Devotions

I am often asked about the will of God.  What is God’s will for my life?  Is this God’s will for me?  If I do this, will I be in God’s will? If I make a mistake, am I out of the will of God?

There are a lot of books on the bookshelves about finding the will of God for your life as an individual.  I’ve read teachings on the perfect will and the permissive will of God.  I heard an idea that if you get entangled in sin, you forfeit the right for God’s best, and must settle for God’s second best will.

The Bible at least to me, seems silent in some ways about the will of God.  It is evident that we are to know God’s laws, His precepts, and His word, and that He expects us to obey those. But when I try to survey Scripture to find answers about the “will of God” as we often define it, whether we should go here, or do this, or buy that, I am often at a loss.

I find three things quite clear, however.  The first is found in Romans 8:29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.”  

It is the will of God that we are conformed to the image of Christ Jesus.  Whatever God needs to do, whatever He needs to use, everything He does has one singular purpose … to make us like Christ.  He’ll use successes and failures.  He’ll speak, He’ll woo, He’ll challenge, He’ll convict us to move us closer and closer to the likeness of His Son.  The ultimate thing I know from Scripture is that God’s will is to make us like our Savior.

Romans 8:29-30: reminds us “those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”  The work that God began in us will be completed.  God set this work in motion, and He will use everything to accomplish His will to make us like His Son.

Our part is to offer our bodies as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” to no longer conform “to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing” of our minds.  With that offering of our bodies, and that transformation of our minds, Paul writes, we will be able then to “test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”  [Romans 12:1-2]

It is not about what we are doing, where we are going, what we are buying, or other such things . . . it is about who we are becoming. 

It was a strange morning last Monday. Hot and humid but still got in a ½ mile walk early. I had three goals. One, to work on the homework for my Wednesday night Bible Study at Pastor Laura’s home. It’s a study on “Elijah, Faith and Fire,” by Priscilla Shirer.

Two, I needed to work a bit on my devotion for the Senior Potluck in August. And three, I wanted to write a couple daily devotions. All the while my mind was filled with the wonderful healing service at CFC Middleton on Sunday.

I did my Bible Study homework first. One part of the lesson on Simple Prayer caught my attention. It talked about God never changing but we do. We grow and mature and in the process become stronger in our ministries (if we allow God to work in us).

After completing my Bible Study homework, I began to work a bit on my Senior Potluck devotion – about the season of my life now, diminishing strength, slowing down, etc.

Then it struck me, after a lifetime of growing and maturing and becoming stronger in ministry, I’m old and no longer able to do what I’ve spent a lifetime learning to do!

I began to pray, and I heard the LORD speak, “Psalm 96,” so I grabbed my Bible. I never even finished the first verse! “Sing a new song to the LORD.” [vs1a NLT]

I am not what I once was. I am not able to do what I once did. But now, at this stage in my life, I am being called to “sing a NEW song to the LORD.”

I can’t wait to hear what that NEW melody will be!

Physical knees and prayer, prayer and spiritual knees are closely intertwined. Prayer becomes more focused when we bend our physical knees and spiritual knees become stronger when we pray.

In Acts 9, when Tabitha died, the disciples sent for Peter.  When Peter arrived, he sent all the mourners out of the room, “then he got down on his knees and prayed.”  When Peter dropped to his knees and prayed a miracle happened, Tabitha was raised from the dead and presented alive back to the disciples.

Would God have heard Peter’s prayer had he been standing instead of kneeling?  Yes.   Did kneeling make the prayer more valuable?  Probably not.  Did kneeling cause the miracle?  No.

Kneeling doesn’t score brownie points with God, doesn’t make our prayers more valuable or cause miracles.  Kneeling is not for God’s benefit; it’s for ours.  All through Scripture, we are exhorted about physical postures in conjunction with spiritual acts.

Praise and worship are heart actions, but we are told that there are also outward manifestations, outward physical acts that accompany our praise and worship of our God.  We are told to shout, sing, raise our hands, dance, stand, and kneel.  These outward postures reflect, enhance, and focus the inward desires and delights of our hearts.

When we kneel to pray, our body bows alongside our hearts before our Savior and Lord.  Our posture reflects our surrender to God’s will in our lives, His Lordship over us.  Kneeling strengthens our prayer attitude, and prayer strengthens our spiritual knees.  This reciprocal action makes us better able to face this walk of faith with courage and peace.

As our Blessed Savior neared the end of his life, the cross looming large in front of Him, He went to the Mount of Olives, taking His disciples with Him.  “He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, taken this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.’  An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.”   [Luke 22:39-43]

Jesus faced the greatest challenge of His life, the cross, with prayer, falling to His knees in the garden.  When we face our greatest challenges, the crosses that come our way in this walk of faith, we would do well to follow His example, on our knees, and with a “not my will but yours be done” on our lips.

Knees.  Knees are funny looking, some are knobby, some stick out, and some even have dimples.  Knees are made up of bones, tendons, ligaments and cartilage.  Knees facilitate motion, make it easier to walk, and possible to hop, skip and run.  Knees allow us to bend down and to squat.   If your knee is ever rendered immobile by a cast or brace, you realize how much more difficult any type of movement is.

As a little child I associated knees with something else.  I grew up in a church with “kneelers.”  These were little cushioned benches that pulled down from the pew in front of you and made it easier for you to kneel through parts of the service.  I learned to associate knees with kneeling in prayer.

As an adult I associated knees with an altar call.  The minister would, at some point in the service, invite people to come down front for prayer.  People would rise from their seats and walk down front, and there they would drop to their knees at an altar, sometimes praying alone, and sometimes praying with others.  Knees and prayer are associated.

As I was reading in Acts this past week, I read about the martyrdom of Stephen.  At the very moment Stephen’s life was taken from him, he dropped to his knees.  “While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’  Then he fell on his knees and cried out, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’  When he had said this, he fell asleep.”   [Acts 7]

Stephen prayed forgiveness on those who were killing him.  Standing there watching and agreeing to Stephen’s death was a man named Saul, Saul of Tarsus, the man who would later become Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles.  Stephen’s prayer for forgiveness went in two directions.  It went to the throne of God, and it went to the ears and possibly the hearts of his listeners.

We aren’t told what effect it had on Paul’s heart, but I am convinced that later when Paul looked back on his life and saw his persecution of the church, including his assent to Stephen’s martyrdom, he also heard Stephen’s words of forgiveness.  I know God heard.

The author of Hebrews 12 tells us to “strength [our] feeble arms and weak knees.”  Our spiritual knees are connected to our spiritual hearts.  The word of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel regarding the final fall of Judah into the hands of Babylon.  He described the coming disaster and the reaction of the people as panic and moaning, faces covered with shame, hands that go limp, and knees becoming as water.  [Ezekiel 7]

In Romans 14, Paul describes a time when all men will appear before the judgment seat of God, and when that happens “’as surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.’”

The condition of our spiritual knees reflects the condition of our hearts.  Our knees become weak when faced with the trials and disasters of life.  Our knees grow weak when our hearts grow fearful.  Our knees grow weak when our sins come back to roost, when our failings are seen, when we come face to face with the consequences and with the discipline.

One of the primary ways to strengthen these feeble knees is to bend them, first of all, willingly before our God.  There is coming a time when every knee will bow, every knee in heaven, on earth and under the earth will bow at the name of Jesus.  [Philippians 2:10]

That bending of the knee will come one of two ways, either it will be a voluntary bending of the knee at the name of Jesus, or it will be a forced bending of the knee, but make no mistake, every knee of every man and woman of every age will bow.

We have been granted the glorious privilege now to know the name of Jesus, to accept his Lordship in our lives.  This means bending our knees to His will now.  No matter what life hands us, no matter what trial we face, no matter how tough the battle, or how fierce the fighting, we bow to His will, we bend the knee, and we become stronger in the process.

My knees are getting older, that’s fair, so is the rest of me.  They don’t bend like they used to years ago and they are often achy and stiff after I walk. Life has not been easy on my knees.

The Book of Hebrews talks about hardship and discipline and about our knees.   Hebrews reminds us to throw off everything that hinders us, the sins that easily entangle us, and to endure hardship as discipline because “discipline produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”  [12:1-11]   Then in verse12, it gets to the part about our knees, we are to “strengthen [our] feeble arms and weak knees.”   

How do our physical knees get weakened?  They can be weakened through lack of use, through injury, through just the aging process.  How do our spiritual knees get weakened?  They too can be weakened through lack of use, and they can be injured when we fail to face the adversities of life in the proper way.  Discouragement, complaining, growing weary and losing heart makes our spiritual knees feeble.  [12:3]

How do we go about strengthening our knees?  Just as physical knees need to be exercised appropriately so that the muscles and sinews can be built up, spiritual knees need to be exercised also.  The first way is by becoming resolute in putting away discouragement and complaining in the face of adversity.  Let’s face it Christian, the life of faith is not easy, nor does it become easier.

Spiritual life exercised amid worldly opposition is a tough battle.  Jesus never promised it would be otherwise.  Just read church history and you’ll know that true believers down through the ages have faced trials and hardships.  Why do we think we will be any different?

How quickly our lives can turn around!  Circumstances can change in an instant.  A car turns wrong in front of us, and suddenly we are dealing with life and death issues, when only moments before we were thinking about mundane errands, or our bills, or our vacations.

We can be stuck in a dead-end job, or thinking we will forever follow this career path or live in this place, when suddenly an opportunity presents itself through a word, a phone call or an email and we are off on something new and different.

The eternal will often thrust itself into the immediate as well.  One day some men were fishing.  It was what they did almost every day.  It was their occupation.  It was how they earned their living in this life.  They watched the weather.  They went to their boats.  They put out from shore.  They cast their net into the sea . . . “for they were fishermen.”  [Matthew 4:18-22]

This day would be different, however, because the Eternal was walking by and was about to thrust Himself into their immediate.   “Come, follow me . . . and I will make you fishers of men,” and Scripture reports, “at once they left their nets and followed him.” 

In a moment’s notice, life was completely different for these men.  Peter, Andrew, James, and John left their nets, their boats, their life-long occupations and followed this man who called to them by the Sea of Galilee.

For the next three years they would walk with Him, listen to His words, and view His life.  Their hearts would be exalted to the highest heights; and for a moment as they viewed the cross, their hopes would be crushed to the deepest depths.  They would become preachers and martyrs.  They would know persecution and great triumphs.  They would see the salvation of God taken to the world.

In one brief moment of time, they would become consumed with the Eternal.  “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.”  [John 10:27-28]

The Eternal is walking by and wants to thrust Himself into our immediate, “Come, follow me.”  Let’s drop those nets, walk away from our boats, and never turn back.

I was watching Wintley Phipps the other night before going to bed. He performed the most poignant rendition of “Amazing Grace” I have ever heard. It was on a Gaither video recorded at Carnegie Hall shortly after 9/11. Before he sang, he made the comment that “black or white, slave or free, we are all connected by God’s Amazing Grace.”

I went to sleep pondering that thought. There are many people in my life with whom I would have no natural affinity except for the connecting of God’s Amazing Grace.

Paul reminds us of that fact, once in Colossians 3:10 that “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all,” and again in Galatians 3:28 that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [NKJV]

It matters not what we are when we approach the cross. Our backgrounds, our social status, our ethnicity, our education – nothing counts one iota in our favor. We all come exactly the same, a desperate soul in search of a Savior.

And when we rise from there, we are all exactly the same, a child of God filled with His amazing grace

Yes, we truly are “all connected by God’s Amazing Grace” given us in Christ Jesus. PTL

I was reading in 1 Timothy yesterday, in Chapter 4 where Paul reminded Timothy that our only hope rests in our Savior, Christ Jesus, “for our hope is in the living God who is the Savior of all people and particularly of all believers.” [1Timothy 4:10b NLT]

That promise is found at the end of a passage where Paul wrote to Timothy about the qualities of a “worthy servant of Christ Jesus.”

 He first told Timothy that a worthy servant is “one who is nourished by the message of faith and the good teaching you have followed.” [vs 6]

He also said the worthy servant doesn’t waste time arguing over “godless ideas and old wives’ tales.”  [vs 7]

And he added, “’Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come’ This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it. This is why we work hard and continue to struggle, for our hope is in the living God….” [vs 8-10]

Paul spoke to Timothy about being a “worthy servant,” and God speaks to us through that passage. As children, people would often ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our responses became clearer as we matured.

As children of God, if someone should ask us what we want to be … I pray our response is “a worthy servant.”

If you have spent any time watching the news lately, two things are prominent—the weather and politics.  I am not sure which is irritating me more?  (I hate the 100+temps, and I am not too fond of politicians either.)

Even with the recent assassination attempt and calls to turn down the vitriolic rhetoric, I still heard one politician talking about the presidential race saying that his side must win! He said it is all about winning and that his side is our only hope.

Is that really what it is all about—winning? I thought it was about “serving the people.”

Certainly, we must pay attention to the politics of our nation; we are called to be responsible citizens. But, when I think of serving and hope, I seldom think of a politician. It seems their only goal is to do everything in their power to get reelected.

No, when I think of serving and hope, I think of our Savior. Jesus said that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” [Matthew 20:28 NLT]

And despite what is being proclaimed on the political stage, our only hope does not rest in a political party or a specific politician, our only hope rests in our Savior, Christ Jesus, “for our hope is in the living God who is the Savior of all people and particularly of all believers.” [1Timothy 4:10b NLT]

Jesus, Servant, Savior, Living Hope. Amen!