Devotions

Not long ago, a wonderful young Christian unburdened his great anxiety to me.

“I feel a calling from the Lord to work with youth and children, but all doors to ministry just keep shutting to me. I pray for other doors to open, but God doesn’t seem to hear my cry. I feel so useless.

“The only ministry I do now is helping with an outreach in one of our slum areas once a week. I serve as a big brother to a preacher’s son because his dad is very sick. But that’s all I’m doing. I have to believe God has more for me.”

When I heard this, I told the young man, “I want you to understand something. What you are doing right now is more precious to the Lord than if you were preaching to thousands in some stadium. Usefulness to Him has nothing to do with numbers.

“You are playing a part in saving that preacher’s son. Go and be a friend to those few slum kids God has given you. Be satisfied in this time and place. And know you are living in God’s perfect will because you’re being faithful in the little things.”

Tell me, Christian, have you made peace with your present situation? Can you trust that God is doing His perfect work in you through every circumstance? If you can’t, you will grow restless, hopeless and eventually mad at God. You’ll become bitter and hard.

Peter writes, “Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19). Likewise, Paul instructs, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

Paul wrote many of his epistles to the churches while locked up in a cramped prison cell — bound, despised, cut off from believers and seemingly from all ministry. Talk about painful conditions. Yet Paul never spoke of being a prisoner of his circumstances; instead, he called himself “a prisoner of Christ” (see Ephesians 3:1).

In his epistle to the Colossians, Paul stated his desire for all saints who suffer: “That you might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” (Colossians 1:9–11).

Amazingly, Paul’s words of hope and exhortation were a product of his longest imprisonment, probably in Caesarea. When Paul penned these words he had no hope of being released. As far as he knew, he would be there for years, possibly for the rest of his days. It is clear that he had made peace with his painful circumstances.

Nowhere in this letter do we find Paul questioning the Lord. The apostle had entered into a full spiritual understanding of God’s will and embraced his circumstances as the Lord’s will for his life at that moment. Therefore, Paul wrote triumphantly to the Colossians, “Oh, that you would come into this full spiritual understanding of God’s will for you.”

Can you imagine? Here was Paul in utter captivity, lacking freedom of any kind. Yet he spoke of “walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing to Him, being fruitful in every good work, increasing in the knowledge of the Lord.”

God has called us to be different from the world — markedly different.

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

That difference is exactly what the world needs. As Paul says, “If all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25).

Our first task is to stop the famine of God’s Word among us. An encounter with His Word will rid us of “business as usual” as Christians. It will confront us with our dryness, coldness and casualness toward Christ’s way. And it will send us to our knees in dependent prayer for God to bring change.

Prayer changes things! It changes our hearts, our families, our churches, and ultimately our world. I ask you to please join me in committing to do three things:

Pray for God’s Word to do a work in our hearts
Stand with integrity as a voice for His Word
Pray for Him to bring about changes only He can bring

I pray we’ll see God manifest Himself as He has done in so many revivals and movements that turned cultures around. He alone can stop the tide of evil being unleashed — and bring reverence again to a culture that has lost its way. He alone can revive the church, turn us toward repentance, and bring spiritual awakening to our society.

Let’s return to the Lord with all our hearts. Let’s seek His face and call on heaven to see a new and great work in our country.

It is possible to find a relatively new believer in the mountains of Peru who understands more about the Bible than a theologian with a PhD. In fact, that uneducated Peruvian may not just know more about the Bible, but he also may know the Lord in a way that the Greek or Hebrew scholar doesn’t. Remember, it was Jesus who rejoiced and said:

“I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” (Luke 10:21, emphasis mine).

PRAY BEFORE READING THE WORD

It is easy for many of us to approach the Word of God daily with little dependence on the Holy Spirit. Often, we don’t pray before we read the Bible even though we need God’s help to understand His Word. The smarter and more educated we are, the harder it is for us to come as children, trusting the Spirit to make the Word real. We must have the Spirit’s help, and if we ask in faith, He will help us.

The psalmist prayed:

“Open my eyes, that I may see wonderful things in Your law” (Psalm 119:18).

Notice that the prayer doesn’t ask for open eyes to “read Your law” or even to “understand Your law.” No, the psalmist’s prayer asks God for something we rarely think about when we open the Word: “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in Your law.” He wasn’t talking about his physical eyes, he was talking about the eyes of his heart.

CONSTANT REVELATION

We all have two sets of eyes. We have the eyes in our head, and we have the eyes of the heart, which the Bible refers to in many places (for example, Ephesians 1:18). The process of seeing spiritual things through the eyes of the heart, not merely the mind, is called “revelation.” This is not some wild and woolly, holy-roller craziness. It’s an everyday working of the Holy Spirit in all who desire it.

Jim Cymbala began the Brooklyn Tabernacle with less than twenty members in a small, rundown building in a difficult part of the city. A native of Brooklyn, he is a longtime friend of both David and Gary Wilkerson. 

So much distress. So much affliction. So much sorrow caused by sickness, disease and disaster. So many hurting believers. So many people facing financial crises.

The Bible tells us, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (Psalm 34:19). However, the second part of this verse changes the meaning entirely: “But the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”

David cried, “Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions” (Psalm 132:1). This godly man faced many troubles. His prayer was, “Lord, You have delivered others out of their afflictions. Don’t forget about me! Help me, deliver me.”

The apostle Paul also endured many afflictions. He wrote: “The Holy Ghost [testifies to me] in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions [await] me” (Acts 20:23). Paul added, “No man should be moved by these afflictions” (1 Thessalonians 3:3). He was saying, “Dear saints, don’t question why I have to face so many great afflictions. These things do not cause me to question God.”

“But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses” (2 Corinthians 6:4). Note Paul’s emphasis here: “in much patience.” Have you been losing patience in your affliction? Have you become so discouraged you’ve come to the point of casting aside your faith?

Lay hold of the Scriptures and let faith arise in your heart. God has not forgotten you!