Devotions

Suppose a boxing trainer took his fighter to an isolated training camp and spent an entire session psyching him up for the big fight.

“Don’t worry! I’ll be right here with you all the time. And here’s a list of great boxers from the past. Just study their every move and you won’t have to go through the hard workouts yourself. You’re a winner and if you follow my directions and memorize the diagrams I’ve made for you, you can step into the ring with anyone and defeat him!”

How foolish does that sound? What kind of trainer would do such a thing? But many Christians who call themselves warriors have never been tested or trained. The sad truth is, they have never been in battle and they are not prepared to fight.

Why are so many true believers going through such hard times? God knows that Satan is going to be loosed on the earth for his last hour of warfare. And the Lord is going to need well-trained warriors who will prevail over all the powers of hell.

These deeply tested saints are becoming the captains of his last-days army. The kind of training they need calls for spiritual discipline, but also for physical discipline. Jacob threw his whole body into the battle — all his human ability. A fighting spirit had risen up in him and scripture says, “In his strength he struggled with God” (Hosea 12:3).

This verse of scripture has great meaning for all who want to prevail in prayer. It says that Jacob won the battle “in his strength” as he struggled! Dear saint, if you are going to prevail in these last days, you are going to have to put all your strength into the battle. God wants to raise up a people who are consumed with being used by him to help others. 

“He who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son” (1 John 5:10).

Consider all the ugly sins listed against Israel in the wilderness — murmuring, complaining, idolatry, ungratefulness, rebellion, sensuality. Yet not one of these provoked God’s wrath like their unbelief. “Then the Lord said to Moses: ‘How long will these people reject Me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs which I have performed among them?” (Numbers 14:11).

God was saying, “These people make a lie out of everything I’ve done for them. I have performed miracle after miracle and delivered them time after time. When will they ever just trust and rest in me?”

Stop for a moment and think about all the things God has done for you: He has kept you, answered prayers, met you in one crisis after another. He has brought you through trials, done things for you that are nothing short of miraculous.

For thirty-eight long years Israel forgot God’s Word and dismissed his miracles. And because they fell back so often into murmuring and unbelief, God said, “I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them” (14:12). He said to Moses, “I am very displeased with my people because they will never come to the place where they trust me.”

When Israel was on the victorious side of Jordan, Moses made a solemn declaration, “Look, the Lord your God has set the land before you so go up and possess it. Don’t be afraid, for the Lord goes before you and he will fight for you!” (see Deuteronomy 1:21, 29-30).

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Launch out in full faith on the written Word of God. Take up the Lord’s challenge to live and die by his Word. 

Believing Christians practice a whole catalog of sins, but one of them — unbelief — gives birth of all others. Not the unbelief of agnostics and atheists, but the troubling doubts of those who call themselves by his name! Those who are his children, who say, “I am of Jesus” and yet hold doubt in their hearts. This deeply grieves our Father.

God takes the sin of unbelief very seriously. In fact, Jude warned the church with these words: “I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe” (Jude 5).

Jude is reminding them of God’s attitude toward unbelief. God may no longer destroy his people physically as he did in the Old Testament but his judgments on our unbelief today are spiritual and just as severe. 

Unbelief is just as destructive today as it ever was. We may not turn into a pillar of salt or get swallowed up by the earth, as happened in Old Testament days, but we are swallowed by troubles, stress and family problems. Fire does not come down and consume us but our spiritual life is destroyed.

But be encouraged! There is a definite cure for unbelief and it is found in the Word of God. One key verse is found in 1 Peter 5:7: “[Cast] all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.” This is God’s personal word to you today. Another uplifting scripture is, “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved” (Psalm 55:22).

God invites us, “Don’t carry that burden one hour more. Put it all on me! I care about everything that is happening to you and I’m big enough to take it all for you.” Give your troubles and concerns to him and be fully convinced that he cares!

Every year during the busy holidays, Christians remind themselves of the real significance of Christmas: the coming of Jesus! Our hearts are filled with gratitude that God the Father sent a Savior to redeem us. We enjoy many blessings: seeing colorful presents around the tree in the living room; singing carols and hymns; thanking God for his goodness. Some of us even enjoy watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” with Linus quoting from Luke 2 at the end.

We are to be grateful with all our hearts for the blessings we enjoy at Christmas. We know that all good things come from the Father. Yet it is good if we remind ourselves why Jesus came: because we are at war — at war with the powers of darkness, with demonic spirits, with the devil himself. The devil comes into our lives to try to steal, to kill, and to destroy — all in an attempt to derail us from God’s good purposes. With Christ’s birth, God established a beachhead in order to fight the enemy in a new way — in effect, a D-Day landing against the entrenched forces of hell.

Many believers do not want to acknowledge this war in their lives but it is a biblical fact that the enemy of our souls is always on the move against God’s people. Therefore, if our focus during the holidays in only on blessings — even good things like giving and receiving — we miss the fuller impact of Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. And we miss out on the deeper, ultimate blessing that Christmas reveals is ours.

God the Father made sure his beloved Son was delivered. All the miraculous victories enjoyed in the name of Jesus for centuries lay there in the humble manger, in the tiny form of a babe.

As we celebrate Christmas, may we be thankful for all of God’s blessings, especially the victory we have because of the birth of the Christ-child.  

Time and again the Gospels portray Jesus as a man of deep and unwavering compassion. After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus withdrew alone on a boat to mourn the loss. He knew John was in heaven, but He hurt for those who were left behind.

When Jesus returned to shore, He saw a crowd of five thousand people gathered to see Him. Matthew records that “He had compassion on them.” So He took five loaves of bread and two fish and miraculously provided food for them all (Matthew 14:14-21). His heart went out to these people who had come to be with Him, and He couldn’t stand to see them hungry. He not only provided food, but He also healed the ones who were sick.

When Jesus saw two blind men on the road to Jericho, He “had compassion and touched their eyes. And immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed Him” (Matthew 20:34). His compassion for these men outweighed any other task before Him at the moment.

On the road between Samaria and Galilee, while going into a small village, Jesus noticed ten men who had leprosy and He healed them (see Luke 17:12-14). The lepers instinctively kept their distance, even from Jesus. Society had shunned them and they were rejected by the world. But Jesus saw them and had compassion on them. He saw them as people in need of a Savior.

How do we respond to the lepers of our day — the outcasts of society? What does our culture do with the poor, the addicts, the alcoholics, the sinners? Does the Body of Christ see them as people in need of help, lost and searching?

We must never forget what Jesus has done for us and for those around us. Without His saving grace we would be just as lost and hopeless as those lepers were. Without Jesus we are nothing and without compassion we have no place in God’s kingdom.

Nicky Cruz, internationally known evangelist and prolific author, turned to Jesus Christ from a life of violence and crime after meeting David Wilkerson in New York City in 1958. The story of his dramatic conversion was told first in The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and then later in his own best-selling book Run, Baby, Run.