Devotions

“Christ . . . a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years” (Hebrews 3:6–9, my italics).

“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end” (3:12–14, my italics).

I believe, with other watchmen, that the days Jesus foretold are now upon us. All over the world, people’s hearts are failing them from fear as they watch the terrifying things coming upon the earth.

Yet, in the midst of all this anxiety and fear, we who trust in the Lord hear His Word telling us, “Be steadfast and confident to the end.”

The fact is, whenever there is mounting fear, God calls for greater steadfastness. Whenever there is great terror and falling away, He calls for greater confidence. Whenever there is gloom and despair, He calls us to increase our gladness and rejoicing.

That is the nature of our heavenly Father. He has made provision for His people to hold fast and retain their joy in the severest of troubled times.

Yet there is a condition attached to this provision and it is a big if:

“We are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end. . . . Christ . . . whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end” (Hebrews 3:14, 6, my italics).

Why are we given this cautionary word? It is because there are powerful forces at work today against every believer who would hold fast to his confident faith.

“Go away! Why are you interfering with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? . . . Jesus cut him short. ‘Be quiet! Come out of the man,’ he ordered” (Luke 4:34-35, NLT).

I want to concentrate on the phrase, “Jesus cut him short.” Jesus wants to do that in your life today. Today! Not when you finally have pleased Him with perfection (because you’re never going to do that). The good news is, there is a power of the Holy Ghost available to believers of Jesus Christ where He says, “I am going to cut this short.” Even if it’s a backslidden heart or some struggle with sin, in His mercy, kindness and grace, He does it right now! 

Satan plans to get you addicted, discouraged, doubting, fearful, and anxious. His plan isn’t just to get you there but to keep you there. One of the most sorrowful experiences I have as a pastor is sitting face to face with people and hearing their confessions:

“I’ve been addicted to this or that for ten years or fifteen years.”

“Ten years ago our son ran away and he’s not serving God.”

“For the last five years our marriage has been on the rocks. We’re about to crash!” And it just goes on and on and on.

Here is some good news for all of us today. Not only does Jesus interfere, but He looks at that length of time that Satan wants to harass you and says, “Enough is enough. It’s time to cut it short.”   

It’s time to cut it short! It’s time for you to say that it’s enough. Satan intends to build weapons—a scheme, a plan—and then he wants to use those weapons against you. So we need to be very careful that we don’t take a sort of a lighthearted, laissez -faire attitude. Kind of like, “Oh well, Satan doesn’t have any power. He can’t interfere in my life. He can’t interrupt what God’s doing.”

He can come against you, right? You’ve experienced that. But the good news is that the Bible says those weapons will not prosper.

“No weapon turned against you will succeed. You will silence every voice raised up to accuse you” (Isaiah 54:17, NLT).

“I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread” (Psalm 37:25). The incredible second half to this promise—“Nor his descendants begging bread”—means that walking with Christ does not affect only you, it affects the future of those you love.

Remember that it is ultimately because of Christ’s obedience to the Father—because He yielded His life to fulfill the purposes of God—that you and I, as the descendants of Jesus Christ, can claim the promise in this psalm. And so we see how important it is that we walk in obedience and give our whole hearts to the Lord. As we do so, the promise will extend to all those who come after us—our children, our grandchildren, those over whom God has made our lives an authority. I have already seen this to be true in my own life.

As far back as I know of, I am the first believer in Christ in my family. But now I have nephews and nieces and other family members turning to God. And long after I am gone, I believe that the blessing of the Lord will still be touching my home as I make the choice to walk in the righteousness of Christ.

On Sunday nights here at Times Square Church, I hear many testimonies of people in our congregation who tried to run from God. They lived lives of sin and rebellion, turning up their music extremely loud in an attempt to drown out the voice of God. But the dilemma they faced was that they had a righteous mother or a righteous father; somebody was praying for them! And now it is obvious that they have not been forsaken; they are not begging for bread, because somebody in their house walked with God.

Let us make the choice daily to walk in God’s way, holding the truth of God in righteousness, and trusting Him for the strength that we need to fully follow Him. As we choose to do so, we will see the Scripture fulfilled—the blessing of the righteous will be upon us as well as our descendants. All that we need will be supplied, for God is absolutely faithful to fulfill His promise!

Carter Conlon joined the pastoral staff of Times Square Church in 1994 at the invitation of the founding pastor, David Wilkerson, and was appointed Senior Pastor in 2001. 

Right now, the world is heading into great turbulence. There will be events and chaos that naturally bring fear. But God has said to us, “My Word is in you. You are covered under the shadow of My hand. And YOU ARE MY CHILD.” It is time for us to fasten our seatbelt, open our Bible and talk to our Father through it all. He has said we are not going down: “I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved” (Acts 2:25).

I urge you to make this powerful word from Isaiah your own:

“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

“Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding.

“He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:26–31).

Our communion with Him gives birth to trust. By pouring out to the Lord our needs, our worries, we come away with His rest and assurance. “Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us” (Psalm 62:8).

It is possible for us to stir and rouse ourselves, so that we ask, “Why am I so fearful? Why am I on this roller coaster of up-and-down despair? Why does the future cause panic in my soul?”

This has happened because we have not fully committed our lives, our families, our health, our jobs, our homes into God’s faithful hands. We have not made the leap of faith that determines, “My Lord is true and faithful. Though I have failed countless times, He has never failed me. Come what may, I will cast my life and future into His care.”

How are we able to do this? By embracing this word He has given us: “Thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again” (Isaiah 51:22). He is saying, in essence, “I am not asleep. I am the same God who opened the Red Sea, who raises the dead, and who has made provision for you. My people are not meant to live in bondage to fear.”

The cup of trembling is removed when we wake up to our need to accept God’s Word. As we take this stand of faith, we will face sudden jolts of fear. But we are to stand up to those fears—to lay hold of God’s promises and be fully persuaded that He is able to keep what we have committed to Him. Then we will drink no more of the wine of despair.

The fact is, the darker the days become, the more God’s people must live by such faith. Otherwise, we make God out to be a liar whenever we panic and fear. As once reported in a story in Newsweek, a teenage girl demonstrated such faith powerfully. A plane flying from Newark to Paris flew into heavy turbulence, and the passengers became panic-stricken and began screaming. Amidst it all, the sixteen-year-old girl sat buckled in her seat, quietly reading her Bible. Later, when she was asked why she wasn’t afraid when everyone around her was trembling in fear, she replied, “My Bible promised me that God would take care of me. So I just prayed and trusted.”