December 22 – God’s Remedy (John 1:1-14)

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”
(John 1:14)

IN WORD:
What was in the mind of God when He sent His Son to live with us? Was it frustration over all of His failed attempts to get people to behave correctly? Was it because the Law did not do what it was supposed to do? Was the spoken Word so lacking that, in a last ditch effort, God tried turning the spoken Word into the living Word?
We know, of course, that the Incarnation was not a last-ditch effort. It was the plan from the beginning. All of the prior judgments — of Noah’s contemporaries, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of degenerate Canaanite tribes — were foundational to this incarnation. All of the prior promises — to Abraham and his descendants, to the newly freed Israelites at Sinai, to the prophets of restoration and hope — were wrapped up in this plan. The righteousness of God first had to be established, then the depravity of man. Then the plan would work. The wisdom of God, the “logos” and logic of the universe, the Spirit of the Eternal could clothe Himself in humanity and have it actually mean something.
What does it mean to you? When you read your Bible, does it make a difference that the Word is not just telling you what to do, but offering to re-create the fundamental nature of your spirit? When you worship God, is it better to do so with a transformed heart than with an obedience to an unknown deity? Does it matter to you that instead of simply being religious as best you can, you relate to a Person — a Person who lived in the same kind of body you have and yet is still powerful and wise enough to be your God? Are you glad your faith is this . . .well, personal?

IN DEED:
Some people are not. They would prefer a distant God who will leave them alone until requested to show up. The God who became flesh has so much better in store for us. Yes, sometimes it feels a little too personal — there’s sin and obedience to deal with. But ultimately, we appreciate it. We’re flesh and we need to relate to flesh. The Word knew that, so Jesus came to dwell.

“Christ became what we are that He might make us what He is.”
-Athanasius of Alexandria-

December 21 – Dedicate Bad Times

“But when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.”(Ecclesiastes 7:14)

IN WORD:
Some Christians feel guilty when they find it hard to be joyful in the face of painful trials. The weeping of prophets and priests, the book of Lamentations, and many other grief-filled passages in the Bible make it clear to us: It’s ok to mourn. We do not have to have our happy faces on all the time. We are to be authentic people, and sometimes we’re authentically sad. That’s expected.
But we do need to realize a profound truth in the midst of our sadness: God is in it. We may find that hard to believe. How could a loving God allow this disaster to strike us? How could disease and death serve His purposes? How can He say He cares while He lets these kinds of trials go on?
These are hard questions that brief devotionals can’t answer. But the witness of the Word, nevertheless, is that God is sovereign and He is intimately involved in our pain. He was with Joseph in his brothers’ treachery and his long imprisonment; He was with Joshua in every battle for the Promised Land; He was with Jeremiah in the destruction of Jerusalem; and He was actually IN Jesus on the Cross. His hand had a purpose in every one of these traumatic events. He did not frantically come up with plans B, C, or D because of an unforeseen failure in His plan A. He had already counted on the trials to come. They were part of His foreknowledge and His design from the beginning.

IN DEED:
Isn’t that comforting? Maybe not as comforting as a quick resolution to your problem would be, but God has His purposes, and His purposes have their proper time. Meanwhile, you hurt. You don’t have to deny that. But try to recognize that God is deeply involved in your critical moments, even when He seems critically absent. Just because life seems difficult doesn’t mean God has missed something. He knows all about “difficult.” He didn’t promise easy, pain-free lives. He promised redemption. Dedicate your trial to His glory. It is part of His plan.

“He who knows how to suffer will enjoy much peace.”
-Thomas A’ Kempis-

December 20 – Celebrate Good Times (Ecclesiastes 7:13-14)

“When times are good, be happy.”(Ecclesiastes 7:14)

IN WORD:
Some Christians feel guilty when they are happy. With a personal history of sin, a world of grief, and so much to be done before Jesus returns, how can times be good? They look at the heart of God and see only sadness and stress. They reason that a good God could not be happy with what he sees and, therefore, neither can we.
But God has not created us for futility. This is perhaps a surprising message from the sad book of Ecclesiastes, but we read about this God of joy in other books of the Bible, too. Fruitfulness, prosperity, blessedness, contentment, and inner peace are all gifts from above. And it’s never wrong to enjoy His gifts.
Is that hard to do? Some people have too easy a time of it, but historically some of our denominations and theological perspectives have discouraged happiness. They meant to discourage meaningless and profane frivolity, not true joy. The Christian life is to be a joyful life; the Bible makes that clear. Rather than always seeing what’s wrong in our lives, what’s wrong in the world, and what God wants to do to fill in the gaps, we are to frequently look at what God has given us, how He has blessed His gifts, and what He has already done to fill in the gaps. Spiritually speaking, we often barely notice that our glass is filling up; we focus on its remaining emptiness. In truth, we’re allowed and even urged to notice that the glass is often half empty on this planet. But we are to dwell on the fact that it’s half full. Thankfulness is to dominate over discontentment in our thinking.

IN DEED:
How can we do this? Like soldiers in combat, we can be altogether serious about our jobs while still enjoying a rest and a laugh in between the battles. Like athletes in training, we can enjoy the competition now and can already look forward to the victory celebration. If we think being serious about the Kingdom of God means deferring gratification until heaven, we’re wrong. God and His gifts are to be enjoyed. Now. When times are good — and if you look hard enough, they usually are — be happy.

“Christians are the only people in the world who have anything to be happy about.” -Billy Graham-

December 19 – Disciplining the Mind (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”(2 Corinthians 10:5)

IN WORD:
Paul made this assertion to a church that was struggling with false doctrine and fleshly disobedience. It was attacked from without by philosophies contradicting the gospel, and it was attacked from within by internal divisions and petty arguments. And though he was speaking primarily of church life, all of the dynamics the Corinthians were facing in their fellowship are also dynamics we face in our own minds. We struggle with disobedience, we stir up mental discord with others, and we wrestle with false ideas about God and about life. Paul would heartily agree to applying this verse to our minds as well as our fellowships.
What we learn from this concept of taking every thought captive is that God wants us to think correctly. He wants us to know Him in truth. He wants us to treat others according to who they are in Christ, or at least who they can be in Christ. He wants us to forsake the thoughts that are built on lies — the ones that say, “God won’t protect me or provide for me; my future is in doubt; my enemies might get the upper hand; I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” And He wants us to embrace truth: “God is my Father and He holds me securely in His hand; His people are my people and I will fellowship with them forever; His Kingdom is my only citizenship; and eternity shapes my present.” The mind must be retrained to accept these truths. We must eat, drink, and breathe them.

IN DEED:
How can we do that? There are 4 imperatives: 1.) We must ask God to make us aware of our faulty thinking; 2.) We must ask His Spirit to conform us to His image; 3.) We must consciously deny the wrong things we think; and 4.) We must consciously replace those wrong thoughts with truth. The Word of God must shape us, the Spirit of God must fill us, and the purposes of god must become ours. Our minds must be renewed.

“There is no salvation save in truth, and the royal road of truth is by the mind.” -Martin Cyril D’arcy-

December 18 – Disciplines of the Mind: Power (Psalm 18)

“It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.”(Psalm 18:32)

IN WORD:
When we believe that we are powerless to change anything, we believe a lie from the enemy. When we think we are victims of circumstances or of people, we are wrong. We don’t have an accurate picture of who we are in Jesus. We are dwelling on the very real human frailty that resulted from the Fall, and we are forgetting the heights to which we’ve been raised in Christ. Yes, we were sinful, impotent, broken, and beaten down, and in and of ourselves we still are. But the Bible declares us seated with Christ in the heavenly places at God’s right hand — the right hand of power. It tells us that the power of the Resurrection lives within us. It tells us that God is exceedingly capable of doing more than we can even comprehend, and that we have access to Him! How irrational it is to behave as victims who have no recourse. What folly to resign ourselves to the circumstances at hand.
The Bible is full of tentative people who did not think they could accomplish anything important. Moses told God He had the wrong guy. Gideon argued that God had picked the weakest tribe and the least of its families. They knew their frailty well, but they needed to learn the truth about God.

IN DEED:
Do you want to think straight? Do you want to have a firm grip on reality? Then meditate on the blessings of God in Christ. Read through your New Testament with the assurance that God’s promises are true. The statements about our salvation, though unbelievably extravagant, must be believed anyway. God doesn’t lie. When we accept an impotent prayer life, an unfruitful position, or a joyless, defeated Christianity, we are tacitly implying that He does lie. We are slandering our powerful Creator who arms us with His strength. Confidence is His gift. Rest confidently in Him.

“The same power that brought Christ back from the dead is operative within those who are Christ’s.” -Leon Morris-

December 17 – Disciplines of the Mind: Weakness (Psalm 18)

“I love you, O Lord, my strength.”(Psalm 18:1)

IN WORD:
The most frustrating feeling we can have when our circumstances are overwhelming is our sense of powerlessness. We cannot pull enough strings to control hurtful people, to heal an illness or a broken relationship, or to ensure our own security in times of trouble. But often we try. We attempt strength, believing that enough will-power, self-effort, or money and power will make things right. Or we go in the other extreme, declaring our efforts futile and resigning ourselves to unpleasant situations. The balance between being passively weak and over assertive is hard to find.
Our identity is the issue. God tells us how he hates pride, so we don’t want to take things into our own hands and manipulate circumstances for our own purposes. Neither do we want to sit idly by while evil runs rampant. We don’t know who we are. Are we weak or are we strong? Are we David against Goliath, or are we David on the run from Saul? Are we Elijah embarrassing 450 prophets of Baal, or are we Elijah running away from Jezebel? Are Christians to roar like lions or be eaten by them? It’s hard to know. God’s Word gives us both pictures.

IN DEED:
The reason we’re confused is that both pictures are accurate. We are weak. But we are strong. We have no power in ourselves, but we are not in ourselves, we are in Christ. Like Paul, we can do all things in Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). But like Paul, we delight in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:10). We have great strength, but not ours. We have amazing status, but we didn’t earn it. We can be incredibly influential in matters of eternity, but only by the Spirit who works within us.
The mind must be disciplined to know two extremes: our utter poverty of power and our indestructible position in Christ. When we focus on the former, we become helpless and impotent. When we focus on the latter, we become proud. But the balance will keep us humble, and it will change our lives dramatically. Our weakness is God’s opportunity to be strong.

“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them.”
-Hudson Taylor-

December 16 – Disciplines of the Mind: Love (Romans 13:8-10)

“Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”(Romans 13:10)

IN WORD:
Retraining the mind requires extraordinary focus at first. Not only must we learn not to think in all of those negative patterns of thinking, holding on to bitterness, fear, regrets, and our weaknesses as we do. We must also embrace the character of God: His faithfulness, His power and might, His grace and mercy, His love. Just as redirecting a river from its centuries-old path is a monumental task of engineering, so is redirecting those streams of thought that have long flooded our souls. We cannot do it without God’s Spirit. Only He has the power. And every power He exerts in us will eventually lead to one thing: love.
In the past, our streams of thought have always carved valleys that pointed in the direction of self. Even our seemingly selfless acts are often done for selfish purposes. That has to change. The natural mind has no God-centeredness in it, and the renewed mind that the Spirit forms in us has nothing else. This is more than a slight re-arrangement of water flow; it is a radical reversal. The landscape of our minds must be tilted in an entirely different direction. All anger, bitterness, competition, jealousy, and selfishness are foreign to the heart of God, and if He has given us His heart, they are foreign to us as well.
How can we take every thought captive to Christ? We must learn to recognize selfish thinking. Whenever we find it hard to applaud another’s talent, encourage another’s spiritual gift, or give for another’s welfare, we must be acutely aware of it. Whenever we hold on to envy, competitiveness, or a distaste for another’s personality, we must be grieved. That does not mean we must instinctively like everything and everyone. It does mean we must treat everyone as a priceless child of God — or at least a potential priceless child of God.

IN DEED:
Selfless love goes against our sinful nature. But so does God’s Spirit. Living in His Spirit and His love requires a conscious discipline of thinking. If we live for Him, we live for His people.

“Love is the only spiritual power that can overcome the self-centeredness that is inherent in being alive.”
-Arnold J. Toynbee-

December 15 – Disciplines of the Mind: Bitterness (Hebrews 12:14-15)

“See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
(Hebrews 12:15)

IN WORD:
You can’t believe how you’ve been treated. Somewhere in your past, someone has done you wrong. You’ve been betrayed, lied about, cheated, or deceived. And it just eats at you, doesn’t it? The fact that there are people less worthy than you who seem to be enjoying life more — earning more and playing more — drives you crazy. It just isn’t right when the wicked prosper. Especially when you don’t.
Everyone has been there; our offended ness can run awfully deep. And sometimes — usually, in fact — it is quite legitimate. It isn’t just a matter of perception; people do step on our toes and treat us badly. Sometimes it’s intentional, and sometimes it’s just carelessness. Either way, many people lack integrity and their lack affects us. We live in a world in which arrogance, meanness, deception, and pettiness abound. We can hardly avoid such things.
Are we wrong to be offended? No, but we are wrong to hold on to that offense. It is pointless, even harmful, to wallow in our hurt and to count all the ways things could be better otherwise. It doesn’t harm the person who angered us; it only harms us — and the people around us who have to live with our bitterness. We cultivate a destructive, cancerous disease when we lament how we have been wronged. We ignore the grace of God for ourselves and for others when we dwell there. God never calls us to that place of lament.

IN DEED:
Imagine winning a billion-dollar lottery and then getting all steamed up about a ten-cent shortchange at the convenience store. That’s a monetary image of our spiritual outrage. God has given us all things and promised us all things. He has pledged Himself and His bounty as our never-ending supply. He has guaranteed that we will never lack anything we truly need. Why then do we obsess about the wrongs we’ve faced? God can make up the difference, and He can deal with the offenders in His time. Is there any grievance worth harboring in that arrangement?

“There is no torment like the inner torment of an unforgiving spirit.” -Charles Swindoll-

December 14 – Disciplines of the Mind: Hope (1 Peter 1:13-21)

“Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”(1 Peter 1:13)

IN WORD:
The kind of hope that is natural to the fallen human mind is based on wishful thinking. It is a dream that things will one day work out well, that desires will be met, that somehow things will get better. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or the fairy tale of true love. It has a great imagination but no confidence. We always wake up from that dream.
But biblical hope is not wishful thinking. It looks forward to the fulfillment of certain promises, and it even brings those promises into the present. The faulty, human hopes we dream about are vestiges from before the Fall, reminders that we were built for an eternal Kingdom of peace and perfection. Biblical hope brings those dreams back to reality and lines us up with the God who created us to dream big. It is not held captive by today’s circumstances, it cannot be squelched by anything this world brings against it, and it cannot die. Hope is not a figment of our imagination, it is a life based on truth.
But we cannot have hope unless we’ve disciplined our minds to accept it. We’re too used to our fantasies proving false, and we’re afraid the Kingdom of God will end up as just another fantasy. The natural mind always makes God’s promises seem unrealistic and hopelessly out of reach. But it lies, and we must redirect our thoughts. Much of discipleship is simply understanding and believing reality. We must turn from false thinking.

IN DEED:
Hope knows who God is. The mountains we encounter in life are irrelevant, because the Rock is a greater reality. A mind trained in biblical hope can apply God’s ultimate promises to current situations. It can base our present reality on our future grace.
Don’t let hopelessness influence your life. It is based on lies and it will paralyze you. We hope in our God because He has told us the truth and His promises are certain.

“The future belongs to those who belong to God. This is hope.”
-W.T. Purkiser-

December 13 – Disciplines of the Mind: Regret (Joel 2:21-27)

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.”
(Joel 2:25)

IN WORD:
The attitude that is perhaps most subtle in corrupting our perspective is the sense of regret we feel over missed opportunities and past failures. We play a devastating mind game that wonders what life would have been like “if” — if we hadn’t fallen, if so-and-so hadn’t hurt us, if we had turned right instead of left, if, if, if. That game will destroy us, always turning our gaze backward, never forward, and never upward. Though the locusts have consumed our past, we extend an open invitation for them to consume our present and eventually our future. We live in our regrets far too easily.
What is the point of that? Are we trying to change the past? Are we telling the Sovereign God that He missed a chance to make things better for us? We are as nearsighted looking backward as we are looking forward. We forget that the God who exalted Joseph to the political top of Egypt, first allowed his brothers to betray him and a prison to hold him captive. We forget that the God who put David on the throne let him hide out in caves for years. We forget that the God who raised Jesus from the dead sent Him to die in the first place.The deliverer Moses was first an exiled stutterer. The apostle Paul was first a rebel Saul. The powerful-preaching Peter was first a spineless self-preservationist. All of these could have lived with an obsession about the locusts. None of them did, and God did amazing things through them.

IN DEED:
Do you have regrets? Do not be gentle with them. Get over them. You have trained yourself in paralysis. You are committing a slow, painful suicide, dying past deaths over and over again until you’ve run out of life. You’re living in a dismal fantasy.
How is that a fantasy? Think about it: God has removed your past from you, separating you fro your sins as far as the east is from the west and comforting you more deeply than anyone has grieved you. That’s truth, and to the extent you dwell on those past events, you’re out of touch with reality. Base your life on truth. It’s calling you forward.

“In Christ we can move out of our past into a meaningful present and a breathtaking future.” -Erwin Lutzer-