“Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.”

— Psalm 2:3, NIV

In Psalm 2, the world says of the Lord and of His anointed (i.e., His Christ): “We don’t want to be bound by God’s rules.” So the conflict is set.

There is a growing opposition that is taking place within our own government towards Christianity. Many people do not realize that secular humanism is a religion, which is now doing everything in its power to completely destroy Christian influence in any part of the public order of our nation.

Many decades ago, no one ever heard of secular humanism. A few decades ago it began to make its voice heard. Then it began to become the dominate voice to be heard in the media, in government bureaucracy, in the schools; and now it has taken over almost every one of these spheres completely. Its agenda now is to completely silence the Christian voice in every phase of public life in this country.

After removing all vestiges of it from the public domain, the final solution to the “Christian problem” is then to remove every vestige of Christianity altogether from this nation, both in the public and in the private spheres as well.

Part of the reason this has happened is because for too long we Christians have retreated into our “holy huddles” and have not influenced the world. But Jesus taught us we are to be in the world but not of the world. When we pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as is it is heaven,” we are certainly asking for His presence to be felt in greater ways. Why must Christian influence be squeezed out of the arena that for the most part Christians created in the first place?

O Lord, we see the destruction and silencing of Your church and we ask that You will once again turn our society back to You. We have seen You do it before and we ask humbly for another outpouring of Your Spirit in a national revival…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN HAVE
A NEW SPIRITUAL AWAKENING.

“But many of those who heard the word believed, and the number of the men grew to about five thousand.”

— Acts 4:4

Someone asked me, “Pastor, do you think there is any hope for our country? For our world? Things look so bleak that we can’t see any hope at all. Do you have any word of encouragement?” “Well, I said, I certainly do. I am greatly encouraged. In fact, I am more encouraged today than I have been for many years about what the Lord is doing in our world.”

What is God doing among us? Well, more than most people think. You know, it took one thousand years for the church to grow to the place where it has added fifty million professing Christians to its rolls. But we did that in the last five years when fifty million people were added to the rolls of the church of Christ worldwide. Meanwhile, the church’s growth around the world is exploding.

For my own curiosity, I graphed the growth rate of the church down through all twenty centuries to see what has happened. At first, it looked as if the line was almost parallel with the bottom line of the graph, it grew so slowly. The growth of the church for the first five hundred years could hardly be detected in the midst of the population of the world.

But by the 19th and 20th centuries, the rate began to go straight up. So I am very optimistic about what God is doing in the church. God is bringing His will to pass, and we have the privilege to take part in that venture.

Lord of the harvest, bring more workers into the field. Thank You for the growth of Your church around the world. Thank You for this harvesting of the earth. Help us to be willing workers…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, THE
HARVEST IS BEING BROUGHT IN.

“…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

— Hebrews 9:22

Right after sin entered into the world, a dichotomy began—a divergent stream of two different thoughts that ever typify the religions of men. One: God’s way—the other: man’s. Feeling the shame and guilt of their sin, do you remember what Adam and Eve did as the prototypes of all other lost human beings? They covered themselves with fig leaves. That is a symbolic presentation of all of the religions of the world—they invented fig leaf theology.

Are you a member of the “First Fig Leaf Church”? Here is how you can tell. I think I might give you a bit of a fashion show. The perennial favorite in this fashion parade is probably the choicest fig leaf on the whole tree called “I’ve done the best I can.” Ah, you see people dressed in it everywhere, parading up and down in the street hiding behind that leaf. Or there is also a three-piece fig leaf called “I’ve kept the Ten Commandments,” spoken by people who could not name more than three of them.

But in Eden, God looking upon Adam and Eve’s fig leaves, made coats of skins and clothed them. There was that early prototype of the other religion—God’s religion—by which an innocent victim had to die and shed its blood because we need to be clothed, as it were, in the skin of that victim. Jesus is the true Lamb of God whose shed blood forgives those who believe in Him.

God our provider, thank You for providing the Lamb for the sacrifice. Thank You, Jesus, You are the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH AND BY THE
BLOOD OF THE LAMB, WE ARE PURIFIED.

“I press toward the goal to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

— Philippians 3:14

The Greek word translated in this verse as “goal” (in the King James it is “mark”) is the word from which we get scope, as in telescope, microscope, or in the common phraseology of the day, to “scope out” something. It means “to look into.”

Now in a race track the course is marked out very clearly as to where we are to go, but in the course of life there are no chalk lines on either side of us, so therefore it is important that we scope out the goal. In this Christian race, we need not only to run fast, to stretch forward, to press on. The problem with many people is they are going the wrong way. Now they may be going very fast, they may be succeeding and making great advances, but they are just going in the wrong direction.

One husband driving with his wife on vacation came to a crossroads. His wife said they ought to turn left. He chose to turn right. Then he drove the next 50 miles figuring out how he could turn around and go the other way without his wife knowing it.

As Christians we need to make sure we have not lost sight of the real goal. We have a heavenly calling that should guide our lives. We are so bombarded with the material things of this life and the world in all of its secularism, we could totally lose sight of the fact that there is any high calling at all.

Father God, we ask You to help us to keep our focus on You and Your work. Help us not to be distracted by earthly things…

BY HIS STRENGTH, WE CAN
STAY FOCUSED FOR HIS SAKE.

“My little children, let us love not in word and speech, but in action and truth.”

— 1 John 3:18

Christianity presents an incredible picture of love, the love of God in Jesus Christ. Because its ideals are so lofty and soaring, because its sentiments are so noble and so high, there is a danger that we should love in platitudes, and in ideals, and in emotional sympathies. There is a danger that we should feel that we have paid up our debt to love if we have praised its beauty, if we have felt its charm, if we have experienced its sentiment, then we feel that we have loved.

But John says no, let us not love in word or merely in feeling or in thought or tongue, but love in deed and in truth. We need to love in the practical ways of helping other people who are in need. And he says, “By this we know that we are of the truth, and shall reassure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20). And those two verses have to be read together.

What does that mean “if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart”? He is saying that if we have lived our life and, because of the love of Christ we have loved our brethren, and we have endeavored to lay down our life for them, then we know we love because He loved us. God assures us in our hearts that we are His because we truly love.

God You who are love, what a miracle it is that any of us are loving at all. It is only Your love in our hearts which makes it so. I thank You for all the love I have received from fellow Christians, especially those closest to me…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
SERVE EACH OTHER IN LOVE.

“By this we know the love of God: that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

— 1 John 3:16

Love is personified in Jesus Christ. Rather than take, He gave…even to the point where He gave His very life that we might be saved. Christ sacrificed His own life out of love for us. And how then should we live, after accepting His love?

We should be ready to lay down our lives for those in Christ. This statement is quite revolutionary in its implications. Even though we might never be asked to actually die for another person, we are asked to daily die to ourselves.

It is important that we do so, knowing that anything that we do less than laying down our lives for our brethren is to fall short of fulfilling the obligation of that love.

This means we could share more than we do. We could give more than we do. We show our love in practical ways. Christ the Savior has shown us the way. If we are to lay down our lives for our brethren, then surely to help others who are poor and who are in necessitated conditions of one sort or another is little to ask. We should help them with the goods of this world. May God give us more grace to live unselfishly.

God of love, give me Your beautiful love in ever greater measure. Help me to live unselfishly, whether I’m giving up a nap or laying down my very life. All small and great acts of unselfish love for someone else come purely from You…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
BE UNSELFISH AND LOVING.

“Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.”

— 1 John 3:14

John is saying here if we hate our brother, this is murder and that we are a murderer. Now there are many people who cannot even imagine going so far as to murder another person, but he is saying that hatred is like unto murder.

It may be the difference between a mild case and a severe case of the same disease but it is the same infection, the same germ which pervades the body of both. It is the same type of crime, though different in degree. And you know, he says, that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. The Greek phrase translated as “and you know that no murderer has eternal life” means you know it requires no argument, it requires no demonstration, it doesn’t even require reflection. But rather instinctively you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. So if you hate your brethren, it is self-evident by prima facie evidence that eternal life does not abide in you.

If you have that desire to do someone in out of revenge, if you harbor that hatred within your own heart, then says John, you are akin to a murderer—even as Cain himself was a murderer, and that type of hatred continues throughout the world.

But there is also something to be said for those who truly repent of their sins, including the sin of murder. The hymn declares, “The vilest offender who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives.” And once saved, let us walk in love.

Lord of life, You give us life and love and the taking of life is not up to us. The germ of hatred is anti-love and leads to death. Thank You that it cannot grow in a heart where Your presence is manifest. Please remove from us any root of bitterness and any hatred…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, HATRED
CAN BE REPLACED BY LOVE.

“His master answered, ‘You wicked and slothful servant!’”

— Matthew 25:26

The Lord Jesus has some unkind things to say about the deliberately slothful person. In the parable of the talents, the Lord lambasts the third man because he was lazy.

The Bible admonishes us to be not slothful in business, but fervent in spirit serving the Lord, and therefore by our fervency in our business we are also serving the Lord. And Paul says that if a man will willfully not work then neither shall he eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10).

And yet we live in a day when these things are being greatly ignored to the detriment of our society. One time some counties instituted a “workfare” program which was to substitute for the welfare program that had been in effect. Sadly, many able-bodied people did not take advantage of this. Too many of them just wanted something for nothing. We are producing more and more people who are being taught by our government in effect that the world owes them a living.

This is a sin and we as Christians need to face up to that. We are producing a generation of slothful, indigent people and it does not portend well for our society.

Furthermore, it does not help the poor, especially since the wealth-transfer systems break the back of the urban family. It is a great tragedy when we as individuals or as a nation stray from God’s principles. God’s ways still work, and He has designed us for work. Granted, some people in extreme cases cannot. But the exception should not make the rule.

Dear God, thank You for creating us to work. Thank You for the blessings of accomplishments and the joy in a job well done. Help us to do work well and always help those who are unable to do so…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE CAN
DO OUR WORK TO HIS GLORY.

“The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry?…If you do well, shall you not be accepted? But if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must rule over it.’”

— Genesis 4:6

In the account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, we see a great contrast between true religion and false religion. Of course, in our day when people believe truth is relative, many recoil at such a notion as true versus false religion.

The nature by which Cain’s works were unrighteous and Abel’s works were righteous was very simply this: Abel held to the right views and practice of religion, while Cain held to false views and practices of religion.

Abel you may recall came before God and brought the sacrifice of one of his flock and offered this sacrifice with the shedding of blood and the giving of a life. Whereas Cain, on the other hand, brought the fruit of the fields from his toil as a farmer and he brought that, and he offered it to God, and he was rejected, whereas Abel’s sacrifice was accepted.

Everywhere in the world there is the same picture of Cain’s type of religion where man brings the fruit of his own labors and offers it up to God—his own goodness, his own morality and piety and benevolence—and he is astonished and chagrined when it is not accepted by God, and he does not receive that inward peace of knowing that he has been forgiven and accepted by God. Whereas the Christian knows that it is only by the shedding of the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, that he is accepted.

Lord God, we see Cain and the chance You gave him to find victory over temptation. Sin is always crouching at the door. Please give us strength for today to overcome it. Help us to please You today…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH, WE
CAN OVERCOME TEMPTATION.

“Do not marvel, my brothers, if the world hates you.”

— 1 John 3:13

We often hear people talk about a person who has a “holier than thou attitude.” Now if there is anything that we hate it is a holier than thou attitude. But there probably is one thing that we hate even more and that is a holier than thou fact; in other words, often we totally forget that there are people who are in actual fact holier than we are.

Justification admits of no degrees whatsoever—there is no one in this world who is more justified than I am, because I am completely and totally justified. I am totally pardoned from all of my sins and accepted as righteous before God. But unlike justification, which admits of no degrees, sanctification does admit of degrees and is greater in one than in another.

So there are indeed in just about any church at any given time people who are at all levels of spiritual growth and sanctification. People who are at all levels of holiness; and if there is one thing that makes many people uncomfortable, it is to be in the presence of someone that is markedly and notably more holy than they are because it is a silent condemnation of their ungodliness and of the remnants of wickedness and worldliness that still cling to their lives. That is why the world sometimes will hate us. May God give us the grace to walk in holiness and to aspire to be more holy.

Holy Father, we wish to be more holy and for Your image to be seen more clearly in us. Grant us to walk in humility and holiness. Let us seek our friendship with those who are holier than we are…

BY GOD’S STRENGTH,
WE ARE MADE HOLY.