Always pray and never give up!

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Today's devotional thought:

In Luke 18:1-8 Jesus tells us the parable of the persistent widow. In verse one we are told why Jesus is telling us this story. "Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me!' "

And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off ? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

When Jesus returns will he find faith? The kind of faith that will always pray and never give up?

Early in my ministry I was witness to an answered prayer a lifetime in the making. It happened one Sunday at the end of the service. During the invitation time an elderly man got up and came to the front to accept Jesus as his personal Savior and Lord. His name was Herbert. Holding his hand as he came forward was his wife of fifty years, Delores. The atmosphere was charged with excitement like I had never experienced before or since in ministry. I knew why. Through ministering at the Church I knew of Delores' prayers for her husband Herbert. 

Over fifty years earlier after being married for a short time Delores became a Christian but Herbert did not. When her attempts to share Jesus with her husband failed Delores did the one thing she knew she could, she prayed. 

Often at times of corporate prayer she would ask for us to pray for Herbert. "Please pay that Herbert would except Jesus." And so every prayer time included us praying for Herbert. I found myself feeling sorry for Delores. If God had not answered her prayer after fifty years maybe God was not going to. It only took me a couple of years of praying for Herbert to feel like giving up. Yet, Delores never did. 

In the end Delores' persistence in prayer payed off. Herbert came forward to put his faith and trust in Jesus. After Herbert was baptized I went and hugged Delores. Her face was radiant and tears slipped down her cheeks. "God is so good," she kept saying. "God is so good to me."

It was less than a year later that Herbert passed away. During that short time each time I saw Herbert in Church there was Delores at his side. Her face always radiant with a smile that nothing could erase. A smile that said, "God is so good."

A number of years later, as I was ministering at another church, I heard that Delores had also passed away but her story of persistent prayer has lived on inside of me—the legacy of a woman who knew exactly what Jesus meant when he said we should always pray and never give up.

What answer to prayer are you waiting on? How long have you been waiting? Let me tell you this, always pray and never give up. God is so good.

Prayer: Holy Father, help us to be persistent. Help us to never give up. We know you are good. We know you love us. We trust in you. May you find us faithful. In Jesus name, amen.

Impossible forgiveness...

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Today’s thought:

Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

The three hardest words you may ever have to say, “I forgive you.” Often those words are not only hard but impossible. But we know those are healing words. We know those words can begin the binding up of wounds that run deep.

Dr. Robert Smith, a pastor and seminary professor, writes movingly of his struggle to forgive:

I remember so very well October 30th, I will never forget this darkest day of my life. Our son was working at his restaurant when four young men got into the store, jammed the safe, and then grabbed him after jamming the register. When he could not open it, the other three fled and the one stood on top of the counter and fired one shot into his body. Thirty-four years of life ended suddenly. Brokenhearted, painful.
The Lord moved on my heart to write the young man. He's in prison now. He was 17 when he murdered Tony. I wanted to write him because the Lord had been working on my heart. I wrote him in prison and it took him over two years to respond in writing, and this is the letter I received:
"Dear Mr. Smith, let me say that I am truly sorry for your loss. I really am. Also, I hope that this is really you that I am writing because I have received a lot of threat mail from your family members and friends. So that's why I never wrote back. But today I thought that I should give it a try because I really wanted to talk to you. I've been locked up three years now and the worst three years of my life. I don't think that I'll make it much longer though. You know, I grew up in church my whole life. I just hung with the wrong crowd on that night. I'm sorry. You probably know my pastor, Rev. ______. I hope to hear from you very, very soon. Thank you for forgiving me. Can you keep praying for me too? This is getting too hard for me to bear, and sometimes I feel just like giving up on life."

Robert Smith continues:

Well, the Lord just kept working on my heart because the Lord let me see what it took for him to forgive me. He let me see what a mess I was. He let me understand that when he forgives he forgives unconditionally. He wanted me to understand that if you ever want to get beyond this you've got to forgive, that you can't do it on your own. So I wrote this young man because I want to be on his visitation list. I want to go up to tell him about Jesus. I want to let him know that I love him. I want this young man and my son hug together in heaven one day. Because forgiveness is not difficult, forgiveness is impossible without God.

How can we forgive? Only by seeing how God has forgiven us! There is a connection between the forgiveness we receive and the forgiveness we give. Jesus said, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). Forgiveness, the balm that can begin to heal you, is possible only through God.

To catch a duck...

Today's thought:

Romans 6:16, "Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?"

How do you catch a duck without a gun or bow? No net? No snare? How do you catch the duck with your bare hands? Well, you would have to use your head. You'd need to come up with an ingenious plan. A plan like one African tribe came up with to capture ducks in a river. Catching their agile and wary dinner would be a feat indeed, so they formulated a plan.

The tribesmen learned to go upstream, place a pumpkin in the river, and let it slowly float down into the flock of ducks. At first, the cautious fowl would quack and fly away. After all, it wasn't ordinary for pumpkins to float down the river! But the persistent tribesmen would subsequently float another pumpkin into the re-gathered ducks. Again they would scatter, only to return after the strange sphere had passed. Again, the hungry hunters would float another pumpkin. This time the ducks would remain, with a cautious eye on the pumpkin, and with each successive passing, the ducks would become more comfortable, until they finally accepted the pumpkins as a normal part of life.

When the natives saw that the pumpkins no longer bothered the ducks, they hollowed out pumpkins, put them over their heads, and walked into the river. Meandering into the midst of the tolerant fowl, they pulled them down one at a time. Dinner? Roast duck. [Wayne Cordeiro, Jesus: Pure and Simple (Bethany House Publishers, 2012), pp. 128-129]

If we don't correct our hearts back to Jesus, it won't be long until we start tolerating "pumpkins." They have a seductive way of sneaking into certain areas of our lives. They creep in one by one until we sink beneath them and enter a watery grave. Jesus said, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" (John 8:34-36). Christ has set us free from sin. We cannot tolerate the sins which desire to take us down. When you see the pumpkin coming, fly away.

Prayer: Father, how easy it can be to be snared by the "pumpkins" of temptation that Satan floats our way. Help us to not tolerate them at all. Help us to resist them and turn away to the One who has set us free from their power. We do this because we know sin only seeks to take us down to its watery grave. We do this because we love You and want to be pleasing in Your sight. Empower us to withstand what we must face today and do so to bring You glory. In Jesus name, amen.

"I've wasted it!"

Today's thought:

James 4:14, "...What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

In his book Don't Waste Your Life, John Piper recounts a story his father often told in his days as a fiery Baptist evangelist. It is the story of a man who came to saving faith in Jesus Christ near the end of his earthly existence. Piper writes:

"The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone's amazement he came and took my father's hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face, "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!"

By the grace of God, even a life that is almost totally wasted can still be redeemed. As the Scottish theologian Thomas Boston once said, our present existence is only "a short preface to a long eternity." If that is true, then the man's life was not wasted after all; he was only just beginning an eternal life of endless praise. But why wait even a moment longer before starting to serve Jesus? Ephesiams 5:15-16, "Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil." You have only one life to live. Don't waste it by living for yourself when you can use it instead for the glory of God.

[Read John Piper's full book, Don't Waste Your Life, free online at, http://cdn.desiringgod.org/pdf/books_dwyl/dwyl_full.pdf]

Prayer: Father, we thank you that a life lived for You is never wasted. You redeem us and our lives from being wasted by Your grace and that grace can redeem a whole life that might have been wasted. What amazing grace that calls us into purpose, meaning and eternal existence. We praise Your name for heaven rains grace upon Your children. Let it rain today, LORD. We love you because You first loved us. In Jesus, amen.

Why I don't Twitter...

Today's thought:

Matthew 10:29-31, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

Explaining why he doesn't Twitter, author and editor Skye Jethani writes:

I know I'll get grief for this, but in the 2004 film Shall We Dance?, one character had a really insightful bit of dialogue: "We need a witness to our lives. There are a billion people on the planet … I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things … all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, "Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."

We all want our lives to matter, and we believe they only matter if they are noticed by someone. I wonder if this desire for a witness isn't what fuels a lot of blogs, Facebook, and especially Twitter. We want someone, anyone, to take notice, to care about us, to watch us and by their attention communicate, "You matter. Your life counts."

If this is one of the hidden motivations behind Twittering, and I think it is, we're really talking about a spiritual hunger—one that I don't believe can be satisfied online. Perhaps the most significant reason I don't Twitter is because I already have a witness for my life. Psalm 139 says it best: "O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD."

I believe in God's economy there is not a single thought, feeling, or moment that is lost. There is nothing that is unseen or unrecorded. God is indeed with me and witnessing every thought and reflection. My ideas are not lost, and my life really does matter—not because someone read it, heard it, saw it, or Tweeted it, but because God is my witness.

Prayer: Our Father, you know us completely. There is nothing about me too insignificant or mundane as to escape Your attention. You are our Witness. Thank You that I am known, cared for and loved by the One who never forgets. We bask in Your attention and revel in the knowledge that because You turned Your back on Your Son on the cross You will never turn Your back on us. In Jesus, amen.