Devotions

One time, a pastor friend of mine traveled up to Wyoming to go snowmobiling with two of his friends. They went back-country and were having a grand old time until they started to realize that all their landmarks were out of sight. They had no GPS signal and no compass.

Now this wasn’t the kind of lost where you just keep wandering until you find a road one or two hours later. This was the kind of lost where you spend the night huddled by a snowmobile with no gas left. This was a they’re-sending-in-helicopters-to-save-you kind of lost.

The very definition of becoming truly lost is not knowing the way back. At that point, you need a rescue party. Sometimes we forget that when we start talking about sin, and this isn’t just talking about before we were saved, when we were still dead in our sins, as the Bible puts it. This is the flesh that we all struggle against. This is the creeping coldness in our hearts, the drift that we experience in life. 

Sometimes when we sin, we fall in the Old Covenant mentality, thinking that God is there to smite us for our faltering and that we have make a payment of our own for our sins. This mentality is rooted in how we have to observe the law in order to earn our way back into the Lord’s good graces. This brings up fear. “Oh no, I’ve stumbled, so now it’ll be curses and rebukes for me. God’s going to put me on the sidelines for a while now.”

This contradicts what the apostle John wrote, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

We need a Savior, and we never stop needing him.

Thank God that the Holy Spirit’s fire produces light — something we desperately need in a world full of difficult decisions and hidden dangers. The Spirit illuminates our lives and our choices so that we can see the path ahead and know what to avoid. Yet too often we don’t seek the Holy Spirit’s direction when making vital decisions.

The Holy Spirit is God’s only agent on earth. He was sent here to guide us. Read the book of Acts and you will see that a computer-mapping program didn’t govern Paul’s trips. The illumination of the Holy Spirit guided his path. In fact, the Spirit forbade Paul from going to some places — not because they didn’t need to hear the gospel but because God had another plan. And the apostle waited until the Spirit’s direction could guide him into it.

To the believers in Thessalonica, Paul wrote, “Do not put out the Spirit’s fire” (1 Thessalonians 5:19). Amazingly, although the Holy Spirit is fully God, it is entirely possible for believers to hinder his work and quench his sacred fire. Some people falsely believe that whatever God wants to do he will do. Consider Jesus’ invitation to his own church in Laodicea: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20).

If he is Christ, and he wants in, why doesn’t he just come in? Why does he bother knocking and asking? That is the mystery of God’s sovereignty and our free will. We must respond to him or we will miss out on his planned blessing.

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:6-7). Paul is telling Timothy to stir up the embers, to keep the fire going. We need to do the same.

We need the fire of the Holy Spirit changing our lives; we need it spreading throughout our towns and cities, spreading so Christ can be glorified. May that be your prayer today. Send the fire, God. Burn, change, renovate, illuminate — as we wait in Christ’s name.  

^{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.}

God has given us an ironclad promise for life on this earth. He says that when our enemy attempts to walk over us, “Therefore My people shall know My name; therefore they shall know in that day that I am He who speaks: ‘Behold, it is I’” (Isaiah 52:6). In other words, God says, “When you’re in your darkest trial, I will come and speak a word to you. You’ll hear me say, ‘It is I, Jesus, your Savior. Don’t be afraid.’”

In Matthew 14, the disciples were on a boat in an awful storm, being tossed about by torrents of wind and waves. Suddenly, the men saw Jesus walking toward them on the water. Scripture says, “And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out for fear” (Matthew 14:26). What did Jesus do in that fearful moment? “But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid’” (14:27).

I’ve wondered why Jesus used these particular words, “Be of good cheer.” Why would he say this to men who thought they were about to die?

The word cheer means “to be relieved, happy, released from fear.” And here, in the disciples’ time of distress, Jesus tied the word to his identity. Remember, these men knew him personally. And he expected them to act on his word by faith. He was saying, “The Father has promised I’ll come to you in your storm. It is written, “Therefore they shall know in that day that I am He who speaks: ‘Behold, it is I’” (Isaiah 52:6). Likewise, our Savior expects the same faith reaction from us, in our distressing times.

The Apostle Peter tells us, “For if God…did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah…bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes…making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot…then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations” (2 Peter 2:4-9).

Despite the severity of these examples, God is sending a clear message of comfort to his people, as if to say: “I have just given you two of the greatest examples of my compassion. If, in the midst of a world-engulfing flood, I can deliver one righteous man and his family out of the havoc…then can I not deliver you also? Can I not provide a miraculous way of escape?

The lesson here for the righteous is this: God will do whatever it takes to deliver his people out of fiery trials and temptations. Think about it: It took the opening of the Red Sea to deliver Israel out of the clutches of its enemy. It took water out of a rock to save those same Israelites from their wilderness trial. It took miracle bread, angels’ food literally sent from heaven, to spare them from hunger. And it took an ark to save Noah from the flood, and “angel escorts” to deliver Lot from fiery destruction. The clear point is that God knows how to deliver his people, and he will go to any extreme to accomplish it, no matter what their circumstance.

Peter’s phrase “God knows how to deliver” means simply, “He has already made plans.” The wonderful truth is that God already has plans for our deliverance even before we cry out to him. And he doesn’t sit on those plans; he only awaits our cry for help. We may be entangled in the struggle of a lifetime, wondering how God will deliver us, yet he is ready all at times to put his plan into action.

We see this illustrated in Jeremiah 29, when Israel was in captivity to Babylon. Here was perhaps the greatest trial God’s people had ever experienced, yet the Lord promised them: “After seventy years, I will visit you and perform my Word to you.”

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). The last phrase literally means “to give you what you long for.” God wants us to keep praying so we’ll be ready for his deliverance.

In 1958, I was brokenhearted over a news story about seven teenage boys who stood trial for murdering a crippled boy. The Holy Spirit stirred in me so strongly that I felt led to go to the New York courthouse where the trial was taking place, and I entered the courtroom convinced the Spirit had prompted me to try to talk to those youngsters.

As the day’s session came to a close, however, a realization began to dawn on me. I thought, “Those boys are going to be led out that side door in chains, and I will never see them again.” So I got up and made my way down the aisle toward the judge’s bench, where I asked to be allowed to talk with the boys before they returned to their cells.

In an instant, policemen pounced on me, and I was unceremoniously escorted from the courtroom. Flashbulbs popped all around me, and I was besieged with questions from reporters who were covering the trial. I could only stand there speechless, utterly dumbfounded, in a humiliating, embarrassing situation. I thought, “What will my church back home think? People are going to see me as crazy. I’ve been so naïve.”

God heard the cry of this poor man that day, and he has honored my silent cry ever since. You see, from that very pitiful scene in the courthouse, the Teen Challenge ministry was birthed, with a reach today that extends worldwide. And I happily share in David’s humble testimony from Psalm 34: “My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; the humble shall hear of it and be glad” (Psalm 34:2).

David is saying here, in essence, “I have something to tell all of God’s humble people on earth, now and in ages to come. As long as this world exists, the Lord will deliver everyone who calls out to him and trusts in him. In his incredible mercy and love, he delivered me, even though I made a very foolish move.”

All you need to know is that our blessed Lord hears every sincere cry, loud or unspoken, and he responds. Even if you acted foolishly or had a terrible failure of faith, you only need to get back to calling on your Deliverer. He is faithful to hear your cry and to act.