2002-01-01
Good Morning Dear Friends,
The Lord leads me to invite you to continue thinking about making time for Him. Mary Shepperd in her message to the group I was in last Saturday cited IS 43: 1-4. In spending some time meditating on this passage one is reminded of God’s attitude toward believers. While it was originally said by Isaiah to Jews, we can include all believers because of the revelation of Paul’s ministry in RO 1: 16-17. Let me cite them both here beginning with the one from Isaiah. “Israel, the Lord Who created you says, ‘Do not be afraid-I will save you. I have called you by name-you are Mine. When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you; your troubles will not overwhelm you. When you pass through fire, you will not be burned; the hard trials that come will not hurt you. For I am the Lord your God, the holy God of Israel, Who saves you. I will give up Egypt to set you free; I will give up Sudan and Seba. I will give up whole nations to save your life, because you are precious to Me and because I love you and give you honor.’ ” What a clear claim of ownership, parenthood, and love for us this is! We should take it seriously and never doubt it. Because this passage began with the salutation, “Israel,” it is necessary to be reminded of the hugely important revelation of Paul mentioned above, so there is no question that even if you are Gentile, as a believer this love message is for you too. RO 1: 16-17, “I [Paul] have complete confidence in the Gospel; it is God’s power to save all who believe, first the Jews and also the Gentiles. For the Gospel reveals how God puts people right with Himself; it is through faith from the beginning to end. As the Scriptures [HB 2: 4 & GA 3: 11] say, ‘The person who is put right with God through faith shall live.’ “
You will remember that yesterday I shared Mary’s belief that we often suffer from a “love-deficit” that makes us try to fill the gap with busyness in an effort to deal with it. This busyness can really interfere with our ability to quiet down enough to listen to God speaking to us. This sets up a vicious cycle, making the problem worse. That is because we all need not only to hear our Lord, but to act on His commands to us. Yet, the “love-deficit” is not the only kind of interference with listening to God that sometimes happens. Rejection and Satan’s actions are others. I don’t know if you have experienced rejection of one kind or another in your personal lives, but most of us do. When you are growing up, some siblings or other children you encounter in school can be very cruel at times. We are not born with self-confidence and feelings of self-worth. These are learned attitudes. If you are blessed enough to have had a healthy home life and emotionally healthy parents, they encouraged you to learn these attitudes, imparted their life of faith to you, and encouraged you when you made progress toward maturity. Not all of us are blessed in this way. Thus, some of us grow up feeling worthless, not learning well how to interact with others-particularly detractors, and never enjoying recognition from our parents for the small victories we make in growing up. Have you ever noticed how many of the less popular kids in school went on to be successes in their adult lives, how the one that didn’t fit in because he didn’t dress right or was “the brain” went on to become a leader in society? Children can be very cruel toward each other, making it necessary for the targets of their cruelty to update their attitudes toward themselves as they become adults. Rejection sometimes comes to us as adults too. Just think of the rejection that comes in the path of someone trying to get a book published or in the midst of a job search. But, rejection does not have to mean defeat! As faithful and intelligent adults, we can put the ill effects of rejection behind us by remembering the message of IS 43: 1-4. That is why I feel Mary has given each of us a gift in bringing our attention to it. Read it over again, even if it hasn’t been long since you first read it. It’s a love letter worthy of more of our attention than it has been given!
The enemy is another matter. He doesn’t deserve any of our attention, except as it applies to mounting spiritual warfare against him. Satan hates prayer and wants to prevent us from being quiet enough to hear what God wants to say to us. While we can’t see the hidden forces mounted against us, we have to know they are there anxious to do evil. Satan lies to us and makes us feel worthless. He is God’s enemy and ours. Yet, God gives us the power when we have faith in Christ to beat the devil at his own game. God equips us to do battle with him and win. By staying in the Word through prayer and study, the Holy Spirit gives us the discernment to recognize when Satan is doing his dirty deeds. I love the example of how any of us can put Satan out of commission that is given us in MT 4: 1-11, the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness. Christ shows us how not yielding to the devil’s temptations defeats his adversary. In today’s world, money, unrighteous thirst for power, materialism, laziness, etc. are the temptations Satan places in our paths. We are encouraged to examine our own personal lives to search out sin in them and expunge it. The idea here is not to provoke guilt, but to do the work of eliminating that part of our lives that won’t survive the Refiner’s fire. Let me cite RO 2: 28-29 here, which is Paul’s message to hypocritical Jews who placed more value on their physical circumcisions than on the content of the hearts. It has value for all of us. “After all, who is a real Jew, truly circumcised? It is not the man who is a Jew on the outside, whose circumcision is a physical thing. Rather, the real Jew is a person who is a Jew on the inside, that is, whose heart has been circumcised, and this is the work of God’s Spirit, not of the written Law. Such a person receives his praise from God, not from man.” Since it is the enemy who brings people to place more importance on outward appearances than on heart-attitude and who brings them to be hypocritical, then what Paul is saying is look to God for direction and approval, not other sources. Examine the content of our hearts with an eye to bringing them in closer to the ideal set before us by the Father in Jesus Christ.
PRAYER: O Lord, through love messages like IS 43: 1-4, You remind us of your love for us. Because of that love, You claim ownership of us and want us to make You alone the Lord of our lives. You gave us Your Son on the cross to provide a way out from under slavery to sin. Because of this, we need to recognize that the sinful behavior of others cannot separate us from the love You have for us. We have the power to not allow sin to defeat us, because You gave us that power. Help us to recognize that, Dear Lord, and to keep our eyes firmly focused on You. In Christ’s name, we praise and thank You. Amen.
Tomorrow, we will finish up this series of messages on making time for God. We should all feel very loved by our Lord and empowered to be victorious over His adversaries. Know that our Lord deserves for us to make time in our lives for Him and that you are not alone in sometimes having a hard time doing this. Your Lord loves you and so do Peter and I.
His Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn