LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Not many people wear the W.W.J.D. bracelets any more. This bracelet was designed to be worn as a reminder to ask the question “What would Jesus do?” when we were faced with a decision or confronted with a problem. I hope we have not let the fading of a fad change the foundation of our faith. God still requires us to take action that models His attributes in every aspect of our lives.

On their way to the Promised land the Israelites are being seduced by the Moabites in an attempt by Balaam to become wealthy and powerful. It was Balaam who devised the plan to overthrow the Israelites by turning them away from the Lord rather than by military force. The Moabites were very afraid of the power of God’s people that had been displayed in previous battles against the Canaanites. They knew they did not have the military strength to defeat them, so they weakened them by immorality and idolatry, taking away their source of strength from the Lord.

The seduction of the people was so blinding that one man named Zimri actually brought a Midianite woman back to his family to share right in front of Moses and the Elders who were weeping over the sin of the people at the Tent of Meeting. The punishment for their sins was already underway. The tribal leaders had already begun the killing of all the men who had been seduced into worshiping false gods. Yet this man was so intent on getting what he could for immediate pleasure that he ignored the consequences of his choices. What severe blindness comes over us when we choose to please self rather than God. What brazen disregard for the holiness of God.

Phinehas, the son of the high priest, took action. He went into the tent where the man and the woman were involved in fornication, and he killed them both with one thrust of the spear. In Numbers 25 God commends him for his action, stating clearly that Phinehas acted exactly as God would have acted. Can there be any greater commendation on a life than that? Is that not to be our ongoing response to sin around us today?

Now be careful, I am not advocating killing sinners, unless we are willing to start with self. What I am suggesting is that we take a stand against sin when God clearly does. Multiple denominations in our country are being split over the issue of gay rights in the church. They are debating what the Bible really says about homosexuality. The spiritual blindness caused by the desire for personal pleasure is justified with the term “unity.” What is there to debate about sin? God is holyand he rejects all that is not. We must be bold and courageous to stand against all such attempts to seduce the people of the world into the worship of false gods that satisfy personal passions. 

My friends, take to heart the commendation of Phinehas by God when He says, “I am making my covenant of peace with him. He and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelites.”  Make it your personal goal to do what God would do. Choose wisely, because one choice to please self could blind you for life.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Monday, November 11, 2024

Recently I did a bunch of walking as I scouted some hunting land for the perfect place to see deer. The next day my leg muscles were sore, and my shoulders were aching from carrying all my gear. It’s hard getting old, but I know if I worked out harder and more frequently I would see some improvement.   

Moses and the people of Israel have had many opportunities to see improvement in the strength of their faith. They have seen the strength of the Lord during their deliverance from Egypt. His power was displayed in the plaques against Pharaoh, in the parting of the Red Sea, and in the miracles of provision in the desert. Now Moses is asking for a display of God’s real strength, and his request teaches us an important lesson about what we should consider the strengths of our own lives.

Numbers 14:17-18a  “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.’”

When Moses asks God to display His strength, it is in the context of human rebellion. The people are refusing to walk by faith and take possession of the Promised Land. Moses knows God has the right and the power to destroy them and start over with a faithful few. So he intervenes on behalf of the people and says, “God, I know you are powerful enough to destroy sinners and their sin, but let the real strength of Your character be displayed by loving the sinners and forgiving them.”

I am deeply challenged by this. I find it easy to define strength in human terms, which are primarily physical. I also find it easy to define my responses and reactions to situations as strength because of my ability to accomplish the desired outcome.  

But there is a level of strength that is modeled by God in His everyday responses to our human behavior. It is to be the model for our growing faith and character as well, and it involves three things:

1.      God is slow to anger. His patience with people’s failures and inconsistencies is incredible, and because of that we survive each day. Maybe there are those around us who need a chance to survive another day.

2.      God abounds in love. He never stops doing what is best for others, even when they don’t deserve it. It is not a true act of love if it is earned. Maybe there are others around us who need to see real love.

3.      God forgives sin. Moses asked for forgiveness on behalf of the people. They did not realize they even needed it. They were so blinded by their sin that they thought they were right. God forgave them anyway. Maybe there are those around us who need a gift of grace – an act of forgiveness – even though they have not asked for it.

My friends, how do you measure your strength? God’s strength was displayed in its highest form by these three characteristics. May that be how we display ours.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Friday, November 1, 2024

It has been a year since the Lord delivered the Israelites from Egypt, and the people have been commended for their growth and dedication to God. They have learned some valuable spiritual lessons and have started to understand the awesome nature of their God. They had been camped in one place for a while, and the security of that place gave them comfort and peace. But when God rises up and begins to move them again, they return to their discontent. You can read the whole story in Numbers chapter eleven. Here’s a sample of what happened.

“Now the people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the LORD, and when he heard them his anger was aroused…The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing…” 

Why are we so prone to complaining? There are a couple of reasons. First, it is our human nature to get comfortable with the immediate and to lose sight of the goal. How many times have you gone on a long family vacation with a destination in mind, only to find that along the way you grow physically weary and emotionally worn and wish you could turn around and go back home? This is what was happening to the Israelites. The inconveniences of packing and the hardships of traveling became the focus of the immediate and they forgot to look at the finish line. Let’s be careful in our lives that we have not allowed the comforts and security of our present situations to keep us from moving forward when God rises up and leads us on an exciting adventure to a promised land.

Second, we are told specifically that much of the complaining was a peer-pressured response to the outsiders that were among them. Moses specifically calls them rabble, and the word literally means a promiscuous assemblage of people. These people that traveled with the Israelites were from various races and backgrounds and had escaped Egypt with Moses. They were not in tune with the Lord God and were not committed to Him. They were on the fringes. They only wanted the personal benefits that seemed to be available from following God. When those benefits did not meet their personal standards, they complained, and the Israelites joined with them.

What a sad picture of today’s church: so many people simply attend for the personal benefits they can receive. People show up in church because they have a need to be met. People make a verbal commitment and even volunteer for service just so they can continue to use the church for personal gain. These people are the first ones to complain when things don’t go their way, and their attitude is highly contagious. I have seen Godly saints drawn into the web of wailing because they have allowed the influence of rabble to become important to them. I have heard long-time faithful followers of God begin to reflect on the way things used to be and wish they could go back because the past has been romanticized, the present is being criticized, and the future is minimized. This is the cycle of death for a church and for an individual.

This cycle seems to start, in most cases, with an outside influence of sin and faithlessness. We must always be on our guard and protect ourselves and our churches from this rabble. Do not allow the influence of popular opinion and worldly culture to diminish our faith in the Person, plan, and provision of the One True God. Yes, it will be hard, and increasingly so as the world continues to reject the ways of God. We will be persecuted for our stand against sin when the world no longer defines their behavior and choices as sin. It will become hard for us to keep our eyes on the goal of finishing the race.  But finish we will and we will finish well. We will be faithful and true. We will remain pure and holy. We will be the worthy vessels of God’s glory, made worthy by the blood of the Lamb. To Him be glory for ever and ever, Amen!

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Monday, October 21, 2024

Over the weekend you were asked to consider this question. “Has my faith in God increased to a level that allows me to not seek options other than God when my present circumstances don’t work out the way I want them to?”

What a challenge. I hope you experienced personal growth as you learn to put your faith in the nature of God and not in the activity of God. We tend to be faithful only when things go well, and when they don’t we turn to options other than God. I trust you see the deception in all of that and are growing in your faith.

Now, here’s the second reason why we tend to return to our old ways of sin and self-management of life. In Exodus 32, the Israelites did not persist in their faith because they were not experiencing any movement. They wanted to see Moses come down from the mountain so they could know what was going on. They wanted answers, and when there was no movement they sought to create their own answer.

How often are we tempted to rush into the still moments of God’s timeline and force movement? We probably do it often. None of us enjoys the times when God seems inactive. We pray for answers, and none seem to come. We want an immediate answer of yes or a no but are unwilling to accept the answer of wait. Wait is a weight we cannot bear. “Maybe God needs our help to motivate some activity,” we say. Do we realize the serious implications of such a statement? If we believe that God needs our help in any way, then we cannot believe that He is truly God, and we place ourselves above Him. It is no wonder that the Lord’s anger burned against the people because of their impudence.

Do not fight the quiet times of God’s apparent inactivity. His glory can still be seen all around you, as it was on the mountain. His promises are still valid and will not fail. He had promised the Israelites in Exodus 19:5-6 that “if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” He affirmed that promise to us as well in 1 Peter 2:9-10 which says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”  

God does not need our help to keep the plan moving: it is moving just fine and according to His timeline. So in those quiet times of inactivity, do what the people of Israel were called to do when Moses left for the mountain to meet with God – wait, and live in consecrated, holy expectation of God’s arrival. He will show up with the answer when He knows it’s best, or He will show up as the final answer and takes us to Himself. Be persistent to live by faith according to what you now know, and God will give you more to know when you need it.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotions for Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Exodus 16:2 “In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.” 

Have we ever considered how many of our negative reactions and responses to people and circumstances are really directed at God and how they offend Him deeply? I think this is a much more serious issue than we want to truly face. I think that our understanding of this issue reflects on our view of God and His sovereignty.

Imagine with me for a moment the latest incident you observed of a rebellious child in the grocery store. I hope it wasn’t with your own child, but it is certainly a possibility because we have all had it happen to us. Little Johnny has just walked with his mommy past the Froot Loops in the cereal aisle and has expressed a strong desire to have some. Mommy explains to Johnny that she already has cereal at home for him. An argument begins because Johnny wants this cereal, and he wants it now. He stomps his feet and refuses to move along. He may even scream a little and say things about how he never gets anything that he wants. He closes with a statement about how he is going to starve because there’s nothing to eat at home.

Sound familiar? But let’s analyze what is really happening. Johnny has become so self-absorbed with the Froot Loops that it causes him to stop and refuse to move on in his life until he gets what he wants. His focus is so distorted that he irrationally evaluates his condition and the historical faithfulness of the food supply at home. He has chosen to not see beyond the immediate. What you have here is a perfect definition of the word “grumble” from the original Hebrew language. It is the word loon, and it literally means to stop (usually overnight); to stay permanently; to be obstinate. We could honestly and truthfully say that stubborn people are loony.  

But the real issue with Johnny is this – he has declared his mother to be unfaithful and irresponsible. No matter how much she explains to him that she will feed him and provide for him, he chooses not to honor her but rather to attempt to manipulate her into giving him what he wants. He manipulates through stopping, stomping, screaming, and scaring. He literally places himself above his mother in authority and in his ability to determine what is best for him.

This is serious: not just for Johnny, but because it is so true of our own lives in relationship with God. Complaining about our current situation and the people who are influencing and affecting our lives is a direct rebellion against the faithfulness and responsibility of God to determine what is best for our lives. It stinks with the smell of a dead and decaying body being placed back on the throne of one’s life. Quite a word picture, isn’t it? But that is exactly my intention. Our old nature and the flesh were to have died and been buried with Christ at the time of our salvation. Jesus was given full access to the throne of our lives, and He was declared Lord and sovereign of all. But how many times have we replaced Jesus on the throne with the corruption and compost of our dead self by complaining and manipulating to get our own way? This certainly is not the life of focused faith that pleases God.

So next time we’re tempted to stop and stay at a place we think we should have received something for ourselves, remember Johnny, and focus on the Lordship of Jesus Christ who has been and always will be faithful and responsible to bless us with every spiritual blessing from on high so that we can fulfill His divine purpose.

Pastor John