We’ve heard it for years. “Forty is the new thirty.” Maybe that’s true in some alternate, fanciful view of the universe, but as I sit here on the eve of the Big 4-0, I can already tell that forty is not really a new thirty. I have parts that ache that I didn’t even know existed when I turned thirty. At thirty, hair color at the salon was a fun luxury. I could be a red-head or a blonde or a brunette with interesting highlights. I could even choose to just enjoy my natural color. Enjoying my natural color at forty, however, requires regular salon visits that no longer seem like luxuries. I’ve also begun to notice that there are times when most everyone else is comfortable, and the actual thirty-year-olds may even need a sweater, but I am enjoying a personal, unscheduled visit from summer. And I’ll tell you, these private moments of heat are different from the summer heralded by the calendar. It is possible for air conditioning to alleviate some of the misery of the calendar’s summer, but the private summer is impervious to any and all climate-control tactics. In short, the new thirty is not really thirty, and in some admittedly superficial ways, this new thirty is simply not an improvement over the original.

Even on the brink of this new decade marker, though, there is good news to be found. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV) It is not just a revised version of the same old thing we’ve been living for the last ten years. It is a new life in which our desires are different; our motives become increasingly more reflective of God’s love and our actions less focused on ourselves. As we grow in this new life, more and more of the fruit of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – will flow from our lives. (Galatians 5:22)

This does not mean we will live perfect lives. David, one of my very favorite people in all of scripture, was a very imperfect man who was also a man after God’s own heart. He was a man of successes and failures, with his most significant moral face-plant chronicled in 2 Samuel 11. This is the story of David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband. Though David had failed greatly, we see in 2 Samuel 12 that God loved David enough to seek him out. Our Lord God sent a prophet to draw David to a place where he could acknowledge his guilt and be forgiven.

David’s acknowledgment of his sin and cry to God are set forth beautifully in Psalm 51. The entire chapter is worth reading and praying when we are faced with the reality of our own sin and failure, but the verse I want to focus on here is verse 10. “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.” Only God can be the subject of the verb that is translated “create” in this verse. David is crying out to God to do something that only God can do. Furthermore, the Hebrew name used for God in this verse is Elohim, a reference to God as Creator. If we cry out to God as David did in Psalm 51:10, we are crying out to the Creator who was in the beginning, is now and always will be. If Elohim spoke this universe into existence and created the wonder of the human body, mind and soul, he can certainly answer the cry of his child to create a new and pure heart within us even when we have sinned.

As I am teetering on the transition from the thirties to the forties, I cannot honestly tell you that forty is the new thirty. In the physical world, forty is limited and changed by the events of the past. Gaining and losing weight with the birth of three children, for example, limits what forty looks like. In the spiritual realm, however, our Creator God is not limited by the events of our past. He used a murderer – Saul, who later became Paul – to reach so many for Christ and write much of the New Testament. He used the prostitute Rahab to deliver victory to his people in the battle at Jericho. And he has even used a sinner such as I to lead others to him and encourage fellow believers as they grow and follow our Lord. This is better than a new thirty; it is a new life and a new heart. (Visit the Know Jesus! link to learn more about beginning that new life in Christ.)

My Father God, my Creator, my Elohim, I confess my tendency to try to create and recreate myself through my own power. I let go of my vain attempts to do the thing only you can do and cry out to you to create in me a new heart, a pure heart, a heart that will beat for you throughout the ages.

Like many young runners on that humid day, Graham looked fatigued as he rounded the last curve before the finish line. Around that curve were the final yards of the race, where you pull out everything you’ve got and leave it there. It was at that beginning of the end that Graham heard my voice. “Run, Graham, Run! Run fast! Push! Push! You can do it!” And what do you think this young runner’s response was? He found his reserve! And when he tapped into it, he poured it all out in those last few yards, even passing another racer he had not been on pace to beat. It’s amazing what a few words of encouragement can do for someone who is working hard to finish a race.

As I saw Graham’s response to my shouts, I began to think about our role as part of the cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12:1. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” (NIV) What should we be doing as we see others working hard to finish their race? Do we have some responsibility to other believers who are struggling to complete the course set before them? What about to those who are running very well, but we know they will need to keep on keeping on even when Satan attacks?

As we run our own race and observe others running theirs, we should do the same thing that comes naturally to us when we are watching a foot race or other sporting event. Right here in the middle of March Madness, how many of us sit and watch our team in quiet reverence with no words of encouragement for the athletes working so hard for the victory? I have seen some of you watch basketball – I know the answer to this question. Some of you go completely nuts in cheering your team on. So why do we so often just sit back quietly when fellow believers are working so hard to persevere?

Scripture makes it very clear that we should be encouraging each other at least as much in life as we do in sports. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11, NIV) And if we find ourselves wondering how often we should do this, the answer is every day. The author of Hebrews put it this way, “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” (Hebrews 3:13, NIV) Do you encourage another believer on each day that is called “Today”? I will admit that I have missed more than a few opportunities to encourage others in their struggles and cheer them on in their victories.

And there is one more little fact you should know about my relationship with Graham. He is not my child. I am not an adult who is at all significant in Graham’s world. I am Grace Anne, Spencer and Matthew’s mom. To Graham, I may also be his mom’s friend. Even without a close relationship, Graham responded when I cheered and called him by name. We do not have to be a close family member or beloved friend to encourage someone in ways that will make a real difference in how well they finish the race set before them.

So, are you up for a challenge? Will you ask God to put someone in need of encouragement in your path today and every day? Will you make a commitment to encourage even those you do not know well?

My Father God, thank you so much for those witnesses who have encouraged me in this race of faith. Please show me opportunities to encourage others, so that they may persevere to finish the race you have set before them. I commit to encourage someone on every day that is called “Today.”

One of my favorite activities as “Mom” is driving carpool. It provides so many opportunities to get to know my children and their friends and to hear what is really on their hearts before and after their school day. It also provides more than a few laughs and devotional illustrations. One morning recently, my third-grader was talking about a whole group of her friends, including a set of identical twins. As an aside, she noted that one of the twins wears her hair shorter than the other. “Is that how you tell them apart?” I asked. “No. That’s how the teachers tell them apart. I can tell them apart because they’re my friends, and I know them.”

You know, there really is a difference between seeing and interacting with someone every day and being their friend. Anyone can tell these twins apart, at least until they change their hairstyles, by simply remembering which one wears shorter hair. Being a friend, though, involves so much more than that. A true friend isn’t just able to recognize you; a friend knows you. She knows the good, the bad and the ugly – she cherishes the good, balances out the bad and never advertises the ugly.

Shortly before his arrest, Jesus spent some time talking to his disciples and preparing them for the trials and blessings that were to come. While encouraging his disciples to remain in him, where they would grow and bear fruit, Jesus told them what it took to be his friend. “You are my friends if you do what I command.” (John 15:14, NIV) He went on to tell the disciples that he called them friends.

Do you hear that? We can have so much more than knowledge of facts about Jesus Christ. It is possible to be called his friends! We must be careful, though, not to fall into a trap of legalism as we seek to be called his friends. Jesus said that we are his friends if we keep his commands. When we look at how Jesus views the commandments, however, we find that the requirement to be his friend really has nothing to do with a memorized set of rules. When he was directly asked to identify the greatest commandment, Jesus replied in this way:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:37-40, NIV)

Any obedience to rules that does not grow from a love for God and a love for others is not the type of obedience that leads to a friendship with Jesus Christ. We know from our human relationships that we don’t build friendships by following a set of rules set out by the other person. Why, then, do we seem to think we can build a relationship with God in this way? We cannot. We have a friendship with God by loving him; if we love him, we will love others. (On this point, I recommend Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love. That book exhorts us to live out the love we say we have for our God by loving and trusting God in a new and radical way and by loving and caring for others as much as we love and care for ourselves.)

If we take this plunge to love God and love others in the way described by Jesus himself, we will grow beyond the mere ability to identify Jesus based on a memorized list of characteristics, which is akin to knowing which twin has short hair. Rather, we will have an intimate friendship with our Lord Jesus Christ, the friendship that he described in John 15. (That’s a great chapter to read and read again, by the way.) In this friendship, we will remain in Christ and bear fruit that comes from him. His words will remain in us, and we will use those words to ask our Father God for his presence, protection and provision. Those requests growing from the very words of Christ in us will be granted. Wow! Why would we stop at anything less than this friendship?

My Father God, more than anything I want a friendship with you through your Son, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I long to have more than knowledge of who you are; I desire to be called your friend. I commit to love you with all my heart soul and mind and to allow your love to flow through me so that I may I love others as I love myself.

“I just need an eighth day of the week.” Have you heard friends say that lately? Maybe you have even had that thought yourself at times. I certainly have. It seems that even our children are feeling the crunch of our busy lives. When I was tucking my oldest into bed about a year ago, she expressed a wish that seemed unusual for a child. “I wish there was just one day when no one had to do any work, but the parents still got paid. And on that day, we could all sleep as much as we wanted to.” Grace Anne’s tone suggested she was dreaming of a fantasy she felt could not possibly come true. Her fantasy, though, sounds somewhat familiar, does it not?

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20:8-10.

Our Creator God designed and created us to need a break. It’s a break that we need every week, and we will not get it in the form of some magical eighth day. The truth is that we could not be trusted with an eighth day; the very reason we crave that day is that we are not using the seventh day as our Lord intended. After a period of failing to set aside one day out of seven for rest and relaxation, we will begin to notice that our schedules are overwhelming. We will feel the anxiety that comes from juggling too many balls without ever putting them all down for a break. Even our friends and family might start to notice that we are not balancing things as well as we once did. I do not know why this lesson is so hard for us to learn, but we truly do need a twenty-four-hour period that is not about productive activity. Any other schedule is not sustainable; we simply cannot go on indefinitely without a break.

Since God used my daughter to remind us at the Able household of our need for a Sabbath rest, we have been doing things a little differently. We take our rest from Saturday evening to Sunday evening, giving us a twenty-four hour period similar to the Jewish Sabbath. We do not have a set of hard and fast rules, but this twenty-four hour period includes worship, rest and other activities that we find relaxing or cathartic in some way.

We close out our Sabbath with a weekly “calendar meeting.” (We really should come up with a better name for this family gathering on Sunday evenings, but I digress.) This meeting is a practice we started on the advice of our pastor, who encouraged our church at the beginning of 2009 to allow God to be Lord of our calendars. On Sunday evenings, we discuss the schedule of the week ahead and focus on any particular challenges we need to be ready to meet. If the week is particularly busy for one person, this lets the entire family know that extra demands probably should not be placed on that person in that week. The children have an opportunity to talk about things they have coming up and also to request that time be set aside for things they would like to do during that week. We wrap it up by offering our schedule as an offering before our Creator God, the very one who knew from the beginning of time that we would need down time, even in the busiest of weeks.

I’ll admit that we still have weeks that get a little out of control, but I am learning to see a day of rest as a privilege, rather than a responsibility. Jesus Christ himself told us that the Sabbath was made for us. (Mark 2:27) Just think of the Sabbath rest as a privilege that comes with being a child of the King. The one who created and owns all that is says we can take a break and relax! And while we are enjoying our break, we can praise God for the promise of Philippians 4:19. He will supply all our needs, according to his glorious riches. And the best part is, we do not have to spend all seven days in productive activity for our needs to be met. We serve a God who is not just our Elohim, our Creator God; he is also our Jehovah-Jireh, our Provider.

If your schedule is spinning out of control every week, I would encourage you to take a look at the seven days in your week. Is there a day that you get the rest your designer and creator knew you would need? Are you doing anything you find relaxing? If not, dear child of God, take the break you need, trusting your Creator to be your Provider, as you move toward a schedule that is sustainable.

My Father God, my Creator, I praise you for seeing from the dawn of time that I would need a break. I repent of the pride which leads me to believe I do not need the very thing you have said I must have. I commit my calendar, my schedule, my days and my future to you, my Lord, to be used for your glory. Take each day and map it out according to your will. I praise you as I rely on you to bless my six days of effort and make them sufficient for all that you intend for my life.

Have you ever had a medical problem that the doctors just couldn’t seem to solve? In John 5, we meet a man who had been waiting thirty-eight years for a cure. When he encountered our Savior, Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” (John 5:8, NIV) The man did. Well, it just so happened that it was the Sabbath, and the Jewish leaders reminded the man that the law forbade him to carry his mat on the Sabbath. The man’s answer was simple, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” (John 5:11, NIV) The commands of the One who made him well carried more weight than the expectations of others around him. When we read on in this passage, though, we see that Jesus later saw the man he had healed and admonished him to stop sinning, lest something worse happen to him. (John 5:14) It seems that the man was no longer following doctor’s orders.

How often do we feel better and then stop doing the very thing that brought about our healing? We clearly do this with our physical health, but we may be even more prone to this when it comes to our spiritual health. Do we not experience healing that only God can bring and then turn back to destructive habits that caused our problems in the first place? We may fail to forgive others, return to a pattern of addictive behaviors or secretly refuse to give the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords the position of Lord over every aspect of our lives. If we return to these sins, we very well may find ourselves in a worse situation than before. The solution is to get up, walk and continue walking with the One who made us well, regardless of any pressures to do otherwise.

My Father God, you are my Lord and my Healer, my Jehovah-Rapha. I call out to you for healing and thank you for the healing you have given. Please open my eyes to clearly see patterns that bring only sickness and death. I commit to leave those sins behind and walk in spiritual health with you and you alone.

At the beginning of the summer, we had a plumbing issue that launched a “gut it and start over” renovation of the master bath. Much to my husband’s dismay, the transformation that unfolded there motivated me to update other parts of the house as well. One weekend, Greg and I were painting my closet, which adjoins the master bath, when he spilled a significant amount of primer on the floor. This wasn’t the old floor that didn’t matter anyway, and it was not the slab, which we had lived on for almost a month. The tile had been laid on the master bath and closet floor a few days before, and it was absolutely beautiful. The grout, however, had not yet been sealed, and the primer was quickly absorbed. This is where I normally would have come unglued and given my husband what a friend of mine would call “some words of wisdom.” But that’s not what I did. We did the best we could to deal with the problem and decided to seek professional assistance later to repair the grout we removed in the clean-up process.

Before you think I am boasting about how good I am and how well I treat people even when I’m aggravated, my point here is exactly the opposite. I am not naturally a nice person, and I can be very hard on myself and those around me. The fruit of the spirit, however, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22) The love, patience and self-control I had when the white primer poured into the thirsty grout did not come from me. Greg and I had already spent several hours painting that day, listening to praise and worship music the entire time. The communion with God through our worship brought me to a place where the fruit of His spirit is what flowed, even at the moment of aggravation. (And no one would be more surprised at this than was my husband; he knows the real me pretty well.) And what’s more, the fact that I was angry and sinned not (Ephesians 4:26) kept me in a place where I could raise my hands and worship when “Here I am to Worship” came on the radio just after the spill.

What if we lived in worship and communion with God throughout every day? What if we breathed psalms of praise to our Lord God Almighty, even as we worked? What if we daily acknowledged him as the only King and Lord of all creation? What if we got beyond ourselves and actually began to know God in an intimate sense? What if we surrendered all of ourselves to all of the Great I Am every day of our lives? The spills and aggravations of life, even the big ones, would not derail us spiritually, as the fruit of the Spirit would spill over in greater abundance.

My Father God, I sing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is and is to come.” (Revelation 4:8) Thank you for showing me the difference true worship can make in how we deal with even small irritants in life. I will give you all my worship and praise you for delivering me from sin that would stand in the way of my offering to you.

As I was tucking Spencer in bed one night, we had our usual conversation about what to expect for the following day. Because it was Saturday, our primary activity the next day would be to study and worship with our church family. Spencer was sad and a little perplexed when he told me a friend of his no longer went to church. “Maybe they don’t know about God,” Spencer surmised. Knowing this family, I told him I think they do know about God. “Well, maybe they know too much about God, and they just don’t want to know any more.” Hmmmmm . . . I wonder if the child is on to something.

At one point in Jesus’ ministry, he returned to his hometown of Nazareth, where he began teaching the people in their synagogue. Matthew 13:54 tells us the people were amazed. They asked, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” (Matthew 13:55-56, NIV) Though they were initially amazed, they ultimately took offense at Jesus.

The people who were offended were the very people Jesus grew up with. They knew he was the son of Mary and Joseph. They knew his whole family and probably knew a great deal about Jesus himself. They may have even played childhood games with Jesus. When it really mattered, though, the people got so hung up on what they already knew about Jesus that they could not see their way to truly know Jesus. Consequently, Jesus “did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.” (Matthew 13:58, NIV)

Like the people of Nazareth, many of us grew up with Jesus and know the stories of Jesus’ life. I wonder, though, if we sometimes get so focused on what we already know about Jesus that we cannot see the new thing our Lord wants to show us today. Do we become prideful because of our knowledge of God, Jesus and the Bible, so that a new truth remains invisible to us? Do we become so focused on things of the past, whether good or bad, that we cannot see the wondrous things God has for our today or the hope he gives for our future? Scripture tells us God’s mercies and compassions are new every morning. (Lamentations 3:22-23.) The question is whether we see them new every morning. Or do we see only the things we already know?

My Father God, I repent of setting up knowledge and experience as idols which can eclipse my vision and keep me from knowing more of you today. I pray that my knowing about you will never replace my truly knowing you.

Freedom! Wow! I am so thankful to have been born in a free country. In exercising this freedom, we were blessed in our church this week to have a wonderful Christian husband and father speak to us about battles he has faced in his service to our country. Jonathan Silk is a Captain serving in the United States Army and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Captain Silk described for us a tour of duty in which he and his soldiers were constantly observed by an enemy who blended into the civilian population. Though often unseen, this enemy was studying his every move and waiting for the opportunity to exploit any weaknesses that may be found. “When you drop your guard, the enemy will be there to exploit that,” Captain Silk had come to learn.

This veteran shared with us the story of a battle in which it was the mission of his platoon to seize the intersection on the far side of a certain bridge. Intelligence indicated that there would be no resistance when his unit attacked to seize the bridge. As another platoon fought for their lives and for the intersection at the near side of the bridge, it became clear that the enemy was going to resist. As Captain Silk described the battle, the first tactic of the enemy was to use spotlights to blind the U.S. soldiers, who were relying on night vision technology to navigate the darkness. We can only begin to imagine the difficulties that arose when the soldiers were immediately and unexpectedly blinded as they went into battle. The first order of business in defending themselves and moving to take the bridge was to regain their vision. The platoon did this by moving quickly to shoot out the spotlights. They then called in a gunship as reinforcement and continued the fight. Captain Silk and nine of his soldiers were injured in that battle, but they accomplished their mission and successfully seized the intersection.

Captain Silk stood before us as a reminder of the tremendous blessing our freedom is. Greater still is the blessing of freedom in Christ. This freedom is more than just freedom from an oppressive government; it is freedom from the bondage of sin. Jesus Christ came into the world to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.” (Isaiah 61:1, NIV; Luke 4:16-21.) The Apostle Paul tells us quite simply, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1, NIV)

The fact that Paul warns us not to be burdened again by the yoke of slavery suggests it is possible to lose a measure of the freedom that has been given us. If we are doing anything at all to serve and honor our Lord Jesus Christ, we can be certain that there is an enemy watching our every move, studying our weaknesses and waiting to attack us at the first opportunity. This enemy seeks to burden us again by the yoke of slavery to sin, self and shame. Just as the enemies described by Captain Silk often blended into the civilian environment, the enemy of our soul masquerades as another harmless alternative among many choices we make every day. Often unnoticed by us, he studies us and stands ready to take advantage of our weaknesses.

One of the many weaknesses the enemy seeks to exploit is our tendency to believe we can fill our minds with the thoughts of the world yet keep our actions insulated from the deeds of the world. This is not true, and Satan has used this false belief again and again to disable Christians in their freedom walk. We are commanded in Philippians 4:8 to think on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable and praiseworthy. If we are watching and enjoying adultery, murder, lust and disrespect for our Holy God on television, there remains only one more step before we are acting out the things we have indulged in our thoughts. All of a sudden the matter of what we watch, read and think becomes a spiritual battle, as we are offered opportunities to act out the sins we felt safe to enjoy from afar. We forget that every sinful act grows from a sinful thought, and, failing to notice the enemy until it is too late, we again become enslaved to sin, self and shame.

When we find ourselves in this position of being once again bound by sin, we can praise God for the deliverance he will provide. We do not have to stay enslaved. “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess.” (Jeremiah 30:3, NIV) If God promised that deliverance from physical captivity to the children of Israel, we can be certain he will bring deliverance from spiritual captivity to those of us who have been grafted into his family by the blood of Jesus Christ, our perfect Savior and Lord.

We can glean from Captain Silk’s military experience three important steps to regaining our freedom in the spiritual realm. Step one is to ensure that we have our vision. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that where there is no vision, the people perish. The word that is translated vision in that verse refers to revelation or a prophetic word from God. Though our Lord God does still use the gift of prophecy to speak to his people, our primary source of revelation and the prophetic word is the Bible. His Word remains useful even today for “teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16, NIV) If we find that our vision is clouded on spiritual matters, we can regain our vision by viewing our situation through the clarifying lens of God’s Word.

Step two in our battle to regain our freedom is to call for reinforcement, just as Captain Silk and his men called for the gunship. Our Lord Jesus Christ promised his disciples that another Comforter and Counselor, who is the Holy Spirit, would come to them. (John 14:16) We will not succeed in any spiritual battle unless we are aligned with and submissive to the Holy Spirit. It is by prayer that we offer our submission and by prayer that we receive the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no better reinforcement to call into our daily struggles.

Our third and final step is to take the vision we gained through the Word of God and the power given by the Holy Spirit through prayer and go into the real world and fight the fight. Furthermore, we must fight this fight with the battle gear given us by our Lord. This gear consists of the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. (Ephesians 6:14-17) It is by this armor that we will have the vision, the power and the gear to fight through the chains that have bound us to our sin. It is by this armor that we will stand firm in the freedom that is ours by the blood of Jesus Christ and not be burdened again by the yoke of slavery.

My Father God, I am so thankful for the blessing of political and physical freedom, but most of all, I praise you for spiritual freedom from the sin that once held me in chains. Keep me ever mindful of the schemes of the enemy and give me wisdom and discernment as I stand firm, so as not to be again enslaved to sin, self and shame.

Please click here to visit Captain Silk’s Wounded Warrior web page.

My sweet, sensitive child was devastated when I caught him in a lie recently. His initial response was an attempt to persuade me he had been truthful all along, and he gave a reasonably adequate presentation of one who had been wrongfully accused. Fortunately for the quest for truth at my house, this is not my first gig involving cross-examination of a liar. My child ultimately acknowledged his dishonesty, and I forgave him. I encouraged him to ask God’s forgiveness, which he chose to do in private. This all happened around bedtime, so I kissed him good night and left him to finish his prayers alone.

When I checked on him later, he was still awake. This is not typical of this child, who generally falls asleep the moment he stops moving at the end of the day. “What’s wrong, Buddy?” I asked. “Nothing,” he mumbled. When a child says “nothing” in this way, it is generally time for a more specific question. In this case, I asked if he was upset about the lie. In a display of attitude I do not normally see in this child, he rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, brother.”

I chose to ignore the attitude for the moment and go straight to equipping my child to deal with the problem of guilt over past sin. My son was surprised and intrigued when he learned that I had told a lie before and had felt horrible about it. I told him I had even had trouble sleeping because of the lie.

After getting him past his curiosity for details I was not going to disclose, I reminded my son that I had forgiven him for lying to me. He confirmed that he had asked God to forgive him as well. We reviewed the promise of forgiveness in 1 John 1:9, and I warned him that if he still felt guilty after he had been forgiven, it was Satan who was causing him to feel that way. “You mean the devil’s using his powers on me?” “Yes, but Jesus has already defeated the devil, so you do not have to take this from him.” I told my son to say something to the effect of, “Satan, I know what you are doing and I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to leave me alone. I will not listen to you anymore.” (For scriptural basis for this, see, e.g., Mark 16:17; Luke 10:17-20; Acts 16:18; James 4:7.) This young believer spoke those words with authority and confidence, and his countenance changed immediately. “So, Satan is a big loser already?” he asked. I think he is beginning to get it.

There is no certain age at which all children will be ready for information about spiritual warfare. If, however, a child has the maturity to have chosen to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then the child is mature enough to be told, in age-appropriate terms, what is actually happening when Satan attacks him. Satan does not respect youth any more than he respects maturity, and it is our job as parents to equip our children to walk from youth into maturity with the information they need to defend themselves in this fight that is not against flesh and blood. (Ephesians 6:10-17) To do this effectively, we must tell them who is attacking them. Otherwise, they will believe and internalize the lies Satan feeds them.

How many of us as adults have been spiritually disabled by a lack of understanding of true forgiveness? When this happens, we become captive to guilt over sin that our Lord God refuses to even remember. (See Jeremiah 31:34; Hebrews 10:17.) A key step in guarding our children against this type of spiritual captivity is identifying for them the one who seeks to rob them of the freedom they have in Christ. Once we have identified the enemy and his schemes, it is not difficult for a child to act in faith and simply tell Satan he has to go away. We are assured in James 4:7 that this resistance will cause the devil to flee from us. If we miss this opportunity to equip our children when they are young, these lessons will only grow harder as our children become more and more bound by the lies of the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy. We would be wise to ensure that even our young children are armed and ready for the attacks of this very powerful foe.

Our Father God, we are humbled by the task before us in training up the next generation of believers. I repent of our lack of focus on the things that truly matter as we raise our children, and I pray that we will lead these little ones to be more courageous and more faithful than our own generation. We praise you for your promise of wisdom if we will but ask, and we are asking now for wisdom that can only come from you as we seek to equip our children for the fight that is before them.

The addition of a third child into the house brings changes beyond what any normal individual could predict. Man-to-man defense is no longer adequate, and you have no time to perfect your zone defense before you realize that the game depends on it. Consequently, the third child grows up differently from the other two. Certain things that seemed so important when the first two were small just don’t matter that much now, and the third child has to fend for himself in ways the first two did not.

If you want to do a little sociology experiment on the side, you may be able to pick a third child out of a crowd even if you have never counted his siblings. A kid might be a third child if . . .

• Instead of "Rock a Bye Baby," he’s singing "We Will Rock You" (yes, the one by Queen).
• He skips the Itsy Bitsy Spider and moves straight to Spider Man -- the red one and the black one.
• You can identify his diaper bag in the church nursery because his name is written on the outside with a Sharpie. (His brother had a fancy-schmancy name tag attached to it when it was his diaper bag.)
• He graduates from that hand-me-down diaper bag to a backpack and schleps his own stuff as soon as he can walk.
• When he wants a snack, he drags the barstool across the kitchen, climbs up on the counter and takes whatever looks good. He wonders why the older kids ask Mom's permission to eat.
• His mom is not quite sure what size shoe he wears. That’s okay, though, because he knows he can go to someone else's closet and usually find a pair that fits.
• He shops for new toys in the Goodwill pile from his brother's room when Mom went on her last cleaning tirade.
• He has never heard of the "five second rule." If he gets to the crumbs before the dog does, they're his.

The good news for us is that, in God’s family, none of us will ever be this kind of “third child.” If you are a child of God through a saving faith in Jesus Christ, God has as much time and energy for you as he did for Moses, the Apostle Paul or even your favorite pastor today. Our all-powerful Father God cannot be outmanned and is infinitely capable of one-on-one interaction with each of his children. He is never too busy, too preoccupied, too stressed or too tired just to visit with us. He will mend our broken hearts and provide all that we need. We can cast all our cares and worries on him, because he cares for us. (Ps. 55:22; 1 Pet. 5:7)

This access to our heavenly Father is even more amazing when we realize that these promises are for all of us. They are not just for those who happened to be born first or born into a less dysfunctional earthly family than their neighbor. If we are in Christ, the lines that divide us fade away. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:26-29)

Our Lord God Almighty, how amazed I am that I can call you Father. Let me never forget who I am in you, and may I always honor you as I walk through this life as a child of the king. (And my Father God, please give us wisdom and energy as we seek to train up our third child in the way he should go. May we always be thankful for your immeasurable creativity and sense of humor in the way you have blessed our home.)

When I was in Target about a month ago, the checker gave me a reusable bag (Free!) in honor of Earth Week. At the end of my transaction, the checker placed the reusable, earth-friendly bag into the disposable plastic bag he had already used for my purchases. You know, he probably did exactly what he was told to do – he gave me a reusable bag in celebration of Earth Week. In doing so, however, he completely missed the point.

How many of us do this every week? We go to an event that we call Sunday Morning Worship. Many of us even go to this event in a building we call the Worship Center. We do exactly what we are supposed to do. We stand at the right times; we sit at the right times. Depending on our denomination, we may kneel or raise our hands at the right times. We are quiet when we are supposed to be quiet; and we sing when we are supposed to sing. Some of us even go back for modified versions of this on Sunday night and Wednesday night. Too often, though, we completely miss the point.

The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 12:1 that true and reasonable worship is the giving of our whole selves to our Lord. We should note that the Greek word translated “worship” or “service,” depending on the translation, indicates service for hire or as a slave and may include the concept of some sacrifice being made. A key component of worship is the offering up of ourselves as slaves to be used in service to our Creator, the Lord God Almighty.

On the idea of service to another, scripture goes on to tell us that we simply cannot serve two masters. In the gospels, this idea is discussed in the context of our attitudes toward wealth. (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16:13) The concept, however, is true as applied to anything in our lives which we allow to be a master over us. If we are serving ourselves, our own lusts, our popularity, our egos, our money, or anything else of this world, we are not serving the Lord God Almighty. And if we are not serving him, then we must ask ourselves about that thing we call worship, because it may not be.

This is not to say we cannot worship if we occasionally get our priorities out of whack. If, however, we are unrepentantly serving someone or something other than our Lord God Almighty, then what we are doing on Sunday mornings is not true worship.

My Father God, I repent of my wayward heart’s tendency to focus on things other than you. I will worship you and you alone and will serve you with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind and all my strength.

Matthew “Busy Britches” Able, our youngest child whom we thought would never slow down enough to talk, will now use his words to tell stories, say prayers, ask for things he wants or needs and more than occasionally tell on his sister and brother. Sometimes, he even manages to put his words together into complete sentences.

Matthew is also in a “Mommy phase” right now. There are times when he wants me and no one else, and he just chants his favorite sentence -- “I want Mommy” -- until I appear on the scene. When I get there, I sometimes find that he has gotten himself into some sort of a problem, and I proceed to help him. It’s then that he moves on to his other favorite sentence. “I do it by gelf!” he proclaims. (I suppose he will one day say the initial “s” sound; the others eventually did.) When Matthew demands my presence at times like this, but then refuses my help, I have to wonder why he called out to me in the first place.

There are times in our adult lives when we get ourselves into one mess or another, and God tells us to boldly approach his throne, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Heb. 4:16) We seem to be able to approach God’s throne and ask, but then when God shows up, we have a tendency to revert to declaring we will do it by ourselves. This makes about as much sense when we do it as it does when a two-year-old does it.

Why do we cry out to God when our world seems to be crumbling around us, but then pick up all the crumbled pieces and take them with us after God has agreed to carry that burden? Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave the entire problem, including all the broken pieces, with the one who has promised to work all things together for the good of those who love him? (Rom. 8:28) Do we just not believe God’s promises? Our Lord God Almighty has a good plan for us, and he is ready and waiting to bring us back from the captivity of sin and rebellion. (Jer. 29:11-14)

David, the Old Testament man after God’s own heart, understood this concept so well. “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.” (Ps. 55:22, NIV) The Hebrew verb translated “cast” in this verse means to get rid of something, referring to something that hinders us in some way. This is not the type of “casting” we do when we go fishing. In that case, your intention is to reel in your line and take it, hopefully along with some fish, with you at the end of the day. In contrast, if we cast all our cares on the Lord, as instructed in Psalm 55, we will get rid of those cares completely by leaving them with our Creator and Redeemer. Praise God, we do not have to reel them in and take them with us!

My Father God, I am ready now to cast all my cares upon you. I will not pick these up again, as I can no longer carry them by my “gelf.” I love you, Lord, and I thank you for your promise that you will work out even the impossible situations for our good.

Do you have a child who will see just how close he can go to the proverbial “line” without actually crossing it? Or perhaps you were one of those children yourself. A child like this may also be the one in the family who does almost exactly what you ask him to do, assuming he believes you’re watching, but who will inevitably interject some of his own will into the situation.

Sometimes when I get to the end of my patience with this type of willfulness in my children, I stop and wonder why in the world our Holy God continues to put up with us. We are God’s strong-willed children. In fact, God’s people have always had a tendency toward this, and God himself described the children of Israel as a “stiffnecked people.” (Exodus 32:9) Put simply, we like to do things our own way. We seem to think it’s acceptable to obedient to most of what God tells us to do, somehow believing that God will understand if we miss a few of the details.

Our Holy God, however, is not one to overlook those details. In Numbers 20, the children of Israel were wandering in the desert because of their lack of faith, when they became thirsty, yet again. They complained to Moses about the lack of water – along with the lack of pomegranates and figs, but I digress. By this point, you have to imagine that Moses was fed up with these people. He was likely irritated, impatient and tired. It is in this context that God told Moses to speak to a certain rock, which would then bring forth water. In his frustration, Moses failed to do what God told him to do. Instead of speaking to the rock, he said to the people, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then, after giving no credit to God as the source of the blessing, Moses struck the rock twice with his staff. Verse 11 tells us that water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.

Then we come to one of those verses in the Bible where we can really see God in the role of Father. You can almost hear him say, “Moses, Aaron, both of you, over here, right now!” The scripture actually records God’s words as this: “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” (Numbers 20:12, NIV). Even though our God is merciful and provided for his thirsty people, he did not overlook the disobedience of their leaders. Both Moses and Aaron were denied entry into the Promised Land because of this single act of disobedience.

Moses and Aaron had lived their lives serving God and leading God’s people and doing these things very well. At this moment of a call to faithfulness in stressful times, however, they did not trust God enough to honor him as holy in the sight of the people. If the God who created and ordered every detail of this universe bothers to give us a specific instruction, we would do well to absolutely and unequivocally obey that instruction in every detail. Those details matter to our Holy God.

If this result of a single act of disobedience is not sobering enough, I am also struck by the fact that Aaron suffered the same consequence as Moses. In fact, Aaron was not even allowed to see the Promised Land from afar, a privilege which was given Moses before his death. So, what did Aaron do? Absolutely nothing. Aaron did nothing. He was with Moses when God told him how to get water from the rock, and he was with Moses when he went about doing that some other way. Aaron did nothing when doing nothing was really an acquiescence to sin.

I am not suggesting it is our responsibility to right every wrong on the planet. What we must do is avoid “going with the flow” when things are flowing in the wrong direction. What would have happened if Aaron had spoken up when Moses raised his staff to strike the rock? What would have happened if Aaron has said something before Moses struck the rock a second time? We will never know the answers to these questions. What I pray we will avoid, though, is the creation of a whole new set of “what if” questions growing from our own acquiescence to the sin around us. Sometimes absolute obedience to a Holy God requires us to go against the flow.

Our Lord God Almighty, you have called us to be holy because you, our God, are holy. Please give us courage to obey you in every detail and the wisdom to discern when we are to speak and act against the sin around us. Oh, Lord God, have mercy on us when we fail in this.

I have had some days recently that did not go at all as I had hoped and prayed they would. (In hindsight, God gave me exactly what was best, though I could not see that at the time.) At one time or another, we all deal with circumstances that seem unjust and sometimes really are. I am reminded in this that we have a Lord who can sympathize with our weaknesses and our trials. As our eternal high priest, he was tempted in every way, just as we are, but he did not sin. (Heb. 4:15-16) He willingly faced great difficulties, even when his flesh cried out for another way. How did he do this?

In preparing to complete the sacrifice of himself for our sins, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives to spend time with his Father. Before going deeper into the garden, Jesus told his disciples to watch and pray. Our Lord was in great anguish as He prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:40, NIV)

In response to the prayer of his Son, God sent an angel from heaven to strengthen Jesus. This is such a beautiful picture of Jesus’ humanity and the Father’s readiness to send ministers with exactly what we need when we submit our will to His. After praying, worshiping and being strengthened, Jesus was faced with trials, ridicule, torture and death. Yet, He was never overwhelmed and never fled from the path that lay before him. Because he received strength during His time of prayer, he was obedient in the face of temptation.

When Jesus returned to His disciples after his time of prayer and worship, he found his friends sleeping. Mark’s gospel tells us this happened three times. Jesus admonished them, “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” (Luke 22:46, NIV) The verb translated “pray” in this verse includes the idea of worship. So, what did the disciples do when Jesus told them to pray and worship? They slept. We see the result of their slumber in Matthew 26:56, when the disciples were overwhelmed by the circumstances and ran away, deserting the One they had agreed to follow.

Viewing the time spent in the Garden in the context of subsequent events, it seems all that happened after the Garden of Gethsemane grew directly from what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane. The results of Jesus’ prayer and worship were strength, comfort and obedience, resulting in eternal victory over the power of Satan and sin. The disciples’ failure to pray and worship resulted in fear and disobedience.

How often do we sleep through our time in the garden only to find ourselves fearful, overwhelmed and disobedient? Don’t we sometimes just feel like running away from it all? My friends, we do not have to live with these feelings of fear and overwhelm. The solution is to “get up and pray,” just as Jesus commanded His disciples. In my experience, this is best done first thing in the morning, before I have a chance to lose my cool in the face of the day’s trials. When we spend the first moments of our day in our own garden worshiping our Creator and yielding our will to His, we can expect to leave that garden with strength leading to obedience, regardless of what the day may bring. In short, what happens in the garden does not stay in the garden.

My Father, I repent of my failure to worship, and I praise you now for the ultimate sacrifice of your Son. I need your strength to face today and each day with complete surrender and obedience to your will. I pray that not my will, but yours be done even in the midst of circumstances that seem unjust. Give me strength to follow the example of my Lord, who surrendered to you and to your will in trials beyond what I can even imagine.

Yesterday was probably the most challenging day I’ve had with Matthew, my youngest and most strong-willed child. He is almost two and a half, and he screamed at me from 3:30 to 5:00 yesterday afternoon for no apparent reason. He simply would not tell me what the problem was, refusing to use his words or his sign language.

After failing in all my efforts to determine what the child wanted, I began to address the fit itself. I explained that it is not okay to fall out on the floor and scream your head off in my kitchen. I held him, until I had been kicked enough that I decided it just wasn’t worth it. I isolated him from those of us who were behaving like civilized human beings. I ignored him, repeatedly walking around the fit that just followed me from room to room. I did absolutely everything the parenting books tell you to do. Then I moved on to techniques that the books, or at least some of them, tell you not to use. Those didn’t work either. Matthew finally stopped screaming about five minutes before his father came home. (The house was quiet and peaceful, and the pile of dirty dishes probably didn’t make sense to my husband when the kids were behaving like angels, and I had been home for hours.)

Later in the evening, Matthew was standing on top of his toy box and announced, “I jump!” And he did. I, of course, caught him. I have learned to expect this child to launch himself from various heights with complete faith that I will catch him. I guess he will continue to have this faith until I drop him. The fact that the child had been nothing short of terrible earlier and had clearly displeased me did not cause him to doubt that I would catch him, just as I always had.

This whole scenario reminds me of the amazing relationship between David and our Lord God. By anyone’s standard, David was nothing short of terrible at times in his life. He was an adulterer, a liar and a murderer. Yet, he knew that his God would catch him when he fell. In Psalm 51, after his sin with Bathsheba was found out, David acknowledged that he had done evil in God’s sight; he confessed and repented of that sin. Then, he was bold enough to ask and expect God to cleanse and forgive him. “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” (Ps. 51:7, NIV)

In Psalm 103, we get more of the picture David’s confidence in his Father’s love and forgiveness.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. . . . But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children. (Psalm 103:11-12, 17, NIV)

What was the key to David’s confidence? He acknowledged that his sin was against God and committed to turn from that sin and walk in the opposite direction. After that, David accomplished something that we often fail to do. He was able to see himself as God saw him; he saw himself as blameless, righteous and clean. (Ps. 18:20-24) He no longer focused on the sin that had been forgiven. Next, David recognized God’s unchanging nature and everlasting love for those who fear him. God did not change, just because man sinned. It is this faith and awareness of who he was and who God was, is and always will be that made David a man after God’s own heart, just as my little blond has my heart strings when he says, “I jump,” knowing full well that I will catch.

My Father God, the rock of my salvation, I praise you for being the One who knows my innermost thoughts and stands ready to remove my transgressions as far from me as the east is from the west. I bring to you the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart. Cleanse me, Lord, and I will be clean.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation which causes you to wonder where God is? We might even wonder if Jesus really is who he says he is. I don’t mean we wonder whether Jesus is the Son of God – we seem to be able to stand firm on that one, at least as an abstract concept. It’s when we take that concept into the practical arena of our daily lives that we sometimes have a little trouble. We are in pain and wonder if Jesus is still the healer. We are abandoned by so many and wonder if Jesus is the one who will never leave us or forsake us. We are weary after days or even years of striving, and we wonder if Jesus really will give us rest. We look at our circumstances, and it doesn’t look like God is healing us or letting us rest, and it may not even feel like he’s still here.

In Matthew 11, John the Baptist was in prison and sent word to Jesus, asking “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Can’t you just hear John the Baptist? “Look, cousin, I thought you were the one, but here I am in prison while you are carrying on with your business. So, tell me, are you really the one?”

Jesus told the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” (Matthew 11:4-6, NIV) Though Jesus did not state it in so many words, he appears to have been saying, “John, this is not all about you. Look at me, and look at what I am doing.”

This passage shows us that there is something so completely normal about looking at our circumstances and asking questions. Even John the Baptist did this. He did not, however, look to his circumstances for the answers to his questions. We must look to Jesus for the answers, even in the midst of problems that are incomprehensible to us. It can be a hard lesson to learn at times, but Jesus is still “the One,” even when he does not bring the solution we want when we want it. He may simply tell us to look at Him.

My Father God, I repent of elevating circumstances to the status of idols before you, the one and only true and living God. Come what may, I stand now in awe of your presence and trust you to bring forth beauty from the ashes of every desperate situation.

Have you ever had your heart sink because your child was just right there, but then you looked again, and he was gone? When we were visiting my sister recently, I left Matthew, my two-year-old, in the den for only a moment. When I returned, he was not there. As it turns out, Matthew had watched my sister’s terriers go to the back yard by way of the doggy door all weekend. Since he is about the same size as the dogs, he apparently concluded that their doggy door would work well for him too.

We adults are sometimes not that different from two-year-olds, and we are often determined to find alternate routes, not just to the back yard, but to heaven. From Bob Dylan’s “tryin’ to get heaven before they close the door” to Oprah Winfrey’s telling us there are many paths to heaven, we are inundated with suggestions that our eternity can be secured by something other than a relationship with Jesus Christ. Scripture, however, tells us that we will not sneak into heaven by some sort of spiritual doggy door. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke very clearly on this matter, stating, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NIV)

One popular doggy door that people seek is based on being a good person. I have had one individual tell me for almost ten years that he is “better than most of the people at that church.” Even if that were true, the fact remains that none of us are good enough to get into heaven on our own good behavior. The only way to heaven is through faith in Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9, NIV)

Another mirage of a doggy door comes in the form of religious ritual or sacrifice. I would never discourage my Roman Catholic friends from observing the Lenten tradition of sacrifice, and there are certain practices in my own denomination that I treasure because they are catalysts for a closer walk with God. Even so, none of these practices or sacrifices will secure a place in heaven for any of us. Jesus Christ’s strongest rebukes were reserved for those who replaced spiritual relationship with religious ritual or sacrifice. This misplaced faith in ritual is an error that can only result in damnation for all eternity. If you have not already, I would implore you to place your faith in Christ alone as Lord and Savior. If you are ready to take this step, but are not quite sure what to do next, please visit the Know Jesus! link for more information. You may also reach me by email on the Contact page of this site.

My Father God, I pray that these words will be used by your Holy Spirit to draw wandering souls to you. Praise be to God for sending Jesus Christ to seek and save those who are lost, and I thank you for using the words of others so many years ago to bring me into a relationship with you through my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

My daughter, who is eight years old, has already started talking about the car she wants when she gets her driver’s license. It’s a white Lexus SUV, and I suppose if she wants a model year that’s on the road today, we might be able to afford one when she reaches driving age in 2016. This does not mean that we should give it to her now. She cannot see over the steering wheel and does not know how to drive a car. Furthermore, she lacks the maturity of judgment you want in someone who will be allowed to propel a ton or more of steel down the highway at potentially deadly speeds. It makes sense that we are not buying this child a car today. She simply is not ready for it.

Have you ever had to wait for something you truly believed God was going to provide for you? Greg and I are now in a season of waiting for something we believe God has promised, and it is often very difficult to continue the wait.

When I recently asked God for some insight into why he is not delivering on his promise immediately, he took me to Exodus 23, where God was giving Moses instructions and promises to take to the people. God told Moses that an angel would be sent ahead of the Israelites to protect them and lead them to the place God had prepared. God told his people he would send terror and confusion ahead of them to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites (the “Ites”) out of the Promised Land. “But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.” (Exodus 23:29-30, NIV)

The Hebrew word that is translated “increased” in this passage literally means “to bear fruit.” My friends, God will not give us the full blessings he has for us until we have shown ourselves fruitful enough to possess the blessing. If God had driven all the Ites out of the Promised Land at once, the Israelites would have been eaten alive by the wild animals, whose population would have gone unchecked with the dearth of human inhabitants in the land. Similarly, we will sometimes receive a blessing little by little for our own protection, as receiving too much too soon could destroy us. God is not going to do something that is the spiritual equivalent of giving an SUV and permission to drive to an eight-year-old child. He is a far better Father than that.

My Father God, my Jehovah Jireh, I praise you for your wisdom and goodness in not letting me be eaten alive now by the very things you have promised as blessings to me in your time. Please give me wisdom, endurance and strength as I seek to bear fruit and increase, so as to be ready to receive all you have for me. Thank you for providing blessings from your abundance and for doing it little by little when that is what I need.

“All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.” I’ll admit I have had these lyrics stuck in my head for too many days now. Perhaps it’s because we have come to the holiday when we give gifts to those we love, watch our preschoolers painstakingly cut out red paper hearts for all their friends, and perhaps even ponder the presence or absence of love in our lives. So, were the Beatles right? Is love really all we need?

One of the first scriptures we learn in Sunday School is 1 John 4:8. “God is love.” As we get a little older, we learn that Christ commands us to love one another just as he has loved us. (John 15:12) When we grow up a little more and talk about marriage, we see that husbands are told to love their wives, “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25)

In all of these verses, the word translated “love” comes from the Greek word agape. This word describes a love that involves the direction of one’s will and is very different from a love characterized by emotions or common interests. Agape love is a willful action; it is not a feeling. Despite the very specific commands that we are to love in this way, the divorce rate in the church is not significantly different from that of the community at large.

If we believers continue to abandon our marriages at the rate we have in the recent past, we will do significant violence to future generations’ ability to understand God’s forgiveness and the unfailing nature of his love for us. The marriage is the earthly relationship God uses to help us understand the relationship between Christ and his church. If we behave as if our marriages are temporary, we are setting our children up to view their relationship with God as a temporary fixture as well. If we treat our spouse’s failures as unforgivable, how will our children know that Christ, who is the bridegroom of the church, will always forgive? My fellow believers, we must take care with the legacy we are leaving our children and our grandchildren.

So back to the Beatles, are they right? I certainly will not say they had all the answers, but they might have happened upon an element of truth in “All You Need is Love.” It just has to be the right kind of love. The agape love we are called to involves the willful surrender of the rights we claim in our marriages. I’m talking about the perceived right to do things our own way or just the right to be right. As applied to husbands, agape love is compared to the love of Christ, when he surrendered his rights and chose to die to secure the purity of his bride, the church. (Ephesians 5:25-27) If we exercise our will in repeated acts of love and surrender in our homes, we will have better marriages. (I am not suggesting we should surrender to violence against ourselves or our children. If this is your situation, please seek godly counsel immediately.)

In order to properly surrender our will in our earthly relationships, we must first surrender our will to that of the Lord God Almighty. It is only by reflecting the agape love God shows for us that we will ever demonstrate that love for our husbands or wives. If we want to protect our marriages and provide a heritage of faith for our children, we must prioritize our walk with the Lord, both individually and as couples.

I have had occasion to talk with Steve McAlister, our minister to young married couples, about the alarming divorce rate among couples who identify themselves as Christians. In his decade as a minister to married couples, Steve has observed that this phenomenon changes when you consider only those couples who regularly attend Bible study together. Among those couples, in Steve’s experience, the divorce rate is “almost nil.” For couples who teach Sunday School, please consider attending a Bible study at times other than the Sunday School hour. The opportunities are there in most churches, and I cannot overemphasize the benefits of studying the Bible with your spouse.

For those who are separated, abandoned or even divorced, please do not be discouraged. I have been there, and my children have had pain I never would have wanted them to feel. It is because of this experience, though, that I know we serve a God who can and will bring beauty from ashes. (Isaiah 61:3) Please know, my dear brothers and sisters, he will do it for you too.

My Father God, I praise you for your son Jesus Christ, who is the eternal bridegroom of your church. Thank you that this very Christ Jesus loved us so much that he gave his life so that we may be holy, cleansed and radiant, without any blemish. I commit, by the power of your Holy Spirit, to honor you by loving my husband as you have taught us to love.

Last week, I had an experience most lawyers never have -- I served on a jury in a criminal case. The young man on trial was accused of several offenses, most of them drug-related, and was all alone in the courtroom, except for his attorney, whom I will call Mr. Jefferson.

I watched Mr. Jefferson carefully as the prosecutor presented the case against his client. In order to win, Mr. Jefferson had only to convince us, the jury, that there was reasonable doubt that his client committed all elements of each of the crimes alleged. In cross-examining the state’s witnesses, Mr. Jefferson’s only goal was to bring out areas of doubt in the state’s case, hoping some of those doubts might be found reasonable.

Unfortunately for the accused, there was little room in his case for reasonable doubt. In fact, the attorney conceded as much on counts four and five of the indictment, and the jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged on four of the five counts.

You and I have probably not committed the same offenses as this defendant, but we are all guilty nonetheless. In our final trial, there will be no reasonable doubt on any count. We have all sinned, and not one of us will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing the law. (Romans 3:20, 23) We are guilty as charged, and our guilt can easily be established beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise.

Lest we become discouraged when we realize our guilt, this is not as bad as it sounds; at least, it does not have to be. You see, we have a better lawyer than any in court last week. We have “an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 John 2:1b, NKJV.) The Greek word translated advocate in this verse is parakletos, a word which describes one who is intercessor, counselor, advocate and comforter; he is much more than just an expert in the law hoping to find reasonable doubt.

And the news gets even better for us whose faith is in Christ Jesus. Immediately after reading in Romans that we have all sinned, we see that we are “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth . . . that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:24-26, NKJV.) The Greek word translated justified in these verses is dikaioo, which means to set forth as righteous or to render innocent. What we have is an advocate who can concede our guilt on all counts, yet still secure our innocence for all eternity. I’ve known some good lawyers in my day, but there is none other who can do this. Praise God for our Advocate who is Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God!

My Father God, I thank you for showing us our sin and for the atoning sacrifice and righteous advocate you have provided in your Son, who is my Lord Jesus Christ. May I draw ever closer to you as I am rendered innocent in spite of my guilt.

If you realize your guilt but have not yet placed your faith in the One who can secure your innocence, click the Know Jesus! link for more information.

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33, NIV) Sometimes bad stuff just happens. Sometimes it even happens to us. And worse still, sometimes bad things happen to our children. Some of the greatest atrocities committed by humans against each other have happened to adults and children who are completely innocent as to the situation that caused the trauma, grief or pain.

Over the Christmas break, one of my children had a fairly significant negative experience that was caused by no fault on the part of the child. Despite a young age, this precious one sees all that has happened through the lens of faith in our Lord God Almighty. My dear child’s prayers have gone something like this:

Dear God, you knew before you even made me that this would happen to me. You didn’t want this to happen, but you knew it would. It is Satan who wants bad things to happen to me. But I know that you will take care of me because you knew about this ahead of time, and you have a plan. Thank you for loving me. Amen.

In asking God to search his heart and lead his steps, King David voiced a similar faith in our God. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:16, NIV) In the New Testament, we have the promise that God will work all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

If we put the encouragement of these scriptures together, our response to pain and trouble in our lives should be much like the prayer of my child. Our Lord Jesus Christ told us we would have trouble in the world; we can still take heart, though, because he has overcome the world. And it gets even better. God does not just know that we will have trouble in general; he knows precisely the trouble that each day will bring. We may be surprised by it, but our Lord God is not. Before every bad thing happens, he has a plan to work it out for us. Praise God!

My Lord God Almighty, thank you for the faith of a child and the encouragement of your word. Praise be to our Lord who has ordained our days and overcome the world!

Da-thump-da-thump-da-thump-da thump – WAHHHHHHH! That was the sound of our two-year-old falling down the stairs at our friends’ house Saturday night. (For his grandparents who may be reading this, Matthew is fine.)

In the dining room a little while after the tumble down the stairs, we noticed that the children, who had eaten earlier, were constantly in our space. They seemed completely unable to function without adult company for longer than a few minutes at a time. I wondered aloud why their neediness had risen to such heights just as we sat down to enjoy a phenomenal meal. Our host observed, “Everything changed after the fall.”

Before Matthew fell down the stairs, all five children were upstairs playing safely in a playroom created just for their pleasure. There were toys, and there was freedom with safety, as long as the children stayed within one simple boundary. Keep the gate closed and locked. They were free to enjoy everything in the playroom. As it turned out, though, someone unlocked the gate. Almost immediately, the baby fell down the stairs.

Several things happened after the fall. First, Matthew was afraid, whereas he had enjoyed freedom with no fear before the fall. Second, the child who unlocked the gate felt heartbroken and ashamed. (In her defense, she is young, and I really do not think she understood she was not to unlock the gate even to come downstairs, which is what she was doing.) Finally, the children were no longer allowed to play upstairs in the space that had been designed just for them. Once banished to the downstairs, they played hide and seek.

The fall down the stairs is so much like the original fall of man. Adam and Eve were in a beautiful garden created for their enjoyment, with only one limitation. They were not to eat the fruit of one particular tree in the garden. So, what did they do? They ate the forbidden fruit. Consequently, they felt shame for the first time, becoming aware of their nakedness. They felt the first fear ever experienced by humankind. They even initiated the first game of hide and seek, as they sought isolation from God because of their sin. Probably the worst of the consequences was that they were banished from the garden, no longer allowed to enjoy blessings originally intended for them.

When we experience fear, shame and isolation from God (as well as other believers), we must recognize that God did not create us for any of these things. These are the results of a fall. In a broad sense, we often experience these things as a result of the fallen state of all mankind. There are times, though, when we can identify a specific sin or even pattern of sin in our own lives that has caused our fear, shame and isolation.

Though we cannot now reenter the Garden of Eden, we can be freed from the shame, fear and isolation that are consequences of sin. Do you remember what God did after Adam and Eve sinned? They were hiding, and he sought them. God seeks us out even when we play a game of spiritual hide and seek as a result of our shame and fear.

After calling his people from their hiding place, God did so much more. Immediately after that first sin, God gave the first promise of a redeemer. (See Genesis 3:15.) He also provided garments of skin for Adam and Eve to use as clothing, thus covering their shame. (Notice, too, that to get garments of skin, a blood sacrifice must have occurred.) Our Father God provides for our safety in the boundaries he sets, but he also provides for redemption when we violate his boundaries. Praise God!

My Father God, please keep me aware of the cause of fear, shame and isolation in my life. Thank you for providing so many amazing blessings within the protective boundaries of your love.

Do you have a friend who seems to always know how to help in any situation? My children and I were visiting with a friend like that recently, and my middle child had finally smacked his gum in my ear one too many times. I told him to find a tissue and get rid of the gum. My friend stretched out her hand to him, saying, “Here, buddy, just give it to me.” It later hit me that this is an illustration of why this particular girlfriend is such a good mom and friend. She is willing to get her hands dirty. She will walk with you right into whatever turmoil you face, and it seems less tumultuous because she is there.

We can find the original example of One who was willing to get his hands dirty in the life of Jesus Christ. On one occasion, Jesus cancelled the funeral of a young man, because his “heart went out” to the boy’s mother, a widow who had just lost her only son. Because of his great compassion for this lady, Jesus reached out and touched the coffin, telling the young man to get up. The one who had been dead then sat up and began to speak. (Luke 7:11-15) By touching the coffin, however, Jesus risked making himself ceremonially unclean.

Many lepers of the day could also confirm that Jesus was willing to touch and heal them, even when they were unclean. Scripture tells us that Jesus did this because he had compassion on them. (Mark 1:40-45)

Jesus was willing to get his hands dirty in a literal sense as well. When he encountered one of the numerous blind men he healed, he spat on the ground and made mud from his saliva. After putting the mud on the man’s eyes, Jesus told him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. The man did this and came back seeing. (John 9:1-6.)

We see in these stories that Jesus had tremendous compassion for those who were hurting around him. The Greek word translated “compassion” in Luke 7:13 and Mark 1:41 is a word that speaks of a yearning from the bowels; it contemplates much more than a fleeting thought of pity. It gives us the idea that Jesus was physically, from his innermost being, drawn to the hurting people around him.

If we follow Christ as our Lord, we will grow to reflect his glory and be continually transformed into his likeness. (2 Cor. 3:18) This will be the likeness of one who walked through life purposefully touching the sick, dead and dying around him. So, here’s the question: Are we being transformed into one who does this in our world today? Or do we hesitate out of fear of association with “those people” if we reach too far beyond our own social circle? There is no reason to fear getting our hands dirty if we are doing it in service to the One who cleanses us whiter than snow.

My Father God, I repent of all vanity and pride that keep me from reaching out to the sick and dying in our world. I yearn to be transformed into the likeness of your Son, who is my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Do you ever feel like you’re getting hit with one thing after another? When David (of the Old Testament) was a boy tending his father's sheep, surely there were times when he grew weary of fighting lions, tigers and bears. (Oh my!) It was that experience, though, that was crucial to David’s preparation for the next big battle.

After his brothers had been on the battlefield with King Saul for some time, David's father sent him to check on his brothers. David found them, along with the King and the entire Israelite army, shaking in their sandals while a big guy named Goliath came out and talked trash to them every morning. David took issue with this and volunteered to take care of the giant.

After some ridicule by David's brothers and a discussion with King Saul, it was agreed that David would fight Goliath. The king offered his armor and sword to David, but the boy opted instead to use his own slingshot and a stone. Can't you just see King Saul's bewilderment at this child’s foolish plan to fight the giant with a sling and a stone? Well, the child was right on this one, and the giant fell with a single shot. (See 1 Samuel 17 for the whole story.)

What a great story for children! But let’s not leave it there. There are three lessons here that will get us on the right track for the “grown-up” battles we face every day.

Lesson 1: Our success or failure in a battle starts with who and what we believe. When David got to the battle lines, he saw something no one else saw. He saw that Goliath was defying the armies of the living God. David saw the opponent and believed God, whereas the King and his army believed the opponent and did not see God. Do we really believe that our God is powerful to defeat every foe? Or do we believe the trash talk of the enemy and fail to see God anywhere around? Remember, there is no reason to fear the enemy when God is fighting the battle.

Lesson 2: God prepares us for the battle ahead of time. David had experience fighting opponents who were bigger and stronger than he. He drew confidence from his prior combat with lions, tigers and bears (Oh my!) because he had a battle-tried set of skills to use in the current fight. Further, he knew from his own experience that his God could deliver the opponent into his hands. If we find ourselves afraid in the face of a battle, we would do well to look back and remember what our Lord has already done in our lives. If he has appointed a battle for us, my friends, he has already prepared us for it.

Lesson 3: God gives us the right weapons for each battle we must face. I'm sure King Saul was trying to help when he gave the boy David his oversized armor and too-heavy sword, but that was not the kind of help David needed. David would have been completely ineffective in the battle God had appointed for him if he had used the weapons provided by Saul. We must take care with the counsel we seek and the weapons we use. Our friends may mean well, but if they are not walking with our Lord, they may offer weapons that are ill-suited for the battle the Lord has for us. We know our true battle is not against flesh and blood, and God has provided his full armor for the spiritual warfare we face. (See Ephesians 6:10-18.) We will fare better with the armor of God than the weapons of man.

My Father God, I see the giant before me and am now so thankful for the lions, tigers and bears (Oh my!) from whom you have delivered me in the past. I praise you for being the Lord of this battle and every other, and I will trust it into your hands.

Well, the Christmas rush has come and gone. Decorating, shopping, parties, cooking, baking, gift wrapping – didn’t the list seem endless at times? How did we remember it all? Most of us wrote at least some of it down, and some of us wrote all of it down. We had to-do lists, grocery lists, calendar entries in Outlook, and an amazing collection of sticky notes.

As God’s people, we are called to remember so much more than just appointments and errands. God repeatedly told the children of Israel to remember that they had been slaves in Egypt and that it was the Lord God who brought them out with his mighty hand. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself gave us the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper or Communion to help us remember him.

Following God’s command to remember him and all he has done is a catalyst for so many blessings in our lives. Remembering our “great and awesome” God is an antidote to fear. (Neh. 4:14.) It is the cure for the downcast soul. (Psalm 42:5-6, Lam. 3:19-23) It keeps us from rebellion and a multitude of other sins. (Psalm 106:7, 119:55) My most treasured blessing of remembering our Lord God is that the remembrance itself gives me a thirst for more of him. (Psalm 143:5-6)

So, how do we remember God and all he has done? The same way we remember the shopping list and the appointments. Write it down! For many years, I have kept journals of things God has done and shown me. This process has left me with volumes upon volumes of reminders of who my God is and of how he has worked so much together for my benefit. When I take time to walk through those written remembrances, I stand in awe of the God I serve. I am less fearful and more obedient, and I have a renewed thirst for more of the Lord my God.

As we prepare for a New Year, I would encourage you to keep a journal of your walk with God. As part of time with our Lord each day (I do it in the morning), ask him to reveal more of himself to you. Then, write down what he shows you. You will begin to see the movement of God’s mighty hand in situations that initially seemed hopeless. You will see that God’s mercies and compassions truly are new every morning, just as they were for the prophet in Lamentations. (Lam. 3:21-23)

My Father God, my Sovereign Lord, I commit to make 2009 a year to remember and, more importantly, a year to remember you. Please show me more of you each day.

“Take me now, because it just doesn’t get any better than this!” That was Bro. David Boothe’s Wednesday evening paraphrase of Simeon’s statement in Luke 2:29-32. Simeon was a righteous and devout man who had been waiting for the “Consolation of Israel.” It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Christ.

When Simeon saw and held the infant Jesus in the Temple, he responded,

Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace,
According to Your word;
For my eyes have seen Your salvation
Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,
A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of Your people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32, NKJV)

Simeon could depart from this life in peace because he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Similarly, we can depart from this life in peace only when we know Christ as our Lord. It is not enough that our parents know Christ or that we grew up in a Christian home; it is not even enough that we go to church and can quote a few Bible verses. Even Satan and his demons know who Jesus is and are afraid, and Satan himself quoted verses from Psalm 91 when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness. (See Matthew 8:28-29; James 2:19, Luke 4:10) It is not enough to know who Christ is; we must know Christ.

But there is something more that we must grasp here. Luke 2:27 tells us that Simeon came by the Spirit into the temple; Simeon did not go into the temple of his own accord. The Holy Spirit drew him there at that specific time and placed him in the presence of the Savior. Later in his ministry, Jesus himself told us that no one can come to him unless the Father draws him. (John 6:44) Further, we are not promised that the Spirit will bear with us forever. (See, e.g., Psalm 18:41, Proverbs 1:38, Jeremiah 11:11.) It is not up to us to decide when we can come into the presence of the Lord. It is only up to us to respond at the time that we are drawn by the Spirit into the presence of the Lord. If the Holy Spirit is drawing you into the presence of the Savior, I implore you to respond to that call now.

My Sovereign Lord, I pray that this season will bring true peace that can only come from you. I cry out to you to draw into your presence the one that does not yet know you.

If the Spirit is drawing you into the presence of our Lord, but you aren’t quite sure what to do next, choose the Know Jesus! link for more information.

Immanuel, God With Us – what a concept! Jesus, who is fully God, became fully man to be God With Us. It is this mystery that is the whole reason for our celebration of Christmas. But how do we have God With Us on a daily basis today? We cannot visit a manger scene in the twenty-first century and expect to see the Christ Child in the flesh. How does the idea of God With Us work in real life?

A few weeks ago, my six-year-old son began having bad dreams, which then caused all sorts of anxiety and fear around bedtime. Greg and I talked to Spencer about what we thought were pretty big concepts for a kindergartener. We told him that perfect love casts out fear and tried to explain the perfection of God's love. We stressed that we do not have to be afraid because God is with us. We then prayed with Spencer, asking God to take away his fear. We covered the same topic and prayed about it again the next night.

On the third night, Spencer prayed first. His prayer went something like this:

God, I am asking you to do something that you have already done two times before. So, Lord, I know you can do it again. I need you to make me not be afraid so that I can go to sleep. Please help me to just think about you so I won't be scared. And, Lord, I might be asking you this for a really long time, like maybe even two weeks. What I'm going to do is just talk to you about this every night until my whole body automatically thinks about you all the time, and then I know I won't be scared any more. Thank you, Lord, for doing this. Amen.

Spencer obviously understood more than Greg and I had taught him and was now teaching us. He seemed to grasp the idea of offering himself, his whole being, in worship, as we are told to do in Romans 12:1. He also understood a great deal about the blessings of having God with us. If we make a deliberate choice to place ourselves in God's presence and go to him with our greatest needs on a daily basis, will we get to the point that our whole selves will simply gravitate toward our Creator in worship? Will we then “abide” in Christ, as he taught his disciples shortly before his crucifixion? (See John 14:4-7)

If we want to have God With Us this Christmas, we must choose daily to be in the presence of God. This is the only way that God With Us can be celebrated. If we utterly fail to abide in the presence of our Immanuel, if we fail to have God With Us, we may still have a celebration, but it will not be the coming of Immanuel that we celebrate. It will be something else entirely, and we will have missed the blessing of God With Us.

My Lord God Almighty, thank you for being our Immanuel, God With Us, who understands all our struggles and calms all our fears. I pray that I will be one who abides in you and lives a life of true worship now and always.

At church one Sunday, Spencer, my six-year-old, asked me, “Why are you nicer to other people than you are to us?” At first I thought he had nailed me for some bad mood in which I may have been less than cheerful with my family. When we talked later, he explained that he meant something else entirely. A few days before, he had had a friend over to play, and his friend had called him an “idiot.” I explained to our guest that no one in our house is an idiot, and that we do not call people that. I also assured him that my children would not be allowed to call him an idiot. Spencer observed that he would have lost his video games for a week or maybe two if he had called someone an idiot. He wondered why I did not impose some form of discipline on his friend.

I explained to Spencer that it is my job to raise, teach and discipline him so that he will know how to walk with God and be a successful man one day. It is not my job to discipline his friends in this same way; they have parents, and it is their job to impose discipline and teach them proper behavior.

We may look around the world in which we live and ask the big questions, such as, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Why does God let so many atrocities go apparently unpunished?” Our Bible teaches very clearly that not all suffering is due to discipline for sin, but there are times when we find ourselves in a bad situation as a direct result of our own sin. God’s word has some encouragement for us in seasons of discipline in our Christian walk:

Endure hardship as discipline: God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Heb. 12:7-11, NIV)

My Father God, I pray that the discipline I impose on my children will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace in their lives. I pray that I will balance discipline with mercy and model for them the love you show us. Thank you, Lord, for the harvest you bring forth in us, even through discipline.

We have had another failed murder attempt by feline at our house. Well, murder may be too strong a word, but not by much. Sasha is our incredibly demanding, part-Siamese cat who seems to be getting more high maintenance by the day. When she is out of food (or if the food in the princess’ bowl has been there longer than about an hour), the almost unearthly wails begin. It’s the raspy, guttural cry that can only come from a cat with Siamese somewhere in her heritage. The complaints continue until I or another member of her staff provides fresh food. Then, when we go to fulfill her request, she weaves in and out around our feet in a manner that makes feeding the cat a nearly impossible and sometimes life-threatening adventure.

I hate to go public with this admission, but I think a lot of us, including myself, can be oh so much like Sasha. We look at a situation before us and cry out to God for a solution. This much is perfectly consistent with scripture, which tells us to boldly approach the throne of grace in our hour of need. (Hebrews 4:16) But then we place ourselves square in the way of God’s answering our prayer. There are two primary ways in which we do this – faithlessness and disobedience.

On so many occasions in the New Testament, Jesus taught that faith is a key component to answered prayer. In an encounter with a father whose son was seized by an evil spirit, Jesus went so far as to tell the man that everything is possible for the one who believes. (Mark 9:23-24)

Have we ever gone to God with a request supported by some vague hope that God might possibly answer our prayer? I wonder how many times we have done this and missed out on all that is possible with God because we did not truly believe. The author of Hebrews summed it up this way: “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6, NIV)

Scripture also teaches that obedience to God’s commands is a crucial ingredient to answered prayer. “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.” (1 John 3:21-22, NIV) Simply put, we cannot continue in a pattern of deliberate sin and expect God to bless us. We are God’s children. As the best of all parents, our Father God will not reward our disobedience.

Many of us are crying out to God for answers in our time of need. Our needs might be physical, financial, spiritual, relational or emotional. Let’s turn from all faithlessness and disobedience so that we are not standing right in the way of God’s answering our prayers.

Dinner time at our house can bring out the best and the worst in our family. One night when our best had not shown through, particularly from my daughter, I launched into a mini-cross examination about her behavior. I reminded her of all the compliments I had received about her behavior at church, at school and at friends’ houses. I just could not understand why we got such different behavior at home. Grace Anne, who was six years old at the time, explained, “When you’re born, you only get so many ‘goods.’ If I use a good for y’all at home, I’m afraid I won’t have any ‘goods’ left for when I’m out in public. I would be embarrassed if I wasn’t good in public.” I assured my child that she was not going to run out of “goods.”

I, too, know how to behave in public, but I’ll admit there are times when I might appear to be hoarding my “goods” at home. Almost all of my failures in this department relate to things I say rather than things that I do. So how do we avoid this bad behavior when we are with our family and closest friends – you know, the ones who catch it when we’re fresh out of “goods”?

Jesus Christ taught that the mouth speaks out of the overflow of the heart. (Matthew 12:34) This must mean that whenever anything unkind, untruthful or hateful comes out of our mouths, there is enough unkindness, deception and hatred in our hearts to overflow. Ouch!

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he admonished the believers there to live by the Spirit, rather than by their sinful nature. Paul reminded them that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Gal. 5:22) If we belong to Christ, our sinful nature has been crucified and we should now be living by the Spirit and demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit by the overflow that we speak. God’s Spirit is fruitful enough that we will not run out of “goods” if we will daily walk in step with our Lord.

My Lord, please fill my heart with your Holy Spirit, so that the fruit of your Spirit will overflow. I praise you for your abundant mercies in filling us to overflowing with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Have you heard of the Grocery Game? It’s an internet service that provides a shopping list of the bargains at stores in a particular area, based on sales and coupons from the Sunday newspaper. I have saved a respectable amount of money with minimal effort in my first week of the game, and I’m so glad a friend told me about the Grocery Game.

I now know that another friend has been playing the Grocery Game for about two years now. When I mentioned this to my shopping partner, her immediate question was, “Why didn’t someone tell us about it before now?”

Maybe no one told us because we didn’t ask. Perhaps a friend didn't want to insult us by suggesting we need help shopping for groceries. In this case, the topic really just didn’t come up before now, and whether or not anyone ever told me about the Grocery Game has no eternal significance.

When we get to spiritual matters, though, the analysis is different. We have news that is so much better than the Grocery Game, and far more than dollars are at stake here. Do we fail to tell our friends about the difference Christ can make in their lives because they don’t just walk up and ask us how to get to heaven? Or are we afraid of insulting someone by suggesting that he or she is a sinner in need of a savior, just as we were? We might even say that it just didn't come up.

The truth is that if we have ever talked with our friends about hurt and discouragement, hope for the future, life or death, the topic has come up. Our Lord is the answer to our hurt and discouragement; he is the hope for our future; he is the reason we have meaningful life; and he is the victor over death. The topic has probably come up.

In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul stated that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Rom. 10:13, NIV) “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Rom. 10:14, NIV) Though we are not all called to preach, every follower of Christ is commanded by our Lord himself to go and tell others about him. (Matt. 28:19-20)

I pray that when judgment day comes, my friends will not be left to cry out, “Why didn’t she tell us?” If we will talk about a cheaper way to buy groceries, the latest book that kept us reading until 3:00 a.m. and the best places to buy clothes for our kids, why won’t we tell our friends about the only One who changes lives for now and all eternity?

Dear Lord, thank you for my salvation and my daily relationship with you. I pray that my gratitude will motivate me to obey you in all things. I repent of my complacency and willingness to sit back while people around me are dying. Please show me when to speak or write and what to say; I commit to follow the promptings of your Holy Spirit.

I was a few weeks pregnant in 2005 when I had a miscarriage that began on Thanksgiving Day. Each year about this time, I remember the raw emotion as I cried out to the God who created both me and the life that was slipping away. I begged God not to let my baby die.

My doctor explained that such early miscarriages usually happen because the baby is malformed in some way that is incompatible with life. I guess this response helped initially, but it really did not provide lasting comfort.

I know that my all-knowing and all-powerful God did not accidentally create a baby that was flawed in some way. Instead, he purposefully knit together in my womb a human being with a soul and did it in such a way that the child would not live to be born. My God also knows me and knew this would break my heart. Because he knew this, he sent friends who ministered to me and my family with visits, meals and a listening ear. One of these friends was a pastor who knew me pretty well and, after a little time had passed, he told me he really believed I would one day be thankful for even this. I don’t recall if I gave an audible response to that, but my thought was something along the lines of “Fat Chance!”

So here I was with a death but no funeral, a medical explanation that left the big questions unanswered, and a friend suggesting I would eventually be thankful for it all. From my grief, I cried out to God for some sort of an explanation. God has not given me that explanation, and for now, I’ve quit asking. What God did, though, was teach me a great deal about obedience to 1 Thessalonians 5:18, which tells us to be thankful in all circumstances. There is simply no easy path by which that lesson can be learned.

I came to understand that the baby was created by God for God’s glory and pleasure. Because the baby belonged to God and existed solely for his purposes, that little life was his to take. This was my first step toward realizing I have no claim to ownership of any people or things in my life. It is only by God’s grace that I have a single other person in this world, whether husband, children, parents or friends. When this concept becomes real in our lives, our only response can be thanksgiving.

My Father God, thank you for all the blessings of my life today. I give thanks first of all for my salvation and then for my husband and three healthy children, the youngest of whom would not exist if I had carried our other baby to term. Please give me wisdom to see your hand even in the midst of pain.

The other day, I asked my husband to fix a problem we were having with the toilet in our bathroom. He said he had already noticed the issue and fixed it. Because I knew he had not had time to go to the hardware store or do any real plumbing work, I was curious to know what he had done. His description of the repair began this way: “Well, I had to move the paperclip further up on the chain. . . .” (Okay, so I guess that explains a lot about those little quirks I sometimes notice at our house.)

Then I started thinking about paperclips. In my workplace, as in many others, we are moving toward a theoretical “paperless office.” Many things that we once needed in vast quantities are no longer needed. The paperclip, though, is different. I believe the paperclip is destined to survive this mass descent into obsolescence. To a young child, paper clips will always be great links in an improvised bracelet or necklace. To a teenager, they are links in a chain intended to irritate the next user of the clips. At my house, I now know that the paperclip is a piece of plumbing hardware. Even the move toward digital media has a place for this little clip, which will be an essential piece of office equipment as long as we have CD drives that refuse to give up their contents.

As Christians, we would do well to be more like a paperclip. The Apostle Paul made it a personal goal to “become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Corinthians 9:22, NIV) In the verses preceding his “all things to all men” commitment, Paul pointed out that he did not exercise all rights and freedoms that were his, hoping to spread the gospel more effectively to all people. Paul was not advocating compromise of the gospel to gain popularity; rather, he was making a commitment to adapt to changing circumstances so that he would be an effective tool to be used by our Lord. To be all things to all men, so that some might be saved, we too must be willing to try new methods and adapt to various circumstances to reach our world. Being all things to all men might mean having a contemporary worship service with a band, and it might mean holding a youth service with a louder band. Being all things to all men in this age surely includes using the internet as a means of communicating the gospel. It might also mean volunteering at a shelter to meet the needs of disaster victims or sharing a meal with neighbors who have lost a job. To be all things to all men, we must have the flexibility to enjoy the company of those who have very little as well as those who have more than we ever will. At its root, being all things to all men means finding common ground to reach those whom Jesus came to save, even if we have to adapt a little and give up something to which we may feel entitled in order to stand on that common ground.

My Lord, I commit to a way of life that will be not a stumbling block to any, but instead will be a witness to your saving grace. Show me how to adapt to be all things to all men, so that some might be saved, and give me courage to make any changes you desire in me.

Before my third child was born, I was warned that life with three children is dramatically different from life with two, and it is. No one warned me, though, about the difference between having one boy and having two of these incredibly active little people. Sunday afternoon, my daughter and both boys were playing together in the back of the house. Spencer, my six-year-old, was running around in circles (I don’t know why; it’s just what he does) and accidentally ran into a door facing with his head. He evidently didn’t hit very hard, because his reaction was laughter, and a lot of it.

Matthew, my two-year-old, isn’t one to miss getting a laugh, so he took off running as fast as he could, using his sweet blond head as a battering ram. Well, it wasn’t quite as funny as when his brother did it, and Matthew now has a bruise and knot that would make a prize fighter proud. Greg and I took this opportunity to talk to Spencer about an older brother’s responsibility to be a good example.

I think the lesson here applies to more than just older brothers. There are many instances in which the Apostle Paul tells his readers to watch what he does and imitate his actions. (See 1 Corinthians 4:16, Philippians 4:9, 2 Thessalonians 3:7.) Can we look around at younger believers and tell them to watch what we do and follow our example? Whether we have told others to watch us or not, there comes a time in our walk toward spiritual maturity when newer believers will begin to look to us for an example.

This is a very sobering thought which highlights the importance of asking the question that was so popular some years back. What would Jesus do? The closer we come to living a life like that of our Lord and Savior, the better example we will be for newer believers. Jesus himself takes very seriously the responsibility we have toward others who may be influenced by us. He told his disciples, “Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” (Luke 17:1-2, NIV) This is a great deal more serious than a bump on a younger brother’s head.

My Father God, please give me wisdom, courage and an even temper, all so that I may live a life that honors you, encourages other believers and never causes another to sin.

Day trading became a hot news topic in the summer of 1999, after a chemist turned day trader lost a great deal of money in the stock market and then went on a killing spree in Atlanta, Georgia. Despite studies that have since shown seventy to eighty percent of day traders lose money, many people still believe they can get rich this way. Over the past several months, I have watched someone fairly close to me reach his financial ruin after years of day trading. He had been motivated by a desire to make the most money with the least amount of effort, hoping that earnings from day trading would ultimately make regular employment unnecessary.

We can all see this appeal of easy money, but scripture warns us of the dangers of being motivated by a desire to get rich. “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction.” (1 Tim. 5:9, NIV) Paul goes on to warn Timothy that this love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.

We have long known there are no guarantees of gain in the stock market, but this lack of guarantee has now become much more real to many of us. Chapter 5 of 1 Timothy is full of sound advice relevant to our current economic problems. In verse 6, Paul advised Timothy that godliness with contentment is “great gain.” In our world of financial uncertainty, we can count on God’s promise of “great gain.” Our God can be trusted with our investment of godliness and contentment, and he will never fail to provide all that we need.

When our God’s provision for us includes material wealth, we must heed Paul’s further advice to Timothy. “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” (1 Tim. 6:17-19, NIV)

My Father God, I repent of materialistic desires and misplaced hope in earthly riches. I commit to be content with the blessings you provide on a daily basis. Thank you for your promise to give us all we need and to work everything, including financial difficulties, together for our good.

Despite the election returns last night, my morning today started like any other. I sipped my coffee and opened my Knowing Christ Journal, which our church is using as a guide for our study of the New Testament. I turned in my Bible to the scriptures for today and found these words: “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.” (2 Tim. 3:1, NIV)

I know some people went to bed last night believing that terrible times are ahead for us right now. Today, however, we have awakened to a new day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24) For those who put their hope in John McCain and Sarah Palin, as well as those who have confidence in Barack Obama and Joe Biden, we must all agree with the Psalmist. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” (Ps. 118:8, KJV) Rather than indulging fear and worry (or celebration, for those who lean toward blue), we must determine now to trust in our Lord.

If we trust in our Lord, we will very deliberately seek to align our will with his. In the context of our dual citizenship in this world and in the heavenly realm, two steps are crucial to keeping ourselves in line with the will of our Lord and King.

First, we must continually place ourselves in submission to our God, the Holy One of Israel. In recent weeks, many churches and individual believers have focused on 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (NIV) Let’s not stop now. We remain in need of forgiveness and healing.

Second, we must place ourselves in submission to earthly authorities. The Apostle Paul reminded believers in Rome that they must submit to the governing authorities, as “there is no authority except that which God has established.” (Rom. 13:1, NIV) In writing to Timothy, Paul also urged that we offer requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving for everyone, including all those in authority. (1 Tim. 2:1-2) My friends, regardless of our preferences yesterday, we must today commit to support all of our elected officials with our prayers.

There are many good examples in scripture of how to pray for those in authority. Psalm 72 starts this way: “Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.” The rest of the Psalm describes a righteous leader as one who will defend the afflicted, deliver the needy and take pity on the weak. He will rescue the needy from oppression and violence, because their blood is precious in the sight of a righteous leader. The Psalm ends with praises to our God, who alone does marvelous deeds and fills the earth with his glory.

My Father God and Sovereign Lord, I humble myself before you and willingly submit first to your will and then to the authority of our elected officials. I commit to seek your face and turn from all wickedness in my own life. Please heal our land and endow our leaders with your righteousness. May all this be done to bring glory to your name forever.

Have you ever looked at your clothing options in the morning and thought that you have absolutely nothing to wear? I’m usually standing in the middle of a closet full of “nothing to wear” when this thought comes to mind.

As children of the King, we are entitled (indeed, commanded) to wear royal robes designed by the King himself. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Colossians 3:12-14, NIV)

Whether we are going to the soccer fields, the grocery store or the biggest black tie event of our lives, our wardrobe is not complete until we have clothed ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, plus love to tie it all together.

Notice that the list of garments in Colossians overlaps with the fruit of the Spirit -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22) These are not traits or behaviors generated by us; rather, this fruit is a manifestation of the Spirit of our Lord living within us. Any effort to clothe ourselves apart from the Holy Spirit within will leave us terribly underdressed, as the best we have in our own wardrobe is as filthy rags compared to the garments our Lord has given us. (See Isaiah 64:6.)

My Father, my Lord, how thankful I am for your Spirit within me. I cast off my filthy rags, praying that you will ever shine forth through me. I commit always to clothe myself in a way that honors you.

“Eat! Eat!” You would have thought my two-year-old had not had a meal in weeks based on his excitement when he saw the brownies on the table. Of course, I gave him one; I was thinking of him when I cut them into small pieces to serve. As soon as he put his brownie in his mouth, he began asking for more. When I told him he could not have another right then, he began to wail. It was that piercing two-year-old scream that keeps us from calling this particular developmental phase “the terrific twos.” In the course of Matthew’s mouth-wide-open fit over not getting a second brownie, much of the brownie I had already given him ended up on the floor.

From his abundance, God provides our every need and oh so many of our wants. Our Lord tailors each blessing to be perfectly good for us, while taking care not to give us more than we should have. So often, though, we fail to enjoy the blessings God has given because we are too busy grumbling about what we do not have. Oh, that we could say with the Apostle Paul, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (Phil 4:11b-12, NIV)

My Father God, I know that you are the Giver of all good things in my life, and I repent of all my ingratitude and greed. My Lord, please give me a heart that desires exactly what you have prepared for me.

"Look where you want to fall." I was young and adventurous, and those were the words of the motorcycle safety instructor to our class of novice riders. The instructor was teaching us to turn our motorcycles, telling us first to look in the direction we want to go. If we want to go left, look left; if we want to go right, look right. And if we want to fall, he warned us, look at the ground. To drive his point home, he advised us to look at the exact spot where we want to fall, because we would go down in the direction of our gaze.

We can find a similar principle in God’s word. When Peter walked on water, he was looking into the face of our Lord, but when he fell, he was looking down. The saga of King David’s sin with Bathsheba began when he looked at her as she bathed on a rooftop. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus himself warned us that if we look at someone lustfully, we have already committed adultery in our hearts. Our Lord wants us to be keenly aware of the dangers of looking in the wrong direction.

God’s word does not stop at telling us where we should not look. Rather, we are given specific instructions as to the things that should have our focus. "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things." (Phil. 4:8, NIV) Countless spiritual face-plants can be avoided if we will focus our gaze only on those things that meet the test of this scripture.

So, how are we doing on this? When we watch television, are we watching only those things that are pure and praiseworthy? What about the things we read, the websites we visit, the tangents we indulge in our private thoughts? Are we focused on things that are pure and lovely, or are we filling our hearts and minds with things that have no business sharing space with the Holy Spirit within us?

And when we are driving to work or running errands, do we gaze with longing at the newer, bigger houses going up across town? Are we in a constant quest for more because our eyes are feasting on the luxuries of the world around us? Have we coveted our neighbor’s “stuff” to the point that we are living beyond our means and drowning in debt? If we are failing the Philippians 4:8 test in these or other areas, the first thing to do is change the direction of our eyes; the rest of us will follow.

My Father God, I commit to cast my gaze first on you and then to things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. Please forgive me of my many failures to do this. Create in me a heart that is always faithful to you.

On the way to school one morning, my daughter informed my son that you cannot kill baby ducks or mama ducks, but you can kill daddy ducks. (I think this may be true in mating season, but I’m not sure.) She explained, “The baby ducks are still growing up, and the mama ducks are taking care of the baby ducks. The daddy ducks . . . well, they’re just extra.”

Too often, we treat our husbands and fathers as unnecessary, and they are sometimes quite willing to settle into the role of an extra. God’s word tells us, however, that the husband is anything but extra in the home. In fact, he has been given the leading role by the one who wrote the script.

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . and the wife must respect her husband. (Eph. 5:21-25, 33, NIV)

At creation, God looked down at Adam and said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18, NIV) If our husbands were as perfect as we want them to be, they would not need us. As God made them, they do need helpers, and we have been given the most important supporting role of our lives.

In this role, a crucial stage direction to follow is to respect our husbands. What does this respect look like? As a practical matter, we should start with the words we speak. Our husbands would probably agree with Proverbs, which says, “Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.” (Proverbs 21:9, NIV) Proverbs 19:13 compares a quarrelsome wife to a constant dripping! We can generally avoid being a constant dripping by filtering everything we say through an awareness that we are not our husband’s own personal holy spirit. There is one Holy Spirit, and it is his job, not ours, to convict our husbands of sin. Our job is to be obedient to God, regardless of what our husbands do. A wise pastor once told his daughter, “If change will make your marriage better, what difference does it make who changes?” I would encourage a wife who is not happy in her marriage to take the first step of change. Treat your husband with respect, and watch what happens. You may find that a husband who is respected by his wife will have greater confidence and success in the role God has given him.

My Father God, I repent of all disrespect in my relationship with you and with my husband. Please give me wisdom as I fulfill the roles you have given me in my home.

WHACK! While watching a movie at my sister-in-law’s house, my youngest son Matthew, who is almost two, got up every few minutes to hit the television. My father-in-law – who, by the way, is a television repairman – noticed this and asked us what in the world the child was doing. We reluctantly admitted that the television in our den has issues, one of those being an occasional “black-out” of the picture. This was not a big deal to me, because the picture would come back if we hit the television, and I simply don’t care enough about this television to call the repairman, even when he’s my father-in-law. The repairman, however, was so appalled by his grandson’s need to hit the TV that he felt compelled to come fix it. He made the repair, and we have not had any problems since. Though our television is now fixed, Matthew still walks up and whacks it from time to time. I think he views this ritual as a normal part of watching a movie.

What Matthew has done with the television set is what so many of us do in our spiritual lives. We adapt to sin and emptiness by developing dysfunctional behaviors to get us through the day. These behaviors develop into patterns which may include alcoholism and other addictions, gluttony, eating disorders, compulsive spending (retail therapy, we sometimes call it), the relentless pursuit of wealth and power, anger, isolation, lust or anything else we seek to fill the void and carry us through the darkness. (See 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 for a similar list from the Apostle Paul.) Though we somehow get to the end of each day, these patterns do nothing to fix the underlying problem. That problem is that all of us are (or were) lost in our sin, needing reconciliation with God that comes only through his Son Jesus Christ. And then – Praise God – the day comes when God saves us from our sin and reconciles us to himself. Though our underlying problem has now been solved, we sometimes cling to the habits and patterns we adopted in our lives before Christ. My friends, we do not have to live this way. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17, NIV) We have been better than repaired; we have been made new, and we need to let the old things go. Quite simply, we must abandon anything that is the spiritual equivalent of hitting a television set that is no longer broken.

My Father God, I lack the words to express my gratitude for your salvation and deliverance from the darkness. I repent of old patterns I have clung to and commit to live as the new creation that I am. Thank you, God, for continuing to transform me.

Hurricane Gustav has come and gone, leaving the City of Alexandria and most surrounding areas without electricity as of Monday and flooded on Wednesday. At my house, we were fortunate to have a generator we called Camille (as I’m sure she had been serving faithfully since 1969, when that storm blew a path that has not faded from our collective memory). After a couple of days, we noticed the carburetor was leaking gasoline, and Camille had to be removed from service for repairs. It was then that we purchased a new generator, thanks to my parents, who were returning from Texas, where generators were readily available. The new generator, which we will probably call Gus, provided a source of power for the freezer, refrigerator and nebulizer for the baby.

That evening, after all three kids were tucked safely into bed, I opened my Bible to Psalm 69, which opens with this cry:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. (NIV)

Though the waters of Gustav were not quite up to my neck, they were higher than I’ve ever seen and reached into parts of Alexandria that had not flooded in over a hundred years. The Word of God tells us, though, that we are not the only ones who have ever looked around and felt like the deep waters of the flood were engulfing us. When we see floodwaters, we can take our distress to the throne of the great I Am who created the earth, the waters and everything in them. We also have a promise that all things, even water up to our necks, will be worked out by God for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28, NIV)

I was blessed in this hurricane to see a demonstration of faith in God’s promises even during the storm, after Gustav claimed the life of the son of a family I grew up with. I do not pretend to understand this family’s grief, but I saw in their eyes a hope that you see in those who have security in their future and in the future of their loved ones. Reading further in Psalm 69, we find insight into this hope: “I am in pain and distress; may your salvation, O God, protect me.” (v 29) It is not the walls of our homes or our emergency preparedness kits that ultimately protect us. It is God’s salvation that protects us from the death that comes as a result of our sin. Just as the wind and fury of Gustav have reminded us that tomorrow on this earth is not certain, God promises security in all our tomorrows through his son Jesus Christ.

Dear Lord, even as we mourn the losses Gustav brought, we are thankful for the great mercies you have shown. Thank you for listening to our cry when the flood waters rise, and thank you for the promise that you will work even this together for our good.

We are expending a great deal of time, money and energy to prepare for Gustav's landfall on the Gulf Coast. Because forecasting a hurricane’s path is not an exact science, many will have prepared for a disaster that does not come. There is one disaster, however, that is certain; that disaster is death and eternal condemnation for those whose eternity has not been secured by the blood of Jesus Christ. Whether or not you are prepared for Gustav, I pray that you are prepared for eternity.

In Acts 27, we find the account of a storm that battered a ship carrying the Apostle Paul and 275 other people on a journey intended for Italy. Early in the trip, Paul warned that the voyage would be disastrous. The pilot and the owner of the ship, however, wanted to continue, and the majority of those on board decided to sail on. Before long, there arose a wind of hurricane force, and the ship was caught in the storm. The vessel took such a violent battering that the passengers threw the cargo and tackle into the sea. The storm continued to rage, and those on board “finally gave up all hope of being saved.” It was then that Paul stood up and, after a brief “I told you so” moment, urged the passengers to keep up their courage because no lives would be lost in the storm.

On the fourteenth night of the storm, the sailors were afraid and began to lower the life boat to escape without their passengers. Paul learned of this and warned that they would not be saved unless they stayed with the ship. By this point they must have determined Paul might be right, so the soldiers cut the ropes to let the lifeboat fall away. At Paul’s urging, everyone ate and then threw the rest of the grain overboard to lighten the ship. When daylight came, they saw land. Though the vessel was destroyed in the shipwreck that ensued, everyone onboard reached land safely.

Even more disastrous than being tossed about by Gustav or the hurricane in Acts is being carried by sin to an eternity in hell. Scripture tells us that we all have sinned, and the result of that sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 3:23, 6:23) If we are relying on anything else for salvation, that reliance is misplaced and we will suffer the tragedy of dying in our sin. Just as the passengers threw their cargo, tackle and even their lifeboat and food into the sea, we must abandon anything other than Jesus Christ that we may be relying on to save us. We will not be saved by good works, respect and prestige, religious ritual, knowledge or friends and family. Just as Paul told the ship’s passengers that they would be saved only if they stayed with the ship, we will be saved only by the one way God has provided.

Dear Lord, as we watch Hurricane Gustav gain strength in the Gulf, I pray that you will spare those who are still suffering from the battering of Katrina. More than this, though, I pray that you will open the eyes of all who are relying on their own lifeboats for salvation and draw them to your truth in the midst of the storm.

With the Democratic National Convention in Denver this week, political commentators have spent no small amount of time discussing the rift between the Clintons and Barack Obama. One pundit compared the Democratic Party to a family in the midst of a family fight and offered this quote: “God gave us families, so we wouldn’t have to fight with strangers.” He went on to conclude that nothing will bring this feuding family back together like a threat from outside. In this case, he was referring to the threat posed by a Republican ad campaign using the words of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden as ammunition against Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, many of us in the church act like the Democratic Party (big gasp!) and spend so much time in conflict with each other than we utterly fail to prepare for the fight against the real enemy. In the process, we give Satan more than ample ammunition to render us ineffective. My brothers and sisters, it should not be this way, and we see the Apostle Paul prayed for better for the Roman believers. “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:5-6, NIV) The original Greek word used to describe this spirit of unity contemplates an involvement of the will, affections and conscience. Thus, we see that we must exercise our will and choose to be in unity with other believers as we follow Christ Jesus. We must do this even when we have differences of opinion with those believers. Without a spirit of unity among ourselves, we will not glorify our Lord with one heart and mouth, as our Creator intended. Further, we will not be prepared for the true battle, which is not against one another. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph. 6:12, NIV) Let’s not wait for the looming threat from the outside to overtake us before we learn to behave as one unified body of Christ.

My Lord, I pray that you will show us the folly of family feuds within the church and give us endurance, encouragement and a spirit of unity among us. We ask this so that we may glorify you and be prepared to take on your full armor in the fight against spiritual forces of evil seeking to destroy your church.

“Come and go with me to my Father’s house. Come and go with me to my Father’s house. It’s a big, big house with lots and lots of rooms. . . .” My children love this song, which one day launched the older two into a fairly intense discussion of God’s house. My seven-year-old pronounced that the church is God’s house. (She’s the oldest of three and the only girl; she tends to make pronouncements.) Just about this time, we were pulling into the parking lot of our church. “See, it’s a big, big house,” she said, offering her final piece of evidence. My middle child, who is five years old, was not persuaded. “God’s house is heaven; church is more like his camp,” he concluded. Even though God is not confined to the heavenly realm any more than he is confined to our church building, my son was definitely onto something. The Apostle Paul said it like this:

Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. (Acts 17:22b-24, NIV)

My friends, if we are worshiping a god who is confined to a structure built by human hands, we are not worshiping the Lord of heaven and earth; we are worshiping an unknown god. When God chooses us to be his, our purpose becomes to know and believe him. “You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed nor will there be one after me.” (Is. 43:10, NIV) The Hebrew word translated “know” in this verse is yada, a verb which includes the idea of knowing by experience. If we want to know God in the yada, yada, yada sense of the word know, we must have experience with God outside of the church building. As we walk with God in our daily lives, we will experience his grace and mercy; we will hear his voice; we will recognize the movement of his mighty hand in situations that otherwise might seem hopeless. I pray that we will not worship an unknown god, but that we will know by experience the Holy One of Israel, the Lord of heaven and earth.

My Lord, my God, you are the Lord of heaven and earth and I praise you. My desire is to know and believe you. Please show yourself to me, so that I may know you by experience as I live each day you have given me.