“Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God. 7. And the peace of God, which passes understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
This is one of my favorite “go-to” texts. I actually mentally quote it sometimes just to remind me of the benefits of prayer that are contained in it. I want to share these benefits with you, and hope it will be a great encouragement in your own prayer life. First, the text tells us that prayer is a cure for anxiety. (“Careful” can be translated “anxious.) Many people are anxious today and need to be reminded that they do not need to be anxious because they can go to the Lord of the universe, and shed their anxieties on Him. We will find Him ready and willing to help. There is no need for a Christian to be anxious. Second, there is the benefit of supplication, or petition. There is nothing that we cannot talk to Him about, and there is nothing that we can tell Him that He does not already know. We can share our concerns about other people with Him. I offer petition every day for my family. I offer petition for my fellow ministers. I offer petition for churches. There is nothing that we cannot share with Him. For example, the Bible tells us to pray for our enemies and the Lord will help us to accept them and not feel hostile toward them. This hostility is a real stunt to our Christian growth. You can pray for all people in your life. Thank God for the benefit of supplication. Third, there is the benefit of “requests.” Those who attend prayer meetings will be familiar with prayer requests. The greatest comfort that I had when undergoing serious illness, was that people all over Georgia were lifting up my name in prayer to the Lord. Praying for others is not just nice to do; it can also be a matter of life or death. We can also petition Him on behalf of our problems, etc. that we are having in our lives. There is nothing that is troubling that you cannot take to the Lord..Remember when you pray that the Lord is in the forgiving business and, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, you will find Him waiting for you, to forgive and cleanse you. Fourth, there is the benefit of peace. When we make our requests to Him in true confession and repentance, He will forgive us and give us peace. The peace that God gives is not just a nice thing, it is life changing. It is “peace that passes all understanding.” If you want peace today take your concerns to God in true confession and repentance, and the “peace that passes understanding” will be yours. In fact, I challenge you take all of your burdens to the Lord. The “peace that passes all understanding can be yours. Take advantage of these benefits of prayer today. Bro. Joe
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“Judge not, and you shall not be judged: condemn not, and you shall not be condemned: forgive and you shall be forgiven. 38. Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down and shaken together, and running over, shall men give unto your bosom, For with the same measure that you mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”
The title above tells us what the text is all about. There are some things that we are not and there are some things we should be. We are not judges! We need to be careful here because we know right from wrong, and to call sin, sin is not judging. This is more fully explained in the counsel to “condemn not.” We cannot condemn anyone. Only God has the righteousness and authority to judge and condemn. To caution someone about bad behavior is neither judging nor condemning. I thank God for the people who have corrected and cautioned me, particularly in my early years. But we need to always remember when we are calling sin, sin; we still have to love the person that we are correcting. We can’t just condemn people and dump them by the wayside if we are to be like Jesus. Disagreeing with someone is not condemning and doesn’t cancel wise counsel, but we are mandated to do this in love and not in a condemning, and self-righteous, manner. We are to be forgivers. This is easy to say or write, but it is not always easy to do. I can think back over my life and think of something that someone said or did to me that really hurt, and I have to remember that I have to forgive. I reiterate: Not forgiving people is not a choice for the person who really wants to be a serious follower of Christ. I think that not forgiving people is the source of a lot enmity in families, circles of friends, and definitely in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to always remember that the first words of Jesus during His crucifixion were “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That sets the example for us, and for the sake of our Christian witness, for the sake of our human relationships and for the sake of our well-being, we need to be forgivers. According to this text, if we want to be forgiven we need to forgive. It ain’t easy, but we need to do it! We are to be givers. In my opinion, this is the greatest text in the Bible about why we should be givers. We need to be generous with our material blessings, and we also need to be generous in our attitudes toward people. The text frankly reminds us that if we are stingy with other people, they will be stingy with us. If we withhold our love from other people they are not likely to love us back. Luke 6:38 is true in our stewardship in our churches, in our daily relationships with others and in all of life. Just read what this text says about the rewards of being a giver and realize that it really pays to be a giver. (No pun intended.) Wow! This is a hard lesson, but it is a lesson that we need to learn. And I remind myself of it often. Bro. Joe “Then said Jesus, Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
This is big subject that I have chosen, but I think that I can show you what you need to know about what Jesus did for you on the cross. First, by going to the cross voluntarily, Jesus revealed to us how much God loves us. That is the meaning of John 3:16-17: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17. For God sent not His Son to condemn the world, but that the world through might be saved.” Here is the message that you need here: Jesus died on the cross because He loves you! Until we see that, we will miss the message of the cross. Second, according to our printed text above, Jesus went to the cross to forgive us for our sins. This is mercy, for we are all sinners and stand in the need of God’s forgiveness. Until we see that we will not grasp the reality of the cross. Standing in the light of the glory of God shining from the cross, we see our own sins and confess them and repent of them. Standing there under the cross, the Roman centurion saw it: “Now when the centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man.” Perhaps you think that you have no need to be forgiven for your sins. The Bible says that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) Perhaps you think that your sins are so great that they cannot be forgiven. Look at Romans 23:24: “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” In His grace, Jesus can and will forgive your sins. Third, Jesus received the wrath of God that should have been ours, and delivered us from the wrath of God. This is why Jesus cried in Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me…” Jesus had never sinned and He knew that on the cross He would feel the sting of your sin and mine. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…” (Romans 1:18) But the good news is that we can escape His wrath through faith in Jesus Christ. Here is the good news from Romans 5:1: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus died on the cross to save you from God’s wrath. Jesus went to the cross because He loves you. When He died on the cross, Jesus secured His forgiveness for your sins. He took the wrath that should be yours and mine upon Himself. That is the gospel, either you have been forgiven for your sins through faith in Him or you have not. Confess your sins, repent of your sins and invite Jesus into your heart and life. Bro. Joe “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
This is one loaded verse. I’ve written on this before, but the text spoke so loudly to me, I had to write about it again. It makes some seemingly impossible demands. It is a direct command from Jesus, which, of course, makes it important. First, Jesus told us to love our enemies. Who is our enemy? It is anyone whose name makes us angry, and might even cause us to lose sleep. Think of those people, and visualize them and make it up in your mind and heart that you are going to love them. If we are to have the peace that Christ offers, we will just have to find it in our hearts to love our enemies. Frankly, some people are easier to love from a distance, but love them we should. We should remember that Jesus loves them and died for them. Seriously ask Jesus to help you to love them, or for Him to love them through you. I think the rest of the verse shows us how to love our enemies. Second, Jesus told us to bless them that curse us. If anyone calls us a foul name, do not return it in kind, but actually bless them. If someone curses us, we should bless them. Take this seriously now, because this is serious business to Jesus. Pray God’s blessings upon the one who curses you. To bless them we will have to forgive them, for unforgiveness and hatred cannot dwell in the same heart and mind, or at least, it cannot dwell peacefully in the same heart and mind. If someone curses us we should forgive and move on. Their hatred cannot have an effect in our lives if we don’t let it. Think about it!!! Third, Jesus told us to do good to those who hate us. What? Does Jesus mean that if someone hates us, we should go out of our way to do good to them? Yes. That is exactly what He means. Are you getting the point here? If you love an enemy, he, or she, is no longer an enemy. If we bless those who curse us, this means that their curses made no difference in our lives. If we do good things for people, if they still hate us, that will be on them, not on us. We are doing what Jesus told us to do. If it was impossible, Jesus would not tell us to do it. Fourth, Jesus told us to “pray for them which despitefully, use you and persecute you.” Prayer is the key to loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us,and doing good to those who hate us. That’s right! Take it to the Lord in prayer. We should put these people on the top of our prayer lists and pray for them every day. I know that this is what we need to do, because I have actually done it, and know that it works. It works because it is done in obedience to Jesus. Will you think about this, pray about it, and let it make a difference in the relationships in your life? All you have to lose is enemies and your own personal negativity. Bro. Joe “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?”
Jesus was traveling from Judea to Galilee, and we are informed in 4:4: “And He must needs go through Samaria.” In other words, Jesus had to go through Samaria. In His infinite mind, Jesus knew that He had an appointment with a sinful woman there, and that a whole town needed Him. Jesus met the woman at a well, where she had come to draw water and talked with her. She was a sinful woman who had been married five times and was living with a man out of wedlock at that time. Jesus told this sinful that He was/is the Messiah. That’s when she went into the town and told the town’s people about Jesus, and they went out to meet Him and accepted His message as well. (You can read the whole story in John 4.) This is an incident in the New Testament where Jesus changed a desperate woman’s life, and the lives of the people in the town in which she lived. How was she changed? First, before Jesus came into her life the woman was friendless. Women usually went to the well to get water together, but she was there by herself. Since she was a sinful woman, the other women in town wouldn’t have anything to do with her. I like to think that after she told the people about Jesus, she found a new acceptance in that town. The Bible doesn’t follow up on her life, but I believe that she was a changed woman after that encounter with Jesus, and because of Jesus she found a new acceptance among her neighbors. At least they listened to her when she told them about Jesus, and they went out to meet Him and also accepted Him as Messiah. Most importantly, the woman was, no doubt, able to accept herself because of her changed life. Jesus promised that He would accept all who came to Him in faith. This woman was not too sinful to be saved, nor is anyone else if they will just come to Jesus in faith. Second, before Jesus came into her life, the woman was hopeless. Not only was she an outcast in her own community, she was lost in sin, which was reflected in her lifestyle. I imagine to the people who knew her, this woman was hopeless. I think that she probably thought she was hopeless too, and she was until she encountered Jesus at the well. She was given a new lease on life that was filled with the hope of Jesus. We need to understand that no one is really hopeless where Jesus is concerned, and if they have an encounter with Jesus they will be filled with hope. Jesus came to bring hope into a seemingly hopeless world. All over the world, people are accepting Jesus as Savior. Many of them are accepting His hope in spite of the threats on their lives. There is nothing greater than the hope that we have in Jesus. This woman shows us that people can be saved and enter into the hope of Jesus, regardless of what they have done in the past. To get a clearer picture of what I have written, I would like for you to read the fourth chapter of John’s gospel. It might be that there is something in your life that an encounter with Jesus can help you with and give you a renewed hope. It can also help us see that the people we know who seem hopelessly lost can encounter Jesus as well. Like the woman in the text, it might be that we could lead to an encounter with Jesus. Read this chapter and think about your own life. Bro. Joe "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
I want to share with some thoughts about forgiveness that can help you in your own pilgrimage. First, we need to remember that forgiveness is available. It is available to you! The promise of 1 John 1:9 is that if we will confess our sins, Jesus will forgive us. Jesus is “faithful and just” to forgive us. Jesus paid a great price on the cross to secure forgiveness for those who are willing to confess their sins to Him. Jesus wants you to come to Him for forgiveness. His arms are wide open to receive you and to forgive you. I do not know what sin you might be dealing with that is troubling your spirit and dampening your joy, but I know that whatever it is, Jesus is willing to forgive it if you willingly confess it. You can do that before you read another word if you really want to be forgiven. Come on, give that sin burden to Jesus and let Him relieve you of it. Second, we need to remember that forgiveness will set us free from the shame and guilt of sin. Psalm 51 is David’s prayer of forgiveness for his sin with Bathsheba. The shame and guilt of what he had done had robbed him of joy. He prayed “restore unto me the joy of your salvation.” Perhaps you need to come clean about the sins that are troubling you. Whatever it is that is troubling your soul and shattering your joy of life, can be taken to Jesus now. Jesus is standing with arms wide open to receive your confession and to give you His forgiveness. If you are tired of the shame and guilt of sin, Jesus is ready to forgive you and to cleanse you. Third, we need to remember that the forgiveness we get from Jesus is to be shared with others by our forgiving them. In His model prayer Jesus taught us to pray for forgiveness and for us to be willing to forgive those that have sinned against us. (Matthew 5:12) Ephesians 5:32 comes to mind: “And be ye kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” There is nothing that can bring revival to a church like people wholeheartedly forgiving one another. Don’t let an unforgiving spirit rob you from the joy that you can have in Jesus. You can ask Jesus right now to help you to forgive. The forgiveness of Jesus is available to you now if you want it. Let forgiveness change your life and set you free from whatever is hindering your growth in Christ. Bro. Joe “And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven, may forgive you your trespasses. 26. But if you do not forgive, neither shall your Father which is in heaven, forgive your trespasses.”
I read this passage this morning and it arrested my complete attention. It made me stop and think about my own capacity to forgive. This made me think about the “sin of unforgiveness.” (My computer tells me that “unforgiveness” is not a word, but, let us say, that I just coined a new word.) I stopped reading for a few minutes and let my mind roam back over the years, and I wondered if I had forgiven everyone for everything in my life. Folks, that is a daunting task. As I let my mine rove my memory banks, I began to turn up a few interesting rocks, so to speak. That is to say that I had to pause and start doing some fast forgiving. There were people who hurt me that I had to forgive, and worse yet, there were people that I hoped to heaven had forgiven me. I don’t think unforgiveness will send us to hell, but it will sure play havoc with our growth in Christ, and it will surely hinder our witness to a lost and unforgiving world. I want to challenge you to stop what you are doing right now and do the same thing that I just did. Let your mind rove back over your memory banks, and see if there are not a few people that you have really not forgiven. It could be that we do not feel as close to Jesus as we should at times. Perhaps we get a restless feeling sometimes that there is something missing in our lives. Could this be caused by the sin of unforgiveness? (Shut up computer with your red line…But I forgive you - I quickly remembered!) At least it is worth a try. You might find a few rocks in your past that need turning over… . Why should we be forgiving toward others? Well, we have a Savior who has forgiven us for our sins when we did not deserve it. Who are we that we can’t have forgiving hearts? Paul gave us a stark reminder of this in Ephesians 4:32: “And be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” We are to do for others what Jesus did for us on the cross. Think of what your life would be like if Christ had not forgiven you. I hope that I have not upset your morning, or evening, or whenever you read this, but maybe I have just given you the spiritual “shot in the arm” that you needed today. Okay, start turning over those rocks! (So to speak..) Bro. Joe “He that covers his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy.”
There is a warning and a promise in this powerful proverb. The warning is that we should be honest about our own sins, and when we are honest about our sins. we prosper in God’s mercy. The verse warns us that we can deceive ourselves about our own righteousness and goodness. Actually, behavior that we would loathe in other people does not seem so bad when applied to ourselves. As long as we hide ourselves from ourselves, we will not prosper in the good that this life offers. (Please do not see $ in this.) There are people who are always finding fault with other people. I have known people like this, and, to be honest, I fight this tendency in my life. (It might prosper you to pause here and make this confession.) Frankly, it is painful to really look at our own sins and faults, but we need to do it if we would prosper in the good things of this life. Instead of covering our sins, we need to honestly confess them. In fact, honest confession is where our soul’s prosperity begins. In Luke 18:10-14, Jesus shared a parable about two men who went to the temple to pray – a Pharisee and a publican. When the Pharisee prayed he reeled out all of what he thought of his virtues, as though he was doing God a favor by praying. When the publican prayed, he said: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Jesus said that the Publican was justified before God, and the Pharisee was not. Be careful now: you will begin to think of other people as the Pharisees and you the Publican. Be careful because the Pharisee was poor in righteousness simply because he did not confess his sins. According to the proverb, confession of our sins alone is not sufficient. When we have confessed our sins, we need to forsake them. If there is one thing possibly more difficult than honest confession is actually forsaking those things that we confess. Let’s look at one particular “set of sins” that would be the hardest to forsake – sins of attitude. When we look honestly at ourselves, there will probably be some attitudes that we need to forsake. I can’t name your sins of attitude, but you can – if you will honestly confess. The benefit of confessing and forsaking our sins is God’s mercy. It is in finding God’s mercy that we come to peace with God, with ourselves and with other people. Honestly confess your sins and forsake them. You will find Jesus at the end of your honest confession, forgiving healing, and giving you His mercy. Bro. Joe “For you (God) do not desire sacrifice; or else I would give it: you do not delight in burnt offering. 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God you will not despise.”
When David prayed the prayer of repentance that is recorded in Psalm 51 he was a broken man, not proud of his sexual conquest with Bathsheba, and his rash decision to have Uriah murdered. David did not come before God bragging on himself, or justifying what he had done. He seriously wanted God’s forgiveness and he hung on in prayer until he received it. God wants your heart too, and He will not be satisfied with your religious activity. He will be satisfied with that, when He has our hearts and when we are doing what we do to serve Him, not ourselves. This reminds us of Peter’s reaction after he denied the Lord. He went out and cried tears of repentance. He did not justify himself for his denial. He did not make excuses as to why he had to deny Jesus. Peter had a broken spirit and contrite heart, and he went on to become one of Christ’s choice servants. What does God want of you? He wants you to have a spirit of genuine repentance and brokenness. You might be having spiritual problems right now because you are trying to get yourself right with God by justifying your sins. Self-justification just will not work. The Lord demands the same thing of us that He wanted of David – “a broken spirit and a contrite heart.” He does not want you to remain broken in spirit, for one of His great desires for us is to be joyful people, but not at the expense of our relationship with Him. It would be good for us to meditate over this text, and search our own hearts and minds to see if they are broken and contrite. Do not let sin disrupt your relationship with Christ, and disrupt your joy in Him. Bro. Joe “For you (God) do not desire sacrifice; or I would give it: you do not delight in a burnt offering. 17. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”
The two verses above come at the close of David’s prayer of repentance in Psalm 51. David was, indeed, a broken man. He had committed adultery with Bathsheba, had Uriah, her husband, killed at the front lines and tried to lie his way out of it. The whole prayer is a prayer of repentance, but I want to focus on these two verses. David pointed out that God would not “delight in a burnt offering.” This was an offering that the Jews made at the holy place, the tabernacle and later the temple. What God was looking for from David was not to do some religious exercise. This does not mean that burnt offerings were not important in David’s day. What it does mean is that David had probably offered burnt offerings the day before his adultery with Bathsheba and all that ensued, and it didn’t keep him from the sins that he committed. We are not pleasing God because we are involved in religious rituals, like going to church, singing in the choir, etc. These, of course, are not bad things; they just do not have the power to save us, keep us and sustain us. There are a lot of things that are good things to do, but what God wanted from David was for him to be broken and repentant because of the sins that he had committed. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God.” He does not mean that He wants us to be unhappy, long-faced and moping all of the time. What He wants is for us to be sorry for our sins, and come broken to Him for forgiveness. Jesus gave us Joy as a gift of the Holy Spirit, but sin cannot result in joy. The sacrifices or rituals that God wants from us is a “broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart.” Jesus wants to work from within us to change us and grow us in His grace. The Holy Spirit wants to break us and bring us to repentance so that we can go beyond our sins and grow in Him. God does not want us to be proud of our sins, nor does He want us to excuse our sins. He wants our sins to drive us to repentance and change. (continued tomorrow) Bro. Joe |
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