Author: arisewithhope

I love studying the Bible about topics that most Christians deal with, and sharing my findings. My hope is to inspire others with the good news of the Gospel and point others to the great and precious promises of Jesus.

Finding the Power to Do Hard Things

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

I have 3 simple truths about the joy of the Lord for us to consider today. It is the knowledge of this joy that can help us to do hard things with a joyful momentum. They are:

  1. We get to rejoice and bring our joys to the Lord because we are chosen by God for serving the Lord, and this is invigorating that our rejoicing blesses him.
  2. We get to receive joy from the Lord even doing hard things as we are serving the Lord
  3. And as we bring our service to the Lord and recognize the grace from God upon our lives to live a changed life by his power, our actions can help serve to feed our joy in the Lord and create a joyful momentum, that seems to “come back to kiss our faces”.

To show these truths I bring us a glimpse of Psalm 119:4-5. These 2 scriptures give us a very simple reason we can rejoice in the Lord steadily even while doing hard things. Let’s read: 119:4-5 “Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.”

God’s strength and power are surely seen in the stability of the sun and with the immensity of heat and light it carries by radiating day after day almost seemingly without fail. It is something to consider the strength of the sun’s shining and it’s rising at one end of the sky and setting in another as if the sun were “rejoicing as a strong man to run his course”.

God is declaring his glory through the heavens in this Psalm. Although Psalm 119 is about how the glory of the sun is pictured as a strong man, its poetry gives us the feeling that there is a picture we can have about how powerful the knowledge of God’s glory is to propel us forward along with anything else touched by his glory. I can believe as we picture the application of truth from verses 4 and 5 we see that being touched by the glory of the Lord as the sun, can give those touched by God’s glory the expectation and experience of being propelled forward with strength and rejoicing by God’s declaring his glory in our lives.

If a Christian is saved for any length od time, we have recognized we can safely believe that God is consciously in the habit of providing all his children a strength comparable to magnet like adherence to a run a course for God with power and indistinguishable light although the sun is less touched by the glory of God inasmuch as Jesus didn’t die for the sun to be saved; he died for us to be saved. We may not keep to the path perfectly, to which we aree called, but the glory of God’s forgiveness and cleansing touches us, and we are revived and go on rejoicing stronger to run our course with God. God’s gravitational pull on us so to speak is a strong “gravity” or “staying power” he gives to keep us on course with him as a gift to pull us to him and a power to run in the path of his commands. Truly God makes us radiate his truth and love along our path as we rejoice, and he propels us forward with a powerful joy in our course in the Lord.

So, lets recap our 3 truths:

  1. We get to rejoice and bring our joys to the Lord because we are chosen by God for serving the Lord
  2. We get to receive joy from the Lord even doing hard things as we are serving the Lord
  3. And as we bring our service to the Lord and recognize the grace from God upon our lives to live a changed life by his power, our actions can help serve to feed our joy in the Lord.

Prayer: Oh God, may these truths with scriptural meditations serve to give us the joyful momentum to do hard things like fasting before you Oh God, and even long term or regular fasting Oh God. And may it also serve to give us a joyful momentum to do the hard thing of praying continuously before You Lord with gladness and willingness and find power and joy to fulfill our callings, and like a magnet “keep to our course” empowered with the heavenly touch of Your glory. Amen  Lord, Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Pains Christians Encounter That Are Unnecessary

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

God definitely has some thoughts about what should be happening on the Earth, at any given time and we can be confident that the One who created the Heavens and the Earth is also running the show. God is in control of what is allowed to happen on the earth. God is Sovereign and has a plan for “making all things new”, for “vengeance is mine, I will repay” He says, and a plan for “healing of the nations”, for “healing the brokenhearted”, for “redeeming people from the curse” that is “found upon the face of the earth”. God has “broken the power of sin” and “put sin to death in the body of Jesus”, and “came to save his people from their sins”. God has promised a future place where there is no strife, where people “will no longer learn war”, where people will be generous, loving, good to their neighbors, serving one another, live long and healthy lives, where people work to “rescue the helpless, and help rebuild broken cities”. God in scripture has gone on record saying that for man to be alone is not a good thing. He hates when His people are isolated from Him and others in the family of God, and he has gone on record saying he hates injustice, immorality, and inequality. God hates it when people in the world are hurt by other people’s sin.

Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

The facts are that sin does hurt people. Even the sin that a person may commit when he is alone may eventually end up surfacing and hurting someone else, as far as something like pornography being viewed, or of a person ruminating over any selfish, prideful, or bitter thoughts. The Bible says God hates those things. Getting hurt is such a common experience that everyone on the face of the earth can unfortunately experience this multiple times a week, if it were not simply getting hurt by the “sin” that we see around us that is described to “vex” one’s soul, as in “Rivers of waters run down mine eyes,
because they keep not thy law” (Ps 119:136). And righteous Lot was vexed, which is to say, greatly distressed with the depraved and sexualized words and conduct of the wicked Sodomites (2 Pet 2:7). One of the qualities that is spoken about of God’s wonderful promises for the future telling that he will one day “make all things new” is a wonderful place to start ruminating over all the hope we can have in a trustworthy God who is aware of our circumstances, our pains, our needs and knows every injustice we have ever suffered, so that meditating on his promises surely can shape our perspectives of what is happening presently all over the globe, shape our understanding of the past and can shape our understanding of what will happen in the future.

1 Corinthians 13:7 says “(Love) always protects….” And “1 John 4:16 says “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” Or, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” So, to see the ways God protects people in scripture and in the world around us is surely a picture of his loving heart. Needless to say, some scholars say at least 5 and possibly 6 out of 10 of the 10 commandments were laws God made to keep us free from the pains of sin, and from hurting one another, and in the OT there are many additional laws God put in place to bring aide to the hurt or defrauded, where the scripture tells in detail how to go about paying restitution.

Therefore praying for protection and/or avoidance of pain can be one of the most prayed-for topics that exists: “God I ask for safety for my patients”…from the lips of a surgeon… “God, please keep my classroom safe today…” from the lips of a school teacher, “God please keep all food bourn illness away from my business…” from the lips of a restaurant owner, or butcher. God please protect this person, we ask for traveling mercies…” from the lips of all who travel, and bus drivers and airplane pilots. “God please keep the campground safe today…” from the lips of state recreation area workers, just to name a few.

But for those who believe in the Sovereignty of God, we can be sometimes taught wrong or tempted to think “everything” that “just happens” is His will, so that means therefore we just simply need to “embrace everything” as coming directly from Him. The idea that we should “be completely humble and not try to fight against anything” so as to be relieved from our duty of imploring God through our belief in the God who protects is an all too deeply accepted half-truth/half-lie that has served to make lame and impotent the Christian church today.

So, here is just a snapshot or short list of “unnecessary pains” the church should not enable by the sin of not thinking it necessary to pray and fast, or enable by the sin of omitting prayer and fasting at times!

Unnecessary Pains:

  1. The pain our sin causes. We need to fight our sin and not accept it, even though our righteousness has been paid for in full not by our works, God has called us to follow him. We should not “shrink back” in our fight of faith. There may be times when we need to “re-coup” and “regain strength” but we should not become passive in our fight against our own sin.
  2. The pain of bad treatment from others. We should not accept all treatment from others as always something needed to keep us in God’s will. God’s people prayed for deliverance from Egypt. Paul was let down by a basket over a wall and was taken to a place where he would be safe from death threats. King David fought many fights against the armies of pagan nations and God gave him and Israel the victory many times over. Esther did not accept the idea of genocide for the people of Israel, and was called on by God to trust Him although her life could be at stake going before the King to ask for a law to be changed. And she called on the nation of Israel to fast and pray for 3 days, and they did, and God granted that the law be changed, by touching the heart of the king of Persia. God rallied the King to literally kill the corrupt person who wanted a nation  killed and this shows that her refusal to “accept” what was already in place for genocide of the Jews to happen in the law. So we see it was her knowledge of the God she knew and loved as a God who delivered his people from death, proved again to be the living and active part of the personality of the God who massively is able to save nations full of people!
  3. The pain of misused authority from husbands or religious leaders. Issues where scripture is taken out of context by abusive husbands and tell their wives that they must submit even when the husband has no interest in protecting the welfare of his wife or family. To counter this, we must remember God does not put authority on the totem pole above the safety of innocent people. God is the God who protects. Issues where leaders take scripture out of context and tell their congregants “they must submit” even when there may be questionable practices or questionable attitudes by the leadership of the church is another place and time people must remember the “God who always protects” and prayers should be made regarding how God would like to reveal truth to save people from getting hurt.
  4. The pain of not being able to preach the whole truth of the Bible because of some “anti-Christ societal norm creeping in”. Issues where “people who seem to want peace, and equality for everyone” in the secular world who may try to shut down the preaching of God’s word or the speaking of Biblical truth is another thing today’s Spirit filled Christian should not accept but fight against through prayer and fasting.
  5. The pain of corrupt laws like legal abortions, the legalization of marijuana, and the legalization of homosexual marriages cause people to sin more freely than when those sins were not legal. The pain of these legalized sins warps the collective mind of society. Therefore, these things enable greater numbers of people to get hurt by those sins, simply by looking on at what is  happening in society. We must keep before our minds that the Bible shows us corrupt laws CAN change through prayer and fasting EVEN though God might be allowing suffering under these sins for a season! We have many opportunities to see our whole world change even down to some laws that can be pivotal in turning our society away from sin, and with the hope of maintaining a more truthful collective mindset in discerning good from evil.
  6. The pain of corrupt laws trying to prevent the true communication of God’s word, and God’s standards. Evil people do not want God’s word to go forth. Corrupt people have tried to shut down his truth since the garden of Eden and the jealousy of Cain. When God’s people pray to keep the Christian Church to continue worshipping Him and serving Him as we should, God often averts the plans of the enemy and preserves his Name, His reputation, and His Truth in the land!

All the above are injustices and evils the Bible mentions we should not accept and should not be lazy in standing against in our Christian walk. Although God is completely Sovereign and can use what the enemy meant for evil for the good of someone or for all his people, can use hardship to sanctify his people, and change the oppression or injustice, let us remember the many Biblical accounts where God changed something, some battle, some law, the heart of some elected official, or some famine or pestilence from shutting down the people of God he has sent to proclaim the kingdom of God. May we remember from which stock we come from, and remember our calling and election and make it sure through a firm footed and steady fight of faith! Pray with me against the above evils!

Prayer:

Oh Gracious Heavenly Father! Many or all of the evils I have listed are happening even as I speak at any time in the world and the enemy has been rampaging against the body of Christ! It’s as if our society has shifted into some grey and nebulous callous and warped un-reality zone! It’s as if there is an underlying message that unless the church shows anything besides being meek and mild we are labeled as “hateful intolerant bigots who need to be quickly woke!” Many times the “wives submit to your husbands card” is played under wrong circumstances, and my heart Lord is not to say that scripture is wrong, but to say it can be used by those with spiritual authority over God’s women and make them stripped of emotional sanity. And likewise, the “submit to your spiritual authorities” card is played under false pretense to suggest they belong to an “right and only right group of spiritual know-it-alls”. Please Lord teach the body of Christ how to address these evils so we can protect the body of Christ more like Jesus does! Teach us how to be loving in our messages proclaiming the word of God without compromising on truth, and may the pains of society screaming for us to “stop preaching the word of God as it is in the Bible”, be quenched and silenced! Oh God, may you bring your will to be done in our nation and other nations to establish your Kingdom and to revise and abolish the corrupt laws put in place by corrupt people to kill innocent children, to brainwash our society out of their God given sexual identities, and to steal our minds through drugs, Oh God! Please undo the pains we Christians have caused or allowed our nation by our passivity toward the corrupt laws now in place, and may Your will be established, and Godly laws put in place in our world to correct the unnecessary pains that I have just mentioned! And Lord, we know it is our personal sin that you overcame on the cross and that we can surrender to you for part of the reborn heart environment in which you have given the Christian to live. Many or most who are reading this know Lord we live in a world birthed by your Spirit, and by your Spirit we have been given a heart to love You, and be grieved by our own compromise!  Oh God may we be granted progress by your Spirit within us, grant us true strength from heaven to go forward by your Spirit as we grow by absorbing your virtue, like the rain and snow from heaven! And may You feed us Lord with your truth so we may proclaim its many benefits and glories, and may you utterly change the face and heart of our lives, of our families and our country, and all the world around us so that You would be seen and glorified more and more in our world on a more massive level Oh Lord Our Lord, for You are Mighty to Save Oh God!

Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

The “Necessity” of Christian Hardships

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

The gospel when proclaimed in a Biblically sound way does and should, bring peace to us all. While this is true there also seems to be a notable number of scriptures that inform us that the God who sent Christ to earth to pay with his blood for peace to be established between the believer and God is also the one who deserves our trembling and shaking before him. He is the same Jesus who said in Mathew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

With the many topics that the Lord introduces to his people in the NT that seem hard, “fasting” would fit the bill. Perhaps you’re a little like me, who have compared the OT plan of drawing near to God with the NT plan for such a work. We think the OT plan should be hard, and, we, —should be done with “hard” in the NT. I believe because we have a nuanced gospel, and can be so prone to settle for a quick and “easily explained” definition for telling what our Christian habits should be, and can get tempted to think that for us NT folks, if each part of our walk with God is not “ease producing” then it also cannot be “peace producing”, but that is simply not true. “Ease” for the Christian is not synonymous with “peace”. To use our distinguishing abilities, we will have to pull the reference cards out of our minds for these two words and closely examine some similarities and differences for discernment purposes on them, mentally write details to edit our definitions with important markers on them and file them away again for future use. We so much need to glean from the many “holy difficulties” that are either sent by Providence, or captured by God for His divine purposes having been sent from the “drizzle” attack of our blind Enemy.

Isn’t it true the Bible says in Luke 13 to make every effort to enter by the narrow gate? Luke 13:23-24 says, “Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, 24“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” 

We can take the word “narrow” in this sentence to be an invitation from the Lord to do hard things. And we can take it as an invitation from the Lord that some hard things The Lord introduces to us are absolutely necessary for us to embrace and “take in” to make a regular part of our lives for a walk with God that stays on the narrow path.

1 Peter 2:20-21 CEV “You don’t gain anything by being punished for some wrong you have done. But God will bless you, if you have to suffer for doing something good. 21. After all, God chose you to suffer as you follow in the footsteps of Christ, who set an example by suffering for you.” I don’t bring up this short passage to suggest we need to be told about the subject of being punished for wrong doing but to suggest that if God would allow others to cause us to suffer and to “capture” different conditions of the suffering the enemy might like to dish out to us and have it all somehow be woven into part of His genius plan for us for our sanctification, then this plan that He has had from before the foundation of the world, just magnifies the amazing qualities of foreknowledge and Providence of our redemptive Shepherd King.

May we travel the hard road of the desert/wilderness with Christ, fasting as often as He may lead, and laying down “every weight and burden, and the sin that so easily besets”, so that we may go swiftly with Him and with perseverance, even running with Him as He leads!

Prayer:

Dear Lord, some days I feel nothing that excites me about going through the routines of the day, of getting out of bed, doing the morning rituals , hopping in the car and going to work, that I much consciously “spit out the lukewarm aftertaste” left from dinking of the world too much, remember that you have called me to yourself, think of your jealousy, and count the cost you paid again to “cleanse my palate to taste again what is truly true”. Help me Oh God, to not be slow to show up for prayer, and as much as only you can cause my drawing near to you to be a taking in of your substance Lord, and a breathing out of your goodness; may I ever keep my eyes on you to wash myself from the world, over and over and over again until others see really clearly, Christ in me. Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Swing the Sword of the Word, Thou Prayer Warrior!

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Encouragement to pray the Word

I want to encourage us today that there may be some of us that seem like we may have been brought full circle in battle by the Lord which can be symbolized by a full 360-degree rotation of a swinging sword wielded by a warrior of an ancient kingdom. We may have had victories in one area or another, but we should not give up the fight or throw in the towel. We should not make light of previous battles we have fought and won but seem to be numb over. We should not downplay our previous spiritual victories as meaningless or powerless, because they did take real spiritual virtue in prayer and life and faith to fight successfully, and we needed God’s love in those areas of our lives to be victorious. Do not despise your previous battles thinking their spiritual size is just “small” in the “victory realm”  because they are not meaningless and not without spiritual “stakes” in the ground. We may need to regain strength, and regain flexibility, regain vital virtue, and goodness and kindness and love  in the areas we may have become systematic and militant in, or burnt out and robotic in or just going through the motions. Let us stretch again forward in faith and in our wielding the spiritual sword in prayer and live out this precious gift of faith and ask for God’s Spirit to fill our lives to overcome our battle fatigue and to overcome our own frustrations with our own cumbersome weaknesses and find his virtue. Let us find his power to hate our sin and by his unfailing love to maintain purity and passion, and to overcome by his Spirit our innate spiritual clumsiness because we have been granted to be filled with his life, strength, and grace.

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Fasting To Grieve Before The Lord

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

May we be careful of not trying to add fasting to times of the motions of drama where we might be prone to exaggerate our cries to God. I have been prompted to sort out my own emotions looking for signs of drama in my requests to God as I have taken on a long-term substitute teaching assignment in my community and I daily encounter the occurrence of drama and of over-realized “sensitive-trigger buttons which the students become overly vocalized about”. And I know at once it should not be something I let sway me as I realize that there can be floods of “whims” of students that may be unaware of the temptations pushing them to leverage control over the direction of the class. OOOh, how this renews my perspective of the carefulness of Our Loving Heavenly Father who must daily weigh what is best for us when it might or might not be a “virtue producing thing” for Him to answer our many rivers of egocentric prayers, and discern the best times for an optimum approach of His to produce more fruit in us even when He says “No!” Even in his “Nos” when he chooses them he is building in us a confidence that we can know he has our best interest in His mind. As I am in position to promote my hopefully healthy response to the flood of requests in my class, I need to use discernment and guard against forces who may try to veer my tasks off course in my teaching and building the classroom into a healthy environment.

God is in the salvation business so to speak, and God saves us by grace through faith—but not by our prayers exactly. God can clearly save people who can’t talk—so the verbal measure of prayer is not as important as the faith measure of a prayer because prayer can be done in the heart. Mourning over sin can be done in the heart as well, and yet in our running to God, let us remember that we need not to have every request heard by those around us nor every motion of fasting noticed by others! Public fasting and prayer is definitely not a bad thing, because we can see it OFTEN presented corporately in the scripture, so we know corporate fasts are something God uses in the Old and New Testaments, but let us also remember it can be done as a show, and people of faith should avoid that. But on the days we might slip in our footing and go sideways into “having too much of our prayer and fasting noticed by mere flesh and blood”– we may realize then that the power is not solely in the corporate fasting and praying we do with others or even with spouses, but truly having to do with the measure of our faith in God.

Isn’t this folly also in us at times? Is it not also a natural temptation for Christians to get tempted toward narcissism when offered free “asking privileges”, and shouldn’t the awareness of this really cause us to seek to make our requests do the opposite of narcissistic motions? May we seek to discern more greatly about “any drama or narcissistic tendencies” in us, and may we push vigorously away from them, and discern more greatly our true needs for real and fitting motions of mourning, grieving, and fasting, and seek to sorrowing over different categories of things in our lives worthy of our mourning, grieving and fasting…Have we freely found the right temper and persistence for….

Grieving over our sins, our lost ground, our missed chances for carrying out a prompting of God?

Grieving over our loved ones’ losses, or grieving about how distant we or they are from God?

Grieving over the lost on a larger scale, in our communities, in our nation, grieving over our lack of having a voice in our school board meetings, or over the missing power in our voice to prompt the legal system in our governments towards more righteous law making?

Grieving over the broken state of our churches, our missing times of “repairing the broken walls (as Nehemiah did)” or that we are missing the very “Nehemiah—like Leaders” who will bring a cry to the nation for our participation in the corporate need for spiritual building, fortifying, and healing?

Grieving over our callousness, blindness, coldness, too thick-skinned-ness, our roughness, sharpness, failures to say the right thing at the right time, our failures to aim to “seek and save the lost”, for the feeling others may have had about us as in perceiving some “seeming deadness or insensitivity”, or in having an unawareness to the true needs out there, our denial, minimizing, living as if nothing is wrong, our justifying sin, our rationalizing, our spiritualizing, failure to grieve over holes and cracks in the broken walls, our failure to grieve thoroughly over the harvest that we are not just sure we may have seen falling to the ground, grieving over not crying out for needing more workers in the harvest fields, grieving over our failure to pursue a steady flow of steady spiritual growth if called to a long term many years of this and we have gotten tired—-and drifted from our calls, or to grieve because of the presence of more of these kinds of failures we tell ourselves aren’t happening—because no one ELSE is grieving about these things, that come to mind except maybe a few…

Is it that we believe too heavily in the Sovereignty of God that we convince ourselves our “fasting can’t add another person to the kingdom that God has not already predestined to come to Him?” If people believe this last statement, then I would say, “it must be you shouldn’t pray either then because if God uses NOTHING of the faith of people to get his will done, then, you must be saying our prayers to Him are meaningless!!” Didn’t Jesus demonstrate the very OPPOSITE belief and works of power throughout his ministry? We should never MINIMIZE our role in fasting and prayer or the use God may choose to put our fasting and prayer to.

It is a strange kind of thing that God does in his validating the faith of Ahab, in 1 Kings 21:25-29 in his remorse, prayer, fasting, and humility after saying he previously “SOLD HIMSELF TO DO EVIL”. Could it be that by the mourning, grieving, fasting, and sorrow of one of the most broken sinners, who was so unique in all of history that GOD Himself first says in 1 Kings 21:25-26 “Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife incited him. 26 He acted very abominably in following idols, according to all that the Amorites had done, whom the Lord cast out before the sons of Israel.” —then later, how did this Ahab discover through fasting, mourning, grieving, and humbling himself, that he could receive some amount of God’s mercy, enough to save his life after God said he should die, even after being called so evil and “abominable” by God, that God made mention of him to the prophet Elijah after his repentance that his going about meekly, and remorsefully caught His attention so that He even spared his life? It is worth repeating even if to ourselves alone that God makes mention of the formerly evil person’s humbling himself with prayers and fasting even to the prophet, that God changes his plans for Ahab!  It says in 1Kings 21:27-29 “It came about when Ahab heard these words, that he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and fasted, and he lay in sackcloth and went about despondently. 28 Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying 29 “Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son’s days.” That is a good place to pause and meditate!

Prayer: Oh God our Gracious Heavenly Father! How deep is our need for you! How slow is our believing! How broken our lives and cities, and of the nations of the world! How dull we have been to hearing you! How slow we have been to keep in step with You! How many are Your mercies! How real is the hope that lies before us to grieve for the lost for their salvation! How entreatable You ARE! How quickly we forget we are in a war over our hearts! How much we need to do regular re-adjusting of our spiritual trajectory to fulfill all Your good will for our lives and to be fully shaped by You to bear the fruits of our ministries! Oh God! Please forgive us, renew us, grant repentance, faith, hope, grace, perseverance, pure motives and help us with walking daily as we should to reflect in our actions what we believe about you in our hearts! I pray Oh Lord, may Your mercy prevail! And please grant good fruit through this time of seeking You with prayer and fasting Oh Lord! May we truly be able to stretch forth our tent straps and may You fill our tents with more brothers and sisters in the Kingdom and may the fruit be to the praise of Your glory Oh Lord! I ask dear Lord in Your Name Oh God! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

In Our Fight Against Our Sin, We Do Not War With Carnal Weapons

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Prayer and devotional blend

Lord, by your good grace, may I and others lose our appetites for anything that is not like you Lord Jesus. As we fast, I pray you would help us deal with our sin habits, so that we can nip our sin habits in the bud. You have given us the directive in the word to leave our lives of sin, and to come follow you, but have not left us like helpless orphans! Help us to lose the enjoyment of indulging in excess because all sin is a snare! Help us to not justify our sins, or excuse them because of the “pluses” we think they add to our lives, or to love the things that snare us! May we hate the things in our lives Oh God that you hate Oh Lord! May we look squarely at the word Oh Lord, and pluck out of our lives the things that we are discerning that offend you Jesus! Dear Jesus, your word tells us that people can become sick with pockets of sin in their lives if that sin is not dealt with! Isaiah 1:5-7 reads, “Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. 7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.” This sounds so much like our lives in America!

May we not be like the people of Isaiah 5:18 who drag sin along as with cart ropes! We notice they were deceived in that verse, and notice that sin is heavy—like the weight of a cart that horses or multiple people would pull around! Or at least that would take the strength of two hands to drag along! May we count the cost of what sin habits rob us from and count the cost of what we might be losing by keeping sin habits in our lives! Even our complacency is a sin Oh God before you! And if we are not the deceived ones, is it not right and fitting for us to help others to become UNDECEIVED who are yet in the muddy swamp of deception?

Lord we are given evidence to believe in the scripture which tells us that you grant your people an inner holiness and to approach you in the same attitude of holiness poured into us from you, and this speaks of your Spirit alive in us having made us born again. Yet simultaneously you call us to chasten our souls with fasting! And we know this is not a work of asceticism! Asceticism is powerless in itself to do the work only grace can do in us as we see we are enabled by another (by God) to live out Philippians 2:13 –to desire and to act according to your good purposes! You call us to walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit, and to live in the grace of the Spirit, and yet it is a chastening lifestyle led by your Word for the holy crucifying of the flesh! We tell ourselves that grace should make it “easy and comfortable” and “easy to agree with!” But sometimes it seems I am far from the pure work of agreeing with your will for a flawless and undisturbed crucifying of the flesh, and how far I feel at times from boldly shouting “YES LORD! Your will and NOT MINE!” But I want to GO there! I want to be more willing and ready to run unhindered with you in the pathway of your commands Oh God! (Psalm 119:32)

Sometimes when spending a long time in one place, the scenery all begins to look the same, and we can lose track of the lessons God is giving us in life and the things we are positioned by God to remember. The scripture is the gift that is available 24 hours a day to remind us of what God has done throughout his plan of redemption. To know we have the benefit of God working in our hearts is a tremendous strength when battling the flesh. What God does in our hearts once we have been born again is to flood them with his Spirit and light. Thankfully this positions us for God to win the war in our hearts when we begin to separate from our idols. Looking at Galatians 4:6, and 2 Corinthians 4:6, we read, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” and, “ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

When struggling with the tool of fasting to crucify our flesh we are never expected by God to put confidence in the flesh, but we can put our trust in the Lord, so that through His Spirit we can crucify the flesh! Oh God, you put your light in our hearts for so many reasons but clearly to show us what we are, and who we are, to give us strength to live for you, to motivate us to strive to be like you and to leave our old lives of sin behind!

Even given our Biblical model, we are shown we cannot do the crucifying in our own strength! Jesus clearly carried his own heavy cross, but he did not nail his hands or feet to the cross! This tells me that some other factors Our God might allow in our lives to indeed help us “crucify” our flesh. That reality is both scary and relieving at the same time. Notice the purpose of suffering in 2 Corinthians 4 (beginning in v 7)But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; 8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;  10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. The purpose of enduring these painful motions and means of crucifixion is SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS ALSO MAY be manifested in our body!

Oh Lord, how encouraging it is for us to read the scriptures declaring the provision you have given for putting off the flesh and crucifying it and for seeing the reality of Jesus at work in our personalities! And we so much want to keep away from religiosity, legalism, and asceticism and the motions of works-righteousness, enduring a cold heart! On the other hand, we also want to stay away from laziness, slothfulness, gluttony, impulsivity, and a lack of self-control which springs from us doing our own things and keeping our own will in the center of our mind as if we were our own God or as a people who serve mainly themselves. Please may we take the next step in the journey you are taking us on, for sanctification, living in the spirit, pursuing holiness, pushing away from sin, in going the other way and in crucifying sin. We can do this successfully only by your Spirit at work in our hearts, and are empowered and led forth to obey you oh God, and this is a great and beautiful mystery! Praise to you Lord, for truly setting us up for victory in Jesus, gracious Lord! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

“Getting our Worship Right”

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Lord, I am reminded today that “Unless the Lord builds the house the workers labor in vain who build it.” Lord we ask that our hearts would be pliable moldable and our mouths yours and yours alone. My prayer is Lord, show me what I don’t see about myself that is keeping me from serving you more fully—wholeheartedly. Show me if I have any hidden sins that I need to surrender. Help us to count the cost that it takes to serve you at the level you have called us to so far, and Lord please forgive us for any way we have been lagging behind the leading of your Spirit.

By nature we are worshippers. Our hearts were designed by You Lord to long for something or someone to worship. Help us Lord to not make the false assumptions that what I long for in the here and now is as good or better than the goal Paul speaks of to lay hold of that to win the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Phi 3:14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. Help us not to worship the goal of worshiping itself. Help us not to be in love with the idea of having “awesome friends” or for that matter, having “great ministries” or even having some spiritual mileage and think we “know our way around the mountain” because by those acts and presumptions we cloud our own vision and secondly we abort the very work we thought was being done “by your Spirit” Oh God!

Prayer: We ask to be cleansed from entertaining temporal loves. We ask to be freed from the delusions of the false promises by people and plans we wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to that at times ended up dragging us and them along in directions that neither we nor they needed to go! Forgive us when our pious grandiosity about our fitness for “the job” ended up doing more harm than good! Forgive us for playing with the false promises this world offers. Forgive us for our pride and self-love, and forgive us for eating it up when people we know may seem to point to that as a viable option about ourselves Oh God! Turn us forever away from the creeping slime of filthy pride that like sewage spreads out along the gutter and seeks to fill our lowly places like water draining into the sewer vents that are open to the world above ground! May we spit out the poison if it has gone past our lips and may we vomit forth a thrust of air and may we reject it with the rejection of evil that Jesus cultivated with firmness and conviction even as a toddler in Isaiah 7:15 which reads “He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right”. And so you had REAL power to reject evil even as a toddler which is clear that you cultivate in your people Oh God before it comes near us or touches our lips again! Oh God! May you give us courage to warn others, and may you touch us to cleanse us as we seek your cleansing, and may you purify our tastes as we commit again our whole beings again to you Oh Lord that we may truly and forever “Taste and see that the Lord is Good! Oh God! Help us! Cleanse us and purify us oh Lord for pure fellowship with You, in our seeking you, and in your love eternal Oh God! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Learning the Fear of The Lord as Mentioned in Psalm 34:11

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Unpacking Scripture

According to Britannica.com, post-modernism is “… a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; … (objective, natural) reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language. …the rejection of an objective natural reality—is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth.”

The thinking habits produced by postmodernism—skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and the rejection of truth are traps that can become direct assault weapons used against a person’s faith, or at a minimum can handicap it—unless those same people learn to stand up with effective thinking habits that can keep our mindsets healthy and free from error.

There is a general reluctance of certain groups of society to have an interest in cultivating an environment in which the fear of the Lord is treasured. There is also in our world today a famine in knowing what the fear of the Lord is–and in knowing what it means to walk in the fear of the Lord.  To try to start a conversation with your unsaved loved ones about the importance of revering God if you have not done so lately, will quickly bring about question marks, and other un-sought-after results! Reactions you might get could range from people getting offended at you for suggesting they need to fear The Lord, because it is a common belief that “God is only loving and does not want us to be afraid of him—he just wants you to feel good vibes from him!” Or you may get people thinking you are some kind of zealous religionist who is in love with the idea of religion and doing religious things with no particular purpose, and who wants to breed a suspicious paranoia of doing “bad things”, to gain control over society or over themselves. You might get the reaction of someone thinking you have more in common with a Martian who recently landed on earth than a citizen of today’s America, which ironically used to be a Christian nation. Or, you might get a reaction of someone thinking you have some kind of strange archaic tradition that is understood to have been outdated simply because they think that you also are behind the times because of your fashion or the age of your car or of your hairstyle and the idea that modern people understand God far better than the uncultured people of Bible times.  Modern people are in touch with their true selves and believe that fear in any relationship is harmful and have the unspoken question rolling around in their minds —“Who out there actually believes God COULD EVER or WOULD EVER WANT us to fear him?” He is after all the big Santa Claus in the sky, giving out hugs and marijuana to smoke—right?” So how do we begin that conversation about the importance of walking in the fear of the Lord—and how do we let them know the fear of the Lord is healthy and keeps our relationship with God healthy?

We must recognize ourselves and so live as ones who know there is a good use for the fear of the Lord as it produces a good posture for us to be able to approach God in the right spirit. It has a function for everyone and can produce benefits in our lives ranging from keeping a person alive and not burnt to a crisp when in communion with The Holy God, (Lev 10:2), to ranging to keeping a person from sinning (Exodus 20:20), and numerous other functions. It enables one to take the right approach in prayer for communion with God (Psalm 22:23), and for possessing a good understanding of people and life (Psalm 111:10), to God ever having his eye upon us for protection (Psalm 33:18). Because of the fear of the Lord we reap the benefit of having the angel of the Lord encamping around us (Psalm 34:7), and because to have been given the benefits of life and peace from God which are catalysts that can also produce the fear of the Lord (Mal 2:5) so God’s goodness is a circular cycle; as we receive God’s goodness it produces the fear of the Lord, and as we are given and live in the fear of the Lord, it positions us to be recipients of God’s goodness. (Ps 112)

Simply having skepticism or unbelief in God are two of the foundational reasons that much of our society is not recognizing or valuing the treasure of the fear of The Lord. Simply having subjectivism—thinking a person’s truth is only true for the person, and having relativism—thinking truth is a moving target, we can never know it–are two reasons we doubt the existence of solid Bible truth today. Yet it is only in the Bible that we are told of this glorious gift that does so much for God’s people and goes along with explaining the identity of our God and creator because by telling us to fear him is actually demonstrating to us the personality of one who is worthy to be feared.

In our world today, now that we live in a postmodern society, many have lost the ability to think through objectively that which for centuries past was believed by ancient Israel. They believed sin was sin because God said it was sin, and they believed sin had consequences, because God said sin had consequences and because of many graphic consequences that followed the warnings  But we fail today  sometimes to get the whole picture of the fear of the Lord as presented to us in the Bible, because we think “those were the sins of those people—I don’t do those sins! Nothing bad will happen to me! No reason to fear God! A proper response to this is that God is worthy of our fear regardless of anyone’s having sinned. On our BEST days God is worthy of our fear. When we read about Moses who went up to Mount Sinai to receive instruction from God in Exodus 19, it is plainly written that “Everyone in the camp trembled.”, and Moses was one of them. How did we get from there, to where we are today? We need to go back and look at the elements that surround a relationship with God based in a healthy fear of God.

Here we will look at the prospect of “learning the fear of the Lord”: Psalm 34:9-11 O fear the Lord, you His saints; For to those who fear Him there is no want. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; But they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing. Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. I firmly believe the more we study the works of God, the more that the fear of the Lord will be implanted within us, and the more we will have a good root system of the fear of the Lord in our hearts, and minds and in our consciences.

Proverbs 19:23 reads, “The fear of the LORD leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil.” So, if people are lacking in the fear of the Lord, it can send them AWAY from life, possibly touched by evil, and to places they really and truly are not prepared to go. We must learn from Old Testament examples in which the fearfulness of God has been made known, and one of these examples is in the account of the sin of Nadab and Abihu.

Leviticus 10:1-3 Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them. 2 And fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord. 3 Then Moses said to Aaron, “It is what the Lord spoke, saying, ‘By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.’” So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

There were more warnings from God in this chapter towards his righteous servants, warning that they WOULD DIE in verse 6, and to prevent the outcome of God’s WRATH BEING POURED OUT on the congregation -MEANING DEATH FOR THEM even though it would be only a priest who’s sin God gave preventative warning about in verse 6, telling them how they should not mourn for the evil priests, or they WOULD DIE another way in verse 7, and that the priests were not allowed to drink strong drink, nor any of their sons or they WOULD DIE in yet another way in verse 9.

Leviticus 10:4-11 Moses called also to Mishael and Elzaphan, the sons of Aaron’s uncle Uzziel, and said to them, “Come forward, carry your relatives away from the front of the sanctuary to the outside of the camp.” 5 So they came forward and carried them still in their tunics to the outside of the camp, as Moses had said. 6 Then Moses said to Aaron and to his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, so that you will not die and that He will not become wrathful against all the congregation. But your kinsmen, the whole house of Israel, shall bewail the burning which the Lord has brought about. 7 You shall not even go out from the doorway of the tent of meeting, or you will die; for the Lord’s anointing oil is upon you.” So they did according to the word of Moses.

8 The Lord then spoke to Aaron, saying, 9 “Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting, so that you will not die—it is a perpetual statute throughout your generations— 10 and so as to make a distinction between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean, 11 and so as to teach the sons of Israel all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them through Moses.”

God gives us the medicine of demonstrating his fearful acts “so as to TEACH THE SONS OF ISRAEL ALL THE STATUTES WHICH THE LORD HAS SPOKEN TO THEM through Moses.”

By the fear of the Lord leading us and giving us understanding about these things we are allowed to see God as both the ferocious and terrifying Lion of the Tribe of Judah but still the altogether Good Aslan.

One habit that we can learn from Moses in his search for nearness to God and to hear direction from God for himself and for all of Israel, that showed he possessed the fear of the Lord was that he persistently fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. I believe long-term fasting helps us put our flesh down and put on humility which cultivates a healthy and deepened relationship with God. Numbers 12:3 reads “(Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any person who was on the face of the earth.)” We see that Moses was counted by the God the narrator in Numbers to be humble. God wanted this to get our attention. Moses would not have bragged about this himself.  We can observe from the many different successful occurrences of fasting in the Bible, that fasting helps our minds wrap around the acts of God, and thus CAN develop in us a deepened exposure to God, a deepened understanding of God and deeper fear of God. Because Moses met with God in his fasting and prayers, I believe it bolstered his spirit and submerged him in the Spirit of God to know what to do and what to say in all his leading Israel, when Nadab and Abihu sinned. I believe it enabled him to keep the right reverent attitude in what must have been a terrifying crisis for Israel, and which we can believe it provided the right example for the rest of Israel to follow to keep reverent as well, in the midst of witnessing the wrath of God.

The bottom line is sometimes you will need to fast to navigate successfully around the sins of other people without getting sucked into their sins along with them when the wrath of God falls.

We should be encouraged about Jeremiah 32:40b “…I will put the fear of Me in their hearts, so that they will not turn away from Me.” This gives us the view of the reality of God letting us see the tender desire he has for us in his heart —that He is making us his own and keeping us for himself, so he and we can enjoy a deeper and abiding fellowship of nearness, all simply with his putting the fear of the Lord into our hearts.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, when we look at the vast difference between ourselves and Moses, we can be encouraged about the sustained trait of meekness. Meekness was preserved in the life of Moses, although the people he led were under a covenant of sacrifice. And that meekness you used Oh God was part of what you used to make Moses powerful and successful in his day.  May our hearts be open to cultivating a nearness to you facilitated by fasting and prayer so we may also benefit from the strength that comes with stripping the flesh of indulging pleasures. For we know that if we were to leave our flesh alone and not bother with attempts to crucify it, it would drag us away in ungodly directions! We know that you keep us, and yet there is a mystery in our responsibility verses your sovereignty, and we must be led by you in these areas of growth and sanctification by your Spirit, otherwise if we do it in our flesh power, we gain nothing. Please Lord, guide us in what you see is our responsibility, help us to see it too, and to receive the grace we need for putting off the flesh, and help us to put on the strength of humility, to walk in meekness and gentleness, because I believe it carries the power to draw people to follow you. Preserve us in the attitude of your Spirit, so we can be fruit bearers, if need be among acts of your wrath being poured out, big or small in our days, but may we ever keep our eyes on you Oh God our Heavenly Father, and glorify you forever through our love for you and through our right approach to draw near to you! Oh God, we don’t deserve these things, but you said we could ask and when we seek the kingdom, these things would be added unto us oh God! May your Kingdom come, and may your wonderful will be done Oh God in our midst! Blessed be the name of the Lord! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

My Sermon Review, Comments, and Prayer after Hearing John Piper’s “Fasting For the King’s Coming”

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Sermon review

“Let fasting be a declaration and demonstration of your hunger for God –a type of worship, that seeks nearness to, and fellowship with God Himself”—my paraphrase of the audio message “Fasting For the King’s Coming”, https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/fasting-for-the-kings-coming sermon by John Piper.

I can honestly say, I have looked for scriptures commanding New Testament Christians to fast, looking to give my devotionals more authority, bite, and chutz·pah, but interestingly, the Lord leaves this to us as much more of a choice, and unspoken strong admonition for certain desired outcomes. Interestingly, the closest thing to a command to fast is in Mathew 9:15 (also in Luke 5:35) where we see something that seems like a command, but with a closer look at the text, we find it is not a command to fast–“In those days they WILL fast”. The sentence structure of a command we find in the ten commandments—“Thou SHALL have no other Gods before ME…Thou SHALL not steal…” So why is “They WILL fast” different and not a command? “You WILL do something” and you “SHALL do something” are VERY close according to Wikipedia, the etymology of the words “will” and “shall” BOTH are from similar root words and meanings, “representing either simple futurity, (future event) or necessity or obligation.” For the future event to happen, those desiring the future event must necessarily do or be obligated to do thus and so. So, although the Bible doesn’t say we MUST fast, it is understood that to obtain some desired “state”, the answer is to fast!  In Matthew 9:15 we find ourselves looking at Jesus giving a prophecy about a “solution” for the attendants of the bridegroom to bring them near to Jesus, in the absence of Jesus, springing from the catalyst of the absence of Jesus, which reads, “And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

Jesus was speaking of their future demonstration of the New Testament believer’s longing for the Lord’s presence and His Kingdom, which has the implied meaning that they will have success in coming near to God by this means…(paraphrased Richard Foster’s “The Celebration of Discipline”) But today –do we hear much of this in our churches?

John Piper in his book “A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer” asks the probing question, “When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology-but rarely of their daily experience of God. …much about Christian doctrine, Christian standards, problems of Christian conduct, techniques of Christian service— but little about the inner realities of fellowship with God. …Where are the passionate conversations today about communing with God through fasting and prayer? We seem to find it easier to talk much of plans and principles for proclaiming the gospel and planting churches, and to talk little of the power of God that is necessary for this gospel to be proclaimed and the church to be planted.” (John Piper. A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer (Foreword, pages 1-2, Kindle Locations 98-107). Crossway.)

Again, it is strongly implied in Piper’s work that communing or drawing near to God is a truly viable outcome from fasting.

I will conclude this devotional today with what Piper says so well on his website page’s introduction to download his free book “A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer” (retrieved from https://www.desiringgod.org/books/a-hunger-for-god” on January 13, 2022).

He writes

“There is an appetite for God. And it can be awakened. I invite you to turn from the dulling effects of food and the dangers of idolatry, and to say with some simple fast: “This much, O God, I want you.”

Our appetites dictate the direction of our lives — whether it be the cravings of our stomachs, the passionate desire for possessions or power, or the longings of our spirits for God. But for the Christian, the hunger for anything besides God can be an arch-enemy. While our hunger for God — and him alone — is the only thing that will bring victory.

Do you have that hunger for him? As John Piper puts it, “If we don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because we have nibbled so long at the table of the world. Our soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.” If we are full of what the world offers, then perhaps a fast might express, or even increase, our soul’s appetite for God.”

Amen!

Prayer: Oh Lord, how much a God of grace you reveal you are toward us, in the way you can and do accomplish your purposes for the kingdom without rigidly commanding us that we fast and devote ourselves in self-inflicted discomfort to seek you wholeheartedly. Yet, ironically those sacrifices when engaged in are not bad things for us!—they are even good for us!! Yet, your grace of these unmerited realities of your presence without our “works” and your faithfulness when we are weak are the very things that melt us and call us to draw near to you, get rid of our hesitation to come to you, enable us with more firmness of resolve, with more strength of action, to find your grace to seek you and to fast! Your Sovereign grace shows itself to operate perfectly without your “anchor” (if you had an anchor) being in us– such creatures of fickleness, but anchored in your own unchanging nature, and goodness and kindness! And we can see these Sovereign graces of yours that are truly illuminated by your supreme transcendent “better than we can imagine” approach to us, are enabling us to flourish in our lives through your Spirit!

May we keep in mind your grace as we approach you in prayer, and if led to do so in our fasting, and may our minds be focused on your supreme kindnesses in drawing near to us, in our broken states, even as we look to you, to seek you, and adore you Lord. May our minds truly be renewed in your Spirit oh Lord, and establish us as we commune with you, Lord, and make us all you want us to be in you, to the praise and glory of your Name Oh, Lord, and forever! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Fasting as a Way to Improve Spiritual Eyesight and Turn Away From Carnal Indulgence

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

If any of us happen to consider fasting today, we can be sure that The Lord will use it in some way for His Kingdom if He leads us to do so.

As young or as old as I am I have gotten to the point of having this pervading thought–When you get older you generally get less excited about things. You also get excited less often about things. This may be because we feel like we have seen it all, or we tell ourselves it will take too much energy to get excited or passionate, or we convince ourselves that if you’re smart you can just end up getting the best things in life coming to your door through Amazon without needing to get very excited. We might tell ourselves that getting pumped up or zealous about something is for the young and naïve and foolish. Everything we do as we get older is about saving our energy, or saving ourselves some trouble or making our schedules run as smoothly and conveniently as possible. Life becomes a lot about what we like and what we have a taste for and what we think will make us comfortable. We need our favorite drinks or teas, our favorite foods when we go shopping, our favorite kinds of books or bicycles, our favorite cookware, clothing, soaps and toothpaste and our favorite pastimes. (Notice I didn’t even get to the topic of electronics—I made this list true even if one doesn’t have a plethora of money, even true for people living in third world countries) Our lives smell heavily of the smell of “ME, MINE and MY, what I like, what I want, what feels good to me, smells good to me,, tastes good to me, relaxes me, what makes me look good, what keeps people liking me, and what KEEPS ME HAPPY!

And although all that is unfortunately true we can all say that if we were honest, I’ll bet each of us could easily think of 3 or 4 big areas in our lives that if God had absolute control of, or to put it in a theologically more correct way—if we absolutely and completely surrendered those areas to the absolute control of our Sovereign and deeply good Father of pure love and lights, then, our lives and potentially the lives of all of those around us would be radically different from an eternal rewards perspective or at least would be taken up several notches spiritually speaking! But, we think what we have is good enough!—“What more do I need!?”, we tell ourselves! I am comfortable, I am warm, I have nice cologne, I look good in my clothes, my car doesn’t need any repairs, my shrubs are well manicured, my home is well furnished, my vacation is planned, and my hotel booking is paid in advance for the holiday coming up, that we forget what it’s like to be cold, to be poorly dressed, have leaky roofs, and holes in our shoes, to have an infestation of insects eating our garden but our garden was all we had to eat from, to have to walk 5 miles for some medicine that our relative really needs or they will die, to be inconvenienced for one entire day to take someone to the doctor, but not too many days out of the year, because we have to get back as quickly as possible to our wonderful lives, and because we can’t afford to take a day off work without pay too often regardless because we have no PTO and no sick pay on this job!!

Now, to use your imagination, if every physical comfort I just mentioned in the comfortable scenario was a metaphor for a spiritual comfort and spiritual health provision, does that mean that if you have all your physical comforts in place we’d automatically be supplied with just as many spiritual provisions and spiritual comforts from God to match all of our material comforts? The answer is an obvious NO! But, I dare say it is soo easy to respond to a spiritual emergency in a “comfortable way” when we have physical comforts. Would you RATHER do the spiritual work with spiritual zeal and spiritual persistence to get rid of the spiritual poverty and spiritual holes in your shoes, or to obtain by spiritual efforts the rare and distant spiritual medicine that you or a family member needs even if you might be saddled with physical poverty, or would you do the spiritual hard labor so to speak that it would take with passion for a whole day if needed to get an enduring spiritual roof with as much zeal and gusto and passion as you would the physical roof in the rainy season of Africa?

Part of the issue I dare say is that when we get comfortable and lose our zeal a lot of times we lose our desperation for change. Nothing is “REALLY THAT BAD!! I LIVE IN THE NICEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD AND I DON’T HAVE TO BE DESPERATE ABOUT ANYTHING!!” we tell ourselves. But can you see properly whether your spiritual roof IS leaking? Can you see properly if you have spiritual holes in your shoes? Can you see properly if you have spiritual insects raiding your spiritual garden on a continual basis? Can you see properly if you have a desperate need for spiritual medicine that is so deep of a need that you might die if you don’t obtain it and that you must compel yourself to go track down that distant rare medicine by walking five spiritual miles because no one else will walk it for you? This physical world BLINDS us with physical comforts and we don’t even perceive WHAT OUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS ARE much of the time even when our spiritual needs are desperate. But we have been called to walk by faith and not by sight!!

Rev 3:14-22 “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Origin of the creation of God, says this: 15 ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16 So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth. 17 Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have no need of anything,” and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, 18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to apply to your eyes so that you may see. 19 Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline; therefore, be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. 21 The one who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne. 22 The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

In the passage above the elements are in verse 17 that they first said they had become rich and wealthy, then the people grew comfortable and had become lukewarm, then they also said they had no need of anything. Now it is true that not everyone who is rich, wealthy, or comfortable is lukewarm and in danger of being spewed out of the mouth of God. But we must ask ourselves why Jesus warns us that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, (Math 19:24) but no evidence of Jesus saying, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Don’t think that I am necessarily against money; I, just like any number of persons (and it should be no surprise) have no doubt found numerous benefits can be had when money is had. But all Christ followers and even the unsaved should be aware of and alarmed about the blindness that wealth can bring when the wealth is gazed at too long. Could it be part of the cost Jesus speaks of in v. 18 “…to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich…white garments..and eye salve…” might be accessed as we draw near to Jesus more fervently, or to draw more closely to Him? Isn’t prayer along with fasting a proven and effective way to draw near to God and to pursue the Lord? Isn’t fasting a discipline we can apply to become spiritually sensitive? We need to be able to see our condition before God in order to “wash and make ourselves clean” (2 Cor 7:1), to cleanse our hands when we are double minded, (Jam 4:8) to cleanse ourselves from common purposes to be a vessel fit for a noble use (2 Tim 2:21). And it’s plainly true, what we gaze at we become like. (Gen 30:38-39, Heb 12:2) When gazing at the natural world, we lose our spiritual awareness, and lose sight of our spiritual optimum and what we should aim for in our spiritual shape, sensitivity, spiritual liveliness, and spiritual virtues. I Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. For man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” May we seek you for the spiritual vision we need for walking closely with you Oh Lord. Amen.

Prayer: Lord I pray for five simple things today—I pray for the spiritual vision so we can see our spiritual health for what it really is, I pray for the spiritual vision to see what spiritual shape we should take as well, and I pray for the spiritual zeal and fervency to respond to the truth whether it is, either mild or needing our passion that we may respond rightly regarding it. I pray that the kind of change spoken of in 2 Corinthians 7:11 would unfold in whatever way may be necessary in our lives—that we would embody earnestness, godly sorrow, vindication of ourselves, indignation at our own wrongs, fear of doing anything unholy, longing for change and righteousness in our hearts and deeds, zeal and energy and all the sister adjectives that go along with those for the purpose of our needed changes, and avenging of the wrongs we have done! In everything may we demonstrate ourselves to be innocent in these matters, Oh God!

Amen and Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG