Devotions

I find that most believers don’t change more than five percent from what they believed when they were only two years in the Lord. When confronted with Bible verses and truth uncomfortable to us, we hide behind, “But this is the way we’ve always done it. This is what we’ve always believed.”

When we pick up the Bible and don’t ask for the Spirit’s help, it is like saying, “God, do a new thing in me, but I’m not going to change anything I believe.” That’s an odd prayer, isn’t it? No wonder we grow so little in our faith and see so few converted to Christ.

Often, we get our definitions for important things not by what the Spirit shows us in Scripture, but by what we saw growing up in church. “Oh, that’s what worship should look like, because that’s the way we’ve always done it in the church I attend.” It is difficult for all of us to come to the Word of God and say, “Holy Spirit, teach me, even if it goes against what I’ve been conditioned to believe.” And yet we must.

It takes time for the Holy Spirit to teach us the meaning of a passage. If we don’t wait on the Holy Spirit, trusting him, we can grow cold and fall out of communion with God even while having devotions every day.

The apostle Paul wrote, “‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ — the things God has prepared for those who love him — these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10, emphasis added).

Every time we open the Bible, let’s stop and pray, whether for fifteen seconds or fifteen minutes, asking the Spirit to teach us. “Teach me knowledge and good judgment, for I trust your commands” (Psalm 119:66). Then our lives will be more like Jesus every day.

Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson.

“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over” (Psalm 23:5).

Of all the wonderful promises God gives us in this psalm, this is one of the most glorious. He says he is going to set a table for us, spread wonderful food upon it, and then serve us a feast. And he does all this in front of our enemies.

The word for table in this verse means “spread” — a vast array of food, a massive feast. And there is only one guest at this meal — you! God does this wondrous work for every individual who loves Jesus and calls himself by his name.

As God is preparing and serving your feast, he makes your enemies sit on the outer fringe of the scene and watch everything unfold. They see the Lord himself spreading your table with food, escorting you to your seat and waiting on you. Then they watch as you fill up your soul with heaven’s delightful fare. I tell you, no demon power, including the devil himself, could ever comprehend this kind of love, mercy and grace.

Jesus tells us that the Father does this for all his children: “Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them” (Luke 12:37).

As you dig into the glorious food God has provided for you, the Lord leans down and whispers in your ear, “You don’t have to worry about any of these enemies. They aren’t able to do anything against you.”

With this wonderful assurance in your heart, you are able to sing, “Now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around … I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord” (Psalm 27:6).

Nobody wants to hear bad news and the church today is no exception; the American church seems to be preoccupied with a “feel-good” message. This attitude is prevalent in many of the books and magazines we find in Christian bookstores. It is almost as if our leaders are saying, “Relax! God is our Daddy and we’re all his kids and we’re meant to have a good time.”

A storm is coming and God wants his people to be prepared. It will come like a thief in the night, bringing sudden panic and disbelief. You may be thinking, “If calamity strikes, let it come! I’m in God’s hands, so Jesus will see me through.”

Just before his death and resurrection, Jesus stared into the face of a horrible coming storm. He saw that just ahead, Jerusalem would be surrounded by powerful armies, the temple would be destroyed, the city would be burned to the ground, and their entire society would collapse!

Now, Jesus was the very embodiment of God’s love and he wept over his society because he saw what was coming. “Then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved” (Matthew 24:21-22).

If we think about it, we see that Jesus’ day was very similar to ours: peaceful, calm and prosperous. Even as Jesus warned that a storm was coming, he continually sought out secret places to be shut in with his Father. Fully persuaded that God was with him, Jesus knew that he was in complete control!

Beloved, if we are going to face the coming storm, we need to be prepared so that nothing disturbs our spirit. We can do that only by spending time in the Father’s presence — shut in with him until we are thoroughly persuaded that he is at our right hand.

In the presence of Jesus we find joy, hope and rest — all that we will ever need!

The spirit of discouragement is Satan’s most potent weapon against God’s elect. Most often, he uses it to convince us we have brought God’s wrath upon ourselves by not measuring up to his holy standards. But the apostle Paul urges us not to fall prey to the devil’s snare: “Lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

Paul is saying, “You must see your discouragement for what it really is — a demonic weapon — an arrow that Satan shoots at you to get you to doubt yourself. He knows he cannot tempt you to turn away from Jesus, so he swamps you with vicious lies to make you think you will never be good enough to serve Christ.”

King David’s spirit was brought low by feebleness, brokenness, mourning, a sense of disquietude. He felt dry and empty, without direction: “My heart pants, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it also has gone from me” (Psalm 38:10). David is saying, “My vision and revelation of the Lord have left me and I cannot reach God as I once did.”

I personally know how David felt. I have received many rich blessings through my ministry but many times, within days of great events, I have become overwhelmed with discouragement. We are targets for the powers of hell within moments of our greatest spiritual victory.

There are many biographies of devout men and women whom the Lord used mightily, and every one of them struggled through crippling discouragement. For instance, the great British preacher C. H. Spurgeon led multitudes to Christ through his powerful sermons but he suffered awful bouts of melancholy.

The first thing the Holy Spirit does in such times is to bring to your remembrance all the precious promises of Jesus. He will flood your soul with those promises and your spirit will soar within you. The work of the Holy Spirit is to undo the lies of the enemy and bring encouragement from on high! Be assured that all who wait on the Lord will receive his glorious promises!

“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

Many in the church today try to determine the nearness of Christ’s return by reading the signs of the times. Yet one of the clearest statements Jesus makes about his second coming is contained in the verse above: The end will come only after the gospel has been preached to all nations — as a testimony.

The word Jesus uses for “witness” in this verse is the same Greek word used for “testimony,” which literally means proof of fact. Christ is speaking here of not just preaching the gospel, but of presenting it as a testimony. In short, the gospel we preach is effective only if it is backed up by a life that testifies to its reality.

You would think that in America, a nation filled with thousands of evangelical churches, there would be a strong gospel witness. But many churches have compromised the true gospel of Christ and there is very little testimony of his lordship in the lives of the people. They are not true witnesses and the churches are not thriving.

Too many ministers, young and old, run all over the world looking for strategies to produce growth in their churches. They attend seminars, conventions and “think tanks” searching for the key to building a larger church. Still others flock to “revivals” in the hope that they will learn new methods of how to have the Holy Spirit fall on their congregation. But it takes more than new ideas or strategies to touch nations for Christ.

I am thankful there are exceptions, however, and God is moving mightily in churches where pastors catch a vision and spend time on their faces before the Lord. And they are leading their congregations into a deeper walk with the Lord. All our plans are in vain if Jesus is not enthroned in every area of our lives!