Devotions

I believe the prodigal son in Luke 15:11-32 came home because of his history with his father. This young man knew his father’s character, and he must have received great love from him. Why would he return to a man who might have been angry and vengeful, who might have beat him and made him pay back every cent he’d squandered?

The prodigal surely knew that he wouldn’t be condemned for his sins. He probably thought, “I know my father loves me. He won’t throw my sin in my face. He’ll take me back.” When you have that kind of history, you can always go back home.

Now, the young man was intent on offering a heartfelt confession to his dad because he rehearsed it all the way home. When he faced his father, though, he didn’t even get a chance to fully confess. “When he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20, NKJV). The father was so happy his son was back that he covered him with kisses, essentially saying, “I love you, son. Come home and be restored.”

The father did all of this before his son could complete his confession. The young man was able to blurt out the beginning of his speech, but his father didn’t wait for him to finish. To him, the young man’s sin had already been settled.

Notice how the prodigal’s father “prevented” him from punishing himself or lowering himself with the blessing of goodness. The father’s response was to order his servants, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:22-24). Sin wasn’t the issue to this father. The only issue on his mind was love. He wanted his boy to know he was accepted before he could even utter a confession.

That is the point God wants to make to us all. “Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4). God’s love welcomes us home.

I often think of Abraham’s example as he prayed over the wicked city of Sodom. The Lord answered him, saying, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes” (Genesis 18:26, NKJV).

When Abraham heard this, he began to negotiate with the Lord. “Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five?” (Genesis 18:28). Abraham whittled the number down until he finally asked what God would do if there were only ten upright people who sought him. Would he spare the city? God answered Abraham, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten” (Genesis 18:32).

This passage tells us something about the Lord. He is willing to save entire societies if he can find even a small band of righteous people who seek his face for the sake of their nation.

God goes even further on this issue than he did with Abraham. In Ezekiel, God speaks of searching for one praying believer who will stand in the gap. “I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one” (Ezekiel 22:30).

At the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy, Israel was polluted spiritually. The prophets were profane, violating God’s law left and right. The people were oppressed, vexed on all sides, full of lust, robbing one another. Not one person among them cried out to the Lord. Nobody stood in the gap to intercede. God would have saved the entire nation for the sake of just one intercessor.

When Paul writes of his journeys, he mentions not only Timothy and Titus as his helpers but also Lydia and the other precious women who aided him. These were all devoted servants whose assistance helped touch entire nations with the gospel. We are to assist those who have given themselves to go to the nations. If you cannot be a missionary, you can be part of the support body of intercessors.

You can go “in the Spirit” to any nation on earth. You can touch an unreached people while on your knees. Indeed, your secret closet may become the headquarters for a movement of God’s Spirit over an entire nation.

I’ve been in 60 different nations around the world, and many of those countries are places where you will suffer just for being a Christian.

For instance, in Turkey or Jordan, kids from Christian homes are treated like outcasts at school. They’re called all sorts of names. They’re given poor grades. Their reports are diminished simply because they call on the name of Christ. There’s tremendous persecution. In most of the world, persecution for being a Christian is the norm. Right now, somebody is dying for their faith in some part of the world. In the U.S., on the other hand, we’ve had religious safety and freedom.

I was talking to a pastor — he’s actually the head of a denomination in Jordan — and I mentioned, “How hard it must be for you and your two boys who have grown up in these Muslim centers. With the persecution you’ve personally received and your children have received, it must be so hard for you to stand up and be a Christian in a culture like this.”

He responded, “It’s easy to stand up in a culture like this. Where it’s hard is in America. I would rather my children know that it’s a fight living for Christ. I would rather my children grow up in an Islamic state like this than in America where they would be bombarded by secular agendas to pull us away from God and Jesus Christ.”

Church, we must not allow ourselves to be seduced away from God by the apparent ease of being a Christian in our culture. The greatest tragedy of all will be when the church stops shining its light, when it stops seeing Jesus as high and lifted up, when it stops exalting God as holy, pure, true, righteous and just.

As scripture exhorts us, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:10-12, ESV).

Our greatest hope is truly being a faithful church to the Word of God, true to his Word and consistently bringing honest, full revelations about God.

Everyone knows Samson in the Book of Judges for his feats of strength, but I’ve noticed some things about Samson that we tend to overlook.

His whole life from womb to tomb was to be committed to Christ, to God and his service. He was not to cut his hair; he was not to drink anything alcoholic; he was not to touch any dead bodies. These were signs of a separateness, a holiness. Not only was he given a call, but Judges 13:5 gives us a peek into the purpose of his life.

“For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5, ESV).

Samson would grow up and begin delivering God’s people out of the hands of their enemies. What a wonderful promise! He was given a call and commission directly from God, and I think that’s very important.

So many of us today think, “I’m just a normal person with no special skills or abilities. I have to wonder what my purpose in life is.” Many people go through life without realizing that, in the scriptures, everyone whom God has set apart for himself and destined for salvation is born with a call of God on their lives.

Paul writes, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). We are meant to be doing the work that God has put us on earth to do, and the importance of this is emphasized in another of Paul’s letters. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

You have a holy calling. Do you know what that is?

If your answer is “No, I don’t”, I strongly encourage you to ask the Lord to show it to you. We all have a similar call and commission as Samson. It doesn’t matter what your age, gender, income, education level or location is. All of us have been commissioned to save lives out of the hands of the enemy. Our lives are not to be lived for ourselves!

As Jesus looked out to the end of the age, he pointed out a terrible problem. “He said to his disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.’” (Matthew 9:37, NKJV).

As I read these words, I wonder, “What’s the solution? How can more laborers be raised up to go the nations?” Jesus gave the answer in the very next verse: “’Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.’” (Matthew 9:38). You may think, “Doors are closing all over the world.” That may be true, but it doesn’t matter how closed some nations may look to our eyes. If God can tear down the Iron Curtain in Europe and the Bamboo Curtain in Asia, nothing can stop him from working wherever he will.

The apostle Paul was sent forth as a missionary through the power of prayer. It happened in Antioch where leaders of the church were praying over the harvest (see Acts 13:1-5). Paul’s first missionary journey came out of a prayer meeting. It was the direct result of godly men obeying Jesus’ words to pray for God to send laborers into the harvest. 

In the 1980’s, when our ministry was headquartered in Texas, I spent a year praying that God would send someone to New York City to raise up a church in Times Square. I pledged to help whomever God chose, to raise money, to hold meetings, to build up support. While I was praying for God to send a laborer into this specific harvest, the Lord put the burden on me, and Times Square Church was the result. 

The same is true today. We are to be about the work of praying for the harvest. While we’re praying, the Holy Spirit is searching the earth, putting an urgency in the hearts of those who desire to be used by the Lord. He’s touching people everywhere, setting them apart for his service. 

While we’re asking God to send forth laborers, the Holy Spirit is stirring someone somewhere, and it doesn’t matter where it takes place. The powerful truth is that our prayers are being used to send laborers into the harvest.