Month: November 2019

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.  Hebrews 12:17 

Esau was called unholy because he didn’t recognize the value of his birthright.  He traded it in for a pot of stew.  It’s preposterous, isn’t it?  Such outright disregard for something of infinite worth.  The inheritance he spurned was the inheritance of Abraham, passed down to Isaac, and it was a fortune.  By then, the Israelites had become a small nation.  There were thousands of sheep, camels, goats and donkeys.  Even more valuable than any of this was the favor of God that was bestowed on the one the father blessed.  This, he exchanged.

In Matthew 13, Jesus told a parable about someone finding a treasure in the field and seeing its immense value, he hid it so no one else could find it.  Then he went away to sell everything he had so that he had enough money to go back and buy it.  Jesus said that the treasure represented the kingdom of God.  “Having the omnipotent, saving reign of Christ in our lives is so valuable that, if we lose everything in order to have it, it is a joyful sacrifice.”  John Piper

God couldn’t work with Esau.  When pressure came, it took precedent over things related to the kingdom.  If he would cave to the purposes of God in order to eat a bowl of stew, how could God trust him to persevere under greater pressures?  He was not leadership material even though he was a gifted hunter and fairly responsible son.

The enemy is in the middle of getting God’s children to cave and not wait for God’s promise.  He is all about getting us to abandon the kingdom in favor of earthly solutions.  In the wilderness, He tempted Jesus in just this way.  The message was ~ “Don’t wait on God. Eat now. Enjoy power now.”  The temptations Satan offers us, even now, are temptations to get out of pain early.

Waiting on God is always the harder choice.  We want our ‘stew’.  We want justice today.  We want the love and affection that is tangible over what is intangible.  We want to see answers to prayer now.  When a counterfeit spiritual solution comes into view, our needs can easily become an obsession to the point of pushing God aside.  The lure of what Satan offers is that we can have what we want without waiting any longer.  Along with that comes insinuations that God isn’t good for His promise anyway.

Who will stand?  Who will wait?  Who will treasure the kingdom?  Who will suffer without name calling?  Who will hurt without turning their back on their faith?  How much do I treasure the kingdom of God, the sovereign rule of God, in my life?  Trading it in doesn’t just get me immediate relief.  The danger is always in what I’ve lost.  One day, the comparison will be on full display.  I’ll have embraced plastic trinkets instead of waiting for Jesus, the supreme treasure.

I’ve waited so long for some things, don’t let me cave into apathy.  It is the trinket that brings emotional relief.  You are the rewarder of faith and I will keep looking up to trust You.  Amen

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Hebrews 12:14

People who live in an atmosphere of constant conflict often lament, “Oh, if I could just have peace!”  Made in the image of God, we crave peace and spend a lot of money to go places where peace is present.

Craving peace is understandable but striving for peace and making peace are different from each other.  Striving means that peace may not always be possible.  While Jesus promotes unity and while He came to make it possible for us to have peace with God, He also came to bring the sword of truth that would pierce men’s hearts.  Jesus was not a ‘peace at any price’ Savior.  How am I to internalize this scripture then?  Understanding begins when I acknowledge that it takes two people to have peace in a relationship.

Paul said, ‘If it is possible, live at peace.’  The ‘if’ is important to digest because it’s possible, due to people’s sinfulness, to never achieve peace.  People in marriages, families and friendships, deeply hurt another, then offer a generalized, token apology that is pretty meaningless.  “Guess I’m a bad friend.  Chalk me up to being a bad spouse.”  Some consider that an adequate apology and then want everything back to normal.  These are not grounds for peace nor are they grounds for reconciliation!

We are told to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.  We get the harmless part of the equation and cave to the pressure to gloss over things instead of being wise.  There are few truth seekers.  By nature, we weren’t born to own the truth as God defines it.  But the closer I get to Jesus, the more truth I embrace.  With that, the more spiritual sparks I feel from others around me who are repelled by Jesus.  The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of darkness will always cause a combustible reaction.

What if there hasn’t been an offense but just a difference of opinion?  There isn’t a ‘wrong’ vs. ‘right’ but there are strong feelings attached to each position.  Jesus must show me the path I’m to take.  Is this a hill worth dying on?  Perhaps making peace to love and serve my brother would please God more than digging in my heels. Here is the pitfall. I must repent of pride for automatically assuming that I am right or know best, that I am on the side of truth.  Humility in prayer will allow God to show me what’s really going on.  Perhaps I love to be right more than I love to love others.

As Steve Brown says (the founder of Key Life), “God didn’t save you to make you right, He saved you to make you His.”  Humility becomes us as we defer but humility also clothes God’s warriors.

Lord, for those needing wisdom, grant it.  Amen

Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline?  But if you are without discipline—which all receive —then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had natural fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live?  For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but He does it for our benefit, so that we can share His holiness. No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it.  Hebrews 12:7-11

Be honest.  Did you read the first sentence, sigh, and skip over the rest of it?  You’re not alone if you did.  This is the dreaded passage, especially if we have a view of God that portrays Him as angry, nit-picky, and vindictive.  Our instinctive response to a season of pain is to cry out, “All right, what is it I’ve done wrong?”  I’ve certainly voiced that and it used to be often.

This is all pertinent to me right now as our family has sustained a year of one painful thing after another.  It’s been so intense that there has been no choice but to internalize and embrace this passage.  Let me personalize it and perhaps we’ll both love this scripture more than we did an hour ago.

The word discipline can be a trigger.  Overly harsh parents, punishments that were doled out in anger, things said to kids like, “I’m doing this for your own good,” set us up view God’s face as our parent’s faces. That’s a tragedy.  Discipline does not mean punishment.  It means training and instruction.  There must be a lot at stake to learn too, and good things at that, if God permits seasons of suffering. He wants nothing but good for us.  He knows how internally blessed we will be if we learn to think and feel like Jesus.  The pathway to that is oh so arduous.

God is not the schoolmarm who wields a yardstick and threatens, “Now, I’ll teach you.”  This is training that, while hard to bear, comes from unfathomable love and patience.  It is just as often whispered as it is heard in the claps of thunder.  I know that the longer I resist the voice of God in my suffering, the longer the suffering might last.  Not because He is cruel but because He loves me so much that He doesn’t want me to miss it.

The end of the passage promises that trials will yield the fruit of peace and righteousness.  What does that look like?  Here are some things I’m learning.  It’s peace that doesn’t need a pity party.  Peace that doesn’t strive with God to question what He’s doing.  Peace that submits, like a child, and urges me to climb into the shelter of His embrace.  It’s also righteousness.  A kind that learns to think, by default, the kinds of things Jesus thought when His life got hard.  It is a kind that sees suffering as a pathway to service and not something to resent.  It is a kind that breaks all addictions to things outside of God, even people.  That’s leads to joy, not torment.

Peace and righteousness.  This is the design of all suffering whether it is because of the consequences of my sin or whether it is just the kind permitted by God for my sanctification.  Either way, if I accept it and let Jesus share my tears and love Him through it, blessing awaits me and here’s the thing ~ it’s even possible to know both while the flames roar.

Thank you for the lessons.  This is heartfelt but this is also said in faith, Lord.  Amen

 For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you won’t grow weary and lose heart.  Hebrews 12:3

This devotional may only be for a fraction of you who are reading it.  If you are one of the few who are being pursued by an enemy, this will hopefully be water in the desert.  You are someone’s target.  You know that war has been declared for no other reason than because you are God’s child.  You hear the roar of the lion in your spirit.  You smell sulfur.

God wants to put iron in your soul. First, know that Jesus endured more hostility than you and I will ever sustain.  He responded in unfathomable mercy but also with justice that will eternally prevail.  We couldn’t have predicted his responses back then, so today it is ever more necessary not to try to guess how we should respond.  We cannot take matters into our own hands.  We must take the hatred that is directed toward us, along with the people who sent it, and leave all of it in God’s hands.  He rules righteously with both justice and mercy.  He will defend us as well as rule righteously.  Both are possible but only within the mind of God.  When up to us, we’ll choose one over the other.

 “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” Colossians 2:15  Jesus, through His death, dealt with the strategic levels of authority in the demonic kingdom.  He, publicly, humiliated Satan.  The word ‘triumph’ paints a picture of an official public celebration. A triumph is not the same thing as a victory.  Victory means that a battle has been won.  Triumph is the party thrown after the victory.

How did Jesus celebrate the victory won over his enemy at Calvary?  Perhaps the answer is found contextually by reviewing the customs of ancient Rome.  The victor was placed in a chariot drawn by a white horse and then paraded through the streets of the city.  Citizens of Rome applauded him as he passed by.  Behind him, his conquered ones were led in chains and made to endure the shame of defeat.  With this picture applied, Christ was in the chariot, having defeated his foe through the cross.  His enemies were quite a spectacle behind Him as they were paraded in public defeat and subjugation.  This event was reviewed by all spiritual realms.

The enemies against us may be flesh and blood but the origin of the war is not of the ‘flesh and blood’ kind.  The attacks are conceived and fueled by the evil ones who wage war against Christ.  Spiritual foes want us to believe they still have all the power.  They want us to fear that the cross was not a defining moment in their fate.  But these enemies have been defeated and have been shamed before heaven.  Jesus dealt with them once at Calvary and He will deal with them again before casting them into the lake of fire.  They already know their end.  Suddenly they shouted, “What have You to do with us, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?”  Matthew 8:29

Until then, while experiencing the hostility of others, we can find strength in the knowledge that He deals with our enemies even now, both human and spiritual, with infinite wisdom.

The cross before me.  The cross behind me.  You rule in victory and I trust You.  Amen

…keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.  Hebrews 12:2

Shame is a powerful catalyst.  If I know I’m going to go somewhere and will feel any kind of shame, I will want to avoid going.  If God is calling me to a place where shame has been felt in the past, I will have to prepare myself to focus on God and His love for me.  Only He can counteract the toxic effects of being in the presence of humiliation.

What is shame keeping you from today?  Whom are you avoiding because of how they cause you to feel?  What setting is it that tempts you to believe that you are worthless?  Perhaps you are still healing from the last time you were in the company of someone who despises you.

It’s not just people who cause us to feel ashamed.  It can be a humiliating event.  The next time you have lunch with some friends, ask everyone to describe their most embarrassing moment.  Shame and humiliation will be involved.

Jesus didn’t ignore the shame of the cross.  He looked at it square in the eye and chose to despise it.  Instead of shame defining how He felt, He focused elsewhere.  What power God gives His child to endure shame!  Jesus is the ultimate example of God’s sustaining grace.

John Piper wrote this piece about Hebrews 12:2

“Listen to me, Shame, do you see that joy in front of me? Compared to that, you are less than nothing. You are not worth comparing to that! I despise you. You think you have power. Compared to the joy before me, you have none. Joy. That is my power! Not you, Shame. You are worthless. You are powerless.

You think you can distract me. I won’t even look at you.  You are ugly and despicable. And you are almost finished. You cover me now as with a shroud. Before you can say, ‘So there!’ I will throw you off like a filthy rag. I will put on my royal robe.

You think you are great, because even last night you made my disciples run away. You are a fool, Shame.  That abandonment, that loneliness, this cross — these tools of yours — they are all my sacred suffering, and will save my disciples, not destroy them.

Farewell, Shame. It is finished.”

As I read this, I was reminded that I must always look at the bigger picture, not my specific set of circumstances.  Whatever shame I have suffered never concludes my life’s novel.  It is a dark thread amongst the many golden threads of grace and redemption.

Your people spend a lifetime healing from shame.  You did it in an instant because You knew Your Father’s love and saw your eternal destiny.  Amen

Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. Hebrews 12:1b

Spiritual weights are anything that slow us down.  The baggage we drag behind can largely be demonic residue from our choices. Weights can feel heavy but if the weights are comprised of enjoyable vices, they will feel light for a time.  We won’t notice their effects right away.  Nevertheless, they have still reduced our freedom to run and time will reveal that.

Spiritual weights are usually presented as sins; things that we chose to do that were outside of God’s plans for us.  To take inventory, we’re given a list of common sins and asked to check the boxes, similar to what we do when filling in paperwork for a new doctor.  Yes – I’ve had this.  No – I’ve never had that.  Let me emphasize that this approach is far too elementary for a spiritual inventory.  Less obvious things can hold us back and they don’t show up on a sins checklist.

• Wrong beliefs are weights. If I believe lies about myself, falsehoods I’ve come to wear like an overcoat, that covering is heavy to my spirit.  The danger is that it’s so familiar that I don’t think of taking it off.
• Bad attachments are weights. If I am connected to another whose passion is not Jesus, then I have placed myself in a precarious position to be influenced by their thoughts and behaviors.  I remember the words of my parents.  ‘Choose your friends wisely.’  Unwise associations create a drag on my windspeed.
• Listening to critical voices imposes another kind of weight. ‘You’re stupid. You’ll never get it right.  ‘You can’t make up for all the ways you’ve failed me.’  These wound the spirit and cripple my limbs for moving forward.
• Harboring resentment and refusing to forgive may be the heaviest of all weights. When I, as a child of God, put on His crown and decide to sit in His seat of judgement, I wilt under the burden. I was made to dance and worship the King, not try to become One.

All of these involve our inside world and their damage is much more sinister.  No wonder the Psalmist asked God to search His heart.  He didn’t trust himself to do it.  I don’t usually recognize what is sabotaging me either.  But God always knows and is eager to reveal it to me; not to nit-pick, but to lighten my load.  He is a compassionate cheerleader.

Once identified, I’ll throw it off.  Lord, I believe Your interpretation of ‘weights.’  Amen

These were all commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised.  God had planned something better for us, so that together with us they would be made perfect.  Hebrews 11:29-30 

The heroes of the faith, so many of them, lived when following God was so much harder than it is now.  They didn’t know God well.  They hadn’t seen the coming Messiah.  They had little history to review because the Jewish nation was still young.  And, scripture was also incomplete.

They had been given the law; ten impossible commandments to keep.  They held up a mirror to show them their sin problem.  So, what could be God’s plan?  That they would love and worship Him, follow His commands but know that when they failed, they could offer a sacrifice that would make atonement for their sins.  But in this process, they had no internal help with the sinfulness of their flesh.  There was no Holy Spirit to enable holiness, to whisper encouragement, to teach them individually and to write God’s Word on their heart.  Life was a cycle of worship, acts of faith, deeds of sinfulness, making sacrifices, then repenting and receiving forgiveness.

They did not know about a future event called Pentecost when believers would experience the indwelling of the Spirit of God.  Today, when my flesh is weak, I cry out to the Spirit to help me.  I do not need to offer a sacrifice for forgiveness.  The bloody ordeal was satisfied in Jesus.  I can rest in three things: 1.) In the finished work of the cross.  2.) In the sanctifying work of the Spirit and the sharing of Jesus’ divine nature.  3.) In the intimacy with God afforded to me because I’ve been justified and made holy.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.  His diving power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.   Through these He has given us His precious and magnificent promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, now that you have escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.…  2 Peter 1:2-4

None of this did our faith heroes have.  Yet, their faith was stellar enough that it challenges even us.  How did they do it?  There must have been an Old Testament kind of grace that facilitated a spiritual energy to obey and to remain steadfast.  This a mystery held in the mind of God.

I have everything I need today to live a life of obedience and faithfulness.  Oh, thank you.  Amen

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Matthew 5:10

Every person knows some degree of persecution.  Feeling unwanted.  Scorned.  Left out.  Rejected.  God has a heart for you if persecution from others has been part of your story – even from birth.  But there is another kind of persecution.  Righteous persecution.  That means that I will suffer because of my association with Jesus.  When I love Him more than others, that will affect what I say and the choices I make.  To align with Jesus is to be misunderstood and unpopular.  I can’t expect otherwise.  When Jesus entered ministry, His first sermon incited a crowd to stone Him even though He’d only delivered a paragraph.  His words were so sharp that they pierced through the unrighteousness of the crowd like a sword.  The Light of the world caused others to shield their eyes for they loved darkness rather than light.

Until I became God’s child, I was homogeneous with my world.  My parents, family, and friends taught me how to think and view the world.  I loved harmony (as I’m a peacemaker) so I lived rarely making waves.  God turns this upside down, whether we are peacemakers or not, as He becomes our Father and re-parents us to think, feel, and act like Jesus.  Supremely, that is our life’s goal as a new disciple.  I can sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus. .” but then continue to think for myself.  Never am I more hypocritical and salt-less.

If I am an angry person and my words repel others, I will be persecuted.  But, this is not the kind Jesus refers to.

If I am a judgmental person and walk around with a disapproving demeanor, I will be persecuted.  But, this is not the kind Jesus refers to.

I can be a dark person and suffer the exclusion of others.  But, this is not the kind Jesus refers to.

I can be a controlling person and suffer the criticism of others and even though I might be right at times, this is not the kind of persecution Jesus refers to.

‘For righteousness sake’ means that when I speak and act like Jesus, in the way He spoke and in the way He acted, I will be persecuted in the same manner as He was.  Even though humble, I will be hated.  Even though I love, I will be rejected.  Even though I desire to serve, my offers will be refused.  Even though, before God, I have committed no crime except to live out the Gospel, I may be stoned and imprisoned.  But I am blessed by God.  The end of Hebrews 11 says that the world is not worthy of God’s children who walk in Jesus’ footsteps.

I will not hold a pity party.  You told me to expect it, forgive, and seek my comfort from You.  Align me where I’m out of alignment.  Amen

The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.  Hebrews 11:38

Oh, how differently God sees things.  The only thing that matters is God’s viewpoint.  His spiritual vision is uncluttered and there isn’t a trace of distortion; no cobwebs cloud his reasoning. His interpretation of people and events are right and true.  I shudder to think of some of the assessments I’ve made over a lifetime that were far from God’s appraisal.

Opposite viewpoints are the point of this scripture.  The world has regarded believers in Jesus one way – and in the time of the writing of Hebrews – they were expendable, worthless, stripped of all rights, and hunted down to be persecuted before being eliminated.  If I were able to interview the political leaders of that time and ask them why they despised Jesus’ disciples, they would have given an extensive list of reasons.  That’s the scary part.  Their minds were darkened by sin and rebellion.  God’s thoughts were far from their thoughts but still they were zealots of hatred.

While they considered disciples of Jesus worthless, God viewpoint was that it was really the other way around.  He said that the world was not worthy of their presence.  Such is the case for any child of God today who is being persecuted for righteousness sake.  (What is righteous persecution as opposed to self-inflicted persecution due to soulish behavior? That will be the topic of tomorrow’s devotional.)

For now, if you are certain that you suffer because of your love for Jesus, you are of infinite worth to God even though others believe you are contemptible.   It can be lonely to love Jesus more than the acceptance of others, more than you love family or a spouse, more than you love the praise of your children, and even more than you love the comfort of fitting in with others in ministry.  It is lonely to love God’s specific instruction and to walk in solitary obedience.

We are a peculiar people, and rarely will the world understand our way of thinking any more than it understood the peculiar stories and unique mindset of Jesus.  He interpreted his world in ways that could never have occurred to anyone else around Him.  He and His Father were one and that unity gave Him the discernment to make righteous judgements.  He said as much to the mixed crowd who were picking up stones to put a woman to death. He was alone as He forgave her.  They were united to condemn.  “I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.”  John 8:26

Stop now and breathe in the favor of Your Father who, even now, might whisper, “Well done.”

Encourage someone right now is about to cave and feels they can’t take one more minute of feeling hated.  Even for Your sake.  Amen

Some men were tortured, not accepting release, so that they might gain a better resurrection, and others experienced mockings and scourgings, as well as bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they died by the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and on mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground.  Hebrews 11:35-38

I would like to invite you to take in this paragraph by a pastor from the 1800’s, G. H. Morrison.  His messages were described as pastoral and devotional.  He reveled in obscure texts.  He wrote his sermons early in the week and set out, the rest of the week, to discover how simply he could present them.  His painstakingly careful, and Spirit led wording, is never more evident than in his treatment of this passage from Hebrews 11.  The back and forth comparisons make me think of the Ecclesiastes scripture about the times: time to build up, time to tear down, etc.

With you, I ask God for the wisdom to discover how faith should be expressed in my life today.

Teach us, Lord.  Amen

Quote: Faith is not just when it brings deliverance to a man, but sometimes, when deliverance is offered, it gives him a fine courage to refuse it. There are seasons when faith shows itself in taking. There are seasons when it is witnessed in refusing. There is a deliverance that faith embraces. There is a deliverance that faith rejects. They were tortured, not accepting deliverance—that was the sign and seal that they were faithful. There are hours when the strongest proof of faith is the swift rejection of the larger room^{.  G.H. Morrison}