The Closet Connection

But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Matthew 6:6

Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?

You understand what I'm asking here, right? I mean, think about the difference between your steering wheel and your spare tire. Without your steering wheel, you're not going anywhere. But most of the time when you go somewhere, you don't even think about the spare tire that's hitchhiking in your trunk.

You're intimate with your steering wheel. You know exactly where you put your hands. You know the bumps on the back side of it. And if you have them, you know the buttons for radio, cruise control, or whatever else your buttons can do. But with your spare tire, you might be lucky if you even know how to get it on your car when you need it.

Your steering wheel directs your car everywhere you go. It turns left and the car turns left. It doesn't even matter whether your car is full or empty, whether you're towing something or not, your steering wheel always works to powerfully direct the entire vehicle and everything in it. But your spare tire? Well, you hope you never need to see it. It's your insurance policy. You only use it in emergencies and, as soon as you can, you get rid of it.

A prayer life like this takes time and work. It takes laying down our own agenda so that we can pick up God's agenda. It requires us to wholeheartedly pursue God's will for our lives, to desire His presence above the presence of friends or fancy grown-up toys. It takes praying until your list is gone and you simply pray for the pure point of being with Jesus, hearing His heart on things, and then praying for His list instead of yours.

Here's the incredible thing-when you really make this kind of prayer a habit, it changes you. I don't know if you've ever been around people who pray a lot, but you can tell. They pray with confidence and familiarity. When they pray, you can sense that you're in the presence of the Lord. You know that they don't just know the Lord, but the Lord knows them, and that He loves hearing them pray.

It really is amazing, but this is the life that is waiting for all of us, if we will just make prayer our steering wheel instead of our spare tire.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for giving me something as amazing as prayer. It just blows me away that I can talk to You! Please lead me, teach me how to pray so that it really changes me; teach me to make prayer my steering wheel.

Amen

24:Faithfulness

In the meantime...He began to say to His disciples first of all, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.' Luke 12:1

If I were to visit your workplace, what would your coworkers say about you? Or if I went to your neighborhood, what would people there say about you?

I ask these questions for a very important reason: Our reputation will come from whether or not we have been faithful. Faithfulness is the opposite of being hypocritical. It means being honest about who we are and whose we are.

We're here to be faithful to the Lord. That should be our reputation. We should be standing out in the community as ones who are living to be faithful unto the Lord. And this reputation that we gain for ourselves, hopefully for good, is so powerful that it will affect our children.

In fact, check out the story of when David kills Goliath. While King Saul and his whole army sit back saying, Oh, this is just too big for us to be able to do anything about it, David says, Who is this guy that defies the living God? Baloney. We can do something about this because our God is a faithful God! David goes out and doesn't even need Saul's armor. In fact, he tries it on. He can't even move. All he needs is a sling, some stones, and the faith that he's got in his Heavenly Father being faithful-he goes out and slays the giant.

That's the kind of reputation I think God wants us to have in town, one that boldly lives for Christ because we know that He's faithful. But here's what will happen when that reputation starts to grow. Do you know what Saul says after David kills Goliath? He looks at David, saying, Whose son is this?

There's quite a wonderful challenge for us as parents, don't you think? That we would have that same heart and desire the same reputation that people would be saying about our kids on the playground, at the mall, on the beach, Whose son is this? Whose daughter is this? Who's your daddy? That's what Saul wants to know.

And you and I together as dads, as moms, as parents, we desire that, don't we? We desire that the faithfulness of God would become the reputation of both our lives and our families' lives, even being passed on to our kids and to their kids. Whose Grandpa is this? Oh, yes. How great that would be? But it will only happen through faithfulness.

Guard your reputation from hypocrisy. Instead, look to the future and choose to be faithful.

Prayer Lord God,

Thank You that You are faithful! I know that I have no chance of being faithful myself unless You help me with Your faithfulness. I trust in You today to help me be faithful as You are faithful, so that Your name will become great wherever I go!

Amen

Fitly Living, Clearly Seeing

Whoever falsely boasts of giving is like clouds and wind without rain. Proverbs 25:14

We're going to spend a little time in someone else's shoes today, though they might feel very familiar depending on your circumstances.

I want you to imagine that you're in need, and I mean really in need. I don't mean that there are things you want that you can't afford right now, or that you need to budget for them so you can buy them in the future, or that they're luxury items that would be nice and beautiful to have but you don't need.

I mean, imagine that if you don't have some sort of financial miracle, you won't be able to buy food this week. Your house is getting foreclosed on. Your kids don't have clothes that fit them and you can't buy them new ones. You are in need.

Now imagine that someone promises to help you. They boast that they are going to wipe out your credit card debt, make your house payments current, or give you a job that will more than cover your bills. But after all their promises, nothing happens. They never deliver. They disappear.

Obviously, this isn't good. In fact, our verse today compares this kind of person to clouds that promise to drop needed rain on the ground-rain that's needed for crops that feed animals and families and provide a living to an agricultural society-but blow away without giving anything.

This horrible, destructive deception is so important to the Lord that He gives us a New Testament illustration of it in the lives of Ananias and Sapphira. This husband and wife pair conspired together to deceive by boasting of a gift they didn't really give.

They sold some land (no one made them), and they promised to give the Church everything they made from the sale (though no one told them they had to give it all). The problem was that they only gave part of what they earned from the sale. Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't promised to give everything. They could have said they were only giving part, and then giving part would have been fine. But when they gave less than they promised, lying about their gift, they both fell down dead.

Listen, the problem isn't in not giving, though giving is good. The bigger problem is in being deceitful. Examine yourself today to make sure that there is honesty and integrity before the Lord, that you have character that is the same on the outside as it is on the inside.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You that You made good on Your promise to send us a Savior! Help me to guard my words so that I only promise things that I will actually deliver; then please help me to be generous in what I give.

Amen

Weighing What We Say

Nevertheless God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was comforted in you, when he told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more. 2 Corinthians 7:6-7

God meets us where we are. Can I just say how much I love that? I love it!

In our verses today, Paul tells us of a time when he needed God to meet him where he was. He was surrounded by trouble, filled with fear, and so much so that he could find no rest. This is where our verses pick up, saying, Nevertheless God, who comforts the downcast...

Paul is saying that his circumstances were so bad they were enough to leave him depressed. That's what that word downcast means-depressed. He was depressed. He was burdened. He was upset about some words that had been said about him, vile language that was trying to destroy his reputation in the community.

But in that place, God met him and comforted him through a man named Titus. Paul tells us it wasn't just Titus' presence that comforted him, but also the report that he gave. Titus came from Paul's beloved church in Corinth and told him that things couldn't be better there.

Look at those words, When he told us. When did Paul receive comfort in his depression? He received it when Titus spoke.

Okay, stop right there. Tell me, did you do that for anybody this week? You say, Do what? Did you comfort them and encourage them and actually pick some choice words that lifted the burden off their downcast life?

Did you do that for anybody? Because, you need to know, that is why we're here. It's a part of the program as to why we're still on Earth and not in Heaven, so that God could use us and the words that come out of our mouth to encourage someone just as Titus encouraged Paul.

Look, this needs to be very practical for us, because it's very simple. Please don't tell me that you meant to do this, or you thought about doing it, because if you didn't actually do it then it didn't get done. That person in the cubicle next to yours is still depressed. Your wife still doesn't know that you think she's beautiful, that you really appreciate her hard work and love her cooking. And even if you've told them once, maybe they forgot and could stand to hear it again.

Your words are powerful. They really are! Choose today to begin to use them like Titusas God's tool of comfort to those who need it.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You that You are a God who comforts those who are downcast! It's amazing that You would use me to do that in someone's life, so please use me to comfort those around me who need it!

Amen

Can You Believe This?

Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you...that there are contentions among you. Now I say this, that each of you says, I am of Paul,' or, I am of Apollos,' or I am of Cephas,' or I am of Christ.' 1 Corinthians 2:2

Remember yourself back in math class. Now try to answer this: 100 divided by 2 is-of course you know-50.

Alright, you got that one correct, so let's try one more: 90 divided by three is-you got it?-30, that's right.

In the church at Corinth had a problem with division, and I don't mean a math problem.

I mean that the church was split a bunch of different ways, schisms within one body over whose teaching they associated themselves with.

The church was splitting at its seams, but not because of growth. Imagine a political climate in America where instead of two main parties, there were four main parties, and each one's followers staunchly held their status as registered voters of that party. It's bad enough just with two main parties, yet this church had at least four groups duking it out for supremacy.

Paul heard about this and had one thing to say: Stop it! Stop being divided!

He went on to give them a vision of something higher than division to unite them. He said, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6-7).

It's all the same, so stop arguing about it. In fact, realize that everyone who is working for God's benefit in your life is on the same side, and that it's you who are bickering and tearing each other down who are on the wrong side!

It's time for us to realize that Jesus has one body and that we serve Him best by building it up, not tearing it down.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You that You can work through anyone! I repent for any time that I have torn down Your body and worked to create divisions. Please help me to see Your body the way that You do and rejoice whenever it is built up.

Amen

Heaven: A Study of Our Home

He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Revelation 21:7-8

If you're only born once then you have to die twice, but if you're born twice then you only have to die once.

Did that make sense to you? If not, then it will soon. In fact, our verses today make it very clear. They contrast two eternal choices-living forever as God's son or dying forever an eternal spiritual death.

This spiritual death is a second death that is completely separate from the physical death that all of us will one day experience unless we're raptured. Everyone, both Christian and non-Christian, has to experience that physical death. But then comes the hereafter-eternal spiritual life or eternal spiritual death.

Now, let me tell you right now, you want to avoid that second death. It's bad news. And the only way you avoid it is by being born again. And I really like this, because it makes the focus of our life on Earth very clear.

See, when a baby is born, let's be very clear, that baby must die to the world of the womb in order to come alive in this brand new world that is so much better than the old world of the womb. This death to the womb is not an option. The cord must be cut. The old womb-world is put aside, passed away, but behold, all things have become new.

Life in this world cannot happen without a baby first dying to the old. Period.

Here's the point: A lot of Christians right now are not excited about Heaven because they're living for this world. But if we want to experience that second life, and if we want to avoid the second death, then it is time for us to cut the cord, stop living for this world, and start living for the world to come.

Start living today with Heaven as the beat of your heart and desire of all that you live for.

Prayer Father God,

Thank You for making a way for me to be Your son and avoid the second death! Please show me what it means to die to this world and how to live for Heaven in my life right now.

Amen

One Way

What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? Rather that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. 1 Corinthians 10:19-21

Aren't you glad that we don't live in the Old Testament times? I am.

I mean, they had all those sacrifices they had to make, and that just sounds messy. Can you imagine at Passover time, when all the people in Israel had to come together at the Temple and offer sacrifices? I'm not trying to be graphic or anything, but that's a whole lot of slaughtered animals; that's a lot of mess.

But now that Jesus has become the sacrifice for sin on our behalf, are we done making sacrifices? Paul answers this for us in our verses today, making it clear that we still have sacrifices to make.

Now, listen. In saying in our verses today that he doesn't want you sacrificing to demons, that doesn't mean he doesn't want you sacrificing. It means he doesn't want you sacrificing to demons.

So what is it that you are sacrificing? We aren't sacrificing to make our sins right anymore; Jesus did that. But there are still sacrifices of worship and thanksgiving to be made, especially in light of all that Jesus did sacrifice for us.

Or is sacrifice a one-way street for us? Is that something that He did on the cross for me and, It's good, Bob, that we remember that sacrifice. Yes, but is it good that we disassociate ourselves so much from that sacrifice that it's only Jesus who sacrifices?

Paul says, Listen. The Gentiles sacrifice, but they're sacrificing to the wrong things. They're sacrificing to demons and not to God. I don't want you to have fellowship with demons.

Are we saying, I can juggle this. I can manage all of these plates. I can allow for Jesus to be one of many focuses in my life. I can allow for Him to be a spoke of many spokes on my wheel.

Listen, when we remember Jesus' sacrifice for us, we end that nonsense and say, This is my life. This is my hub. This is my center. This is my meaning. This is my purpose, and all else that the world might want me to bow down to and live for, I sacrifice to Jesus.

We have a sacrifice, and it is everything we are and have. Our sacrifice is to lay it all before the Lord Jesus alone, and not before any other thing, and let Him be God over all.

Prayer Lord Jesus,

Thank You for giving everything for me! I'm sorry for any way that I have sacrificed to anything or anyone other than You. Please forgive me and accept from me all that I am and have!

Amen