Friday Devotional: Memory

I often forget how helpful memory is. Simply spending a day with an Alzheimer’s patient will probably cause me to immediately thank God for the provision of memory. This has been on my mind a lot lately as I look back over the last year. Though there are new surroundings, I have seen God take me through very similar circumstances of trusting and waiting on his timing. Memory affords us many blessings. But I can think of three particular blessings that have helped me this year.

Without memory we wouldn’t be able to see how far we have come. We wouldn’t be able to see the work that God has promised to faithfully complete in us (Phil. 1:6). It enables us to see progress in a poor attitude towards a co-worker. Memory is what gives us grace to continue serving in a hard ministry position because of the small difference we see in the life of the person we are ministering to. God does not have to give us these insights into our spiritual state. But He graciously opens our eyes to see the softened heart towards an enemy, or the increased trust in His all-encompassing provision for each and every circumstance.

Without memory we would easily forget our great sinfulness and our need for the great Savior. The Israelites forgot God on a regular basis, and we are no better. David says in Psalm 51, “my sin is ever before me.” Memory forces our transgressions to be ever present in our minds. But memory also forces us to look to the One who was pierced for our transgressions. It is when we feel the most sinful that we must cry out to God for the righteousness of Christ on our behalf. If we didn’t have memory we would be so prone to think of ourselves as good. We do so even without amnesia. But it is in the mercy of God that He allows me to see my sin, but then immediately see my great Savior.

Without memory we would lose hope when all seems lost. Often what gets me through the winter is the memory of summer. It is the trust that warmth and sun will soon come to melt away the cold. Even in spiritual darkness it is helpful for me to look back and remember, even faintly, a time when I loved Him unashamedly, when I delighted in His Word. Sometimes the darkness lasts for months, sometimes hours and sometimes just for my morning devotions. But it is because I remember the past that I am able to pray for the present. I know His promises, and I have seen them manifested in my life, therefore I am able to rest in the memory and hope for the future. In the winter, I can trust that the summer sun will come because I remember what it looked like, what the warmth felt like on my skin, and how it lighted my paths and made me see more clearly. Darkness only lasts for a night, though some seasons have more night than others. Just like the summer sun sustains us through the winter, so the memory of the Son’s presence and hope in His promises sustain us in the dark, long winter of despair.

Memory is a mercy from our Father. He does not desire for us to be left to ourselves and so he gives us glimmers of hope. Memory can serve as one of those glimmers. Even when He feels far away we can trust that He will never leave us. So next time I am overcome with my sinfulness, or discouraged over my feelings towards spiritual things, or when intense trials come and I feel that there is no hope. I pray that I can look back on the memories of a fonder time and know that each season is appointed its time and must come to an end.

Friday Devotional: Our Condition

“To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen; behold the Word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.”—Jeremiah 6:10

Left to ourselves this is our predicament. At one point in our lives, if not now, we were (or still are) unable to listen to the Word of the Lord. It sounded like nonsense, or even the same as the heresy we heard last week at a different church service. We were perishing. We were lost. And the hope of Christ sounded like complete and utter foolishness to us. Now that we are found, we all probably know someone who is still floating in a sea of darkness, separated from God.

This verse should first make us grateful, grateful that we understand it, and the implications of it. But also it should make us grieved. There are many who are still uncircumcised, some of them live under the same roof as us.

It is a reminder that God is the one who circumcises and opens ears. Jeremiah is where God tells us that he will give his people a new heart and make a new covenant with them. We cannot make ourselves hear what we do not even have an ear for. Apart from sovereign grace, the hardness of our own hearts keeps us from taking pleasure in, and even hearing God’s voice.

We must not give up on praying for the lost friends and family who are in our lives. Without the Holy Spirit, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn. The very thing that gives us life and spiritual food is foul to them. God is the only one who can turn the scorn into delight, and give them new eyes.

It’s very easy for me to get angry with people who scorn Christ. I get frustrated with their inability to recognize that which seems so clear to me. But then I am quickly reminded that God put people in my life, (mainly my parents) who did not get frustrated with me when I scorned their Savior. I, too, must do the same.

Is there a person in your life, dear Christian, who needs new eyes to see the beauty of the Savior? Pray for him. Do you have a family member who continuously mocks you for your faith in Christ? Pray for her, that she may seem him as infinitely valuable.

We all were once lost, despising the One who died for us. Praise him that our dreadful condition is no more. And pray for the ones who have yet to come. May the power of the Cross break the chains of death that makes them scorn the very thing that leads to life.

Friday Devotional: Through Many Tribulations

“Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”—Acts 14:22

Often when I read this verse I quickly breeze over, barely acknowledging the weight of its meaning. The apostles weren’t merely offering helpful tips to be a Christian. They were giving a definitive statement; tribulation is a given necessity in order to enter the Kingdom. Paul had just been stoned and left for dead, and now he is telling the young Christians that this is how we must live. Surely it must have seemed strange to a new believer that this much suffering be necessary.

You do not have to live long as a believer to either experience suffering in your own life, or witness it in the lives of those around you. Pain is very real. Babies die suddenly. Children rebel and turn away from families. Cancer afflicts little children. Hurricanes wipe away entire villages. My relatively short time on earth reminds me that I cannot postpone the inevitable. It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom. But this is not a morbid text. It is not a death sentence for the repentant sinner. There is a promise attached to the tribulation—we will enter the Kingdom. This momentary affliction of earthly suffering will be made right in the Kingdom of our Christ. We are able to live, serve, and even die freely because we seek the coming Kingdom, the city that is to come.

We may weep and grieve rightly through the “toils and snares” but we can trust that this grace that brought us through will one day lead us safely home to the Savior.

May this truth strengthen you today, dear Christian. Whether you are facing a sunny season in your life or whether the clouds are down, know that the Kingdom is coming. The darkness has been overcome by the Son.

Sunday Devotional: Taming the Tongue

“The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.”—Proverbs 15:28

I don’t know about you, but I can relate to the wicked person. Apart from Christ, my sharp tongue can shoot darts into the hearts of those I love. And on more than one occasion I have had to go back and ask forgiveness for an ill word spoken in anger or haste. Most of the time I find myself quickly saying the first thing that comes to mind instead of praying about, or even thinking about, the implications of my words.

Notice first how the verse says “the heart of the righteous ponders how to answer.” The taming of the tongue cannot be a result of exerted will power. Every time I vow to never speak impulsively again, I find myself sorely disappointed by my own lack of ability to refrain. A thoughtful answer is the overflow of a righteous heart, and not righteousness from ability, but righteousness from the truly Righteous One—King Jesus. Even if we were able to answer kindly, apart from Christ, that kindness will eventually turn to pride in our ability.

So much of our frustrations with our own sinfulness stem from our continual attempts at “doing better next time,” instead of trusting in the fact that a Jewish carpenter did it perfectly 2,000 years ago and intercedes for us before the Father. This news, this amazing truth, is what keeps us from wickedness. The heart of the righteous man recognizes that he will never graduate from the Gospel and move on to something else. The minute we think that we are ready for something other than the Gospel it reveals that we have lost the wonder of what saves us.

We are always given a choice. We can choose righteousness or we can choose wickedness. But those of us who have had the scales fall off of our eyes, see that righteousness leads to life. A wicked answer may seem harmless in the beginning, but in the end it leads to spiritual death—separation from God. We obey because we love Him, and know that He is far better than any second long high from lashing out at another person.

The Bible is full of references to taming the tongue, which should tell us something. God cares about our words. He cares about our answers. How we respond to people says everything about our belief in the Gospel. With every word that pours out of our mouths we are either saying that Christ is enough or that Christ is worthless. Let us pray for a new heart, dear Christian, so the world may see only Jesus and not be clouded by our own sinful reactions. May this Lord’s Day be a great and glorious reminder of the sweet mercy of God for us on Calvary.

Friday Devotional: Here Comes the Bride

“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready.”—Revelation 19:6-7

The wedding season is upon us. At the dawn of the first day of summer the wedding invitations begin pouring in, and our weekends are quickly booked with all of the festivities of our friends and loved one’s happy nuptials.

As women, many of us have been planning our wedding since we were five years old, down to the color of the flowers and the number of attendants that we have already chosen. All we’re really missing is the groom, and we are pretty certain that he will come soon to sweep us off of our feet and carry us off to wedded bliss. This is not wrong. In fact, we should desire marriage and look forward to that day, should God choose to give us that. But the end result of our wanting to be married should be a hope in a marriage to a very different man—the God man, Jesus Christ.

Marriage exists to point people to the Gospel, and it’s really easy to lose sight of that when we desperately desire marriage here on earth. Often times we have a Hollywood understanding of marriage, thinking that our life will be complete if that “perfect man” came to our doorstep and promised us love and happiness for ever. The perfect man did come, and will come again to redeem His Bride, the Church.

For many of us, our days are spent dreaming of a marriage here on earth, even to the extent that with the first “hello” from an eligible bachelor we are planning the big event before we even know his name. And for others, we can probably confess that we are all too guilty of confusing a phone call with a marriage proposal. Are we content with our only marriage being the final marriage where we are eternally joined to our Bridegroom, Christ? Carolyn McCulley says that if Jesus came back tomorrow and you are disappointed because you aren’t married yet, you are idolizing an earthly husband, and desiring the wrong marriage. And I think she’s right.

The marriage we should long for is the final marriage that all marriages should point to, Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Jesus is not our own personal boyfriend/fiancé/husband. The marriage supper of the Lamb is not an individualized marriage. We will not each be personally walking down the aisle to Jesus in the last day, despite what some women’s Bible studies and worship songs allude to. He is the Bridegroom of the Church collectively, of which we are a part if we are in Christ. In our preparation to meet our Groom, our lives should reflect less of an American, individualistic ideology, and more of our brothers and sisters in the book of Acts, who gave their lives for the building up of the local church. This means we should spend more time changing diapers in the nursery and sitting in the pews under the Word of God, than picking out our wedding songs and drooling over designer dresses.

We muddy the Gospel when we bank all of our happiness on a marriage here on earth. Instead, let us cry out with the whole earth “come quickly, Lord Jesus!” All of our right, earthly desires for a husband are here to give us a temporary picture of an eternal reality—the Gospel.

I am all for marriage here on earth, and I love going to weddings where God is glorified in the joining of two Christians declaring a covenant before God and His people. Like Calvin said, our hearts are idol factories, and every good and biblical desire always has the potential to replace God as our object of worship. Whenever I am struggling with whether or not a desire is an idol, a question I always ask myself is “if God chose to never fulfill this desire in my life, would I still love Him? Would I still desire to serve Him?” Those are hard questions to ask, because more often than not, I find myself chafing at the idea of not getting what I want. But as we seek to honor God with our desires, let us keep an eternal perspective. Resolve today, dear Christian, to love and serve your local congregation, members of the Church. And dream of the greatest wedding party of all, where the Vera Wang dress will fade away in the face of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Sunday Devotional: Sarah's Children

And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening.”—1 Peter 3:6

If you spend any amount of time with a group of women, it won’t be long before you probably will hear “I am so freaking out about this” from one of their mouths. “Freaking out” has become the modern day equivalent to the nervous break down of twenty years ago, and it floods our churches, our homes, our work places, and our very souls.

When Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, tells us that we are like Sarah if we do not fear anything that is frightening, he is not saying that the Christian life is free from fear. He is implying that there are very frightening things out there, but you need not fear those things. How we react in frightening times speaks volumes about our belief in the Gospel. Our response to fear is either telling the world that God always keeps His promises, or that God cannot be trusted.

Panic attacks, freaking out, and nervous break downs are not characteristics of a godly woman. In fact, they are characteristics of a woman who has nothing to hope in but herself. Learning to trust in the promises of God often times requires us to go through agonizing suffering and great uncertainty because God knows exactly what we need to conform us into the image of Jesus—even if it means great fear for a season.

If “freaking out” is not becoming of a godly woman, how do we remedy anxiety? Know God through His Word. If we do not know God’s promises, we cannot trust them in the first place. Read, study, and love the whole Bible—Genesis to Revelation. It is there that we will see the power of God in keeping covenant with His people, and it is there where we will find our source of strength. So much of our anxieties can find their calming rest in the precious Words of our God—go to Him, He will not forsake you.

For some of us, frightening circumstances may seem very foreign right now, to others it may seem more real than we would prefer. Regardless of the present, there will come a day when it will not seem so easy, and the reality of the frightening will be very near. Hope in God, dear Christian. Sarah faced great uncertainty: infertility, moving to an unknown land, and a husband who put her in dangerous predicaments. Yet God, in His mercy, molded her into a woman who hoped in God (1 Peter 3:6, Hebrews 11:11).

God cares far more about our reactions than our situations. He lovingly squeezes us until we can joyfully say that Jesus Christ is all, no matter the cost. May our reactions to all things frightening be proclaiming to the lost world around us that God always wins.

Friday Devotional: Our Faithful God

Today’s Friday devotional comes from an expositional book on Ruth by Sinclair Ferguson called Faithful God. He captures the beauty of the sovereignty of God that I would like to share with you. It is my prayer that it will encourage and strengthen you as it did me.

“Yet at the same time we recognize that in the midst of our confusion and the happenstances and surprises of life there is a sovereign God in heaven whose hand is upon us every moment of the day, a God who reigns over every inch of the universe in which we live. So we know that nothing ‘just happens’. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without his knowledge, interest and rule (Matthew 10:29). All things comes to pass under the sovereign wisdom and purpose of our heavenly Father, working together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

That is why we can be quietly confident—not because we know exactly what God is doing in this unpredictable world, but because we know that what is unpredictable to us is already predicted by him. He has written his purposes for us in his own book, and numbered our days before one of them was given birth or saw the light of day (Psalm 139:16).”

May these truths give you a greater measure of hope in the keeping and sustaining power of God today. What a grace and mercy to know that we have an all powerful anchor, Jesus Christ.

Friday Devotional: Jesus, Our Hope

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to know that you are the Holy One of God.”—John 6:68-69

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. Jesus had just given them some truths that were hard to take. The disciples were faced with a decision, to leave Christ with everyone else or stay with this man from Nazareth. People wouldn’t have blamed them, it is hard to accept that our “flesh is of no avail” in regards to our own salvation. Many had already deserted Jesus at the sound of this teaching, and He asks an honest question of His disciples. “Do you want to go away as well?”

We are faced with that decision on a regular basis. Circumstances surrounding us can make us think that leaving Christ and going out on our own would be much better, much easier. Every trial, every obstacle, and every ounce of suffering that comes our way beckons us to choose, Christ or the world.

But deep down, we don’t really want to choose, really. We know, with Peter that without Christ there truly is nowhere else to go. The followers left Jesus because the road ahead looked hard and they didn’t like the picture that they saw. And though often impulsive and sharp-tongued, Peter’s confession, like another instance (Matthew 16:16), reveal eyes that have been opened. Though the deserters were culpable for their actions, the fact of the matter is, they left because they could not see.

Jesus was preparing them for the hard road ahead, just as He prepares us. If we did not have the trials, we would not long for Christ because we would be too busy being comfortable. But in all of our circumstances, no matter the sorrow, no matter the pain, no matter the uncertainty, we can rest in the promise that there truly is no other place to go but to our Christ.

The narrow road is paved with tears, but we are not walking on uncharted territory. It was laid out for us on the Calvary Road two thousand years ago by a Jewish carpenter. He knew the tears, He knew the pain, He knew the scorn and judgment. You can run to Him, dear Christian. He will not fail you. May God give you the grace today to say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Friday Devotional: The Devastating Results of Sin

“But he did not know that the LORD had left him.”—Judges 16:20

My heart sank when I read this verse regarding Samson. Not because I had never read the book of Judges before, and not because I was surprised at the outcome of the story. Samson was a big deal in my house growing up. I grew up with three brothers who often times would refer to Samson when talking about their desires to be strong. Popeye and the Hulk were great, but Samson was the pinnacle of strength in the Tarter household.

This verse struck me because of the force of it. Very often when I read my Bible I breeze over phrases, trying to get all of my reading done in a short amount of time. But if you stop and think about a phrase like “he did not know the LORD had left him” you realize the devastating effects of such a verse. God is gone.

God was the source of Samson’s strength, and when He left there was no longer any power or protection surrounding Samson. He was alone. But God did not leave without reason. Notice the events leading up to God’s departing from Samson. Samson liked women, and his desire for ungodly women ensnared him even to the point of being manipulated by Delilah (Judges 16).

This is not the only reference in the Bible to God leaving a person, 1 Samuel 16:14 tells us the heart-breaking story of King Saul: “Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.” Saul, like Samson, had created a path of deception, hatred, and self-promotion that eventually left him abandoned by the sovereign Creator.

It is easy to read these biblical accounts and disassociate ourselves from the tragic choices and consequences, but we must remember that we too are of the same stock as Samson and Saul—and even Judas Iscariot. The root of all these tragic stories is sin, and none of us is exempt from that truth. After reading the book of Judges for the first time I asked my dad how God could keep saving the Israelites. I mean, after all, they never obeyed. They always went back to sinning. It really frustrated me. His gentle rebuke guides me every time I read this book—“Courtney, doesn’t God keep forgiving you?” You see, the fact that I was appalled at the Israelites really showed that I didn’t understand sin.

We are all that depraved, and if we are not vigilant about fighting sin in our own lives, we too will find ourselves left alone to drown in our wickedness. The people the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans 1 probably didn’t even realize that God had given them over to the “lusts of their flesh.” We should never become comfortable with the language of the Bible, especially with regards to our sin. It should make us weep, but most importantly it should make us tremble. It should make us introspective, asking God to reveal to us the areas in our lives that we are “exchanging His glory for a lie”. Samson was exchanging God’s glory for a lie—the lie of one night with a deceptive woman.

But the story does not end there. Though Samson willingly relinquished his power into the hands of Delilah—and thus was abandoned by God, God is merciful. When God takes His hand off and gives us over to our depraved minds, He does so in order to bring glory to Himself and repentance to us. God may depart from you, but just as the Prodigal’s father welcomed back his wayward child after years of debauchery, so God restores His children who cry out to Him for mercy in their pig sty.

This is not a license to sin, but it does offer great hope for you today. The Bible does not end with Judges, and the very next book after it is Ruth—a great picture of the keeping power of God. In the darkness of Judges, God foreshadows the coming Messiah.

So, as you go about your weekend love your Old Testament. Love the hard books that are rarely talked about—our Christ is on every page. And fight sin, dear Christian. Don’t play with the kindness of God. He will not tolerate sin forever—and it is a very despairing life for the one who has lost the hand of God, and doesn’t even recognize it.

Friday Devotional (a little late): Talking about Blood

Blood is not a casual conversation topic. Proper etiquette would say that talking about blood would not be appropriate for dinner talk. Many people are quite queasy around the sight, or very mention, of blood. We even have an entire ratings system, though faulty, that factors in blood-sightings when it rates movies. In fact, we are pretty much scared of blood. It’s gross. It’s vile. It usually represents affliction, pain, and worse—even death.

But, the Bible is not scared of blood. Blood is a common theme throughout the Bible, the Old Testament especially.

“And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with these words” (Exodus 24:8).

I was explaining this to my small group girls one week, and as I was sharing with them I realized how gross this was. Animal blood being thrown on you is always disgusting. I’m sure it must have shocked the Israelites at first. It’s not every day that someone throws blood on you. The horror of that fact is telling us something. Our sin is that disgusting. We become so comfortable in the language of atonement and forgiveness and sin that we forget how horrific our sin is in the sight of God.

Before we begin the explain this away as a minor detail in an Old Testament book, let us remember and see that this is not an isolated incident in Scripture (Exodus 29, Exodus 30, Leviticus 8, Leviticus 9, and many other places), it characterizes Christianity. We are a blood bought people. And like Isaac was a foreshadowing of the Christ to come, so blood too is a foreshadowing of the blood to come. Two thousand years ago on Calvary, a bloody Christ bore the penalty because the blood of bulls and goats could not satisfy the wrath of God. The blood in the Old Testament was not saving sins, it was pointing to the One who would come and make atonement. The “type of Christ” was no longer a type. He had come.

I heard a pastor say a while back that nobody likes to sing about blood anymore. And it’s true. We like to sing about happy things, not gross things. The blood-bought, atoning, work of Jesus Christ on the Cross is not a cotton-candy, idea that we pay lip-service to at the Lord’s Supper and maybe Easter. The blood was proclaiming promised salvation for us in the Old Covenant, and it saves us in the New Covenant. We should not be afraid of it. We should rejoice in it. Our discussion about Christ’s death should make us tremble, it should make me tremble. And so often we take it lightly because we don’t understand the seriousness of it.

Every time Moses threw the blood on the altar, He was declaring a transaction with God, all the while knowing that this transaction was not enough—and you feel the tension of that when you read through the Old Testament. When Christ came, and faced great agony in the Garden, He felt the seriousness of what was coming. When we read Jesus’ words saying “it is finished” that should make us fall on our faces. God did not absolve sin when He forgave us, He poured out the necessary wrath on Christ—His blood literally was spilled so we could live.

The blood is gross and vile because our sin is gross and vile. It might make us uncomfortable, but it was necessary. Let’s start singing about the blood again. We should sing and talk about the blood of Christ with great joy and thankfulness. Our names are in the Old Testament in the promises of the coming Messiah, our name is written on the hands of our Christ as He died in His own blood on Calvary 2,000 years ago. We are a peculiar people, we come by blood.

I come by the blood
I come by the cross
Where Your mercy flows with hands pierced for me
No I dare not stand, on my righteousness
My every hope rests on what Christ has done
And I come by the blood

I Come by the Blood by Sovereign Grace Music

Friday's Devotional: Learning from the Patriarch's Part 2

“I don’t read the Old Testament because it has no relevance for me—it’s the Old Covenant. The New Testament pertains to me because it is about Jesus.”

I did not say that. A fellow student said that to me my first year at Northwestern while we were studying for an OT exam. Unfortunately, many students, and Christians for that matter, breeze over the Old Testament because they find it archaic and, well—boring. That being said, I love the Old Testament (and the New Testament). Every part of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is proclaiming the greatness of Christ and the power of the Cross. The Old Testament is a foreshadowing of the coming Messiah and the New Testament is the proclamation that He has come!

My Friday devotional is still from Genesis, and the Lord has blessed me and convicted me tremendously through my study of the Patriarch’s. Genesis 22 is a very familiar passage—the sacrifice of Isaac. It is a passage filled with hope because we can know and rest in the fact that God provides our sacrifice, God provides our ransom.

Verse 8 says: “Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’”

And God did. The atonement was where the wrath of God was satisfied. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ was to appease God the Father. Abraham knew that God was the one who saved. Sinful man cannot provide his own sacrifice, it must come from another place.

This is what the Old Testament believers held to. Sin must be dealt with, and the animal sacrificial system was not enough—Messiah had to come. Redemptive history, and even the Old Testament, is laying for us a framework and understanding of the greatness of our sin before a holy, righteous God, and the power of Christ in taking on the judgment for that sin on our behalf.

The God of the Universe did provide a sacrifice for Abraham, and God credited his faith in that promise as righteousness, and the God of the Universe provided a sacrifice for us as well—Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Understanding and knowing the Old Testament is crucial to the growth of a Christian because without it we cannot adequately interpret the New Testament.

Messianic promises in the Old Testament enable us to rest in the future grace of our God. We don’t need to fear because God will, and has provided the sacrifice on our behalf. Don’t despair Christian, Christ is your righteousness. May God awaken in you a deep love for the whole counsel of God, and may He grant you the discipline and grace to know His word from Genesis to Revelation!

Friday's Devotional: Learning from the Patriarch's

I decided to start posting a Friday devotional. It will consist primarily of what I have been learning throughout the week in my time in the Word.

God has been teaching me a lot about the faithfulness of His promises, and how since He is the Creator and I am the created, I do not get to decide what is best for me. I’m reading through Genesis right now, and this week have been reading through the story of Abraham.

Faith is not easy, but it is what we are called to. It’s not easy to trust when we don’t know the outcome of a particular situation. I need constant reminders from the Bible that God always knows the outcome of my circumstances, even if I cannot see ahead of my surroundings. And the answer to my uncertainty is not to frantically try and micromanage the outcome. The answer is always more faith, more hope in God.

In Genesis 12:10-20 Abraham lied to Pharaoh by saying that Sarah was his sister. He was afraid that Pharaoh would see Sarah and want her for his own, and in turn kill Abraham. But Abraham did not enter Egypt without hope, God had told him, in verses 2 and 3, that he would make Abraham a great nation. That promise did not change upon entering Egypt, in fact it should have given Abraham more courage to tell the truth—God had promised him life. The external circumstances looked bleak, so instead of falling back on God’s faithfulness, he trusted in his own feeble ability to protect himself—which backfired.

But God does not leave Abraham there. He pursues him. He chases after Him and conforms Him to the dictates of a Holy Creator by making Him trust. He continually puts situation after situation in front of Abraham saying “I am your God, I will fulfill all I have promised.”

In Genesis 15:4-6 we begin to see a change in Abraham. God still is promising Abraham a son, and Abraham believes God’s promises and the faith is credited as righteousness. Abraham had no tangible thing to hold onto. He only had the Word of God, and he trusted it. We must trust the promises of God. All of our attempts to take matters into our own hands are professions of unbelief—which ultimately lead to death. Death is waiting for us if we consistently usurp the authority of God over us and take control of our situations. We don’t always know why God puts us in periods of trusting, and sometimes we may never know. But we have the Bible to tell us that He is faithful, and “no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!” (Psalm 84:11b-12).

That is what God does to us to make us trust Him. He knows exactly what we need to conform us into the image of Christ. Everything is about Christ. All of our circumstances, all of our suffering, all of our waiting, all of our sorrows—all of these things are meant to lift high the King of Kings and conform us into His likeness.

When we begin to feel like God is not answering us quickly enough, and we want to give up on this Christian life all together, we must remember that our Creator really is Sovereign, and He has not left us. There is an answer coming, even if the only answer we ever get is that Christ has redeemed us. There is no other place to go. We either can walk in the light of Christ knowing that God will work all details out for our joy and good and His ultimate glory, or we can walk in darkness following the wide road to death. We can either believe God and receive the credit of Christ’s righteousness, or we can go our own way thinking that we know best. One of my new favorite songs by Keith Getty starts out like this:

“My hope rests firm on Jesus Christ, He is my only plea. Though all the world shall point and scorn, His ransom leaves me free.”

The blood of Jesus Christ that paid my ransom should bind me to the Cross forever and cause me never to run away from trusting the great promises of God. Choose today whom you will serve.