May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. [Psalm 19:14]
I’m sharing these daily devotions in the hope they will inspire you to read God’s word. I’m praying that they will help you find your way to a closer relationship with God. [Read More ….]
I share prayer requests with a group of believers. As I look through the appeals, it becomes obvious that Christians, even Christians of deep faith, are not shielded from the challenges and difficulties of everyday life. Like everyone else, we have marriage problems, unemployment, financial issues, uncertainty, poor health, depression, and chronic pain. Our family members are no different from anyone else’s either; they have addictions, cancer, lack of faith, legal difficulties, and emotional problems. Our needs are the same as anyone’s: wisdom, balance, healing, guidance and strength.
The Psalms represent God as a shield about twenty times. A shield is a weapon of defense and ancient shields were protection against arrows and spears. So, if God is our shield, shouldn’t people of faith be impervious to the slings and arrows of everyday life? Shouldn’t we be protected and sheltered from the storms that plague unbelievers?
Deep faith is no guarantee of a smooth ride in this life. In this broken world, life will inflict its inevitable challenges and obstacles with unpredictability upon us all—both believers and unbelievers. God’s shield doesn’t make us like superman, invulnerable to everything but kryptonite; it doesn’t prevent us from being bombarded with trouble. Look at Job—a man of faith, God’s shield didn’t keep him from losing wealth, family, status, and health!
God’s shield, however, makes an enormous difference when facing those troubles because it keeps us from being defeated by them. Again, look at Job—although Satan hit him with every weapon in his armory, the man never cursed God. While he wanted to know the why of his trouble, he never lost his faith in God!
God’s shield is the armor that sustains us when we have to face challenges, strengthens us when we do battle with evil forces, revives us when we tire or lose heart, guides and comforts us with His word, and provides a refuge when we need a safe haven. It assures us that God is in control, that He loves us, that He’ll never abandon us. His shield also provides us with brothers and sisters in Christ who gladly offer their prayers, support, advice and helping hands.
You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge to Satan. [John Bunyan]
I think of Jesus’ instructions every time I pack for a trip! Take only what I’ve got on my back and the one pair of shoes on my feet? He’s got to be kidding! When we’re taking a trip, wanting to be prepared for any eventuality, it seems like I pack everything but the kitchen sink!
Wanting to visit family and friends and enjoy the fall colors, we took a three-week road trip from southwest Florida north to Illinois and back a few years ago. With casual and formal occasions planned in both rural and city locales, we packed plenty of clothes and shoes. We also packed essentials like prescriptions, toiletries, camera, phones, iPads, and assorted chargers along with back packs, sweatshirts, jackets, and rain gear. The car was stocked with snacks, bottled water, maps, and Fodor’s guidebooks. Even then, we weren’t prepared for every eventuality. Unprepared for snow in the mountains, we needed a snow brush/ice scraper and I purchased a fleece vest and warm hat!
Unlike the disciples, we’d spent weeks researching and planning our trip. Because we made hotel reservations for the entire journey, we knew where we’d rest our heads during our travels. We even made some dinner reservations in advance! As for money, we had both credit cards and cash but the disciples had neither! They were expected to depend on the good will and hospitality of the towns they visited.
Jesus, however, wasn’t sending the disciples on a vacation—they were on a God-ordained mission and Jesus was training them. This was an opportunity for the disciples to put into practice the principles He taught them. Jesus wanted His followers to understand that, when doing God’s business, they could and should rely on Him (rather than themselves) for their needs. Rather than putting their faith in TripIt, Google Maps, or AAA, they had to trust God with their journey.
Moreover, Jesus knew His time on earth was short—the disciples’ assignment was urgent and He wanted them to focus on the mission rather than logistics. As for receiving hospitality—welcoming the traveler or sojourner was a cultural obligation in Jesus’ day. The sharing of food was a token of friendship and a perfect setting for them to develop relationships while passing on the good news about Jesus. The first evangelism assignments taught Jesus’ followers the simple but profound lesson that, ultimately, our provision comes from God, not gear!
Had I been one of the disciples, would I have taken nothing with me as instructed? Would I have trusted God to provide everything I needed or would I have worried about my next meal or where I’d rest my head at night? Would I have tucked away some money or a few pieces of bread in my pocket “just in case”? What about you?
Each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and He will not send us out on any journey for which He does not equip us well. [Alexander MacLaren]
While creativity is encouraged in both cooking and prayer, there are certain procedures for both that should be followed to ensure good results. For example, before a cook even begins, his work surface, utensils, and hands should be clean. In prayer, instead of starting with clean bowls and spoons, we should start with a forgiving heart and wash off any resentment or anger.
Even the most creative chef knows there are some cooking rules that simply can’t be broken: egg yolks can’t get mixed in with whites in a meringue, fudge needs to be cooked only to the soft ball stage, and poultry should be cooked to 165 degrees. Prayer has rules, too. For example, a willing, obedient, and thankful heart is a necessity. In addition, just as leavening of some kind must be added to any bread recipe, we must have faith in God and the power of our prayers. Without leavening, no matter how delicious the rest of the ingredients, the bread won’t rise. Without faith, no matter what we’ve said or how nicely we’ve said it, our prayers won’t rise to God’s ears!
Just as some foods, like risotto or a 20-pound turkey, require patience and persistence, so do our prayers! The answers to our petitions aren’t like instant potatoes—they often take time. Just as pans should be greased so baked goods won’t stick, we need to lubricate our prayers with a large amount of humility if we want them to come out easily. Any good chef knows to use only fresh wholesome ingredients. Self-righteousness, hypocrisy, or pride are disgusting to God and they’ll spoil any prayer the same way rancid nuts spoil granola.
Sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami are the five taste elements that build our overall perception of flavor while praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession, and petition are the elements of prayer. Balance is as important in prayer as it is in food. Just as sugar or honey can balance a sour or bitter flavor, thanksgiving and praise help keep a prayer from being too heavy on our personal needs and desires!
It’s said that “We eat with our eyes” and, in cooking competitions, presentation is judged. While points might be awarded for fondant flowers or a strawberry fan, God doesn’t score our prayers on their aesthetic appeal. He won’t award extra points for eloquence or number of words. If God evaluates our prayers at all, it would be on things like sincerity, motives, repentance, obedience, and willingness to submit to His will!
Finally, a good chef doesn’t offend a gastronome with bland or tasteless food; he honors him with bold flavors. A true connoisseur of prayers, God is awesome and capable of anything and everything. Let’s never insult Him with half-hearted, routine, insipid, or bland prayers. Like a gourmet chef, we must be bold with our offerings to the Lord. When cooking in God’s kitchen, let’s give Him everything we’ve got!
Martha, the elder sister of Lazarus and Mary, was chided by Jesus when she complained about her sister not helping with dinner preparations. Her fault, however, was in her fretfulness and reproach more than the work she was doing. She had more than a dozen hungry men to feed but, wanting to be the proper hostess, Martha’s preparations probably were more elaborate than necessary. Could it be that she’d become more interested in impressing her dinner guest than knowing Him? “Worried and upset by many things” that night, she lost sight of Jesus. Praiseworthy service must never obscure our view of the Lord!
Hard-working Martha was a woman of action; seeing what needed to get done, she did it. It was Martha who, even in her grief at Lazarus’ death, left her house of mourning and ran to greet Jesus while Mary stayed home in her sorrow. It was Martha who spoke to Jesus about the possibility of another miracle and it was Martha who declared that He was the Messiah. Apparently, Martha hadn’t been so busy with those dinner preparations that she’d missed Jesus’ message. Without a doubt Martha, like Mary, was a woman of faith; she just demonstrated it in a different way.
While industrious Martha was the busy one, Mary was the quiet sister who sat at Jesus’ feet to learn. She was the one who fell at his feet in grief and knelt before Him to anoint His feet. Busy preparing a meal, Martha made the mistake of comparison and judgment—of thinking her work was superior to that of Mary. Later, when Mary extravagantly anointed Jesus’ feet with a year’s worth of wages in perfume, there is no record of complaint on Martha’s part even though she was serving again! After Jesus’ first rebuke, she had learned to respect the different ways of service.
Both Mary’s choice of quiet contemplation and Martha’s of service and hospitality were worthy activities. Nevertheless, when reading about these sisters, we often judge one against the other. Because Mary was the deep thinker, inner mystic, and prayer warrior, we often think of her as the more faithful of the sisters. But, if we were all Marys, not much would get done around our churches. If we only had people who sit quietly listening, praying, and meditating on God’s word, there would be no food at the pot lucks, no teachers for the children, and no one to drive the sick and elderly to church or medical appointments. Tables and chairs wouldn’t get set up, the food pantry would be bare, sidewalks wouldn’t get shoveled, grass wouldn’t get cut, the choir loft would be empty, and flowers would never get on the altar.
Martha, the doer, was the practical sister. When Jesus commanded that Lazarus’ tomb be opened, she reminded him that the corpse would smell. While, on this occasion, she needn’t have been concerned because a miracle was in the works, a certain amount of practicality is needed in even the most faithful. There are times we all need someone to tell us an idea stinks!
There are both Marys and Marthas in our churches; neither way of serving is superior to the other and both should be respected. We need both thinkers and doers, worshippers and servers, the pious and industrious, the dreamers and the practical. Those of us who are Marthas, however, might want to temper our practicality and busyness with a bit more faith and contemplation while those of us who are Marys might want to temper our spirituality with a little more helpfulness and service.
Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. [C.S. Lewis]
When my eldest grand took advanced calculus, I could neither understand what she was doing nor the purpose in doing it (other than gaining entrance into a good university). The following year, she took something called discrete math. Since I was thinking “discreet,” I couldn’t understand how numbers could be cautious or prudent. Even when she explained “discrete” means “individually separate and distinct” and discrete math is the basis for much of computer science, statistics, and programming, I remained in the dark. Fortunately, I wasn’t the one taking SATs and making application to colleges, so I didn’t need to make sense of her difficult curriculum.
Even more confusing and difficult to explain than calculus and discrete math is the concept of the Holy Trinity. Although my grand has to fully understand the concepts taught in her math classes, I don’t have to completely comprehend the Trinity to believe in it (which is good since the Trinity can seem as confusing as algorithms, algebraic combinatorics, and hypergraph theory).
While various analogies are often used to describe the Holy Trinity, none seem to work completely. The Trinity has been compared to an egg with its three parts: yolk, white, and shell. Although each is part of the same egg, the analogy fails because none of the three are the egg themselves. All three distinct persons of the Trinity are God rather than just part of Him. Others analogies compare the Trinity to water with its three properties of liquid, solid (ice), and vapor or steam. Although they all are water, the analogy fails since the same water can’t be all three at the same time. God, however, is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously. In previous devotions, I’ve compared the Trinity both to a chef’s mirepoix and the three dimensions of a book; while close, they weren’t perfect analogies either.
While viewing a waterfall, I remembered an analogy used by one of my pastors. Picture yourself standing at the foot of a beautiful and powerful waterfall. You look up to the top. You can’t see the river that is the source of the water and yet you know it is there. The river, the source, is like God the Father. Then you look ahead and see the water pouring down over the rocks. The water you can see is Jesus (the Son who comes from God). Finally, you feel the spray on your face, breathe it in through your mouth and nose, and the water becomes part of you. That mist is the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, while the river, falling water, and mist are different forms of the same thing and exist at the same time, the analogy still doesn’t wholly capture the Trinity.
Despite failed analogies, the doctrine of the Trinity is central to our Christian faith. God is one being who exists as three coexistent, equal, eternal, and divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While they are all God, none of the three are any of the others. The Father is not the Son or Spirit; the Son is not the Father or Spirit; and the Spirit is neither Father nor Son. That we can’t fully comprehend this incredible phenomenon is understandable. God is God and we are not and His ways are beyond our limited human understanding.
Nevertheless, just because I can’t understand calculus or discrete math doesn’t mean they are false or nonexistent and just because I can’t quite grasp the concept of a Triune God doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist either. Our Triune God’s power and presence are not dependent upon our understanding. After all, this is the God who created a vast universe from nothing, scattered countless stars across the sky, and fashioned everything from elephants to dragonflies and redwoods to roses. God doesn’t just understand theoretical astrophysics, nanotechnology, quantum physics, calculus, and discrete math, He created them! Being three in one is probably child’s play to our omnipotent Triune God. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen!
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is the commandment cited by Jesus as the most important commandment of all [Mark 12:29-30]. It tells us there is one, and only one, God. Yet, as Christians, along with our belief in only one God, we profess our belief in the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How can that be?
Although we find a variety of names for God in Scripture, we never find the word “trinity.” Nevertheless, it appears in Christian doctrine. Then again, words like divinity, omniscience, incarnation, and omnipresent don’t appear in Scripture either. Nevertheless, like the Trinity, their concepts are found throughout Scripture. The absence of a word doesn’t invalidate a doctrine. While there is only one God, from the first words of Genesis to those in Revelation, we find a plurality to that one God—what we call the Trinity—consisting of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In Hebrew, the singular form of God is El, but when Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” the word translated as “God” is Elohim, which is the plural form of God. However, wherever we find the plural Elohim referring to God, the verb used is singular, which clearly implies only one God! In Genesis, we have God (Elohim) speaking of Himself in the plural saying, “Let us make man in our own image,” [1:26] and man “has become like one of us.” [3:22] God isn’t speaking to the angels because they are nothing like Him or us nor is God using a royal “we” since there are no other examples of its use in Scripture. In fact, the earliest evidence of royalty referring to themselves as “we” is not found until the 4th century!
The personages of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are found in both the Old and New Testaments. In Genesis 14:18, we have the Father when El (the singular form of God) is used for “God Most High.” In Isaiah 7:14, we have the Son in Immanuel meaning “God with us.” In Job 33:4 and 37:10, we find the Holy Spirit as ruach el, meaning spirit or breath of God (el). In the New Testament, we have all three personages present when Jesus was baptized. God the Father (a voice out of the heavens) publicly proclaimed Him (Jesus) as His Son while the pneuma theou (Spirit of God) descended like a dove upon Him. [Matt 3:16-17] We have that same voice validating Jesus as God’s son in the Transfiguration. [Matt 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35] Finally, we have Jesus putting all three persons together when He gave the disciples the Great Commission. [Matt 28:19]
Yesterday, Christians celebrated Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus’ followers. While Pentecost, like Christmas and Easter, celebrates an event, Christians will celebrate a vital part of our doctrine—the Holy Trinity—this next Sunday on what is called Trinity Sunday. While God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit have existed eternally as three distinct personages, there still is only one God! Our triune God was there in the Old Testament when Elohim decided to make man and our triune God was there when Elohim chose to save man in the New! While difficult to fathom and impossible to fully understand, this is one of the most important beliefs of our Christian faith. Thank you, God!
When I know it is the Word of God that declares the Trinity, that God has said so, I do not inquire how it can be true; I am content with the simple Word of God, let it harmonize with reason as it may. And every Christian should adopt the same course with respect to all the articles of our faith. [Martin Luther]
Devotions of the Heart 