“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4,5).

OUR LOVE FOR GOD OUGHT TO BE OUR DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC AND THE THING THAT DETERMINES OUR ACTION. If there is to be a fixed center point around which all our other characteristics revolve, the love of God should be it. There is no statement of more fundamental, far-reaching importance than the famous statement of Moses to Israel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” No less an authority than Jesus quoted this text when He was asked what was the greatest commandment in God’s law.

In any person’s life, the object of that person’s love makes some kind of comment as to his or her character. As Arsene Houssaye said, “Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you what you are.” But if this holds true in general, it is also true with respect to God. In assessing the quality of our character, all anyone ever needs to know is the answer to this question: how deep is our love for our Creator? When that question has been answered accurately, the very root of our personal being will have been discovered. And if the truth is that we do not love God, then nothing else can compensate for that deficiency.

Our love for God is to be an all-encompassing, consummate love. To love Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength means that many other concerns (some of which by themselves are quite important) must be subordinated to our love for God. And this is not a thing we can do once (on some “great” occasion) and then forget about it. Putting the love of God at the center of our hearts and keeping it there is a matter of daily decision. When we neglect this daily decision to love God, it doesn’t take more than a few days for the chaos to begin creeping back in. So we must resist this tendency at all costs. We must draw the lines of demarcation where they ought to be drawn — and thereby “define” ourselves as people who truly do love God.

“We must spiritually renounce all other loves for love of God or at least so hold them in subordination to this that we are ready to forego them for its sake; yet when we find God . . . we find in and with him all the loves which for his sake we had foregone” (William Temple).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you” (1 Peter 5:10).

IN CHRIST, IT IS CERTAIN THAT GOD WILL “PERFECT, ESTABLISH, STRENGTHEN, AND SETTLE” US. But that will come at the end of our earthly lives. God will do these things, Peter wrote, “after you have suffered a while.” Right now, a character-building process is going on, and we should be patient while it is running its course.

Repentance. As hard as this world can be at times, its continuation allows us the time we need to repent of our sins. And it is not only the additional time that benefits us, but the hardness of our sojourn encourages us to repent. For most of us, repentance is not a one-time occurrence; it is a process. By a sequence of events, God is teaching us repentance, and the process can’t be rushed.

Refining. God uses the illustration of a precious metal being refined by fire to help us see what needs to happen to our hearts. Peter wrote, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6,7).

Remediation. In many respects, life in the present world is like time spent in a treatment center. The flaws in our character are being remediated, and the process (often very painful) takes time. Only when our inner characters have been prepared and made fit for the eternal enjoyment of God will they be given that privilege.

Among the many other benefits of our difficulties in this world, there is the fact that we will enjoy heaven all the more because we suffered while getting there. “No one truly knows happiness who has not suffered,” as Henri-Frédéric Amiel wrote. So we should not be surprised that our reward will come later. The Hebrew writer said, “For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise” (Hebrews 10:36). That word “after” is a little word, but oh, how important it is in this life. After we have done the will of God . . .

“From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health” (Spanish Proverb).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).

THE MORE RESOURCES WE ARE BLESSED WITH, THE MORE IMPORTANT IT IS TO PRACTICE ECONOMY. There is a sense, of course, in which the opposite is also true: economy is especially critical when resources are limited. But the well known principle of accountability says that to whom much is given, much is expected. The more we have, the more responsibility we have to use our resources wisely, and that is hard. As Spurgeon pointed out, earning money is not as hard as learning to spend it well. Managing our resources (whether they be many or few) so that the maximum amount of good is done, is one of our principal challenges as mature human beings.

Sparing. To be economical, we must be sparing — in a good sense. That is, we must exercise restraint in our expenditures. Economy means knowing how to subordinate our impulses to our principles.

Frugal. There is a time and a place for luxury, obviously, but if we are so attracted to luxury that we know nothing of self-denial, then we’re on a slippery slope. Economy means being able to abstain.

Thrifty. An old Latin proverb says, “No gain is so certain as that which proceeds from the economical use of what you already have.” Economy means increasing our resources by eliminating waste.

Economy is essential if we are to remain free in our thinking and in our living. One of the worst enslavements is bondage to a particular standard of living, the kind of bondage that occurs when we are so tied to what we presently own that we can’t do without it. Most of us these days are fortunate to have much more than we absolutely need, and the truth is, we can do without much of our present abundance. We may think we couldn’t survive having “little,” but it would only take a fire, a hurricane, a tornado, or an earthquake to prove otherwise. If our abundance was suddenly wiped out, we would find that we could survive, if we had to, on much less than we thought we could. So it is a healthy exercise to live economically — spending less than is within our power — just to stay out of slavery to our stuff.

“He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little” (Horace).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:12).

OPENNESS, TRANSPARENCY, DISCLOSURE. These are words with a very high social value these days. We tend to view them positively (at least as far as other people’s conduct is concerned).

But what about openness with regard to our religious convictions, especially those that might get us into trouble if they were publicly known? When we might be persecuted for our beliefs, we often find it convenient to be quiet about them. And perhaps even more than persecution, we fear social disapproval and ostracism. As the world becomes increasingly secular, religious beliefs of any kind will come to be viewed as contemptible. Whatever other religious people may do, how is a Christian to deal with this pressure?

Well, the gospel is clear on this point. Jesus said, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32,33). Openly acknowledging that we are the Lord’s people is a part of our faith in Him. We cannot hide our identity and still expect that He will acknowledge us on the Judgment Day.

In 1 Timothy 6:12, Paul reminded Timothy that he had made “the good confession.” Surely the verbal confession that Jesus is Lord is a good confession — the best of all possible acknowledgements that a person could make. And it is a required part of becoming a Christian. “With the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:10).

But to confess Christ goes beyond merely saying the words “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” We must truly believe those words — and they must be confessed in our deeds as well as our words. We can’t have Jesus as our “Savior” without obeying Him as our “Lord.” And in the end, doing that may require the greatest courage of all: confessing by our actions that we have accepted His lordship — both when it is convenient and when it is not.

“One of the greatest errors in the church today is the artificial distinction we have created between accepting Christ as Savior and confessing Him as Lord. We have made two experiences of it, but the New Testament makes them one” (Vance Havner).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Hope is wishing for a thing to come true; faith is believing that it will come true” (Norman Vincent Peale).

FOR ALL OUR WHIMS, WE DON’T HAVE MANY REAL WISHES. A wish is more than a transient urge or a passing fancy. It is a real desire or longing for something. It is a strong inclination based on more than a mood. The things we wish for are things that bubble to the surface as our inner character interacts with our outward circumstances. They are things we would really like to see come true. And as Norman Vincent Peale suggests, faith adds the element of expectation. If we have confidence that our wishes are in fact going to come true, then what we have is a combination of hope and faith.

Some people, of course, are nothing more than dreamers. Their wishes never put on any work clothes, and nothing ever comes of their intentions. But as long as we’re willing to back up our wishes with hard work, there is a lot to be said for wishing big wishes. The human heart is vast. Its capacity is almost infinite. And it’s a pity that we so often content ourselves with wishes that are far below our ability. We ought to let ourselves go, at least once in a while. Let’s wish for some things that would stretch us to our limits . . . and even beyond.

While we’re increasing the size of our wishes, however, we also need to give some consideration to their quality. Too often, our biggest wishes have to do with nothing more than our possessions and our lifestyles. But we’ve been endowed with the ability to wish for things that are much more important, things that have to do with our character. So add to your wish list some items that would increase your integrity. If a genie ever gave you three wishes, you wouldn’t want to waste them on toys or entertainments, would you?

The bottom line is, our wishes need to be consistent with our principles. It’s a dangerous game we play when we wish (however privately) for the fulfillment of desires that are inconsistent with our deepest convictions. So we should keep a close watch on our wishes, lest they come true and we regret it. Or maybe we should simply say it this way: we ought not to wish for things we wouldn’t pray for.

“Anything large enough for a wish to light upon is large enough to hang a prayer upon” (George MacDonald).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“. . . remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father” (1 Thessalonians 1:3).

IN THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST, FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE ARE CLOSELY RELATED. Each virtue helps the others to grow, and on the other hand, a failure of any of the three will hinder the other two. In our meditations on “reaching forward,” we have seen how very important hope is in the Christian’s life. Hope is perhaps the principal thing that moves us toward God and toward heaven. So despair, the loss of hope, is a problem of eternal proportions. Today, let’s see how faith and love can keep us from losing our hope.

The hopefulness of faith. Faith, when all is said and done, comes down to “trust.” It means that, based on the convincing evidence that God has kept His word in the past, we make the decision to leave the future in His hands. So faith makes possible a hope that is based on trust — trust in the Creator of heaven and earth.

The hopefulness of love. Love is the ultimate optimist. It is not naive, and if the evidence requires a negative assessment, love will go with the evidence. But love is a defender of hope. Rather than give up at the first sign of trouble, love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

So in the gospel, we have faith, hope, and love, these three. But Paul said the “greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). When all else fails and our hopes hang by a thread, it will always be love that keeps that thread from breaking. How could we give up on the One who has never, not even in His darkest hour, given up on us?

In our text for today, Paul spoke of three things in the Thessalonians’ lives: their work of faith, their labor of love, and their patience of hope. When our work is based on our trust in God’s faithfulness and our labor grows out of a love that is pure and strong, then the hope that is in Christ will produce a steadfastness that would hardly be possible any other way. As long as our hope is fed by a hard-working faith and a long-laboring love, the devil simply doesn’t have what it takes to keep us from going toward God.

“He who despairs wants love and faith, for faith, hope, and love are three torches which blend their light together, nor does the one shine without the other” (Pietro Metastasis).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“. . . in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11).

FOR THE TASK OF TAKING THE GOSPEL TO THE GENTILES, GOD SELECTED A MOST UNLIKELY CANDIDATE. Saul of Tarsus was a firebrand. He was a strict and conscientious Pharisee, a protégé of Gamaliel, one of the leading rabbis in Jerusalem with an influential seat on the Sanhedrin. Before his conversion to Christ, Saul was an ardent persecutor of the fledgling church, traveling even to distant cities to imprison those of “the Way” (Acts 9:1,2).

Saul, later known as Paul, was on track to become one of the leading scholars and defenders of the Jewish faith of his generation. He had a great deal to give up. When he became convinced that he had to become a Christian, it was not as if he had nothing to lose. And the life he had as a Christian, at least in this world, was a life so hard that most of us can hardly imagine it (just read 2 Corinthians 11:23-28 if you think Paul made his life more comfortable when he obeyed the gospel). When he was baptized for the remission of his sins (Acts 22:16), Paul was not switching his “religious affiliation” — he was moving from condemnation to salvation, from death to life, from Satan to the Savior of the world.

After turning to Christ, Paul was as fiery a preacher as he had been a persecutor, which goes to show that the Lord is not looking for timid people without any intensity but for those who, when they finally see the truth, will take a bold and passionate stand for it. And why will people take such a stand, even going so far as to die for Christ? Because of how good the good news really is. So today, our motivation needs to be just as passionate. My own prayer is that I obeyed the gospel in order “that I may gain Christ and be found in him . . . becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

“The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring his infinite beauty” (John Piper).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority” (John 7:17).

MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE, THE THING THAT DETERMINES OUR DISCERNMENT OF GOD’S WILL IS OUR INTENT TO DO HIS WILL. It is an honorable and necessary thing to love the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:10), but our love for God’s truth must be active rather than passive. We must not only desire to know the truth; we must actually intend to obey it. And when we study the Scriptures, this motive is the main thing that determines whether we get the right answers to our questions. If we’re honestly looking for information that will help us improve our own obedience, then we have God’s assurance that we’ll get the information we need. On the other hand, if we’re looking for any other reason, then we’ll probably not discern the Lord’s will even when it’s right in front of us. Paul wrote, “And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:11,12).

Obedience is not something that can safely be put off until we’ve learned everything there is to know about God’s will. In fact, if we don’t do what we should about what we know at present, it is not likely we’ll learn anything beyond that. As Louis Cassels observed, “Obedience leads to faith. Live faithfully by the little bit of light you now have, and you will be given more.”

But there is something else we need to understand, and that is the role of obedience in helping us to understand what we’ve already learned. It is one thing to know something in theory; it is quite another to know it in practical experience. With regard to God’s truth, it is only in obedience that we pass from theoretical knowledge to practical understanding. By going ahead and doing what God says, we come to see that His truth is really true after all, and the wisdom of the right path commends itself to us not as we sit and think about it, but as we get up and walk in it. “We learn more by five minutes’ obedience than by ten years’ study” (Oswald Chambers). If we would be discerners of His will, we must “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).

“Obedience is the eye of the spirit. Failure to obey dims and dulls the spiritual understanding” (Samuel Dickey Gordon).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).

WHEN THE LORD WARNED THE SAINTS IN SMYRNA THAT THEY WERE GOING TO BE PERSECUTED, HE URGED THEM TO HOLD ON AND REMAIN FAITHFUL. They were going to be tested, and during their ordeal, the temptation to give up would have to be resisted.

The word “despair” basically means a loss of hope. To despair is to be overcome with a sense of futility and defeat. In that sense, despair is certainly a thing the Christian should stay away from, because there is always hope in Christ and to give up that hope would be an abandonment of faith. But there is a kind of despair the Christian may feel from time to time, and that is the fear that the outcome of a particular crisis may not be good in the short term. The Christian never doubts the outcome of the overall war between good and evil, but he knows that Satan may be allowed to win an individual battle now and then. So without giving up his long-range hope, the Christian may suffer short-term despair.

In such situations, we need to hang on to our long-range hope and keep going, no matter how desperate the prospects seem to be in the short term. Just as there is a kind of “despair” that is not bad, there is a kind of “stubbornness” that we may engage in. While it is wrong to be perversely unyielding or close-minded, when it comes to hardship, we need to be stubborn enough not to give in to it. Stubbornness in the face of difficulty is a virtue.

Peter wrote, “Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). The “girded-up” mind is a determined mind, braced for action. Peter is recommending that we decide in advance that we’re not going to give up.

When they find themselves in despair, many people think they have no choice but to give up. But despair doesn’t have to lead to that. If we choose, we can stay the course. Indeed, there is no finer courage than that of the soldier who sees no hope of getting off the battlefield alive but fights on because the cause is just.

“Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair” (Edmund Burke).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

     

“Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:46-48).

THIS STATEMENT WAS MADE BY JESUS TO A GROUP OF HIS DISCIPLES ON THE EVENING OF THE SAME DAY ON WHICH HE HAD BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD. As He appeared to them in the room in Jerusalem where they were gathered, the disciples were frightened, but Jesus assured them they were not seeing a ghost and asked if they had anything to eat. Then He began to talk to them about the momentous events of His death and resurrection.

He said, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). Not one detail of what had happened in the previous week should have been surprising to the disciples. All of it was a part of what had been written about the Messiah in the three divisions of the Tanakh (the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings). And then “he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (v.45).

Now we come to our text in vv.46-48. Specifically, what Jesus showed His disciples from the Hebrew Scriptures is that (a) the Messiah would suffer, (b) He would rise from the dead, and (c) repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And when the apostles themselves began their work, they preached from the Hebrew Scriptures, showing that what the prophets had foretold about the Messiah was perfectly fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 3:22-26; 9:22; 10:43; 17:2,3; 18:5; 24:14; 26:22,23; 28:23,24; etc.).

There is no greater study for us than to immerse ourselves in the Hebrew Scriptures, reverently looking there for every detail which God revealed about the coming of His Messiah. The Messiah was to be a King, obviously, but as it turned out, He was a very different King than anyone expected. In particular, His horrible death and victorious resurrection caught everyone by surprise. But that is the way it often is with events that shake the world.

“What happened on that day [of Jesus’ resurrection] became, was, and remained the center around which everything else moves” (Karl Barth).

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com