Taunting

Coaches and parents especially don’t encourage those under their care to taunt their opponents. But the Bible does!

Seriously!

As a part of our P119 Spiritual Workout series, we looked at the section called Waw yesterday—

May Your unfailing love come to me, O Lord, Your salvation according to Your promise; then I will answer the one who taunts me, for I trust in Your Word. (Psalm 119:41-42)

“I will answer the one who taunts me.” How exactly do you answer the taunter? The word for answer here in Hebrew comes from the idea of “singing tunefully.”

You know how it feels when you have that perfect zinger—that great one-liner as a comeback to someone who’s tweaked you?

And you know how you don’t just say that zinger, but you add a musical note to it as well, just to add a little emphasis?

Well, this is what Christians can do to the devil when he taunts them! The book of Revelation tells us that satan is the accuser (the taunter) of the Christians, and that we overcome him by the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony. But the psalmist says it’s not just plain old words, but the lilting sing-song, tuneful reply to his taunt.

We reply to our enemy’s taunts with a Scriptural-based tweak of our own. We can remind him of our total forgiveness in Christ. We can tell him how God loves us, and sent His Son to die for our sins, and how the Holy Spirit has been given to us as a deposit guaranteeing that we are now in Christ. We can use the Bible to tunefully taunt the taunter with the truth of God’s Word.

Don’t just silently take it when the enemy accuses you. Don’t get mad. But shut him up by answering him with a song right from God’s Word!

If you have missed any of the messages in our P119 series, you can access them all by clicking here.

More Glory For God

You may be aware of this statement from the Westminster Catechism: The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

I love how John Piper elaborates on this in his book Desiring God—

“In view of God’s infinite power and wisdom and beauty, what would His love to a human being involve? Or, to put it another way: What could God give us to enjoy that would prove Him the most loving? There is only one possible answer: Himself! … So if God loves us enough to make our joy full, He must not only give us Himself; He must also win from us the praise of our hearts—not because He needs to shore up some weakness in Himself or compensate for some deficiency, but because He loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing and praising Him, the most magnificent of all Beings.”

The cycle here is similar to the cycle I talked about last week, but it looks something like this: Glorifying God helps us enjoy Him, and enjoying Him helps us glorify Him.

God is delighted when we’re delighted in Him.

Why? If we are enthralled with Him, why would seek enjoyment in anything else? So as we glorify Him, He shows us more of Himself for us to delight in. And as we delight in the newly-revealed view of Himself—as we are more and more captivated by His greatness—we glorify Him even more.

Which starts the glorifying God and enjoying Him forever cycle all over again. I LOVE IT!! 

My Best Friend

I am so blessed to have a best friend. 

Someone who has helped me grow and mature.

Someone who helps me dream bigger,

persevere longer,

act more kindly,

live more transparently,

love more empathically,

encourage more frequently,

lead more gently,

serve more Christ-like,

and glorify God more highly.

My best friend is my confidant, my playmate, my cheerleader, my counselor, my wife of 22 years.

I love you, Betsy! I cannot imagine a better friend. I cannot imagine how much of life I would have missed if you hadn’t been by my side, opening my eyes.

The first 22 years have been amazing. I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us for the next 22 years! 

Happy anniversary!

(We love working with Michelle Wise for our photographs. Check out her amazing work here.)

7 Quotes From “Secret Power” Especially For Pastors

D.L. Moody’s book Secret Power is addressed to both individual Christians and church leaders (you can read my full book review by clicking here).

I posted some quotes for individual Christians to consider yesterday. Here are seven quotes especially for pastors and church leaders:

“The Gospel proclamation cannot be divorced from the Holy Spirit. Unless He attend the Word in power, vain will be the attempt in preaching it.”

“Skeptics and infidels may say they don’t believe in it. It is not our work to make them believe in it; that is the work of the Spirit. Our work is to give them the Word of God; not to preach our theories and our ideas about it, but just to deliver the message as God gives it to us.” 

“It is not the hard work breaks down ministers, but it is the toil of working without power. …If you ministers have not the Spirit of God, you had better not preach, and your people had better stay at home. I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church in the land without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. If you have not the Spirit of God, Christian worker, remember that you stand in somebody else’s way; you are as a tree bearing no fruit standing where another fruitful tree might grow.”

“Man cannot preach effectively of himself. He must have the Spirit of God to give ability, and study God’s Word in order to testify according to the mind of the Spirit.”

“Thousands and thousands are sitting in darkness, knowing not of this great Light, but when we begin to preach Christ honestly, faithfully, sincerely and truthfully; holding Him up, not ourselves; exalting Christ and not our theories; presenting Christ and not our opinions; advocating Christ and not some false doctrine; then the Holy Ghost will come and bear witness. He will testify that what we say is true. When He comes He will confirm the Word with signs following.”

“I believe the reason why God makes use of so few in the Church, is because there is not in them the power that God can use. He is not going to use our ideas, but we must have the Word of God hid in our hearts, and then, the Holy Spirit inflaming us, we will have the testimony which will be rich, and sweet, and fresh, and the Lord’s Word will vindicate itself in blessed results. God wants to use us; God wants to make us channels of blessing; but we are in such a condition He does not use us. That is the trouble; there are so many men who have no testimony for the Lord; if they speak, they speak without saying anything, and if they pray, their prayer is powerless; they do not plead in prayer; their prayer is just a few set phrases that you have heard too often. Now what we want, is to be so full of the Word, that the Spirit coming upon us shall bring to mind—bring to our remembrance—the words of the Lord Jesus.”

“I have lived long enough to know that if I cannot have the power of the Spirit of God on me to help me to work for Him, I would rather die, than live just for the sake of living.”

8 Quotes From “Secret Power”

D.L. Moody’s book Secret Power is addressed to both individual Christians and church leaders (you can read my full book review by clicking here).

Here are eight quotes for Christians to consider.

“Joy is love exulting; peace is love in repose; long suffering is love on trial; gentleness is love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is love on the battlefield; meekness is love at school; and temperance is love in training.”

“Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us.”

“The reason why the Church cannot overcome the enemy is, because she doesn’t know how to use the sword of the Spirit. People will get up and try to fight the devil with their experiences, but he doesn’t care for that, he will overcome them every time. People are trying to fight the devil with theories and pet ideas, but he will get the victory over them likewise. What we want is to draw the sword of the Spirit. It is that which cuts deeper than anything else. …The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God, and what we need specially is to be filled with the Spirit, so we shall know how to use the Word.”

“The fact is, we are leaky vessels, and we have to keep right under the fountain all the time to keep full of Christ, and so have a fresh supply.”

“The Holy Spirit tells a man of his faults in order to lead him to a better life. In John 16:8, we read: ‘He is to reprove the world of sin.’ Now, there are a class of people who don’t like this part of the Spirit’s work. Do you know why? Because He convicts them of sin; they don’t like that. What they want is some one to speak comforting words and make everything pleasant; keep everything all quiet; tell them there is peace when there is war; tell them it is light when it is dark, and tell them everything is growing better; that the world is getting on amazingly in goodness; that it is growing better all the time; that is the kind of preaching they seek for. …It is my work to preach and hold up the Cross and testify of Christ; but it is His work to convict men of sin and lead them to Christ.”

“I think there is no way so sure to win our families and our neighbors, and those about whom we are anxious, to Christ, than just to adorn the doctrine of Jesus Christ in our lives, and grow in all these graces. If we have peace and joy and love and gentleness and goodness and temperance; not only being temperate in what we drink, but in what we eat, and temperate in our language, guarded in our expressions; if we just live in our homes as the Lord would have us, an even Christian life day by day, we shall have a quiet and silent power proceeding from us, that will constrain them to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But an uneven life, hot today and cold tomorrow, will only repel. Many are watching God’s people.”

“Love will rebuke evil, but will not rejoice in it. Love will be impatient of sin, but patient with the sinner. To form the habit of finding fault constantly, is very damaging to spiritual life; it is about the lowest and meanest position that a man can take.”

“Oh, the privilege, the blessed privilege, to be used of God to win a soul to Christ, and to see a man or woman being led out of bondage by some act of ours toward them. To think that God should condescend to allow us to be co-workers with Him. It is the highest honor we can wear.”

(You may also be interested in quotes from this book that are especially for pastors and church leaders, which you can read by clicking here.)

Thursdays With Oswald—Let God Be Original

This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.

Let God Be Original

     We continually want to present our understanding of how God worked in our own experience, consequently we confuse people. Present Jesus Christ, lift Him up, and the Holy Spirit will do in them what He has done in you. …

     Experience as an end in itself is a disease; experience as a result of the life being based on God is health. Spiritual famine and dearth, if it does not start from sin, starts from dwelling entirely on the experience God gave me instead of on God Who gave me the experience. …

     Whenever I put my experience of life, or my intelligence, or anything other than dependence on God, as the ground of understanding the will of God I rob Him of glory. 

From Disciples Indeed

I need to let God be as original with others as He was, and is, with me.

My experiences with God—the Word He revealed to me, the emotions I felt, the decisions I made, the conversations I had, the prayer I prayed—is just that: MY experience. If I try to force someone else to experience God exactly as I experienced Him, then I am really asking them to be someone other than who God created them to be.

When I look throughout the Bible, I see so many ways God encountered people. They were all unique experiences because they were all unique people. 

Father, meet with me uniquely. And help me to remember to let You meet with others uniquely as well!

Secret Power (book review)

Dwight L. Moody is my kind of pastor: he said exactly what was on his mind. He wasn’t worried about political correctness, or couching his words in comfortable words. He was a modern-day prophet of his day, clearly stating, “Thus says the Lord!” Thankfully for us in our day, D.L. Moody’s books sound just like his sermons. In Secret Power, Moody calls Christians and churches back to a fuller understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Moody writes:

“How much we have dishonored Him [the Holy Spirit] in the past! How ignorant of His grace, and love and presence we have been? True, we have heard of Him and read of Him, but we have had little intelligent knowledge of His attributes, His offices and His relations to us. I fear He has not been to many professed Christians an actual existence, nor is He known to them as a personality of the Godhead.”

I am convinced that this is true. The Holy Spirit seems “spooky” or out-of-date or inapplicable in many churches. Moody explains this is the reason why our churches are not experiencing the same miracle-working power that was seen in the New Testament church.

As a result, individual Christians are lacking in power in their personal lives, too, because they are not being taught about the role of the Holy Spirit in their churches. As a result, Christians are not soul winners as were New Testament Christians.

A secondary title for this book is “The Secret Of Success In Christian Life And Work.” That success can be yours today if you will only allow God to operate in your life and church in all of His fullness. 

If you are thirsty for this sort of fuller relationship with the Holy Spirit, I encourage you to read this book! You may also want to check out some quotes I shared from this book here and here.

Got Wisdom?

Solomon advised us to pursue wisdom:

  • Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them. (Proverbs 4:5)
  • Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. (Proverbs 4:7)
  • How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver! (Proverbs 16:16)
  • Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding. (Proverbs 23:23)

I like T.M. Moore’s insight on this…

“Wisdom is that skill in living which comes as Christ is formed in us and lives His Word, in the power of His Spirit, through our lives. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God (Psalm 111:10). But we’ll have to work hard and in many different ways to bring wisdom to a higher state in our lives. Solomon prayed for wisdom, but he also applied himself diligently to studying and contemplating a good many subjects in order to acquire that which he was trusting the Lord to give him. So we too, if we would increase in wisdom, must devote ourselves to ‘getting’ it by all the ways God makes available to us.”

In other words, we can (and should) pray for wisdom, but then we need to get busy to actually get the wisdom. God won’t simply pour wisdom into our hearts and minds.

Wisdom is earned through experience

Godly wisdom is earned through experiences that the Holy Spirit helps us evaluate and assimilate. The experience might be pleasant, or it might be painful. It might come through reading your Bible, or it might come through prayer. It might come in a pastor’s message, or it might come in a friend’s words. You might get it by going to your job, you might get it while taking a stroll along the beach on your vacation.

God’s wisdom is constantly being revealed to us. Are you getting it?

If not, what are you going to do to get it?

Whatever you do, GET WISDOM!

10 Quotes From The “Necessity Of An Enemy”

I was intrigued by the title of the book: The Necessity Of An Enemy. But I was even more intrigued by what I read in Ron Carpenter’s thought-provoking book. You can read my full review by clicking here.

Here are 10 quotes that caught my eye from this book:

“You will never be an exceptional person if you only fight ordinary battles.”

“Because you have a God-given purpose, this means the devil’s painted a bull’s-eye on your back. …It’s good to have enemies and the trouble they bring—it means you’re in the game.”

“When Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians that ‘we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory’ (Ephesians 1:12), he didn’t tell them to just give God praise. He urged them to be a praise. … In New Testament terminology, glory actually means ‘likeness’ or ‘to resemble.’ In other words, for you to bring glory to God means that God is hard at work making you become something that resembles Him, something that more clearly bears His image. It comes as no surprise that this reality makes someone very upset: The devil isn’t concerned with fighting something that you’re doing; he fights who you’re becoming.”

“God’s definition of winning is fulfilled when you fight the battle and, after it’s over, you are even more established in the identity He designed for you.”

“God knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10). … So the fact that He started the area of your life where you’re now facing a challenge from an enemy is the very evidence that He’ll bring you through the battle to complete the thing.”

“A good teacher does not use a test to teach you something…a test measures what you already know.”

“Negative people, allowed to speak into your life, will become agents of destruction of your purpose. An enemy will always try to weaken your passion for your dream.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to super-spiritualize something and blame the devil than to understand a need or personal flaw and take ownership for it.”

“An enemy is someone who increases, strengthens, encourages, or enables an area of weakness in you that God wants to remove from your life.”

“In your progress toward God’s purpose for you, anything you hang onto that God wants you to drop is an enemy.”

The Scriptures Foresaw

Check out this passage from Galatians 3:8-9—

The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

God’s Word is a living Word. They are not merely ink on a page. They are the very words of God.

God’s Word never stops working. God made a promise to Abraham 3000 years before Paul saw it being fulfilled in the Galatian believers. And now, another 2000 years after that, it’s still being fulfilled in ALL who come into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ!

These words are not past tense—those who have faith ARE blessed. They apply to me, today, now, just as much as the day they were spoken by God 5000 years ago! And they apply to you too.

Let this soak in…

Not one promise in the Bible will expire. 

Not one command will become irrelevant. 

Not one precept will ever be out-of-date.

Living. Active. Personal. Real. Present tense. Now!

Do you believe it?

Do you live like you believe it?