What Is Your Aim?

John PiperThis is a devotional from John Piper which I found so intriguing that I wanted to share the entire thing with you.

What Is Your Aim?

Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. (Hebrews 10:24)

When you get up in the morning and you face a day, what do you say to yourself about your hopes for the day? When you look from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, what do you want to happen because you have lived?

If you say, “I don’t even think like that, I just get up and do what I’ve got to do,” then you are cutting yourself off from a basic means of grace and a source of guidance and strength and fruitfulness and joy. It is crystal clear in the Bible, including this text, that God means for us to aim consciously at something significant in our days.

God’s revealed will for you is that when you get up in the morning, you don’t drift aimlessly through the day letting mere circumstances alone dictate what you do, but that you aim at something—that you focus on a certain kind of purpose. I’m talking about children here, and teenagers, and adults—single, married, widowed, moms, and every trade.

Aimlessness is akin to lifelessness. Dead leaves in the back yard may move around more than anything else—more than the dog, more than the children. The wind blows this way, they go this way. The wind blows that way, they go that way. They tumble, they bounce, they skip, they press against a fence, but they have no aim whatsoever. They are full of motion and empty of life.

God did not create humans in his image to be aimless, like lifeless leaves blown around in the backyard of life. He created us to be purposeful—to have a focus and an aim for all our days. What is yours today?

By the way, you can sign up for lots of helpful devotionals through BibleGateway.

Links & Quotes

link quote

Some good reading from today…

I was totally blown away when I saw this morning that BibleGateway featured my chart The Kings & Prophets Of Judah & Israel!

[INFOGRAPHIC] 22 Surprising Facts About Sleep from the Cleveland Clinic. Here’s a great book resource: Sleep: It Does A Family Good.

Very powerful: An open letter to my friends struggling with eating disorders.

“In times of extraordinary crisis ordinary measures will not suffice. The world lives in such a time of crisis. Christians alone are in a position to rescue the perishing. We dare not settle down to try to live as if things were ‘normal.’ Nothing is normal while sin and lust and death roam the world, pouncing upon one and another till the whole population has been destroyed.” —A.W. Tozer

“I want you to know how to study theology in the right way. I have practiced this method myself. … The method of which I am speaking is the one which the holy king David teaches in Psalm 119. … Here you will find three rules. They are frequently proposed throughout the psalm and run thus: Oratio, meditatio, tentatio [prayer, meditation, trial]. …

“You should completely despair of your own sense and reason, for by these you will not attain the goal. … Rather kneel down in your private little room and with sincere humility and earnestness pray God through His dear son, graciously to grant you His Holy Spirit to enlighten and guide you and give you understanding. [Psalm 119:18, 27, 33, 34-37]. …

“Second, you should meditate. This means that not only in your heart but also externally you should constantly handle and compare, read and reread the Word as preached and the very words as written in Scripture, diligently noting and meditating on what the Holy Spirit means. … Therefore, you observe how in this psalm David always says that he will speak, think, talk, hear, read, day and night and constantly—but about nothing else than God’s Word and Commandments. For God wants to give you His Spirit only through the external Word. [119:11, 15, 48, 24, 47, 93, 97] …

“Third, there is the tentatio, the trial. This is the touchstone. It teaches you not only to know and understand, but also to experience how right, how true, how sweet, how lovely, how mighty, how comforting God’s Word is: it is wisdom supreme. This is why you observe that, in the psalm indicated, David so often complains of all sorts of enemies. … For as soon as God’s Word becomes known through you, the devil will afflict you, will make a real [theologian] of you.” [119: 67-68, 71] —Martin Luther, on the 119th Psalm

The Love & Hate Of God

SamekhI don’t think there’s anyone reading this that hasn’t—at one time or another, or perhaps even right now—struggled with feeling distant from God’s love. Maybe you felt like you blew it, or gave in to temptation, or things aren’t going as you had hoped, and you thought, “Where are You, God? Do You still care about me?” This message is for you!

“God is closer to us than we are to ourselves and that is why we do not notice Him.” —Thomas Merton

The section of the 119th Psalm called samekh (see verses 113-120) is a helpful passage for reminding ourselves just how near God is to us. Some people get nervous thinking about God being close to them, to the point where they want to run away. But you must have this clear in your mind—

God is near me to help and support me, not to harass and condemn me! 

Samekh means...Samekh is the only Hebrew letter which is completely enclosed. And when you look at it, samekh looks like a shield. Indeed the word means more than God’s omnipresence. Samekh means…

  • God’s never-ending support
  • God’s never-failing love
  • God’s never-stale mercies
  • God’s undiminished faithfulness
  • God’s unfathomable grace
  • God’s unquenchable hate

Wait a minute! God’s unquenchable hate?!? Yes! God loves you so much, that He hates anything that would draw you away from Him. So this section of Psalm 119 is filled with words like love, hope, refuge, uphold, and sustain. But it also has words like hate, away from me, reject, and discard.

God wants you to know how close He is to you. God is FOR you and He is AGAINST anything that would pull you away. Read the words in Psalm 91 and see how God protects you and then attacks the enemies of your soul. In the NewTestament, feel God’s closeness as we are told that…

Oh, how God love you! He wants you to feel His closeness, so He loves you and He hates the enemies of your soul! Bask in that today.

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

Poetry Saturday—The Building Of The Ship

The poet creates so many analogies from the building of the perfect ship. The loving Master knew exactly what he was doing. But the poem closes with this analogy to the United States of America…

LongfellowHow beautiful she is! How fair
She lies within those arms, that press
Her form with many a soft caress
Of tenderness and watchful care!
Sail forth into the sea, O ship!
Through wind and wave, right onward steer!
The moistened eye, the trembling lip,
Are not the signs of doubt or fear.
Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o’er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives!

 

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
We know what Master laid thy keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
’T is of the wave and not the rock;
’T is but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, —are all with thee! —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

9 Requisites For Contented Living

Contented Living

“There are nine requisites for contented living:

  1. Health enough to make work a pleasure [Ecclesiastes 5:19*];
  2. Wealth enough to support your needs [Proverbs 30:8-9];
  3. Strength to battle with the difficulties and overcome them [1 Corinthians 15:57];
  4. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them [James 5:16];
  5. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished [Romans 5:3-5];
  6. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor [Luke 10:25-37];
  7. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others [Ephesians 4:2-3];
  8. Faith enough to make real the things of God [Psalm 91];
  9. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future [Psalm 33:18].” —Goethe

* The quote is from Wolfgang Goethe, but I added the Scripture references.

Links & Quotes

link quote

Some great reading from this weekend…

Are you a Christian? Then there’s something dreadfully wrong with you. You’re unthinking; you’re unscientific; you can’t see how badly Christianity botches morality. You represent a deeply defective culture that’s been getting all the most important things wrong for a hundred generations.” Read more from Tom Gilson in Skeptics Dehumanizing Christianity.

“No one can know truth except the one who obeys truth. You think you know truth. People memorize the Scriptures by the yard, but that is not a guarantee of knowing the truth. Truth is not a text. Truth is in the text, but it takes the text plus the Holy Spirit to bring truth to a human soul.” —A.W. Tozer

Important news for pregnant women: Take care of your teeth. “The results reinforce data suggesting a link between periodontal disease in the mother and the risk of preterm birth.” Read more in Bacteria Found In Healthy Placentas.

Many contemporary critics of the faith charge that Christianity is a barrier to progress. … But the overwhelming weight of good is undeniable—and indispensable to civilization.” Read more in The ABCs Of Christian Civilization.

[VIDEO] Rep. Trey Gowdy asks “Did the media ever pursue these big questions on Benghazi?”

“Biblical hope is not wishful thinking or an optimistic outlook; rather, it is a confident expectation based on the certainty of God’s Word that as He has anchored us in the past, so He will in the future.” —David Wilkerson

“You need to be aware of what others are doing, applaud their efforts, acknowledge their successes, and encourage them in their pursuits. When we all help one another, everybody wins.” —Jim Stovall

“The Bible was not given to replace the miraculous but to correct abuses.” —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Links & Quotes

link quote

Some great reading I found today.

God has sought us out: let us have good hope for those who are laid upon our hearts in prayer, for He will find them out also. … It is a point of honor with Jesus to seek and to save all the flock, without a single exception. What a promise to plead!” —Charles Spurgeon

Where is the outrage?! Christian Girls Abducted & Raped In Egypt.

[INFOGRAPHI] Right on the heels of Easter, Bible Overview has a great infographic of everyone in the Bible who was raised from the dead.

The apostles had this instinct: When in trouble, pray. When intimidated, pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray!” —Jim Cymbala. Read more from Pastor Cymbala’s great post on prayer.

“Throughout our history Americans have put their faith in God and no one can doubt that we have been blessed for it. The earliest settlers of this land came in search of religious freedom. Landing on a desolate shoreline, they established a spiritual foundation that has served us ever since.” —Ronald Reagan

“Nobody ever got anything from God on the grounds that he deserved it. Having fallen, man deserves only punishment and death. So if God answers prayer it’s because God is good.” —A.W. Tozer

Sacrifice is not giving up things, but giving to God with joy the best we have.” —Oswald Chambers

Links & Quotes

link quote

Some great reading (and watching) from the past couple of days.

“This generation has yet to prove all that prayer can do for believing men and women.” —A.W. Tozer

Come, my heart, be calm and hopeful today. Clouds together, but the Lord can blow them away. Since God will not fail me, my faith shall not fail; and as He will not forsake me, neither will I forsake Him.” —Charles Spurgeon

[VIDEO] This is priceless! Watch as a young man with Down Syndrome reads a special letter.

John Piper shares The Greatest Prayer In The World.

Tim Elmore discussing Generation Y: The Inverse Relationship Between Empathy And Narcissism.

This is why I love loving on our missionaries: Home Without A Home.

Some powerful Good Friday quotes compiled by Chilly Chilton in his post Cross Walk.

“Right now you may feel abused and unloved. The devil would have you believe that God has left you to your own devices—that you deserve to suffer, that it’s all over for you, that there is no hope. Beloved, those are lies from hell. God wants more than anything else to rid you of your perverted concept of Him.” —David Wilkerson

Links & Quotes

link quote

These are links to articles and quotes I found interesting today.

[VIDEO] Great challenge from John Maxwell about being our best.

It doesn’t matter what you do … Your Job Is More Important Than You Think.

“You see Agape is all giving, not getting. Read what St. Paul says about it in First Corinthians Chap. 13. Then look at a picture of Charity (or Agape) in action in St. Luke, chap 10 v.30-35. And then, better still, look at Matthew chap 25 v.31-46: from which you see that Christ counts all that you do for this baby exactly as if you had done it for Him when He was a baby in the manger at Bethlehem: you are in a sense sharing in the things His mother did for Him. Giving money is only one way of showing charity: to give time and toil is far better and (for most of us) harder. And notice, though it is all giving—you needn’t expect any reward—how you do gets rewarded almost at once.” —C.S. Lewis

Parents and teachers, this is good advice from Tim Elmore on working with ‘difficult’ students: How To Lead An Outlier.

David Wilkerson has a solid word for those in a difficult marriage: Is There Any Hope?

John Stonestreet addresses Generation XXX: Responding To Our Pornified Culture.

Don’t let him get away with it! How Harry Reid Is Trying To End Debate In The Senate.

Hyper-Mega Dynamite

Ephesians 1-19One of my favorite scenes in the movie Elf is when Buddy is discovering all the amazing human things in New York City. In a public restroom he stands up on the toilet in his stall to shout to the person occupying the stall next to him, “Have you seen these toilets? They’re ginormous!” It was so amazing to him that gigantic wouldn’t cut it, and neither would enormous, so he combined them together … it’s ginormous!!

When I read Paul’s prayer for the Christians in Ephesus (see Ephesians 1:17-23), I get the sense that even the well-educated apostle was having difficulty finding enough adjectives to describe the amazing inheritance we have in Christ. He mentions things like…

  • Out-of-this-world wisdom,
  • divine revelation,
  • deep and intimate knowledge of God,
  • a flooding of heavenly light,
  • supernatural hope, and
  • an overflowing, incalculable, inestimable, eternally-compounding inheritance!

But then he comes to God’s power and his vocabulary almost fails him. Like Buddy the elf, he starts putting words together to try to convey the vast majesty of this power.

Most Bible translations say something like incomparably great power. But when you look at the Greek you see prefixes like hyper! and mega! and you realize that Paul is saying it’s so beyond gigantic or enormous … it’s ginormous!! 

The word for power is “dynamis,” and many people have said that God’s power is like dynamite. But they have it exactly backwards! Dynamite has only been around for 200 years. When dynamite was created it was named after Christians who were living in the hyper-mega, ginormous, dynamic power of Jesus Christ. Christians’ power wasn’t named after dynamite; dynamite was named after empowered Christians!

This is the power in which Christians can live everyday in every way! This is the power God has for you! If you’re living in anything less than hyper-mega dynamite power, perhaps you should pray for yourself the prayer that Paul prayed for us! 

We’ll be continuing our series in Ephesians this coming Sunday, and I’d love for you to join us.