Devotions

Consider a man who is fed up with his sinful habit, yet he continually falls deeper into its clutches. He has promised himself a hundred times he will never do it again, and, for a while, he submerges the temptation and enjoys a measure of freedom. However, it comes back with greater force. 

This man has covered up his sin, lied about it, cheated because of it; and it has brought him great sorrow. He no longer enjoys it, but he can’t quit. He just keeps going back. 

The man knows he will have to stand at the judgment seat one day, and he goes through life, fearing exposure and scandal. His sin has drained him, shackled him, deceived him. It has brought him down to a weariness in which he can hardly exist. He’s at the end of his rope. 

In this sad, weary, worn-out state, the Holy Spirit speaks to the man, “There is a way out for you. There is a place of victory, peace, joy and newness of life. Accept Christ’s call to run to him, and find rest. Go to the cross of Jesus Christ.”

Beloved, when you kneel at the cross, you will not hear an easy, soft word, at least not at first. Even though the cross is the only door to life, you are going to hear about death regarding your every sin. 

At the cross, you face the crisis of your life and that is what is missing in so many churches. The preaching of the cross brings about a crisis of sin and of self-will. It will speak to you with loving but firm words about the consequences of continuing in your sin. It says, “Deny yourself, embrace death at the cross, and follow me!” 

“Then he said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it’” (Luke 9:23, NKJV).

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche didn’t like the hope that Christianity offered. He called it abusive. He observed Christians praying about their problems, seeking God to answer their unmet needs, and he scoffed. He saw people hanging onto hope when he thought they should abandon all hope.

Most people don’t realize how important hope is in their daily struggles. Once hope is abandoned, we start to despair, becoming despondent and angry and wanting to reject God. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12, ESV). 

We wonder if God hears us when we cry, “Lord, will my child ever speak to me again? How long will I have to watch bills pile up as I live paycheck to paycheck? Will my marriage ever be restored? God, is there any hope for me at all?” 

We grow weary of desperately praying to the Lord to express our deepest needs. Sometimes, our prayers are agony, yet every such lament is a cry of hope. We may think that God doesn’t want to hear our anger or despondency, but he actually invites and encourages our cries. God already knows what is in our hearts, so it is important to express those feelings to him.  

The Lord doesn’t cast us out over any of these feelings. On the contrary, his nature is to heal the brokenhearted. He doesn’t turn his back on the wounded or the discouraged but instead repairs our brokenness. 

Like any good father, God loves to give to his children and wants us to ask him for good things. That includes our requests for healing, deliverance, reconciliation and restoration when we suffer. Suppressing hope and longings may provide a temporary taste of stability, but it shuts down any possibility of a genuine breakthrough. Moreover, it does not involve faith. 

Scripture says, “The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble” (Psalm 9:9).The Lord’s presence is with us when we wait and cry, “How long?” Every lament is a marriage of pain and hope. Await your new song amid your suffering, and hold onto hope. God is a stronghold for us through our long times of trouble, and he is also at work changing our hearts. 

^{This devotional has been adapted from Gary Wilkerson’s book, The Altar of Our Hearts: An Expository Devotional on the Psalms.}

If you had a chance to ask God a ‘why?’ question, what would you ask him? Why did this bad thing happen to me? Why did my mom pass away?

How about a personal failure question? That’s what we find in Matthew 17. The disciples failed at something they were empowered to do and did not know why they’d failed. They had tried to heal a young man’s boy and were unable, so the man brought his son to Jesus. “And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was healed instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.’” (Matthew 17:18-20, ESV).

I love  that the disciples asked their question. People don’t do this today when they finish a task. It’s rare to find someone asking for critique to get better. We live in a culture that will blame others but not inspect ourselves. 

Jesus’s answer to the disciples is astounding and multi-layered. The big issue, Jesus said, is faith; then he tells them (and us) what can get mustard seed sized faith kick-started: prayer and fasting. Track with me here. Fasting is not a hunger strike to get God’s attention. Fasting creates space for God. To make a meal during the disciples’ time period was not going to Whole Foods or Costco; it was an all-day affair that involved killing an animal and cooking it. Fasting meant creating space to pray and hear from God. 

When someone fasts, they are giving God more time, and when you get more time with God, trust me, God gets bigger in your life. That’s why I believe that you can fast from many different types of things and not just food — social media, television, certain activities — and create space for prayer. 

The way you get a grain of faith is by praying and fasting. A private ‘why’ not only helped the disciples but also gave us great insight for when we need some movement on things that won’t budge. 

^{After pastoring an inner-city congregation in Detroit for thirty years, Pastor Tim served at Brooklyn Tabernacle in NYC for five years and pastored in Lafayette, Louisiana, for five years. He became Senior Pastor of Times Square Church in May of 2020.}

Many of us have had formative experiences of being rejected, abandoned or hurt by people. These are experiences we feel not just in our thoughts but in the very fabric of who we are and how we view the world. We can say things to ourselves like “Oh, I’m not unloved. I’m not an outcast.” all day long, but that’s not enough to deal with the emotional core in us. We must have something higher to set us free from binding emotional pain or accusations against our worth as God’s children. 

Many times in life, I’ve struggled with a sense of not being enough and saying to myself, “I don’t feel worthy…” What’s set me free from that sense of unworthiness has been setting my heart on a higher power. Here’s what I mean. If I feel like I’m not enough, then I will say, “I want to be a man who pours out God’s love on other people.” 

Remember this scripture: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…” (1 John 4:18, ESV). I think that we could put many things in the place of ‘fear’ in this verse. God’s perfect love casts out a sense of inadequacy. Perfect love casts out loneliness. Perfect love casts out defensiveness. 

How do we come into a place of perfect joy and confidence? I don’t think it can genuinely come from trying to confess out what’s holding us back from those things or looking into a mirror and telling ourselves, “I’m worthy! I’m worthy!” Those actions aren’t powerful enough. 

Constantly returning to what God says about us as his children, however, helps us not lose sight of his great love for us. Contending to be a man of God and live like Jesus gives us something greater to overcome those emotional pains and doubts that would color our decisions. This is why scripture tells us “…to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:23-24). 

Israel refused to believe God's message about how precious they were in his eyes. Instead, they preferred to focus on their condition, their weaknesses and inabilities; and they gave in to their fears.

After a time, God ran out of patience with them, saying 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? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them…” (Numbers 14:11-12, NKJV).

The Lord forgave Israel for Moses’s sake, but they were not permitted to enter into the Promised Land. Instead, they were assigned a wilderness existence, a life given over to constant fear and destructive doubts. They were forgiven but miserable! They had lost the hope, rest and peace that come from accepting and believing how special God's children are to him.

Beloved, the only time God's patience runs out with us is when we refuse again and again to accept how much he loves us and wants to see us through our battles. Indeed, many Christians today have been turned back into a wilderness of their own making. They have no joy, no victory. To look at them, you'd think God had forsaken them years ago when actually he has just turned them over to their own complaining and murmuring.

Thank God, Joshua and Caleb entered into the Promised Land, and what joy they had! God blessed them incredibly, and they stood as green trees in his house until their dying days. They were men of power and vision because they knew they were precious to God.

You also are precious to the Lord, in spite of all your problems and failures. No matter what your trials or struggles, you can be a green tree in God's house, just as Joshua and Caleb were. Simply stand on what scripture promises: “He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me” (Psalms 18:19). That is the foundation of true faith.