LifeLink Devotions

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

In two weeks, I will be going on a mission trip. I have been on many of them, but I have started to recognize a problem. There is a difference between being on a mission trip and being on a mission. Mission trips can be either temporary interruptions to our normal pursuits of life or they can be another means of expressing the lifelong mission we are on.

When Jesus came to the last week of His life prior to His crucifixion, He spoke about being on mission. Everything about His life led up to this “trip”.

John 12:31 – 32 “Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” 

Jesus describes His mission in three particulars:

1. He will determine the guilt of the world and enforce the punishment;
2. He will drive Satan from power;
3. He will draw all men to Himself.

Of the three aspects of His mission, we are able to be involved in only one of them. Some well-meaning Christians try to get involved in more than one, but it is wasted effort and a prideful pursuit. Some think it is their responsibility to pass judgment on the sins of others. As Christians we only have the right to communicate the facts of the judgment already imposed, but it must be done in the context of the punishment that has already been suffered. If we are going to point out the sin in another person’s life it must be done with the grace of forgiveness and not with the condemnation of judgment. Jesus has already judged the world, and He has not asked us for our validation of that judgment.

Other Christians think it is their privilege to be able to drive Satan from power. Why are they attempting to do what has already been accomplished? In his Biblical letter, James says, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7) We are not told to attack Satan, or to drive Him away. Rather, we are told to submit to God, and in the simple act of resisting Satan’s attacks he will flee from us. Why? Because his power has already been broken in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is foolish to engage in a work that is already completed.

But as Christians we are to be involved in lifting Jesus up from the earth so that He may draw all men to Himself. I know that Jesus was specifically referring to the type of death He would die on the cross when He said this, but there is an ongoing application for all of us. First, Jesus was not saying that all people would be saved. We know that is not true from what happened to Judas and one of the thieves on the cross next to Him. Not everyone will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus. But when Jesus was lifted up on the cross, He made it possible for all mankind to come to the knowledge of who He is. It is now our responsibility to live and speak in such a way that we lift Jesus up above the things of the earth so that all people have a chance to know who He is.

 Our mission is to lift up Jesus above the earth. Our mission is to make the life of Christ more obvious in us, so He is more obvious to the people around us. This means sacrificing the significance of earthly things and stipulating the significance of heavenly things. Paul says in Colossians 3:1 – 3, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

But don’t be confused or discouraged – it is not our lives that attract people to Jesus: it is the life of Jesus seen in us that draws them. He draws people to Himself, and we are the vessels He has chosen to use to be seen by the world. For that to happen, my vessel must be clear so He can be seen in me, not so colored by my own opinions, preferences, and goals that the world can only see me. May our lives be clear of the entanglements of the earth so that we can lift up Jesus so that He can draw people to Himself. That is our mission, and it’s quite a trip.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions

Monday, April 11, 2022

Yesterday we celebrated what is called the “triumphal entry” of Jesus into Jerusalem. It is also called “Palm Sunday”, the day when the people of Israel who had gathered for the feast of the Passover waved palm branches as Jesus rode a donkey toward the city. The people were hoping that Jesus would be their promised Messiah and deliver them from the oppression of the Roman Empire. If they had only understood the teaching and ministry of Jesus from God’s perspective they would have known Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom first, which would later be followed by a political reign. But they only wanted the political.

God used the celebration of the people to accomplish His perfect plan for the redemption of the world. Two weeks earlier Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and it caused a major division in the nation of Israel. People who had been neighbors and friends were now secretly either believing in Jesus or reporting His actions to the Pharisees. Some were living in fear that they would be rejected by society for their newly found faith, while most were living in fear that the comfort and benefits of their way of life would be taken from them if Jesus was allowed to gain any more popularity and power. Those in power used hyperbole to accomplish their own objectives, claiming that “the whole world has gone after Him.”  They wanted Jesus dead and were already scheming to see that happen. Even those who claimed to believe in Jesus would eventually succumb to the pressure of the status quo and turn against Jesus.

John 12:17-19 ^“Now the crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus from the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to spread the word. Many people, because they had heard that he had given this miraculous sign, went out to meet him. So the Pharisees said to one another, “See, this is getting us nowhere. Look how the whole world has gone after him!”

As I consider the world in which we live I sense that things have not changed. Day after day the Name of Jesus is being attacked by the people of the world who are living in the fear that the comforts and benefits of their sinful way of life are being threatened by the truth of Jesus Christ. Even those who claim to know Jesus and be His followers are rejecting some elements of the truth so they can better fit into modern society and not face rejection or suffering. It seems that the cry of the Pharisees that the whole world has gone after Him is still being heard today, and the plans of the powerful to eliminate Jesus from the world are becoming more elaborate.

But we need to see the good news in all of this: opposition only happens when the opponent feels threatened. For the opponents of Christ to feel threatened they must be observing a “triumphal entry” of sorts of Jesus Christ into their territory. Preachers, evangelists, and missionaries are boldly proclaiming the Name of Jesus and His truth like never before. Churches are filled with vibrant and mature believers who are taking their faith into the workplace and living lives that honor Jesus rather than self. Some are even sacrificing everything to take the Gospel to the far reaches of the world where they face the risk of making the ultimate sacrifice of death to bring life to those who are dead in their sin. The church of Jesus Christ is alive because Jesus is alive, and the world is being threatened.

 But there is one more reality that we must face – the world will not lay down their lives for Christ. They will continue to implement more and more schemes designed to eliminate Christ from society, and they will succeed. They will partially succeed when they cause many who claim to believe in Christ to fall away from their faith and turn to the world’s system – and that is already happening. They will claim ultimate success when all the Christians are removed from this earth by Jesus in preparation for His judgment of their sin. But it was not their plan that succeeded; it is God’s plan that is being worked out for His glory, and we are a part of it. The people of the world are not in control, as they think they are. God is!

So don’t be like the people of Jesus’ time, who wave palm branches celebrating their King one day and then succumb to the pressures of their personal comforts and social acceptance the next day. Don’t fall away! Don’t even slip a little. Be faithful! Let’s not only be one of the crowd that goes after Jesus, but one of the few that stays committed to Jesus.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions

Friday, April 8, 2022

For the last several devotionals on marriage we have been focusing on the privilege of a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church. In the final verse of Ephesians 5 we find a statement to the wives – respect your husbands.

Ephesians 5:28-32  …and the wife must respect her husband.

Before you shout out, “But he has to earn my respect,” let’s talk about it. I agree that certain aspects of respect, like character, are earned, but there is to be an unconditional granting of respect for the position of husband no matter what. Unfortunately, we have very little modeling of that in our culture today. Consider the office of President of the United States. I remember as a young boy that newscasters on TV (no, I was not born before television) would never refer to the President by simply using his last name. Every reference to him began with the word President. But that kind of respect has been lost, and it has carried over into our jobs and our relationships.

God has commanded wives to respect the position that their husbands hold as His representative of authority in the family. Now some men’s character and behavior make that very difficult, but there is no loophole in God’s demand for respect. In fact, respect from his wife may be the most important element in any man’s growth and maturity into a more Christ-like role of family leadership.

One thing that destroys a man’s sense of respectability faster than anything is criticism. The wisest man to ever live understood this when he wrote things like “Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife…Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife…Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife…A quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day;restraining her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand.” (King Solomon in Proverbs) In fact, according to researchers, constant criticism is the single most measurable indicator when predicting marriage failure.

In the February 21, 1994 edition of U.S. News & World Report, a report was published by psychologists Cliff Notarius of Catholic University and Howard Markman of the University of Denver. They had studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage in order to uncover the processes that destroy unions. These marital researchers studied couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retraced their steps back to their wedding day of those who had split up. What they discovered is unsettling. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple’s durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple says they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won’t look remarkably similar in the early days.

Yet they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationship. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, only 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were put-downs. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. “Hostile put-downs act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time,” says Notarius. “In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can’t get through a week without major blowups.”

Yes, men are critical too. But we’ve already dealt with that when we spent several days talking to the husbands about loving their wives as Christ loves the church. If he does, he will be building her up and making her pure and holy, not putting her down with insults and criticisms. That same result of eliminating criticism will be experienced by wives if they would put respect for their husbands ahead of their desire to change him.

Roderick McFarlane, in the December, 1992 edition of Reader’s Digest, wrote about the success of her grandparents marriage. “On her golden wedding anniversary, my grandmother revealed the secret of her long and happy marriage. ‘On my wedding day, I decided to choose ten of my husband’s faults which, for the sake of our marriage, I would overlook.’ A guest asked her to name some of the faults. ‘To tell the truth,’ she replied, ‘I never did get around to listing them. But whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, ‘Lucky for him that’s one of the ten.’”

Respect for the position of husband. It carries the same responsibility of obedience by the wife as God’s command to the husband to love his wife. If you’re ready to evaluate your life in this regard, there’s a quiz you can take at the bottom of this devotional. Just remember, the greatest gift you can give your husband to spur him on to become all that God intended him to be is your respect that he can do it, and your encouraging words that you believe that he will.

Pastor John

How Critical are You of Your Spouse’

This exercise is meant to create awareness of how easily we can become critical of those we love the most. Keep track of the number of times you answer “Yes” to the following statements.

1. I feel critical toward my partner three times a week or more.

2. I feel critical toward my partner for how he or she looks.

3. I feel critical toward my partner for how he or she talks.

4. I feel critical toward my partner for how he or she relates to others.

5. I feel critical toward my partner for his or her values.

6. I feel critical toward my partner for his or her household habits.

7. I wish my partner were more like me.

8. I think my partner is capable of changing in the ways that I want.

9. I think my partner behaves in certain ways just to annoy me.

10. I find it hard to forgive my partner for not living up to all of my expectations.

11. I find it hard to accept the ways in which my partner is different from me.

12. My parents often criticized me when I was a child.

13. My partner often accuses me of being critical.

14. I wish I were more accepting of my partner.

15. One (or both) of my parents often criticized the other.

If you answered yes to 5 or more of these statements, you may have a problem with respect.

Warner Books, Inc. of New York, New York, U.S.A. From The First Year of Marriage by Miriam Arond and Samuel L. Pauker, M.D. Copyright by Miriam Arond and Samuel Pauker.

LifeLink Devotions
Thursday, April 7, 2022

Ephesians 5:28-32 “In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

The older I get, the more I realize how hard it is to carry the burden of performance. From an early age, we have been taught from numerous sources that we all have a role to play in life, and that our lives will be judged on how we did. Every job we take demands that we learn a certain set of skills to accomplish the work assigned to us. Every relationship we pursue seems to require some adjustment to our personality or goals so we will be accepted by the other person. We have even turned our relationship with Christ into a performance by thinking that Scripture demands we change our behaviors to match some idyllic model of what Jesus must have been like. To quote the words of a former college classmate who became an author, “I’m tired of trying to measure up.”

The reason I got on this train of thought today was because of a misunderstanding about marriage and its symbolism of the church’s relationship with Christ. Near the end of the Apostle Paul’s teaching on marriage he makes this statement – “This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.” For most of my life I understood that to mean that the marriage relationship of husband and wife is the basis for understanding the relationship of Jesus to His church. Now I know that I was wrong. The right understanding is this – the relationship of Jesus to His church is the basis for understanding marriage. This makes a huge difference to me. No longer do I use my relationship with my wife to define my relationship with Jesus, but I use the truth of my relationship with Jesus to define my relationship with my wife. I do not know how to love Jesus because I have practiced on my wife. I know how to love my wife because I have experienced true love for Jesus. I know how to act towards my wife because I have experienced how Jesus acts towards me. I know how to treat my wife because of how Jesus treats me. I know how to forgive her because I have been forgiven. I know how to care for her because Jesus cares for me.

Here’s where the whole performance thing comes into play. When we responded to the call of God for salvation and surrendered our lives to Jesus Christ, we became one with Him. The two of us – me and Jesus – became one flesh, one spirit, and one mind. The total life of Jesus – his nature and character – was born in me through the power of the Holy Spirit. In the book of Titus, Paul says, “But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”

The life of Jesus Christ was born in us when we repented of our sin and by faith received God’s
gift of salvation. Unfortunately, in our human attempt to do our best and take responsibility for the outcome of our lives, we have distorted His qualification of our lives by trying to learn how to please to God. We have somehow turned God’s truth of grace into our duty to adapt our lives to the learned behaviors that please God. As a result, we are frustrated and fearful of failure.

Unfortunately, we have taken that same misunderstanding into our relationships with people and spouses. We are dissatisfied with life because we feel it has been spent trying to please others by learning approved behaviors rather than living in the liberty of expressing God’s love. We have become addicted to performance when God wants us to be addicted to love.

Here’s the key for me – the love of God in Christ Jesus has so overwhelmed me, and the life of Jesus has so overtaken me, that I no longer live for me, but for the one who died for me and who now, in His resurrection power, lives in me. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ is not about accepting a new job and then learning the skills necessary to please the employer. It’s about being adopted as a son of God and being guaranteed the inheritance of it all. Then, to carry beyond human capability, we have the very life of our adopted father infused into ours so we have the capacity and capability to know everything necessary to fulfill the goals of the Father. We are no longer bound by the false belief that we must try to please God. We are no longer slaves to the false thinking that we can perform up to an acceptable standard. We have been liberated by the birth of Jesus in us, and His life lived through us cannot fail to please God.

That’s how a man is to love his wife. He doesn’t learn what please her and then attempt to do it. He doesn’t perform up to some perceived standard of approval. Just as Christ did with me spiritually, the husband takes his wife’s life into his and becomes one with her. Her thoughts are his thoughts and her ways are his ways. Then, when he loves her, he is loving himself, because she is one with him. All activity ceases to be performance and instead becomes the expression of the heart. That’s what Paul means when he calls this a profound mystery. The union we have with Christ in salvation is to be the model for the union we experience in marriage. When we understand it from that perspective, we will begin to experience and enjoy the fullness of oneness that God intended.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Ephesians 5:25-27 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

My days can get long. They start around 5:00 a.m. when I do my personal study and then communicate with overseas missionaries. I remember one particular day when I had to meet some men at the church at 6 a.m. to drive three-and-a-half hours for the memorial service for a wonderful servant of Jesus whom God had called to her eternal reward. She and her husband had been faithful servants in our church before moving away. Words cannot adequately express the influence this woman’s life had on others. Since she was a teenager, she had gone through numerous, and I mean numerous, health issues. By the age of 50 she had experienced well over 100 surgeries. Yet this woman of faith never complained. In fact, if ever anyone needed to be uplifted or hear an encouraging word, they would call her. She modeled for all of us the proper way to live under adversity.

By the time we arrived back in Eau Claire it was 5:00 p.m., and in 30 minutes I would be attending an elder board meeting. On the way home, my wife had called and asked if I would have time to meet her for supper. I was so blessed to feel that she had missed me that much and wanted to spend that time with me. I told her to be at the restaurant by 5 and order my food so I could sit for 20 minutes with her and eat before the meeting. She agreed. I was pumped for those few moments of time with the love of my life.

When I arrived at the restaurant and headed straight for the restroom, I noticed her in the corner booth with my son and his family. I wondered why they were there. When I came out and started for the booth, I heard a voice shout out, “Hi Grandpa!.“ I knew it wasn’t the voice of my son’s son. Then, in an instant, there was a small boy jumping into my arms. He had run across the restaurant to surprise me, and he certainly did. It was my two grandchildren from Sun Prairie and their mother – my daughter. They had come up for a quick surprise visit.

I was so overwhelmed with joy that I didn’t even think about how my wife arranged to sacrifice her personal time with me to bring me such joy? Her thoughts were about blessing me. Her words of invitation to dinner together were words designed to produce great joy. That joy continued for the next two days, as I got to spend each morning with the kids before I go to my office appointments and each evening playing games and wrestling.

I learned something from her that day. She spoke words to me designed to encourage me and lift my spirits. Words are powerful. So men, let me ask you, does your love for your wife come through in your words? When Jesus Christ came to this earth to pay the price for our sin, He used His words to wash us and cleanse us. The faith we have placed in Him for our salvation is based upon the power of His words. The commitment we make to Him is motivated by the hope we find in His words. The choices we make to live holy and blameless lives are influenced by the love He spoke to us with His words. In the same way that Christ loved us and cleansed us from sin by His word so that we He could present us to himself in purity and love, we are to love our wives and use our words to bring them to a place of radiance.

Men, if your wife is not very radiant to you right now, it’s probably your fault. She will only reflect the beauty she sees in your eyes. She will only match the radiance she hears in your words. Your words have the power to tear her down or to build her up. Your words have the ability to discourage her or encourage her. Your words have the authority to wash away her fear, doubt, disappointment, and insecurity. Your words have the strength to enrich her. Your words can bring her joy. Your words can make wrinkles and blemishes unimportant and irrelevant. Your words can and will produce radiance.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church – with a passion to make her holy and blameless, which is expressed in our use of words designed to cleanse her and make her radiant. In doing so, you have given yourself the greatest gift you could receive.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

 There’s a new wedding tradition that was introduced to me almost 10 years ago. It occurs near the conclusion of the ceremony. I encourage all couples to adopt it into their ceremony. It represents our current passage of Scripture from Ephesians 5.

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord… Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy…”

 Use your visualization skills for a moment and picture the front of a church during a wedding. The bride and the groom have taken their places on the stage. The groom is on the right as the audience sees them. His family and friends have all sat on that same side of the church. The same is true for the bride’s family and friends on the left. The groom has already stated his covenantal vows to his bride, and she has done the same. They have exchanged rings as a seal of their covenant and commitment. Now they move around the back of a table on which the unity candle has been placed. As a beautiful song is sung, they take the individual candles that were lit by their mothers and light the unity candle in the middle, after which they extinguish their individual candles. This symbol of the oneness of marriage has long been a part of our marriage ceremonies.

Then something unique happens. As they prepare to move back to the front of the stage, the groom moves from the bride’s left side to her right side, and escorts her back to the front of the stage. The audience wonders if a mistake has been made. He is now standing between the bride and her family. The pastor says these simple words to the groom – “Having now taken your rightful and God-honoring place as the head of this relationship and the protector of your bride, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Do you see the symbolism? Several things have been represented by this move. First, the groom has left his father and mother and become the head of a new family. The bride has left the security and protection of her family and surrendered herself to a new protector. The groom, with his right hand now free while his bride holds to his left arm, can protect his bride in the event of danger or attack. He is willing to sacrifice his life to defend her.

Isn’t that awesome? It so beautifully portrays the marriage relationship Paul describes in Ephesians 5. I wish every married couple understood this. If you’re already married, I hope you don’t think it’s too late for you and your spouse to start living like this. When wives willingly submit to the leadership and protection of a sacrificial husband, God’s love is magnified. It’s how He designed marriage to work.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions (Click here for Apple Podcast)

Monday, April 4, 2022

 There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding in our culture and in the church about the Biblical principles of marriage. So many people have gone off on radical tangents because they misunderstand the words the Apostle Paul uses in Ephesians to describe a Godly marriage. Some have based their understanding on the poor examples that were set by their own parents or by those in positions of leadership in the church. Some have chosen to interpret Paul’s teaching based on a pre-determined social agenda. But when understood considering the true picture of our relationship with Christ, the truth set forth about marriage bring the greatest fulfillment possible to both husband and wife.

Ephesians 5:22-27  “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.” 

Marriage is a mutual partnership of love, respect, and submission. It is not a dictatorship. It is not anarchy. Marriage is a mutual submission to Christ, resulting in mutual submission to one another, expressed by the husband loving his wife as Christ loved the church, and the wife respectfully submitting to the husband as she does to her Lord.  

When Stuart Briscoe met his future wife Jill, they realized they came from two different family backgrounds. The dynamics of each family would help them to understand the true definition of submission, love, and respect. Jill’s father was a quiet, gentle man, and considered himself head of his home: protector, defender, and provider. Her mom was a sweet, Scottish- born Presbyterian. She believed in the sovereignty of God and her husband. Her father adored her mother, put his considerable business assets into her name, and looked to her to raise the children. He was the model of God’s love by seeking to enrich and fulfill her life at the expense of his own desires. When Jill’s sister came of age, her father supported her when she became an excellent car mechanic and raced cars. Eventually she took her place at his side as partner in his successful car business. Jill’s father represented the servant-hearted leadership of Christ, who loves His bride the church and proves it by giving himself up for her.

In contrast, Stuart’s family was strict. His father was an elder in a small local assembly of believers, and he took seriously his responsibility to rule the household well. He considered himself the authority in his family, while his wife, a bright, articulate, efficient lady, considered herself in subjection to her husband in everything, carrying those convictions to her dress, her hair style, and her silence in the presence of men at the church. She was a gifted child of God but based on her misunderstanding of Paul’s marriage principles she was stifled and unfulfilled.

When Jill met Stuart’s family for the first time, she remembers wondering greatly about this amazing mode of doing things. She says, “I sensed an unconscious frustration of unexplored desires and frustrated gifts in my mother-in-law. It was as if those gifts sat meekly inside her heart with eyes downcast and wearing a hat. In that moment as a new believer, I believe I stumbled on an important truth of what submission isn’t. Submission isn’t sitting down on the outside while you’re standing up on the inside.”

When we experience true love, we become its slave. But that slavery is absolute freedom. Freedom to stand on the inside and leap on the outside. Love does not suppress – it liberates. We who know the incredible grace of God understand this. We have surrendered and  submitted our lives to the One who sacrificed His life for us. We were not coerced or manipulated to do so. We understood in our hearts that every moment of every day Jesus Christ has our best interests in mind and desires to see our lives fulfilled. Our submission to Him brings the greatest joy.

That’s what it’s supposed to be like when a husband treats his wife like Christ treats us. Wives will submit to the loving leadership of such a man, because they know it sets them free to be all that God made them to be. When husbands are living in submission to Christ, it will be reflected in the way they sacrificially love their wives. Wives will reflect their submission to Christ by respectfully submitting to their husbands. Both will be filled with the complete joy and satisfaction of life as God intended when living in His love. It’s beautiful. It’s satisfying. It’s God’s truth.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions (Click here for Apple Podcast)

Friday, April 1, 2022

There is NOTHING about this devotional today that relates to Aprils Fool’s Day.

Life is filled with forced subjection. We’ve all had jobs that we did on the outside while we dreamed of something else on the inside. We spend long hours fulfilling a job description while our hearts burst with boredom and long for liberty. I remember one such job I had like that prior to being called into the ministry. It was shortly after college when I was confused about the direction of my life. I held two jobs. I drove school bus and served as a police officer in a little North Dakota town. The city had been given a six-month grant to hire a daytime policeman. I needed money, so I applied. I was the only applicant. I wore a uniform, was issued a gun, and drove a squad car. I was directly responsible to the mayor of the town.

One day I issued a parking ticket to a farmer who had come into town in the late afternoon and parked his truck backwards on the street. He was blocking a portion of the driving lane, facing the wrong direction, and taking up several spaces. The next day the mayor called me into his office and tore up the ticket in front of me. I was told that certain people in town do not get tickets. I asked him for a list of those people, and he refused, saying only that I shouldn’t write tickets anymore to avoid any possible problems. I was angry. I submitted on the outside and played the part of a police officer with no authority, but on the inside, I just wanted those six months to be over.

Ephesians 5:21  “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.“

When we look at the Roman culture of the first century, when Paul wrote the above command, we see relationships between men and women that involved forced subjection. Women were the servants of men, even as wives. It was the way society was managed. That’s what makes the next section of Ephesians so interesting to study. Paul tells everyone to be subject to each other, and then follows up with specific instructions to wives to submit to their husbands. In a culture of forced subjection of women to men, why does he tell the Christian women to submit to their husbands? The reason, I think, is the difference between forced subjection and voluntary submission. Paul wanted the Christians to model something more than external conformity. He wanted the heart to be involved also.

None of us is the final authority on anything. None of us is the ultimate boss. Within the context of the family of God – the church – we are all to be subject to one another out of reverence for the ultimate boss – the Head – Jesus Christ. God has established and ordained levels of earthly authority in the church and in families, but each of those leaders is to model the same kind of authority that Jesus did. He first modeled it at age 12, when he was found by his parents in the temple, teaching the elders. After they expressed their fears and emotions and encouraged His obedience, Jesus voluntarily subjected himself to their authority. Luke 2:51 says, ”Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them.”

The Greek word translated “obedient” in this verse is the same word “submit” Paul uses in Ephesians 5:21. It cannot mean to relinquish authority and equality. It does mean the voluntary subjection of one’s authority to another as a result of our love for God. Jesus made himself subject to his parents because he revered God’s authority which had established the family order. For the purpose of fulfilling God’s will, Jesus eventually subjected His authority to the Roman government, and died at their hands as a sacrifice for our sins. He could have taken authority over that entire situation and won an external battle, but His heart voluntarily submitted out of reverence for the Father.

We will only experience true freedom when we understand that submission comes from the inside, not the outside. It is not forced, it is voluntary – motivated by our love for the one who subjected Himself to our sin so that we could be free from it. To use the words of Jill Briscoe from her message entitled “Hilarious Hupotasso,” (that’s the Greek word for “submit”) “Sit down on the inside as well as the outside. You’ve been sitting down on the outside because you had no choice. Now we give you this voluntary choice, this act of will rather than this legal requirement. Paul was after a heart attitude, a spirit of humility by choice, not coercion. Paul is pro-choice: the choice to lay down our lives for our brothers, sisters, husbands, and children, because we have laid it down for Christ.”

How liberating it is to serve one another in love because the heart of Jesus Christ our Lord fills our heart and motivates such a choice. Suddenly life has purpose and meaning again.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions (Click here for Apple Podcast)

Thursday, March 31, 2022

While having lunch with a missionary couple from Brazil several years ago, we talked about family, ministry, and life in general. Afterwards, as I drove home, I thought about our conversation, and realized that every part of it had been positive, encouraging, and filled with thanksgiving. There was not one discouraging word. There were no attempts at humor using sarcasm. There were no insults or innuendo. There were no subtle attempts to establish credibility by criticizing others. The entire ninety minutes was spent in speaking to one another in the love of God. It was refreshing.

I’ve been in too many social situations where I have quickly joined the communication style of the crowd. Sarcastic comments fly off the tongue followed by forced laughter to cover the hurt that has been inflicted. Criticisms of people not in the group escalate as each person gains some misguided sense of value by belittling others. The experience of power over people soon becomes the group dynamic that promotes insults and injury to others. To some of us this may sound like a rather radical and extreme analysis of our average conversations in everyday life, but it really isn’t. We have become blinded to the emotional needs we try to meet through communication and to the damage our words do to others. We are destroying the influence of the love of God by allowing our speech to be motivated by the love of self.

Ephesians 5:19-20  “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The Apostle Paul provides us with the correct way to communicate with each other – we are to speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. The principle is this – when we talk to anyone, it is to be done under the influence of the Spirit of God so that our speech is filled with the grace of God and praises people. Let me explain. When we worship God, we praise Him. We praise Him for who He is and for what He has done. We are completely focused on His goodness. Paul says we are to speak to one another the same way. Our conversations with people should leave them feeling like they have been commended, not condemned.

Unfortunately, that’s not the norm for most of us. We more often participate in building ourselves up at the expense of others. It’s what Satan wants from us, because it destroys the impact God’s love should be having on others. James Dobson said it this way: “Satan’s most successful maneuver in churches and Christian organizations is to get people angry at one another; to attack and insult our brothers and sisters, thus splitting the body of Christ.” We seem to thrive on strife. We somehow believe that it makes us better to make others worse. We have bought into Satan’s tactic of comparing ourselves to others rather than to God.

There is an old legend that tells of Hercules encountering a strange animal on a narrow road. He struck it with his club and passed. Soon the animal overtook him, now three times as large as before. Hercules struck it fast and furiously, but the more he clubbed the beast, the larger it grew. Then Pallas appeared to Hercules and warned him to stop. “The monster’s name is Strife,” he said. “Let it alone and it will soon become as little as at first.”

This is valuable advice for those of us Christians who engage in criticism and counterblows, somehow thinking that it’s the best way to stop the blows of others against us. A gentle answer turns away the wrath of others. Kind words heal the hurts. Encouragement softens the heart. Praise brings good to the front of everyone’s life. It’s how God created us to live.

So let your speech be seasoned with grace. Let your conversations be positive, encouraging, and filled with thanksgiving. Let others walk away from your time together feeling built up and energized. Speak to one another in a spirit of praise. You’ll make others feel better, and you will too.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions (Click here for Apple Podcast)

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

When I was a freshman in college, I joined an outreach team. We went to various churches and performed musical concerts. Occasionally, when we were visiting a church on a Sunday morning, the pastor would request that we bring some form of message. That was my role in addition to singing. I distinctly remember the first sermon I preached as a part of that group. It was in St. Cloud, Minnesota, the home church of one of our team members. I spoke from Ephesians 5:15-16 and based on the King James Version of the Bible I entitled the sermon “Walking Circumspectly.” I still have that sermon typed out and in my files.

The full verse in the KJV says, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.” I like that word circumspectly. It means “to be diligent, accurate, precise, and aware of everything going on around you to the farthest extent of your experience.” It describes a life lived wisely. In the context of this letter that Paul is writing, it means several things:

1. to be alert to every possible trap of the enemy that would hinder our spiritual intimacy with Christ
2. to be diligent in our pursuit of faithful obedience to Christ
3. to be accurate in the assessment of our personal lives so that they are free from sin
4. to be aware of every opportunity that presents itself to be a witness for Jesus Christ.

When I consider what it means to walk circumspectly, I think about it in relationship to deer hunting. That’s a stretch for some of you, I’m sure, but bear with me (excuse the mixed metaphor). One of the things I like to do when deer hunting with a bow is called still hunting. That’s the process of quietly stalking the deer on the ground rather than sitting in a stand and waiting for the deer to come to me. Both methods require me to be circumspect, but still hunting requires more alertness to every detail around me and more camouflage to keep me from alerting the deer to my presence. When I still hunt, I use binoculars, so that I can be aware of everything happening to the farthest extent of my experience. The deer can see and hear me from a greater distance than I can see or hear them, so I use every advantage I can. I concentrate every sense I have on the task of sneaking through the woods quietly and alertly so that I will be aware of every opportunity to tag a deer. While still hunting last year I snuck up to within 12 yards of a tom turkey before he was aware of my presence. The first deer I ever shot in my life was shot from a distance of 15 yards with the deer standing directly in front of me staring at me, not sure of what he was seeing.

Walking circumspectly in this world requires the same kind of alertness and diligence. Every spiritual sense we have must be tuned to the environment around us. We must be alert to every trap of the enemy. We must be diligent to make every choice we are provided with in faithful obedience to Jesus Christ. We must be accurate in assessing our personal lives so that we can remain untouched by the sin around us. We must be aware of every opportunity to be a witness for Jesus Christ as we walk through this life.

Witnessing about Jesus can be done in a multitude of ways. I meet so many people who are discouraged because they don’t feel they witness correctly, or at all. Yet when I see their lives and watch their interactions with people, their whole life is a witness to the love of Jesus. The gift of love we give someone today may not have had any gospel reference in it, but it was the living example of the gospel, and the Holy Spirit can use that to draw them to Himself. By faith we must trust that the Holy Spirit will use whatever input we give at any time in a cumulative way to bring that person to their point of decision. Let me illustrate.

I was at the store picking up some landscaping supplies for a home project. As I stood in line, a young man came up behind me carrying only a bottle of Mountain Dew. I asked him if he wanted to go ahead of me. He said no, and his reason was that he was too tired to do anything other than just stand and wait his turn. I asked him why he was so tired. He told me he’s a new dad and they have their first baby at home. I extended my hand to congratulate him, and he shook it. As we talked, he told me he was taking his turns getting up at night and it was wearing him out. I told him how proud I was of him and that he was going to be a great dad. Never once did I tell him who I was or use any reference to Jesus Christ. I simply spoke words of encouragement to him. Then when I paid for my stuff, I told the cashier to add his soda to my bill. At first, he refused, but I insisted. It was such a small thing, but it touched him deeply, and he said he didn’t know how to thank me. It was obvious that he had not seen love like that before. I pray that God will use that one simple event to draw him to salvation as others influence his life at other times. I thanked God that He had made me sensitive to an opportunity, and that I had made the most of it.

Live wisely and make the most of every opportunity!

Pastor John