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Due to the amount of administrative work and translation formatting, we are cutting back on the number of blogs to once a week. They will be published every Friday evening so they can be viewed over the weekend and the coming week.
Your prayers and support are needed even more than before. God is working in ways we have not seen before. Our dependance on Him is also felt more than ever. Thank you for prayerful understanding. “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20–21).
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As a continuation of our theme yesterday on the role of “mothers,” I want to narrow our focus to widows. There are several widows that we know who devote time each day to prayer and specifically pray for this ministry. There is no doubt they are heard by the Father who answers in unmistakable ways. One of these dear ladies sends a small gift every month with a note to encourage us. We treasure her faithfulness to the Lord and us!
This reminds me of how Paul speaks of these saints. “She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day” (1 Timothy 5:5). We sense her devotion to the Lord is very real and has been very special to us in many ways. You may be a widow or widower, or an older person who is home bound. Because of your circumstances, you are not able to serve in your local church or community. This should not stop you from praying or writing a short note to encourage someone. Remember how the Lord valued a “poor widow” in Luke? “Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on”” (Luke 21:1–4). The Lord’s esteem is far better than man’s! There are so many good things that could be said about mothers, but I am certain that some feature or quality would be overlooked. The reason for this is that God has equipped each mother with unique qualities that He designed for her specific place and time in history.
Paul never wrote a separate letter to Berea, thouugh they were very close to Thessalonica. His initial visit to both places were together in Acts 17:1-15. Berea would have known how Paul and Silas were mistreated in Thessalonica, and in that sense shared similar experiences. There is not a significant difference in what Paul and Luke said about them. Thessalonian believers received “the word in much affliction, with joy in the Holy Spirit.” Then “the word of the Lord sounded forth from [them] in Macedonia and Achaia” (Thessalonians 1:6, 8). “These Jews (Bereans) were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Their impact had enormous results in the region. So it is with the young students in the picture (below). We continue to pray for God to raise up the generations behind us who are “noble, with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily” to make their faith stand on the Word of God. This group has finished God’s Plan for His Disciples (GPHD) and are going on to study God’s Plan for His Church (GPHC) Pray for them to be well established in the truth. While praying for them, pray that you and those around you grow in the same desire.  I must confess that as I listen to some prayers, many of them were telling God many details that He already knows. It is not my desire to judge how others pray; I am just concerned about my own prayers. Do they sound as if God needs information? Knowing God’s heart requires that I listen to Him first!
I do not need to give God more information He already knows, I need to know His heart better. This struggle in my heart brought me to a quote by E. Stanley Jones. “Prayer is surrender – surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will. If I throw out a boat anchor from a boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.” I invite you to think about the question in my title for this blog. Though our nation has observed this day for 75 years, have we achieved what God wants for the Church and His people? It is right that we seek the Lord, but what does God want us to seek Him for? If we His people are seeking God for what increases His glory and the spread of the gospel, our prayers will be aligned with His heart.
“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen as his heritage!” (Psalm 33:12; 144:15). This was Israel, not America. Dependence on God is always a right thing to do. My concern is that we are asking Him for what is on His heart. I have a plaque in my office that says, “God, burden my heart for what burdens Yours.” We may find that His agenda in prayer is different than ours. Are you ready to have your prayer agenda changed by Him as you get to know His hearts? “Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God” (Psalm 146:5). Make the Lord your God the only source of help and only hope! “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). How important is unity among the members of the Church universal and the local church? This subject was very much on the mind of Jesus right before His death. John gives us Jesus’ prayer at the end of His private meeting with them. Keep in mind the context: Judas had left and Jesus spent several hours giving the eleven disciples His final instructions regarding the coming of the Holy Spirit and His departure. Then Jesus prays!
Four times in John 17 Jesus prays that we “may be one even as we are one” (11, 21-23). If this request carried that much weight with Jesus, it should not be hard for us to realize that we must be serious about unity among ourselves in the Church! In asking the Father for this, it should speak to us that the Father is the ultimate source of unity. Therefore, going to Him and asking for His help in producing this in the Church must be our first thought. I am afraid the Church has spent far too much time and effort seeking to develop ‘man-made’ unity instead of going to the source of unity. Paul also gives us the source when he says, be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3). True unity in the Church was never created by man. The Spirit is the Author! Go to Him! When was the last time you prayed for this kind of unity for your church? This is a good time to start. The first step is to humble yourself and realize that your idea of unity is most likely not His. Let Him reshape your heart and mind with His will, purpose, and plan. There are some critical principles for us to unpack in these verses (John 7:1-9). The Lord was true to His Father’s agenda; “My time has not yet come” (6, 8). There is no evidence of impatience with Jesus, though He points out that the disciples are always wanting to push the calendar ahead of God’s timing. I have found this very challenging to myself. We get in our heads that certain things must happen at a certain time, day, year, etc. Does my Father have a better plan? I will never know until I wait for Him to work it out.
This conversation Jesus has with the disciples reveals another problem; popularity. They felt that if Jesus “showed Himself to the world” (4), His brothers would believe He was the Christ. That was a good desire but not God’s way. If Jesus got universal recognition, would that be His objective. NO!! Jesus said that a time was coming “when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself” (John 12:32). This was not a time for popularity but salvation of the world through His being crucified for the sins of the world. Jesus speaks to this truth in 3:17, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” The attitude of Jesus toward His place and timing in the world should mold our thinking so our place here has the divine perspective. Jesus’ whole life was lived for the glory of the Father. Is that the way we live ours? Yesterday we looked at “perseverance” which has the meaning of “devoting yourself to something with intense effort.” “Endurance” has a slightly different meaning of “having the capacity of bearing up under difficult circumstances.”
When we come to faith in the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we may suddenly realize that we are in a world that hates the One we have come to love. Many find out very soon that following Jesus as a disciple will mean persecution, suffering and rejection because of His name and your identification with Him and His truth. As Paul describes our salvation in Jesus, he also explains a supernatural ability in every believer to stand firm in these conditions. “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3–5). All this is achieved by faith that gave us access into the grace described in verse 3 to 5. If you are suffering the reproach of Christ because of your commitment to Him, receive this grace which is the spiritual strength to endure in such circumstances. The suffering may come from unbelieving family members, a godless school teacher or employer, an unfair neighbor, or even a government that forces unbiblical practices. Let this post help you endure for the long journey by the grace we have in Christ. How can we develop the spiritual, mental, and physical ability to remain faithful in any commitment to the Lord and His work? First, we must grow in our love for GOD’S WORD. Second, we must recognize the presence, power, and authority IN US of the Holy Spirit. Without these we will try to persevere in our own strength.
Jesus was fully dependent on the Father. “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 5:30). This alone was the secret of Jesus persevering under the worst suffering. There was another element to His endurance. “In these days He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night He continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). When Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, He took the eleven disciples with Him and asked them to “watch with Me” (Matthew 26:38). Three times Jesus “came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And He said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour?” (26:40). Paul makes a strong case for prayer as part of the Christians armor, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18). What are you doing to persevere? |
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