Devotions

God’s favor follows you! This is not just a phrase to encourage you, it’s a fact based on passage after passage of Scripture. Yet very few in the church live as if this is true.

You may have marital struggles and wonder if the tension with your spouse will ever turn around. Or you may suffer from depression and wonder if it will ever lift so that you can feel the favor of God again. Perhaps you have a prodigal child and wonder if he will ever return to faith. Or maybe you have a sibling who is an addict and wonder if she will ever be free from her bondage after years of indulging her habit.

I can guarantee you no Christian ever pictured himself being in seasons like these. No one ever imagined enduring hardships that outweigh the comfort they feel from God. Yet Peter tells us we are not to think that such trials are unusual: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

If you are in the midst of an excruciating season of life, I have a sure word for you: Hold on! The Lord is not finished with you. You may think you are alone in your predicament, but all along God has been storing up blessings for you that you never dreamed of. As Peter states, his glory is going to be revealed through your trial.

It is important that we try to understand Satan and his ways as we follow our Lord’s leading. We need to know how the enemy tries to thwart God’s efforts among us. 

Satan’s hatred toward followers of Christ is very real. He despises everything God stands for, and he’ll do all he can to keep people away from the truth. I have witnessed his anger since I was a small child in Puerto Rico. My parents were known throughout the region for their practice of the occult, so I grew up seeing the powerful hold Satan has on those who are under his influence. When my mother became a Christian, it was a fatal blow to the work Satan had built within my family. She was once one of his greatest allies, and now she had become his fierce enemy.

After my mother had given her life to Jesus, my wife, Gloria, and I were visiting at her home. Every night while we were there, at exactly three o’clock in the morning, Gloria would be awakened by a frightening sound outside her window. When she told us about it, my mother laughed and said, “Don’t let that bother you. Ever since I became a Christian the demons have been angry with me. Tell them to shut up, then go back to sleep.”

Gloria wasn’t sure what to think of her advice since she hadn’t grown up seeing the things my family had experienced. But that’s how I’ve always tried to deal with Satan and his wily demons. In spite of their attacks, as frightening as they may seem, the best approach is to simply focus on the person and power of Jesus. All Satan is trying to do is create a diversion in our lives to keep us from telling people about Jesus.

The apostle Paul reminded us that Jesus “disarmed the powers and authorities” and “made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:15). Through this act, Jesus gave each of his followers the ability to defuse evil whenever it arises in our presence.

Nicky Cruz, internationally known evangelist and prolific author, turned to Jesus Christ from a life of violence and crime after meeting David Wilkerson in New York City in 1958. The story of his dramatic conversion was told first in The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson and then later in his own best-selling book Run, Baby, Run.

Tempting the Lord begins when God allows a crisis in our lives to intensify. Why does he do this? What is he after? Our Lord allows this to happen so he can get at the last roots of our unbelief! His Spirit goes into every chamber of our hearts, searching out the most damnable things — pride, self-sufficiency and all else that hinders his fullness in us.

In short, this is what it means to tempt God. It happens when his chosen, blessed ones are placed in the fires of testing and their crisis keeps growing more intense until fear grips their hearts and they cry out, “Lord, where are you? Where is my deliverance? Are you with me or not?”

John the Baptist faced the kind of trial that can lead to tempting God. As he sat in prison, he must have wondered where God was in his situation. Word had reached him of all the wonderful things Jesus was doing — healing people, performing miracles, drawing crowds who had once flocked to John. And now, here he sat alone, awaiting execution.

John had known he had to decrease so Christ could increase, but now the thought crossed his mind, “Decrease, yes. But death? Why do I have to die if Jesus is truly God? Lord, this is all too much to endure.”

The last words Jesus sent to John were incredibly significant: “Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” (Matthew 11:6). Christ was telling this godly servant, “Don’t be offended at me, John. God has a plan in all this and he is worthy to be trusted. If he wanted me to come and release you, you know I would be there in a moment. Be assured that whatever comes of this will be to his glory and it will mean eternal glory for you!”

John did endure. And when he was finally beheaded by Herod, he went home to glory full of faith and honor.

Throughout history, people have believed they could handle any calamity well enough without faith in God. The prophet Isaiah wrote that such scoffers boast, “When the overflowing scourge passes through, it will not come to us” (Isaiah 28:15). Isaiah calls these people spiritually blind (see Isaiah 26:11); in other words, they will not attribute any calamity to God’s work. Instead, they will act as if God is not in heaven at all.

Many scoffers in America think their wealth will save them from disaster but God says in no uncertain terms that when his divine shaking begins, the ungodly rich will suddenly see their possessions as worthless (see Isaiah 2:20-21). Others say, “Prophets of doom have been saying the same things for centuries but the world hasn’t ended yet. We just need to enjoy life while we can.”

It is true that God’s prophets have sounded warnings in every generation but history proves that God has always sent his judgments in due time. John Owen, the great Puritan preacher, gave a strong warning to his congregation on April 9, 1680, and while skeptics mocked, God did, in fact, send awful judgments on that society. John Owen lived to weep over a flaming catastrophe that engulfed London and destroyed that great city. In fact, he saw the fulfillment of every one of his powerful prophecies — wars, destruction, shattered economies, nationwide depression, diseases that wiped out multitudes of careless, unconcerned people.

Beloved, we are living in just such a time as Owen’s. And in times like these, there is only one response: “The just shall live by faith!” Owen admonished his people with tears to prepare an ark of safety for themselves and their families. “That ark is Jesus Christ — the only place of safety.” 

We may see danger on all sides, but we have a fiery guard of angels surrounding us and a God who is under oath to carry us through any disaster we may face. Put your faith in Jesus and you can face the coming storm with quiet confidence and peace of mind. He is your good, loving shepherd and he is faithful to see you through!

The conditions in the world today are causing fear to mount. We are witnessing the words of Jesus come to pass: “On the earth distress of nations, with perplexity … men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Luke 21:25-26). Christ is warning us, “Without hope in me, multitudes of people are literally going to die of fright.”

For Jesus’ followers, however, those who trust in God’s promises to preserve his children, there is glorious freedom from all fear. In fact, all who come under the lordship of Christ never need fear again if they will lay hold of the following secret: True freedom from fear consists of totally resigning one’s life into the hands of the Lord.

Resigning ourselves into God’s care is an act of faith. It means putting ourselves completely under his power, wisdom and mercy, led and preserved according to his will alone. If we do this, the God of the universe promises to be totally responsible for us — to feed, clothe and shelter us, and to guard our hearts from all evil.

Jesus provided the ultimate example of this kind of holy resignation when he went to the cross. Just before he gave up his spirit, he cried aloud, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). Christ placed the keeping of both his life and his eternal future into the custody of the Father. And, in so doing, he placed the souls of every one of his sheep into the Father’s hands. 

You may wonder, “But didn’t Jesus say he had the power both to lay down his life and to take it up again?” (see John 10:18). Since he had the power to “take up his life again,” why did he resign it into God’s hands to be preserved? The answer is simple: Jesus did this to set an example of trust for all his sheep to follow.