Meditation (1 Peter 2:22)

The Son of David, who was to come and deliver his people, would be just and righteous and zealous for God. We would say he had integrity. And he did. Jesus’ love, his truth and his goodness were not governed by external circumstances or personal ambitions, but were always steadfastly in accordance with the will of the Father.

Here is our Lord Jesus, standing in stark contrast before a man who is the exact opposite of integrity—a hypocrite. Caiaphas models everything Jesus is not—a manipulator too busy with his own selfish plans to mediate for the sins of the people. He had set this whole scene up, proposing that Jesus be killed so that Rome would not take away his job—and his status. It was Caiaphas who had suggested that one man should be sacrificed for the nation (John 11:45–53).

But we have to stop and think: Here is the high priest of the Jewish nation, essentially making a sacrifice to Rome to keep what he does not want to lose. So when Jesus stands before him and does not deny his own divinity, Caiaphas plays out a response he probably has rehearsed, pretending to be terribly upset. Jesus is silent; a man of integrity knows better than to argue with an actor. Jesus knew that Caiaphas had made up his mind long before this trial ever began. In light of this story, we have a choice: to follow Caiaphas and love what we have so much that we will lie, cheat and kill to keep it, or to lay down our lives and follow the one who modeled integrity and is, himself, our righteousness.

Prayer

God of glory, you want what is best for me. Yet, I attempt to control my own life, and I sabotage the peace and joy that come from submitting to your will. Help me to remember that it is in the small decisions of life that my character is forged. Small acts of hypocrisy always lead to larger acts of infidelity. Give me the wisdom and humility to seek accountability and honesty with a few people, so that they can protect me from myself. Keep me from being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. In your Son’s name I pray. Amen.

Taken from Once a Day 40 Days to Easter

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When You Can’t Feel God by J.D. Greear, Jesus, Continued…

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. – Matthew 4:1-2If the LORD is with us… where are all His wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us? – Judges 6:13  By His Spirit, God is alive and active in His church. Nevertheless, if you think that walking with Jesus means an endless series of miracles, burning bushes, still, small voices, warm fuzzies, and sensations of peace that pass all understanding, then you are going to be disappointed. Many of the greatest (and most honest) saints have confessed that they had to walk through many valleys with no sense of God’s presence, sometimes nearly going deaf from the heavenly silence. C. S. Lewis wrote that during one of the most painful times of his life, he cried out to God and got… a door slammed in [my] face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. He confessed that this heavenly silence made him doubt whether there was even a God at all: There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once… Why is God so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble? Somehow, these honest words seldom make it into anyone’s list of favorite C. S. Lewis quotes. Have you ever felt this way? I once told a group of interns at our church that if they ever had days when they couldn’t feel God’s closeness, experiencing regular waves of His pleasure and mercy wash over their souls, that was proof they weren’t really saved. You should have seen the looks on their faces. I realized they hadn’t gotten what I thought to be a rather obvious joke. If that were true, none of us could be sure of our salvation! Every believer has times in which they feel as though God is distant. Or absent altogether. Many Christians assume that silence from Heaven means something has gone wrong, that the inability to “feel” God’s Spirit means God has turned His face away. But this is not what God’s Word tells us. His apparent silence is, in fact, an important part of how He works in our lives and grows us up into the men and women of faith He wants us to be. An Ancient, Recurring Story The greatest saints in the Bible often felt the absence of God. No less than the prophet Isaiah himself cried out in despair, “God where are your dramatic, awe-inspiring works of God in my day?” He had heard of “times past” when God would “rend the heavens and come down,” when people “quaked in God’s presence.” But where was that God now, Isaiah asked? He cries out in dismay, You have hidden your face from us. – Isaiah 64:1-7 The psalmist Asaph says plainly, “We are given no signs from God; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be” (Psalm 74:9). And Gideon, right before God used him to destroy an entire Midianite army with only three hundred men, said to an angelic messenger, “If the Lord is really with us… where are all His wonderful deeds like the ones our fathers recounted to us?” (Judges 6:13, my paraphrase) The experience of feeling like God is absent or silent, you see, is anything but new. So why does God leave us feeling that way sometimes? And what are we to do during those times? White Space When God calls someone to follow Him, He frequently sends them through times in the “wilderness.” Right after God first put into Moses a vision to see Israel led out of slavery, He exiled him into the wilderness for forty years to herd sheep. Only after a long, silent, four decades, did God finally appear to him in the burning bush with the command to go. Can you imagine what kind of despairing, “God, where are you?” conversations Moses must have had with God during those forty silent years? Or consider the story of David. After being anointed as future king of Israel by Samuel, what was David’s next move? Did he… … go straight to the palace to try on robes? … immediately confront Goliath? … get billed as one of the “sexiest men alive” in Israelites Today magazine? None of the above. First Samuel 16 tells us he went straight back to the pasture to tend the sheep. When David encounters Goliath, he’s in between sheep-care and crackers-and-cheese runs for his brothers (1 Samuel 17:15). Samuel had anointed David as king in 1 Samuel 16:13. This means David went from being named “future king” and “man after God’s own heart” by the most famous prophet alive to “field hand shoveling sheep dung” and “Cheeze-It boy” for his big brothers. Right after the conclusion of the last verse in the story of David’s anointing (1 Samuel 16:13), my Bible has a white space, and the author moves on to something else happening at a different place in Israel. In that white space is where David went back to the pasture. The space between the call of God and the fulfillment of the dream. Nothing is written there, for David or for us, and I’m sure it felt terribly confusing for David. Are you in a white space right now? White spaces are typically the hardest parts of life to endure: The white space of silence; the white space of singleness; the white space of sickness; the white space of finishing out a prison sentence; the white space of unfulfilled promises and unmet expectations. How many times must Joseph — sold by his brothers into slavery, falsely accused of adultery with his master’s wife, overlooked for parole by the magistrates — have called out to God, “Where are you?” After Jesus called Paul to be his apostle on the Damascus Road, Paul wandered in the desert for three years and suffered obscurity for another fourteen (Galatians 1:17-19; Galatians 2:1). Paul endured seventeen years in the background before he was appointed by the Church as a missionary (Acts 13:2)! After Mary became pregnant with the Messiah, God waited for several months to tell her fiancé, Joseph, about the miraculous conception. Why did God wait? During that delay, Joseph (naturally) assumed she had cheated on him (I mean, what else could you assume?). This means that for several months, Mary had to go through the humiliation of pregnancy alone with everyone, even her beloved fiancé, assuming she was a cheater. God chose to do it that way. Why? Why did He wait so long to tell Joseph? Why the “white space”? Why does God sometimes leave us feeling alone, deserted, humiliated, abandoned — like we are in darkness, like He doesn’t care — as though He’s abandoned us altogether? Why is the only sound we hear at those times the echo of a door slammed in our faces? I don’t know the full answer, but I know that part of it has to do with the fact that He wants us to walk by faith, not by sight; and walking by faith means sometimes pressing on when we can’t feel or see Him. God sanctifies us by humbling us. He works His salvation out in us by taking us through the valley of the cross, which often means feeling alone and abandoned. This may be why God didn’t tell Joseph His plans for Mary at first; He wanted Mary to feel the shame of the cross. Moses had to endure the wilderness of isolation. Paul had to learn to suffer (Acts 9:15; 2 Corinthians 11:24-27). In reality, we most certainly are not alone during these dark times, but walking by faith means believing that we are not alone even when we can’t feel the warmth of God’s presence. Another reason God often leads us through dark, silent valleys is that He wants to purify our hearts. Why do we want to be close to God? Is it because of what He gives us, or is it simply because we want Him? What is more valuable to us: God or His blessings? Sometimes God withholds everything from us except His promises in order to make us ask ourselves, “Is this — His promise — enough for me?” You can never know that Jesus is all that you need, you see, until He’s all that you have. So let me ask you a very important question, one that the survival of your faith depends on. Can you walk by faith in God’s promises alone, even when you can’t see or feel anything? Can you delay gratification, even the gratification of “feeling” the Spirit? Watch the Video for Jesus, Continued… Excerpted with permission from Jesus, Continued… by J.D. Greear, copyright Zondervan 2014.

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Meditation (Matthew 26:40–46)

Jesus said, “Keep watch with me.” If you have ever sat with a loved one while waiting for that person to die, perhaps you know something of how the three men who waited with Jesus might have felt. He had told them, repeatedly, that he was going away. But now they see him in anguish, and they can see that it is all starting to happen, in perhaps a more terrible way than they had imagined. They could not understand what would come in the next few days, so the waiting was full of dread, the dark kind of sadness that feels unbearable.

Jesus said, “My soul is overwhelmed to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” But instead they fell asleep. Still, if we disparage the disciples for their inability to stay awake, maybe we haven’t spent enough time thinking about this scene, and maybe we have never prayed to the point of exhaustion. There is a point at which our circumstances can no longer be examined. There is a point after which a person can pray no more. This is when the Holy Spirit must take over for us “through wordless groans” (Romans 8:26), perhaps even while we sleep.

Jesus asked God three times to take away the suffering that was coming, not just the torture and ridicule, but the unbearable thought of facing all of God’s wrath at once, the Father’s hatred for sin all falling at once on the head of his innocent Son. But Jesus followed his request with “may your will be done.”

When we ask God for something three times, and he does not give us what we want, we are often angry and begin to question his goodness. And when our friends fail us, we may want to find new friends. But Jesus, even as he faced the beginning of the most terrible time there ever was on earth, went back to encourage the friends who had failed him and to face his mission before God: the price of our salvation.

Prayer

Loving Father, I gripe and grumble when I encounter painful circumstances. I complain about bad luck or not getting the breaks in life. I wonder why you allow such pain to occur to me and to others. Yet I know that I can take my grievances directly and openly to you. I can admit my confusion and my disappointment. I know I am approaching the only One who can really do something in my times of need. Thank you for your patience and your kindness to me. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Taken from Once a Day 40 Days to Easter

https://meetmyfriend.com/1031/

God Strengthens Us Through Others

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22:31–32)

What about the other ten apostles (not counting Judas)?

Satan was going to sift them too. Did Jesus pray for them?

Yes he did. But he did not ask the Father to guard their faith in the very same way he guarded Peter’s.

God broke the back of Peter’s pride and self-reliance that night in the agony of Satan’s sieve. But he did not let him go. He turned him around and forgave him and restored him and strengthened his faith. And now it was Peter’s mission to strengthen the other ten.

Jesus provided for the ten by providing for Peter. The strengthened becomes the strengthener.

There is a great lesson here for us. Sometimes God will deal with you directly, strengthening your faith alone in the wee hours of the morning. But most of the time (we might say ten-elevenths of the time) God strengthens our faith through another person.

God sends us some Simon Peter who brings just the word of grace we need to keep on in the faith: some testimony about how “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

Eternal security is a community project. Whenever God encourages your heart with the promise that in Satan’s sifting your faith will not fail, then take that encouragement and double your joy by using it to strengthen your brothers and sisters.

 

For more about John Piper’s ministry and writing, see DesiringGod.org

https://meetmyfriend.com/1027/

Meditation (Isaiah 52:2–3)

It is nearly Easter, and we will hang crosses on the walls of our homes and churches. How do we think of it when it’s a decoration? With all of our present-day associations with the cross—an object of Christian identification and adoration—it is almost impossible to see the cross for what it actually was. And when we fail to understand the cross, we fail to properly understand what our Lord suffered on our behalf: shame.

Jesus despised the cross. To even speak of the cross in his time was disgusting. It was a punishment reserved for the worst of the nation’s criminals. It was designed to bring about the utmost torture to lawbreakers.

So to say that Jesus “endured the cross, scorning its shame,” is not to say “poor Jesus.” It is to say that Jesus loved us so much and was so submitted to the Father that he not only endured torment, but also public humiliation. And when it was over, he was exalted to the highest place of dignity and honor in the universe.

Prayer

Jesus, Lord of glory, you came to earth and took the form of a servant and willingly suffered an unimaginable death on the cross. You died for me, a sinner. You paid the penalty for my sins. Such amazing love is utterly incomprehensible to me. Help me to understand that the path to glory often requires a sojourn through difficulties and challenges, but that you are always with me. I seek to follow you in all my ways. I know that serving you is true freedom. In your name I pray. Amen.

Taken from Once a Day 40 Days to Easter

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https://meetmyfriend.com/1015/

Meditation

Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows that no one has ever been truly faithful to God. Everywhere you look you see people sinning, turning away from God and then crying out for mercy when they find themselves in trouble. God knew this would happen and, in his mercy, built a solemn and precious day into the Jewish calendar, the Day of Atonement. On this day, the high priest would make sacrificial offerings for himself and for all the people. Once these rituals were complete, all the sins of all the Jewish people would be ceremonially transferred to a goat, and the goat would be released into the wilderness.

But what about us? We continue to turn away from God, day in and day out, our sin mounting higher and higher until it becomes too large to ignore. What can we do? Is there some ritual or ceremony that can take our sins away? No, but we have a High Priest, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, who lived a sinless life and died a sacrificial death, taking our sin upon himself and in exchange offering his righteousness to us. Because of him, and him only, we are forgiven, free, clean and able to live—for all eternity.

Prayer

Loving Lord, I thank you that you sent your Son into this world to be my High Priest. Thank you for his sinless life that enabled him to make atonement for my sin and for the sins of the whole world. Thank you for his death, for the shedding of his blood that saves me and makes me holy in your sight. Help me now to enjoy the peace of knowing that my sins are removed from me through the sacrifice on the cross of Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

Taken from Once a Day 40 Days to Easter

https://meetmyfriend.com/1009/

Meditation (Matthew 27:50–51)

Since the fall of humans in the garden, people have lived with the knowledge that they are separated from their Creator. Jews in Jesus’ day knew this full well, and in case they forgot, there was the curtain—the great, heavy curtain of blue, purple and scarlet thread and finely twisted linen (see Exodus 26:31). Four inches thick and so strong the historian Josephus said that horses tied to either side of it pulling could not tear it in two, it separated two rooms in the tabernacle. Though the curtain was beautiful, its real purpose was not. It did not simply separate two rooms; it existed to bar entrance to God’s holy place. It sent a message about the separation between God and people, serving as a reminder that no one was to ever approach God except in the limited ways he meticulously prescribed.

The curtain represented a closed door, open only to the high priest, and to him only once each year. And the only way he could survive entrance to that holy place was by the sprinkling of blood. The curtain constantly reminded God’s people of their sin and the separation it brought between them and the One they longed for. The curtain, in one piece for so many years, communicated that God is holy, and his people, in their sin, were not.

As we enter this Lenten season, we prepare our hearts to celebrate the day the curtain was torn in two, from top to bottom, from God to human. Jesus was the true and perfect sacrifice, paying the penalty for all sin—once for all. The curtain no longer served a purpose. Let us solemnly remember Jesus’ sacrifice on the day the holy place was opened to us.

Prayer
Almighty Father, I rejoice in the knowledge that you actually want to be with me, a sinner, and to have me with you. I realize that your grace is far beyond my ability to comprehend. The sword of judgment that should have been held over me was broken on your Son and removed all barriers between us. Teach me how to come before you with the proper mix of humility and confidence. I confess my need for you and trust in what you have done for me. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Taken from Once a Day 40 Days to Easter

https://meetmyfriend.com/1003/

Ephesians 2:8

A major passage for understanding God’s grace, i.e., his kindness, unmerited favor and forgiving love. you have been saved. “Saved” has a wide range of meanings. It includes salvation from God’s wrath, which we all had incurred by our sinfulness. The tense of the verb (also in v. 5) suggests a completed action with emphasis on its present effect. through faith. See Ro 3:21–31, which establishes the necessity of faith in Christ as the only means of being made right with God. not from yourselves. No human effort can contribute to our salvation; it is the gracious gift of God.

Taken from NIV Study Bible

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Who Can Be Saved? (Isaiah 55:1)

God, through Isaiah, issues an open invitation to “all . . . who are thirsty.” Anyone can eat and drink this meal, free of charge. The only requirement is that they come. In verse 6, Isaiah urges everyone to take this opportunity for forgiveness while it is so freely available.

Taken from NIV Student Bible

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