Devotions

People who are spiritual leaders can look and act in very different ways because God made his people with enormous variety — we’re called the body of Christ for a good reason — but they will all share certain qualities. All spiritual leaders also have the same starting point, and this is key because the starting point is where those qualities are planted.

Let’s start with a familiar story. It’s the beginning of Paul’s journey with Christ. “Now as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him. And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’” (Acts 9:3-6, ESV).

Some people have an experience with Jesus, and others have an encounter with Christ. What’s the difference? People who experience Jesus are the ones who take a selfie with the Savior. People who encounter Jesus fall to their knees, and their lives are never the same afterward. Paul’s response to Christ is the essence of an encounter. He didn’t ask Jesus, “What’s my calling? How do I achieve this dream I have? What’s my next step?”

Paul, and every spiritual leader throughout history, asks, “Who are you, Lord?”

Brothers and sisters, we have to grasp the significance of this. We must capture this in our hearts. How often do we go to the Lord and pray, “Show me what it is that you want me to do. Help me be obedient to my calling.” Nothing wrong with those prayers. Jesus promised Paul that he would tell him what he was meant to do. We jump to that step too quickly, though. We need to start with “Who are you, Lord?” God’s presence will change us and give us the strength to do things that we could never do on our own.

Scripture says of Israel, “Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:41 NKJV). Israel turned away from God in unbelief. Likewise, I believe we limit God today with our doubts and unbelief.

We trust God in most areas of our lives, but our faith always has boundaries and limits. We all have at least one small area that we block off where we don’t really believe God will take care of us.

For example, many people will pray for the healing of a well-known person who is a perfect stranger to them. But often, when it comes to healing for their own loved one, they limit God. I limit God most in the area of healing. I have prayed for physical healing for many, and I have seen God perform many miracles. When it comes to my own body, though, I limit God. I am afraid to let him be God to me. I douse myself with medicine or run to a doctor before I ever pray for myself. I’m not saying it’s wrong to go to the doctor, but sometimes I fit the description of those who “did not seek the Lord, but the physicians” (see 2 Chronicles 16:12).

Do you pray for God to bring down walls of oppression in other countries, but when it comes to the salvation of your own family you don’t have an ounce of faith? You think, “God must not want to do this. He doesn’t seem to be hearing me.”

If this is true, you are not seeing him as God. You are ignorant of his ways. God desires to “do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20).

Israel asked constantly, “Can God…? Sure, he made a way for us through the Red Sea, but can he give bread?” God spread a table for them in the wilderness. “But can he give us water?” He gave them water from a rock. “But can he give meat?” He gave them meat from the sky. “But can he deliver us from our enemies?” Time after time, God provided in every area, yet they spent forty years saying, “Can God…? Can God…?”

Beloved, we ought to be saying, “God can! God can!” God can and will do all that we ask and believe him to do.

Jesus said, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:9 NKJV). We must see Jesus not as man teaches, but as the Spirit reveals him to us, as God wants us to know and see him! We are to get God’s vision and testimony of Christ, then we will know God as he desires to be known!

Here is how I believe God wants us to see his Son: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17).

Jesus was a gift! God wrapped all his resources up in Jesus. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Christ is God’s good and perfect gift to us, come down from the Father. Do you see Jesus as God’s perfect gift to you? Do you see him as all you need to live joyfully, victoriously, righteously, full of peace and rest?

Ages ago, before you were created, God saw what your hurts and needs would be. He knew ahead of time what you would need to solve all your problems. He did not wrap up his answers and send them to you as a rule book or as an army of “answer men.” No, he gave us all one solution to all our crises and needs: one man, one Way, one answer to everything we need in Jesus Christ.

God says to you, “I don’t want you to live for tomorrow. You’ll only look back and see that today could have been your very best time. Jesus can’t be any better or stronger to you than he is right now. Why won’t you let me be God to you today?”

The glory of God and the worthiness of his Son are involved in his dealings with us. Hence everything that could possibly stand in the way of our eternal blessedness has been disposed of in such a manner as to secure the divine glory and furnish a triumphant answer to every plea of the enemy.

Is it a question of trespass? He has forgiven us all trespasses.

Is it a question of sin? He has condemned sin at the cross and thus put it away.

Is it a question of guilt? It is cancelled by the blood of the cross.

Is it a question of death? He has taken away its sting and actually made it part of our property.

Is it a question of Satan? He has destroyed him by annulling all his power.

Is it a question of the world? He has delivered us from it and snapped every link which connected us with it.

Thus, beloved Christian reader, it stands with us if we are to be taught by scripture, if we are to take God at his word, if we are to believe what he says. If it be not thus, we are in our sins, under the power of sin, in the grasp of Satan, obnoxious to death, part and parcel of an evil, Christless, godless world and exposed to the unmitigated wrath of God, the vengeance of eternal fire.

Oh, that the blessed Spirit may open the eyes of God’s people and give them to see their proper place. May they see their full and eternal deliverance in association with Christ who died for them, and in whom they have died, and thus passed out of the power of all their enemies!

Excerpt from the writings of J.B. Stoney used in David Wilkerson’s personal devotions.

For anyone to enjoy settled peace, he must cease from self and harken to God’s Word and rest without a single question on its pure, precious and everlasting record. God’s Word never changes. I change; my frame, my feelings, my experience, my circumstances change continually, but God’s Word is the same yesterday and today and forever.

It is a grand and essential point for the soul to apprehend that Christ is the only definition of the believer’s place before God. This gives immense power, liberty and blessing. “Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17 NKJV). This is something perfectly wonderful!

Let us ponder it; let us think of a poor wretched, guilty slave of sin, a bondslave of Satan, a votary of the world, exposed to an eternal hell. Such an one is taken up by sovereign grace and delivered completely from the grasp of Satan. He is freed from  the dominion of sin, the power of this present evil. He is pardoned, washed, justified, brought nigh to God, accepted in Christ and perfectly and forever identified with him so that the Holy Ghost can say, “As Christ is, so is he in this world!”

All this seems too good to be true. Most assuredly, it is too good for us to get, but blessed be the God of all grace and blessed be the Christ of God, it is not too good for him to give. God gives like himself. He will be God in spite of our unworthiness and Satan’s opposition. He will act in a way worthy of himself and worthy of the Son of his love.

Excerpt from the writings of J.B. Stoney used in David Wilkerson’s personal devotions.