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 ….]
The Sinner’s Shack Gentlemen’s Club wanted to open an establishment in a small Midwest community. It’s a rather conservative town and, since there’s nothing gentlemanly about the goings on in such an establishment, many people were up in arms about it. When the Holier than Thou Evangelical Church started a campaign to halt the tawdry business from locating in town, prayer sessions were held three times a day and the City Council was inundated with letters and calls of protests. Unfortunately, in spite of the prayers and pleas, proper zoning was attained and construction on the “gentlemen’s club” began. Just a day before its grand opening, however, lightning struck the Sinner’s Shack and it burned to the ground!
The Holier than Thous were rather smug and self-righteous about the fire until Honey Bunn, the owner of the club, filed suit against the church, its pastor, and the entire congregation on the grounds that they were “ultimately responsible for the demise of the building and business, either through direct or indirect divine actions or means.” In response, the Holier than Thous vociferously denied “any and all” responsibility for the lightning and the building’s loss.
As the judge read through the plaintiff’s complaint and the church’s reply, he admitted confusion. “I have no idea how I will be able to decide this case,” said the judge. “I have a staunch sinner who appears to believe in the power of prayer and an entire congregation of Christians who don’t!”
Of course, this is just a bit of silly fiction, but it poses some interesting questions about our belief in the power of prayer. If we were opposed to the establishment, would we have joined in those prayer sessions or would we have considered the issue a lost cause? If we attended those prayer sessions, would we have gone out of a sense of duty or because we truly believed our prayers could make a difference? Do we ever pray without believing in the power of our prayers? Do we ever consider something such a lost cause that we don’t even bother to pray? Do we ever pray without the confidence that our prayers are heard? When our prayers are answered, as they appear to have been in the story, are we surprised? Then, instead of crediting it to the power of prayer, do we chalk it up to coincidence or good luck?
In regard to answered prayers, Thomas Aquinas said, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Nevertheless, when God’s answer is as spectacular as a fortuitous lightning strike, it’s difficult not to attribute His answer to coincidence. Nevertheless, nothing happens that hasn’t passed through God’s hand first. When we pray, we better believe that we’re praying to the almighty God who can change reality to meet a request—if it is according to His will! If we don’t believe that, there’s really no point in praying! As for those who regard answered prayers as little more than coincidence or luck, I’m with Archbishop William Temple who said, “When I pray, coincidences happen; when I don’t, they don’t.”
Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. [Albert Einstein]
The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder. [G.K. Chesterton]
Recently, our pastor asked what amazed us. I thought of his question and Agur’s observation about snakes when we were at the zoo recently. I was amazed watching the 12-foot Burmese python effortlessly slither into the water. Her roommate, a 19-foot 200-pound reticulated python was equally amazing as he slowly unfolded and glided along the enclosure’s edge.
It wasn’t just snakes that amazed Agur; he was astonished at the way an eagle freely soars in the sky, a ship easily sails on the sea, and the way of a man with a woman. Although wise, Agur was at a loss to explain these wonders of nature. When looking for a common denominator, they all seem to have an invisible means of propulsion. The eagle soars in the sky while barely moving a wing, the legless snake simply glides over the rocks, a boat sails windward powered by nothing more than a piece of cloth, and something unseen draws a young man to a certain young woman like iron to a magnet.
Of course, we know there is a scientific explanation for each of these phenomena. By telling us about thermal and orographic updrafts, ornithologists explain how an eagle can precisely and effortlessly ride currents we cannot see and how the eagle’s large wingspan and slotted wingtips add lift and reduce drag. Agur, however, wasn’t an ornithologist.
Herpetologists explain that a snake’s ability to move forward lies in its belly scales. The ridges in between the snake’s underside scales function like the treads on the bottom of a boot—they can both get a grip on the ground and push off against it. As the snake glides across a rock, it creates traction and pushes off the ground in some parts of its body, while frictionlessly gliding forward in other parts. But, Agur wasn’t a herpetologist!
As for the physics of sailing, it has something to do with Bernoulli’s Principle—that the faster-moving air on the outside (windward) of a sail creates lower pressure, while the slower air on the sail’s inside creates higher pressure and the pressure difference (lift) is what pulls the sail and the boat forward. Meanwhile, the resistance of the keel in the water also generates lift and moves the boat forward. Agur, however, didn’t live in 1738 when Bernoulli published his principle!
Although scientists and researchers have spent decades trying to determine what draws a young man to a certain young woman, it still remains a mystery today. Although pheromones and scent play a role, attraction is a mysterious mix of physical, emotional, and social factors. Agur’s observation was spot on—we don’t know what causes a young man to love a young woman! As for love, I’m with the psalmist who said, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!” [139:6]
Agur didn’t fully understand these things and, truth be told, I still don’t fully understand thermals, traction, lift, and attraction—but I know the One who created them! Although the internet gives us access to a plethora of scientific information, we must never let all those facts rob us of our sense of wonder at all that God created. Knowing about things like Rayleigh scattering, the wavelengths of light, refraction, and reflection must never prevent us from being amazed at how God colors the sunrise and sunset or hangs a rainbow after a storm. I, for one, will continue to be amazed every time I visit the python enclosure at the zoo or see a rainbow in the sky! God gave us a world that defies explanation. Like Agur, a wise person knows that not everything can or need be explained to be appreciated!
What amazes you?
Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf. [Albert Schweitzer]
There is a burden of care in getting riches; fear in keeping them; temptation in using them; guilt in abusing them; sorrow in losing them; and a burden of account at last to be given concerning them. [Matthew Henry]
Last Christmas Eve, people stood in long lines at gas stations and convenience stores to make a last-minute purchase, but it wasn’t for a Christmas gift; they wanted a Powerball ticket! Christmas morning, someone woke up to discover they won $1.817 billion and had become a billionaire overnight! By choosing the lump sum payout of $835 million, their status dwindled to multi-millionaire. Once taxes were paid, approximately $550 million remained which, in anybody’s book, still counts as a fortune!
Even though the odds of winning the Powerball are 1 in 292.2 million, Americans spent between $3.6 billion to $4 billion to get the jackpot to up to $1.87 billion. Those ticket purchasers certainly had a different perspective on wealth than did Agur—the man who didn’t want riches! After asking God to give him integrity and honesty, Agur’s second request was that God give him “neither poverty nor riches.” Instead, he asked for just what he needed.
We all understand Agur’s desire to be kept from poverty—no one wants to be poor. While I’m not sure I’d steal were I poverty-stricken, I suspect I’d complain, worry, and have difficulty believing in a loving God. Agur’s request to be free from riches , however, certainly is contrary to the American way. Wanting better, bigger, newer, and more, we strive for success, prosperity, and upward mobility.
Agur had good reasons for not wanting riches. With riches, there’s a temptation to self-sufficiency and pride. Wealth and poverty can be equal opportunity destroyers. Indeed, while their problems would be different, a person with too much could confront as many challenges as one with too little. For example, winning the lottery doesn’t buy you happiness but it does buy you “friends,” relatives, predatory “financial advisors,” and sham business opportunities! Financial windfalls tend to blow away. Whether they win $1 million or $500 million, within five years, between 30% and 70% of jackpot winners have lost or spent all their money!
Agur’s prayer doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be wealthy. His simple prayer is about what we desire. While none of us desire the desperation of poverty and need, we shouldn’t desire the power, possessions, status, self-satisfaction, and luxuries of wealth. Both riches and penury can lead us away from a relationship with God. Rather than wealth or poverty, Agur desired contentment—the ability to say that whatever God put on his plate was enough! Like him, we should desire a relationship with God that acknowledges and trusts in His daily provision—His manna or “daily bread.” Indeed, contentment is realizing that God has given us all we need.
There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men. [Billy Graham]
The only prayer found in Proverbs is that of Agur in Proverbs 30. While he probably was one of the sages of Solomon’s day who helped compile the proverbs, other than saying he was the son of Jakeh, we really know nothing about the man. In his prayer, Agur asked for two unusual things, the first of which was that God would, “Remove far from me falsehood and lying.” His second prayer was that God give him neither poverty nor riches. These are not typical requests and I suspect that we’ve prayed neither prayer. The first one because we don’t see the need and the second because we can’t imagine not wanting something a little more than just enough!
While we might ask God to remove liars and deceivers from our dealings, Agur wants more. He’s asking God to remove any deception from his heart. He wants nothing to do with falsehood in the way he thinks, believes, speaks, and lives. Integrity is a way to live without anxiety and Agur knows that, with nothing to hide, he’ll have nothing to fear! I’m not sure that honesty and integrity are prayer requests we often make. After all, asking God to keep us from hypocrisy and deception implies we acknowledge our insincerity and falseness both to ourselves and others!
I suspect we more readily spot hypocrisy and deceit in others than we can in ourselves but, truth be told, I suspect we lie more to ourselves than we lie to others! However, we’re so good at rationalizing and excusing that we don’t even know we’re doing it! We tell ourselves we “deserve it,” when we can’t afford it and that something can’t be done when we’re afraid to try. We excuse our bad behavior by saying we can’t help it or by shifting the blame to someone else. We call our sins momentary lapses and convince ourselves that they don’t matter because nobody will know, no one got hurt, or that everyone’s doing it. We tell ourselves we’re doing or not doing something for the sake of someone else when we’re really doing (or not doing) it for ourselves. We say we’re trying something just once when we know we aren’t and we tell ourselves there wasn’t enough time when we wasted the time we had. We hold grudges, gossip, gripe, brag, lie, judge, and are selfish and prideful (among other things) and yet, we don’t feel the need to confess to God because we’ve learned to deceive ourselves into thinking those “little” sins don’t matter. They do!
Scripture tells us the “heart is deceitful;” indeed, it is. Since God can see into our deceitful hearts, He knows our sins whether or not we acknowledge them! We need to be honest with ourselves if we ever hope to be honest with God and it’s only by seeing ourselves as God sees us that we can do that. Agur’s prayer that God “Remove far from me falsehood and lying” is a prayer for us all.
The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood lurks, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself. [John Calvin]
Satan is the personal enemy of Christ. [Watchman Nee]
When writing about enemies earlier this week, I couldn’t think of anyone with whom I interact who qualifies as an enemy. But, when I broadened my search and considered the various people Satan uses in his evil schemes against God, I realized I have several—some whose names I know and others whose names I don’t. When they become Satan’s agents, they become God’s enemies, and, if they are God’s enemies, shouldn’t they be mine? So, who are they?
The first set of enemies is easy to identify. Candidly admitting to be Jesus haters, they are the ones who consciously and openly oppose Christ. While some merely hate with their words, others oppress, intimidate, and threaten Christ’s followers. While systemic persecution is not a problem for Christians in North America, it is in many parts of the world. According to Open Doors, more than 388 million Christians “face high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.” 1 in 7 Christians are persecuted worldwide, 1 in 5 are persecuted in Africa, and 2 in 5 are persecuted in Asia! Those who openly oppose Jesus or persecute our brothers and sisters for their faith in Christ are as much our enemies are they are God’s!
Because they don’t openly oppose Jesus, God’s other enemies are harder to identify; some may even call themselves Christians. Nevertheless, their rotten fruit makes them enemies of God as they do Satan’s work by planting weeds in God’s fields. More than 3,400 years ago God told us that we are to love Him wholly and completely and love our neighbors as ourselves. 2,700 years ago, the prophet Micah told us that God wants us to love kindness, to do justice, and to walk humbly with God. [6:8] But, instead of looking outward and loving God wholly and then loving their fellow man, these enemies of God look inward. Loving only themselves, they focus on their goals and desires while using and abusing others along the way. Self-centered, they are filled with selfish ambition, arrogance, pride, and self-absorption. Words like justice, sacrifice, restraint, mercy, kindness, forgiveness, uprightness, righteousness, truth, and humility aren’t in their vocabulary. Their disregard for their fellow man, God’s creation, and God’s word makes them God’s enemies, as well as mine.
Since they “come disguised as harmless sheep but are really vicious wolves,” [Mat 7:15] the false teachers are equally difficult to spot. After calling them “deceitful workers disguised as Christ’s apostles,” Paul warned the Corinthians that, “Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” [2 Cor 11:13-15] Unlike a spy who furtively passes secrets to the enemy, these false teachers openly spew the enemy’s lies to the people. They are the impostors who are in it for the money, the abusers who are in it for themselves, and the “ticklers” whose feel-good messages entertain and flatter but don’t correct or challenge. These enemies of God reinterpret or edit Scripture to their own liking, claim special knowledge or revelation, or dispute the Bible’s authority. They often distort Scripture by mixing in just enough truth and Bible verses to make it sound right to those who don’t know better. As enemies of Christ’s church, they are as much my enemy as they are God’s!
When writing about God’s enemies, David wasn’t writing about his personal enemies. He was writing about people who, with evil intent, deliberately and maliciously defy the Lord—people who hate the Lord whether they admit it or not! Disapproving of their conduct and disgusted with their behavior, he detested them and wanted nothing to do with them. Since our devotion to the Lord excludes any loyalty to those who oppose him, we must do the same. Earlier, I was mistaken when I said I had no enemies. While I don’t know all of their names, I do know that they are God’s enemies and, if they are God’s enemies, they are mine!
The Christian life is a battle against Satan. [Zac Poonen]
One of my favorite psalms is Psalm 139 but, as I read it this morning, I got annoyed with David. Near the end of this beautiful psalm praising God for His omniscience, omnipresence, and intensely personal involvement in his life, David mentions hating his enemies (something he and other psalmists frequently did in Psalms). David certainly had his share of enemies. Along with the Philistines, Moabites, Geshurites, Girzites, and Amalekites, his enemies included Goliath, King Saul, Absalom (the son who tried to overthrow the kingdom), Ahithophel (the counselor who defected to Absalom), and Adonijah (who tried to wrest the crown from Solomon). Looking at Israel’s history, I understand why David and the other psalmists mentioned enemies so frequently, but I’m not running for my life, fighting a rebellion, or fending off Assyrians and Babylonians, so why do I care about their enemies?
Perhaps I’m naïve but, when I asked my husband the names of our enemies, we couldn’t think of anyone who qualified! We’ve had competitors, rivals, opponents, and some very annoying and exasperating people in our lives, but we’ve never thought of them as enemies. So, what do these Psalms mentioning enemies mean to us today?
Looking again at David’s history, however, I see a greater enemy than Saul or the Philistines: David himself. Although courageous, he could be deceitful. He lied to Ahimelech, pretended to be insane to King Achish, and, after taking refuge with the Philistines, double-crossed them. Short-tempered, he nearly killed everyone in Nabal’s household because of the man’s rudeness. Prone to despair, there were many times he felt God abandoned him. Lustful and impulsive, despite seven wives (and numerous concubines), David took another man’s wife and killed her husband to cover his crime. He was an inattentive father who ignored Absalom and failed to punish Amnon for raping Tamar. A reckless man of pride and ambition, David failed to follow God’s directions concerning the Ark and the census. While loyal to his friends, he could be ruthless to his enemies. Nathan’s words in 2 Samuel tell us that many of David’s trials were the result of his own sins. “This is what the Lord says: Because of what you have done, I will cause your own household to rebel against you.” [12:11] Considered a man after God’s heart, we like to think of David as the ideal man but, like any man or woman, he had his dark side.
David had flesh and blood enemies but, when he listened to Satan rather than God, he became his own worst enemy! Today’s verse tells us the Apostle Paul fought with this same enemy. Satan, of course, didn’t stop with David and Paul; he’s always out and about hunting for prey. Rather than spears, missiles, drones, or ransomware, his weapons are things like pride, deceit, fear, anger, hate, doubt, lust, insecurity, self-pity, unforgiveness, recklessness, impatience, jealousy, arrogance, materialism, and lack of faith.
Like David and Paul, I don’t have to look far to see my real enemy and, like them, I want him destroyed! No matter where we are in our walk with Jesus, sin remains in us. The good news, however, is that we are not defenseless. Christ’s followers don’t have to live like unbelievers! By faith, we have the Spirit of God and no longer need be controlled by our sinful nature. We have the power to declare war on our enemy and “put to death” the behavior and attitudes we know to be wrong! Rather than serving our own worldly desires, we choose to serve God by minding His Holy Spirit. We do this because of our love for Christ and our gratitude for all He’s done and will do for us in the future. With the power of the Holy Spirit, we can defeat our enemy!
We must have a spirit of power towards the enemy, a spirit of love towards men, and a spirit of self-control towards ourselves. [Watchman Nee]
