we can be friends with the world and friends with God at the same time. That’s a fantasy that is never supported in Scripture. We can have a decent reputation, we can serve humbly and admirably in our society, and we can earn the respect of many. But it is a superficial respect. Don’t be taken in by it; take it with a grain of salt. A mere mention of Jesus could forfeit all the acceptance you think you’ve earned. Never give the world’s esteem much effort, and cling to the surpassing worth of the Lord you’ve chosen. Ultimately, only His opinion matters.

“Hold everything earthly with a loose hand.”
-Charles Spurgeon-

October 15 – Rock of Wisdom (Matthew 7:24-27)

“Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”
(Matthew 7:24)

IN WORD:
Perhaps we have come to assume too much about the character of Jesus. We ask, “What would Jesus do?” Envisioning the pre-modern Man of peace who walked around Galilee so many years ago, just as the movies portray. We wonder how much relevance He has for a world of corporate takeovers and global communications. We wonder how much of His voice is our own psychology and how much of it is really His.
That’s a flaw of human nature: We have difficulty distinguishing between our God-given but distorted consciences and the pure, convicting voice of our Lord. The Spirit of God dwells within us, but so do all sorts of misconceptions, anxieties, phobias, hang-ups, and habits. When we think we hear His voice, is it a matter of revelation or psychosis? In our discernment, there is a fine line between the two. In the reality of His Kingdom, there is an unbridgeable division between them. We must learn how to tell the difference.
That is why a strict adherence to God’s Word is paramount. We are not to make His Words our occasion for petty divisions, but we are to hear His voice clearly. And Jesus offers it clearly. He has instructed us thoroughly. He has shed His light on the Old Testament — it is all summed up in Him — and He has shined His light into the New — things will always be summed up in Him.

IN DEED:
As our minds go through this renewal process — the transformation from old, worldly ways of thinking to grasping and embodying the deep mysteries of the now-revealed Kingdom of God — we must saturate them in His words. His teaching must become the first set of criteria used in our decision making. His wisdom must become the fire that melts us and the mold that shapes us. We must define truth by Him and define all that is outside of Him as un-truth. We must build all our houses on the solid, un-shakable foundation of His Kingdom.

“When we speak about wisdom, we are speaking about Christ.”
-St. Ambrose-

October 14 – Deception’s Defeat (Jeremiah 17:5-13)

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”(Jeremiah 17:9)

IN WORD:
Not only can we be deceived by the false prophets of our age, we can also be deceived by our own hearts. We often embrace lies if they are emotionally satisfying, never discerning the final result of believing them. God’s wisdom takes a backseat to our affections when our affections have not been rooted in Him. The fact of the heart’s treachery is a huge affront to our ego. It’s a tragic affront to our Father.
Such is the nature of human wisdom. It is dark and deceptive, shifty and shallow, misdirected and myopic. It rejects the present reality of eternity for the future hope of personal glory. It builds on shifting sand. And, according to God’s Word in Jeremiah, it is beyond cure!
How tragic. How scary. How can the God of hope give us such a hopeless word? How can the promise of salvation be so un-promising? How can we continue to read the Bible after we’ve come across this desperate declaration? How can we be redeemed?
The answer is glorious. God promises later in Jeremiah to give His people a new heart (24:7). So what if our hearts are beyond cure? They are not beyond resurrection. Our dead hearts are not reformed or healed; they are raised to new life. They are replaced with ones that are real. God says it even more precisely in Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).

IN DEED:
Only God can understand our hearts, and His assessment is utterly depressing if we do not know the rest of His plan. But He who discerns our deepest thoughts and most obscure deceptions (v. 10) offers us His pure and truthful Spirit to replace the corruption of our flesh.
These dreaded prophecies do not end with dread, and the wisdom of God does not end with death. Those who embrace it find life — answers now, direction today, and character always. Open your heart daily, to His life.

“O for a heart to praise my God, a heart from sin set free; a heart that always feels Thy blood so freely shed for me.”
-Charles Wesley-

October 13 – Deception’s Promise (Jeremiah 6:13-15)

“‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
(Jeremiah 6:14)

IN WORD:
Jeremiah was given a difficult assignment. He was called to preach destruction to a people who would never believe him. He knew up front that his message would fail. Other prophets would succeed with their false message. But God told Jeremiah to preach the truth anyway.
We live in an age of acceptance. Anything goes. Morality, we’re told, is relative; truth is too complicated to pin down, commitment is defined by the mood of the moment, and there are many different paths to God. Tolerance is a code word meaning, “Don’t preach to me. I’ve got no intention of changing.” The false prophets of our age have a clear, persistent message: “Peace, peace.” But there is no peace.
How we wish peace would come. We pray to the Prince of Peace and ask Him to rule our lives. He does, and He will. But He will fulfill the message He preached long ago in Galilee and Judea: God will judge the human revolt, and Jesus is the only way to escape the judgment.
That’s not a popular message in an age of acceptance. Nothing will bring out intolerance in the “tolerant” ones like a message of exclusive redemption. But like Jeremiah, Christendom is faced with a choice: Preach the truth, even where it goes unheeded, or lie about the condition our race is in and the judgment that awaits it — all for the sake of “peace.”

IN DEED:
Deceptions abound in our world. Most of the effective ones sound pleasant to our ears; otherwise, they would not deceive us. God’s Word sounds pleasant, too, but only to repentant ears. To the pride of self-sufficiency — the drug of choice for the human ego — His Word is anathema. It is as thoroughly rejected as Jeremiah was. But it is true.
Our generation has brought significant challenges to our faith. Our beliefs are not for the faint of heart. But as Isaiah promised, God’s truth is the only water that quenches thirst and the only bread that is filling (Isaiah 55:1-3). Cling to it. Drink and eat of it with gusto. Stand firm in a truth-impaired generation. And never fall for the false promises of secular prophets.

“We like to be deceived.” -Blaise Pascal-

October 12 – Your Soul’s Delight (Isaiah 55:1-7)

“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?”(Isaiah 55:2)

IN WORD:
We like to think we have a lot of resources at our disposal: a plan for the future, a diverse portfolio, a wealth of friends & family, a strategy for personal security, frequent entertainment, and more. Subtly and imperceptibly, our faith begins to shift from the God who gave us these things to our ownership of these things. Before long, we are imbibing secular wisdom and humanistic strategies for success, health, and welfare. We seek all our comforts without reference to God, except for our prayer that he will support our agenda. This path from God-reliance to self-reliance is surprisingly short in its distance, but very, very tragic in its implications.
God’s penetrating question through Isaiah calls us to a better way. Why, when we have the God of all resources in our intimate fellowship, would we place our faith in the resources themselves? Perhaps that’s the problem — we aren’t in intimate fellowship with Him. It’s easier to pursue self-sufficiency, we think, than to pursue the invisible God. But human ingenuity falls woefully short. We will find that out before long, if we haven’t already.

IN DEED:
Why do we seek wisdom from any source other than God? Why do we trust in provision from the work of our own hands? Why do we find our security more in our human relationships than in our holy Father? The answers are part of the mystery of fallenness. Just as their sin drove the Israelites away from their covenant with God, so does ours. Supernatural faith becomes naturally corrupt all too quickly. Finite minds and fickle hearts are always in need of redirection.
God gives us His direction. He implores us to embrace it. It is the only way to life. It alone will delight our soul. It takes hold of His everlasting faithfulness. Is that so hard to remember? Our discipleship must always involve turning to what is truly bread and laboring for what really satisfies — daily, hourly, and moment by fulfilling moment.

“God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.”
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning-