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All over the world as you read these words, God’s people are being hounded and persecuted for their allegiance to Jesus Christ. And they are standing fast in the face of edicts from kings, presidents, generals, and party commissars. They are saying, “No, we won’t do the things you are asking us to do. We refuse to deny our Lord.” And they are paying the price.
Perhaps this has been a difficult year for you. The future stretching out before you may seem gloomy or threatening. You want very much to be God’s man or God’s woman, but you find yourself under the gun. In
your rare moments of quiet, you may wonder, Where is God? He’s right there at your side, my friend. He has never left. He has never removed His eye from you, nor has His attention wandered to other matters. Not even for a heartbeat. He has never ceased caring for you, thinking about you, considering your situation, and loving you with a passion and intensity beyond comprehension.
“Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months”
The old motto of soldiers during the Revolutionary War applies to many areas of life: “Trust in God, but keep your powder dry!” In other words, place your life in the Savior’s hands, but stay at the ready. Do all that you can to prepare yourself for battle, understanding that the ultimate outcome rests with the Lord God.
Wisdom says, do all you can within your strength, then trust Him to do what you cannot do, to accomplish what you cannot accomplish. Faith and careful planning go hand-in-hand. They always have.
You can have all the faith in the world, but if you have no consistent plan for discipline, you run a circus, not a family.
Passing the time with Moses.
But on that dark morning when Jochebed placed her little one in a tiny basket coated with pitch and tar, she also had a plan. It may have been desperate, but these were desperate times. And she put her plan into action, fully realizing the results lay completely in God’s good hands.
I have no desire to stir up controversy or raise guilt. I simply want to declare what I see to be biblical principles—principles that ought to be soberly, carefully considered.
Having said that, I still maintain it is better to sacrifice almost any material goal—short of food on the table and a roof overhead—than to sacrifice those precious years of opportunity with your little ones.
Neglecting to ask God’s counsel, neglecting to seek God’s timing, you step in to handle things. And by and by, you’ve got a mess on your hands. You’re stuck with a corpse, with a shovel in your hands and a shallow grave at your feet.
When God’s in it, the job gets done. With the Lord in charge, failure flees.
The fact is, you cannot sow a fleshly seed and reap a spiritual plant. You cannot plant a carnal act and grow spiritual fruit. If you manipulate and connive and scheme and lie to get yourself to the top, don’t thank God
for the promotion! God knows, as you know, that you maneuvered and pulled strings and buried those carnal carcasses in the soil to get yourself promoted. So when you get that bigger office and the key to the executive washroom, don’t give Him the credit. He doesn’t want it. Your fingerprints are all over that scheme, not His.
At times we say to the Lord, “Thanks for that, Father.” And the Lord must answer back, “Who? Me? I didn’t pull that off. That was your doing.” You cheat on an exam, mak...
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fudge on your income tax, get a nice refund and thank Him for the extra cash you can give to the building fund. It doesn’t work that way, friend. He says to yo...
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As Moses was sitting by that well, I can imagine a still, small voice cutting through his musings. “Don’t thank Me, Moses, that an Egyptian lies buried in the sand. You did that. And fleshly acts like that can never advance My plans....
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Knowledge tells me what to do; wisdom tells me when to do it and how to carry it out.
To put it in simple terms, in the Body of Christ some people are called to be the toes. Not everyone can be a right hand, an eye, or an ear. Some people have to be the toe, or the heel, or the kidney, or the liver. These members are (hopefully) seldom seen. But just let one of them stop functioning for awhile and watch out! The whole body is in trouble. Moses was willing to be obscure, to dwell apart from the limelight, to accept his new status.
God knows all about it. When He’s ready, He will work. I must leave it at that.
Do you know who it is who keeps erecting all those unrealistic standards in your life? Do you know who keeps raising the bar beyond all hope of clearing it? It’s you. You do.
Then comes that moment in the driveway when the car is packed to the gills, and that young man, that young lady, walks out of the house. We all hesitate at the car door, knowing life must change when that car drives away. There are hugs, kisses, last-minute items to remember, stern admonitions, more hugs . . . and tears. And then the car drives away, and Mom and Dad stand arm-in-arm in the empty driveway, wondering where all the years went.
There are hugs, kisses, last-minute items to remember, stern admonitions, more hugs . . . and tears. And then the car drives away, and Mom and Dad stand arm-in-arm in the empty driveway, wondering where all the years went.
His schooling includes time in the wilderness. That’s where He gets our attention.
It could be that you’ve enjoyed good health and strength through most of your life, and suddenly the doctor tells you, “You know, I’ve noticed a spot on your lung. Frankly, I don’t like the looks of it.” Or, “We’ve checked the biopsy, and it doesn’t look good. In fact, there’s a malignancy.”
April 2016
Lung cancer diagnosis in Jim.
There’s nothing like the desert to help you discover the real you.
That’s the way life is today. Fast. Compressed. Condensed. Slam-bang it’s-done. Not so in God’s wilderness schooling. When it comes to walking with God, there is no such thing as instant maturity. God doesn’t mass produce His saints. He hand tools each one, and it always takes longer than we expected.
Take time to be still and listen to the profound sound of silence.
it will happen on an ordinary day. People will be getting married and buried. There will be problems, and there will be needs. Some people will be driving buses, others will be riding in them. Some will be on the way home from work, tuned in to talk radio. Others will be in the checkout line at the grocery store, impatiently wondering why the person ahead of them is taking so long to write that check. Some will be boarding an airplane, others stepping out of a subway. And suddenly, the Son will come! There will be a flash in the sky, a shout, the staccato blast of a trumpet, and in the
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God is looking for someone with ears to hear His voice, hands ready to do His work, and a heart that is willing to respond.
I have never lost respect for any individual who replied to a question with the answer, “I just don’t know.” On the other hand, I have lost a great deal of respect for those who knew they were wrong, and knew that I knew they were wrong, but could not bring themselves to admit it.
Probing a little deeper into the original language, we discover that these words, “I AM WHO I AM,” are the very characters in Hebrew that spell out the name Yahweh.
“I will be in between your lips. I will be right on your tongue. And I will give you the necessary words as you need them.”
He sometimes shouts through our pain, whispers to us while we’re relaxing on vacation, occasionally He sings to us in a song, and warns us through the sixty-six books of His written Word. It’s right there, ink on paper. Count on it—that book will never lead you astray.
Have you made a move, followed the nudging of God, into realms you wouldn’t have even dreamed of five years ago? He will honor your faith if you trust Him in that kind of walk.
You may have lots of friendships in your life, but you’ll probably never have more than a couple of friends on that deeper, spiritual, soul-to-soul level. You can tell such a friend anything that God is doing in your life, and you’ll find a warm reception and deep appreciation.
Until your eyes are fixed on the Lord, you will not be able to endure those days that go from bad to worse.
Seven days passed after the LORD had struck the Nile” (v. 24).
Life’s plagues are tough to endure—painful to the core. But God has no desire to leave us alone in our pain and distress.
Genesis, for example, is nothing more than the biography of twelve men wrapped up in a historical account of God’s movement on this earth. Think about those men. You have Adam and his three sons, Cain, Abel, and Seth. That brings you to Noah and his three boys, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This is followed by the account of Abraham and his son Isaac followed by Isaac’s son, Jacob, followed by Jacob’s son, Joseph. That’s it! That’s the basic outline of the Book of Genesis.
Our problem isn’t that we don’t know; our problem is that we do know but aren’t willing to follow through.
“For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
Coming to the Red Sea is just as much a part of His plan as crossing it.
The tears flow as God works in His time. But in the burning of those tears, God becomes very significant and real. And we realize, at last, that a predicament in God’s hands is only a highway to the Promised Land.
Why does God put us through wilderness experiences before Canaan? For one thing, He wants to test us. That’s why God led Israel into the wilderness, according to Deuteronomy 8:2: “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.” (Read that again . . . only this time, slowly.)
God puts us in the wilderness to test us, to stretch our spiritual muscles. Our earthly wilderness experiences are designed to develop us into men and women of faith. Let’s face it, our spiritual roots grow deep only when the winds around us are strong. Take away the tests, and we become spiritual wimps. But bring on the wilderness winds, and it’s remarkable how we grow, as our roots dig firmly into faith.
A heavenly appetite comes only from heaven; the Lord is the one who will reshape your desires as you kneel in submission and obedience before Him.
Today He’s our pal, our understanding buddy, our ever-available bell-boy. No, He is not! The Lord is our God. He does not bow to our hurried pace, but in silence He waits for us to meet His demands. And once we slow down enough to meet Him, He is pleased to add incredible spiritual depth to our shallow lives.
You can live as you please if you know you’re not being seen and you won’t get caught. But if, down deep inside, you know there is a loving and holy God who will not let you get away with sin, you will avoid sin at all costs.
You need a place in your home or apartment where you can meet with the Lord. Let me be even more practical than that. You must provide yourself with that place. You need only four things: a desk, a light, your Bible, and quietness. It may be in your bedroom, where you can close the door and be alone. It may be in a corner of your den or at your kitchen table. But wherever it is, you need your own quiet place where you can be all alone with God.
