05.20.09
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This devotion was written by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, Streams in the Desert
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YOUR CROWN OF GLORY
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“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb . . . and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Rev. 12:11).
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When James and John came to Christ with their mother, asking Him to give them the best place in the kingdom, He did not refuse their request, but told them it would be given to them if they could do His work, drink His cup, and be baptized with His baptism.
Do we want the competition? The greatest things are always hedged about by the hardest things, and we, too, shall find mountains and forests and chariots of iron. Hardship is the price of coronation. Triumphal arches are not woven out of rose blossoms and silken cords, but of hard blows and bloody scars. The very hardships that you are enduring in your life today are given by the Master for the explicit purpose of enabling you to win your crown.
Do not wait for some ideal situation, some romantic difficulty, some far-away emergency; but rise to meet the actual conditions which the Providence of God has placed around you today. Your crown of glory lies embedded in the very heart of these things–those hardships and trials that are pressing you this very hour, week and month of your life. The hardest things are not those that the world knows of. Down in your secret soul unseen and unknown by any but Jesus, there is a little trial that you would not dare to mention that is harder for you to bear than martyrdom.
There, beloved, lies your crown. God help you to overcome, and sometime wear it. –Selected
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“It matters not how the battle goes,
The day how long;
Faint not! Fight on!
Tomorrow comes the song.”
05.13.09
“THE DELIGHT OF DESPAIR”
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This devotion was written by Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
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THE DELIGHT OF DESPAIR
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“And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.” Revelation 1:17
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It may be that like the apostle John you know Jesus Christ intimately, when suddenly He appears with no familiar characteristic at all, and the only thing you can do is to fall at His feet as dead. There are times when God cannot reveal Himself in any other way than in His majesty, and it is the awfulness of the vision which brings you to the delight of despair; if you are ever to be raised up, it must be by the hand of God.
“He laid His right hand upon me.” In the midst of the awfulness, a touch comes, and you know it is the right hand of Jesus Christ. The right hand not of restraint nor of correction nor of chastisement, but the right hand of the Everlasting Father. Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it is ineffable peace and comfort, the sense that “underneath are the everlasting arms,” full of sustaining and comfort and strength. When once His touch comes, nothing at all can cast you into fear again. In the midst of all His ascended glory the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an insignificant disciple, and to say – “Fear not.” His tenderness is ineffably sweet. Do I know Him like that?
Watch some of the things that strike despair. There is despair in which there is no delight, no horizon, no hope of anything brighter; but the delight of despair comes when I know that “in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.” I delight to know that there is that in me which must fall prostrate before God when He manifests Himself, and if I am ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of God. God can do nothing for me until I get to the limit of the possible.
05.08.09
“THE GREATEST PAINS”
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This devotion is written by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, Streams in the Desert
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THE GREATEST PAINS
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“As many as I love I rebuke and chasten” (Rev. 3:19).
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God takes the most eminent and choicest of His servants for the choicest and most eminent afflictions. They who have received most grace from God are able to bear most afflictions from God. Affliction does not hit the saint by chance, but by direction. God does not draw His bow at a venture. Every one of His arrows goes upon a special errand and touches no breast but his against whom it is sent. It is not only the grace, but the glory of a believer when we can stand and take affliction quietly. –Joseph Caryl
If all my days were sunny, could I say,
“In His fair land He wipes all tears away”?
If I were never weary, could I keep
Close to my heart, “He gives His loved ones sleep”?
Were no graves mine, might I not come to deem
The Life Eternal but a baseless dream?
My winter, and my tears, and weariness,
Even my graves, may be His way to bless.
I call them ills; yet that can surely be Nothing but love that shows my Lord to me! –Selected
“The most deeply taught Christians are generally those who have been brought into the searching fires of deep soul-anguish. If you have been praying to know more of Christ, do not be surprised if He takes you aside into a desert place, or leads you into a furnace of pain.”
Do not punish me, Lord, by taking my cross from me, but comfort me by submitting me to Thy will, and by making me to love the cross. Give me that by which Thou shalt be best served . . . and let me hold it for the greatest of all Thy mercies, that Thou shouldst glorify Thy name in me, according to Thy will. –A Captive’s Prayer
02.27.09
“HOLISTIC HEARING”
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HOLISTIC HEARING
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Deut 6:3-9 NIV
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3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, promised you.
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
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Rev 2:28-29 NIV
29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
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Many in our day have hearing problems. Critical, life and death words spoken directly to the soul of a person goes ignored, time and time again. Not for lack of proper cochlear function, rather stemming from a defective heart. For the words may be cognitively registered, and maybe even semantically grasped. But there is no true hearing, in the biblical sense. For in both testaments, to hear is to obey.
Most early cultures did not separate the two realities; they were practically synonymous…two sides of the very same coin. If a child was to have heard their parent’s words, their obedience to said words were assumed. A sound person was understood to be one whose words and deeds were consistent; as a reflection of the holistic integrity of their person.
Our culture however reflects signs of pervasive and profound disintegration: fractured narratives, fractured communities…fractured souls. In this wasteland littered with disembodied truths and hearts, it is easy to hear and not obey. Ceaseless muttering of “yeah, yeah, I know” having the effect of verbal graffiti on pristine walls. A vicious cycle of broken promises as the wake of the refusal to couple the twin realities of hearing and obeying.
The people of God however were reminded repeatedly of their call to truly hear. For the LORD their God is one: unfactioned in community, unfractured in person, unfettered in purpose. This very same wholeness was to be their inheritance, as they loved and obeyed to mutual exclusion to all else.
It is Jesus, God’s Unique Son who shows us the way; and His Spirit who calls out for a new hearing. Repentance is God’s solution to our predicament. While all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again, our King has willingly endured the rending of body and soul; that we would be given ears once again to hear…and in the hearing made once again whole.
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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION
- This morning will you reflect on the unfactioned Tri-unity of God; the unfractured personhood of, and the undistracted mind of Christ; who sees and hears with perfect perception. Will you bow before this King and ask Him to touch and restore you?
- Where do you see the wake of sin in and around you, i.e. fractured relationships with God, community, and self? Will you ask God to reveal both the specific sin, and the route of repentance and wholeness?
- Will you attend to God’s voice this morning? What is God asking you to hear & obey? Will you ask Him to give you ears to truly hear?
This devotional was written by Pastor Martin
12.01.08
“POLARIZING COMING”
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1 Thess 4:15-18 NIV
16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage each other with these words.
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Rev 1:7-8 NIV
7 Look, he is coming with the clouds,
and every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him.
So shall it be! Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
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It never fails that persons of consequence, “gravitas” so to speak, evoke a polarized response upon their entrance to the scene. People are either drawn to such a person, or find reason to repel away. Such was the case with Jesus’ first coming; where some flocked passionately to Jesus, while others schemed to put him in the ground. There was, and is no middle ground.
This polarized response is seen in the two verses above. In 1Thess, the promise of his coming calls for elevated hope, the very raw material for mutual encouragement. But in the Revelation passage, this same coming is said to be the cause of mourning.
Why does the same event, i.e. the coming of Jesus evoke such different responses? Could it be because lots have been drawn, bets have been made. To those who have put their trust and destinies in Christ, find immeasurable strength in the hope of his coming. While those who have stubbornly refused will find they have cause for inconsolable grief.
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REFLECTION/RESPONSE
- This morning, will you take a few moments to acknowledge that Christ is THE person of consequence, the Almighty. He is no faddish celebrity with fifteen minutes of fame to his name. Will you glory in the fact that the Alpha and the Omega loves you, and chooses to be for you!
- What is your immediate response to the prospect of His coming? Dig deep, beyond the petty fears. Imagine a scene where one day, all the misery, suffering, and shame will be wiped away; to reveal a landscape of eternal joy together with Christ. Now imagine that these are the cards you are holding at the poker table. If you haven’t already done so, will you declare “all in”?
- Will you be open to how Jesus might want to presence Himself with you today? Not only to empower you with strength for the days challenges, but to be a “polarizing” agent in your sphere of influence for Christ?
11.09.08
“LIVING HOPE”
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Rev 21:1-5 NIV
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
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Sometimes, in order to get through the tough middle part of a journey, you need to know how it ends. John wrote the book of Revelation to churches reeling in what seemed to be a hopeless situation. Squeezed between the violent persecution of the Jews, and the beastly influence of the Roman Empire; what hope did could they have? Arousing their godly imagination, John points to the Almighty Christ who has and will win the final victory.
We know how it ends. This future is ours to grip onto in hope amidst the difficulties that face us today.
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
- This morning, will you start your reflection by imagining the scene found in Rev. 21? Try to imagine the sounds, the colors, the movement portrayed in these verses. Develop a familiarity with the end of the story.
- Now reflect on where you are now. Where have despair and depression seeped into the crevasses of Your soul? Will you expunge them with the hope God has for you?
- Will you ask God to release His new creation power into your heart, your life, and ministry?
