Over the next few devotionals, I want to share some personal stories of how God’s wisdom has been proven in my life. It all comes from two popular verses in Proverbs. I remember memorizing them in Sunday School as a child, and they have stuck with me. Here’s how I learned them.
Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths.”
What does it look like to trust in the Lord with all your heart? They key is to understand the word “all”. It means all. Not some or most, but all. Is that even possible?
There are many Bible stories of men and women who trusted God with all their heart for a moment, but not permanently. I think permanent trust is hard to achieve while we live in these bodies of flesh. Abraham trusted God completely when asked to move to a new land, but his trust wavered when he got there. Moses trusted God in the wilderness until the second time they needed water and he didn’t follow God’s instructions. The Apostle Paul trusted God until he had a disagreement with John Mark and Barnabas.
We all have moments when we trust God completely, but like the people in Scripture we have too many moments of trusting ourselves.
Late in 1986 I was living a comfortable life in South Dakota. My wife and three children were being taken care of as I worked a full-time job, and I was also living out God’s call on my life to pastor a church. Then God called. He directed my wife and me to begin planning to enter ministry full time and leave behind the comforts of our home and possessions. We obeyed. In early 1987 we accepted the call to a church over 300 miles away. It would cut our salary by almost 40%. We sold our home, my classic 1964 Ford pickup, our boat, my guns, and planned for major budget reductions because we trusted what God was doing to fulfill His call on our lives. It was the most joyous and rewarding obedience in our lives.
Did I continue to trust God explicitly? No, and there are far to many stories to prove my trust in myself. But this I know. God is faithful, and will never stop welcoming us into a relationship of complete trust. So no matter what your trust level is right now, set a goal to make trust complete, and then strive for trust to become permanent. Imagine what God can do with a person who trusts Him in ALL things.
LifeLink Devotions for Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Proverbs 1:33 “…whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
He woke up early in the morning with a question burning in his heart. “Could I ever convince anyone that God is real” He thought back to the many experiences of his life, and was convinced that He had never heard God’s voice, and most certainly had never seen God’s face. Yet he believed.
As he got into his pickup that morning and drove away from the farm that was home to over a dozen horses, he began to talk out loud to his heavenly Father. He asked why God had never spoken audibly like he had read about in Scripture. He wondered what he would ever tell someone who wanted proof of the existence of God. He looked at the seat next to him currently occupied by a pack of necessities and accessories for his day and stated, “God, I know you are as real as this black bag, and that you occupy this seat with me. But I want to see you like I can see it.” As he related the story to me I thought to myself, “Be careful what you pray for.”
Later that night, after a hard day of work and an evening visit with a friend, he got back into the pickup and headed for home. He was in a hurry – too much of a hurry. Excessively exceeding the speed limit on a rural North Dakota road, he was within a half mile of home when he came over a small hill. As the truck leveled off at the bottom of the hill and the headlights illuminated the path ahead he saw a frightening sight. There on the side of the road was one of his horses – the same horse that had been returned to him the night before after escaping through a hole in the fence that he had planned to fix earlier that morning.
Instantly his mind went into high gear. Isn’t the brain that God created for us amazing? The speeds at which it can process information is incredible, even though it’s not until well after the event that we realize how much information was processed. Options came to his mind. Decisions had to be made. He thought, “I can maintain control and try to go around the horse, but he will likely be spooked and jump into me and end up coming through the windshield. Which way would he jump? Which side of the road do I choose? I’d better slow down.”
He slammed on the brakes. As the information processed he chose an option that was in his own words totally stupid – he jerked the steering wheel hard to the left and sent the truck into a spin and headed for the ditch. Later he would make this statement – “God’s grace covers stupid.” That was lesson number one, but not the most important lesson of the night.
As the truck skidded sideways and backwards down the highway, he began thinking of more options. He knew from years of experience that the outcome of this decision was going to be tragic. He knew that as soon as the truck went off the road and down into the ditch that the wheels would catch in the dirt and the truck would flip and roll uncontrollably. At that moment he felt a peace came over him that he cannot explain and that he had never felt before. When the truck impacted the ditch he knew from the depths of his heart and soul that he should let go of the steering wheel and sit back and relax. That’s exactly what he did – he totally let go.
As I stood where this happened, I saw the spot the truck hit the ditch backwards and the back bumper dug into the ground and carved out a mini ravine. That contact caused the truck to flip end to end and roll side to side. I stood on the glass-covered spot twenty feet away where the roof over the driver’s seat hit the ground and was crushed to within inches of the steering wheel. Anyone sitting in that position would have been killed. I walked up the hill where the truck had flipped again, clearing a barbed wire fence and rolled several more times up the hill.
Somewhere during the first flip, before the roof was crushed, the driver was extracted from the truck through the passenger door window and catapulted sixty feet through the air into the ditch, suffering multiple rib fractures, a punctured lung, hip and leg injuries which required surgery, and multiple bumps and bruises. When he regained consciousness, he tried to make a call to a friend for help. In a nightmarish moment his phone battery died. But the black bag in the truck contained an extra battery. It was his only hope for life.
As he pushed himself up to his feet he was amazed at the power of adrenaline. He felt no pain and was able to walk slowly to the barbed wire fence. Somehow with his debilitated legs he was able to hoist each leg high enough to get over the fence and make his way up the hill to the truck. In the dark as he circled the truck he saw the shadowy image of the black bag in the pasture grass. After replacing the phone battery he made seven calls before he finally got someone to answer. By now he barely had any breath left as a result of the punctured lung and the pain was beginning to overpower the adrenaline. Weakly he asked for help and was barely able to say, “I’m south of the farm.”
As he shared the story with me and took me to the place where it all happened, he declared several eternal truths:
I never fully experienced God because I had never totally let go.
Our control of our lives limits God’s presence and power.
God is revealed only in our weakness, not in our strength.
God became as real as the black bag and my only hope for life is in Him. I may only see shadows of His presence, but He is there, and in Him is found the rescue for human sin and for human stupid.
Be careful what you pray for – but be assured of this – God hears you and will reveal Himself to you according to the level of your surrender. Let go and know God!
Within each of us is a terrifying enemy of God. Not terrifying to God, but to us. Unfortunately, we have embraced this enemy and signed what we think is a lasting peace treaty with it. However, this treaty is a lie, and sooner or later we all discover that the enemy has deceived us and brought us to destruction.
The enemy I refer to is Pride. God hates pride.
“Whoever has a haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not endure.” Psalm 101:5
“The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.” Proverbs 8:13
“Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished.” Proverbs 16:5
Pride manifests itself in a variety of ways in our lives. But the single most prominent way pride reveals itself as both the enemy of God and the enemy of our life is this – when we reject correction. When confronted with a wrong and a challenge to change there is an immediate rise in our pride pressure, and just like an exaggerated rise in blood pressure, our heart is at risk when it happens.
Pride seeks to protect when in reality it is causing harm. We are deceived into believing that we are guarding our hearts – our value system and our image – when actually we are moving quickly towards the destruction of our spiritual hearts. Just as high blood pressure is an indicator of hardened or constricted arteries, so high pride pressure is an indicator of a hardened heart.
King Solomon states that pride is conquered only when we respond humbly to the reproof of God when He lovingly disciplines us for our sin. How we respond to God’s correction reveals the nature and extent of pride in our hearts.
Proverbs 1:23“If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.”
Those who embrace the perceived benefits of pride’s self-protective responses will find themselves alone, abandoned, and absorbed with awful consequences. In Proverbs 1:29-31 we read,“Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices.”
But those who humbly seek the Lord and embrace His correction comes the abiding Presence of God in the Person of His Holy Spirit, and a constant understanding of God’s Word – His purpose for our lives and the power and provision to accomplish it.
What a contrast. The choice is ours. Pride resulting in only what we can do for ourselves, or Godly correction resulting in what God can and will do in us. Today, and every day from here forward, while we know we are weak and our pride is strong, we can choose to read God’s Word, not for knowledge, but for transformation, calling out for God’s reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
How about you? How do you respond when someone tries to correct you? What does that say about the enemy of God in you? What will you do about it?
We all had them. Many of us were them. Some of you are planning to be one.
The first recorded words of God to Adam and Eve were His blessing and command to become parents. God had spoken in Creation and to Adam prior to the creation of Eve, but now he reveals His heart to the man and woman. He expects multiplication, and it is through the marriage of one man and one woman that His will is to be accomplished.
As parents and grandparents, our role is significant before the Lord. In his opening statements of wisdom, Solomon addresses his son and challenges him with the importance of listening to his father and mother.
Proverbs 1:8 “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.”
His wisdom reveals that a parent’s instruction and teaching must be worthy of hearing and applying to a child’s life.
What are we teaching our kids? Or what are we not teaching them by what other sources of instruction do we allow into their lives? Those questions must burn deeply in our minds every day as we consider the awesome and eternal responsibility God has given us to instruct, teach, and train the next generation of Christ-followers.
A quick study of the two Hebrew words used in this verse is valuable for us. Dad is responsible for instruction and Mom brings teaching. Now I must say that this is not the only verse about parents in Proverbs, and it certainly cannot be taken as the whole counsel of God concerning the unique roles of mom and dad. But in this first reference to a parent’s responsibility, the literal meaning of the Hebrew words tells us that Dad is the enforcer of God’s law that mom has taught.
The word translated “instruction” means “chastisement”, and is translated as discipline, correction, and instruction. Dad, your role with your kids is to correct them when they are outside the boundaries of God’s will and to do so with the intent of training them to stay inside those boundaries.
Mom’s, your word “teach” is the Hebrew word for “law”. You will recognize it because it is the word “torah”. To moms God has given the responsibility of teaching the law of God to her children. That is not to say that dad doesn’t also have that responsibility. What it says is that between mom and dad there is a mutual understanding of and agreement with the law of God and they work together to train their children to know and serve the Almighty.
It is our privilege as parents to represent the Lord Jesus Christ to our children. It is our responsibility to teach them and train them through instruction and discipline to recognize the Lordship of Jesus Christ over their lives. We will fail at that if He is not Lord of our lives. Verbal instruction and teaching must be validated with visible activity.
Our kids are being taught whether we are saying anything to them or not. They learn mainly by observing.
Sometimes it’s just not possible. Our best attempts at reconciliation are met with stiff resistance. We cannot help but wonder – “How far should I go to make things right?”
How far should we go to bring peace? After multiple attempts we begin to feel we have nothing left to make things right. Maybe it’s because we believe we are responsible for other people’s choices. As a result, we develop a dysfunctional need to fix everything. That’s okay when working on a dryer or a dishwasher, but not with people.
I was challenged with this when I received an email from a reader who shared how she misunderstood this aspect of reconciliation. She said, “As a very young child there was a lot of yelling in my family. I tried to be the peacemaker by making excuses for everyone’s behavior. If that didn’t work, I’d apologize for whatever was wrong just to stop the fighting.”
“What the Father pointed out to me was that I was reinforcing Satan’s lie that I deserved no better than to be treated this way. My whole life I have, in effect, accepted responsibility for other’s actions so that they wouldn’t feel bad and would have a way to save face. I tried to keep the peace. I came to realize that I wasn’t doing anyone any favors and maybe doing more harm than good. It’s not up to me to make excuses for anyone’s transgressions. It is my place to say ‘That hurt’ and forgive them. Or ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. Please forgive me’. Just like the Father does for me.”
Taking responsibility for another person’s choices and actions is not God’s model of reconciliation. Reconciliation isn’t real unless both parties agree. Both parties must take personal responsibility for their own choices and actions. It isn’t peace if both parties in the dispute aren’t brought to a point of repentance for their own actions.
Our Scripture passage today emphasizes this point of personal responsibility. The Apostle Paul writes, in Romans 12, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” We are only responsible for our choices. We are charged with living in peace with others. We are not charged with forcing others to live in peace with us.
Sometimes people reject our attempts at peace. I see three possible responses we could have. First, we could retaliate. But our Scripture passage in Romans makes it clear that we are not to take revenge in any form.
Second, we might try to manipulate the situation to bring what looks like peace. This may involve things we’ve mentioned before like taking false responsibility for an action, or by lessening the severity of the action or the hurt it caused. This type of dishonesty does not bring true peace.
Third, we can continue to love – not only in thought and feeling, but in activity. This is the only correct response to people’s rejection of our attempts at reconciliation. We must not deceive ourselves into believing that we are living at peace with everyone if that peace is in word only. There must be specific activities of good intentionally directed at our enemies if the evil is to be overcome.
We have not been commanded to do something impossible. By the grace of God in our lives, we can live at peace with everyone by acting towards them as if nothing is wrong, even though they may treat us differently.
If we are going to truly understand the marvel of reconciliation, we must wrap our minds around the amazing concept of forgiveness. Here’s one of my favorite Bible passages describing what God did when He reconciled me to Himself in Christ.
Ephesians 1:3-8 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.”
WOW! Let’s break that down. Here’s what God did for us in our salvation:
He blessed us in His presence with every spiritual blessing in Christ. That means that when God sees us from His throne, our standing with Him is the same as Christ’s.
He chose us. He initiated the whole plan to bring us into relationship with Himself, and to call us holy and blameless.
He determined to adopt us. We are joint heirs of all things in eternity with Jesus Christ.
He has lavishly bestowed His glorious grace on us through Jesus Christ. He will never count your sins against you and He will freely grant you everything He has promised.
He has redeemed us. We are bought with the price of His Son’s blood, and that price is non-refundable. We are eternally secure.
He has forgiven us. Forgiven of everything that contradicts Him, so there need never be anything between us.
My heart is overwhelmed with joy as I think that God, based on the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, can and will forgive us when we humbly confess our sin, and will restore us to perfect relationship with Himself. That, my friends, is truly awesome.
I challenge you to takes some extra time this weekend to look up Ephesians 1:3-8 for yourself and study everything God did for you in your salvation. Let the Holy Spirit overwhelm you with gratitude and joy. Then come back Monday for a story that illustrates all of this.
Yesterday we began a conversation about God’s marvelous work of reconciling us to Himself through Christ’s work on the cross. Here’s how God taught me the the splendor of His work.
God’s Holiness Fought Me – I had to come to a place in my life where I knew that nothing I could ever do or offer to God would be able to change my nature. I had to know that I could never stand in the presence of God based on my qualifications. There can be no salvation from sin and reconciliation to God unless we first see God in His absolute holiness.
God’s Love Sought Me – He sent Jesus to pay the price for my sin – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should never die, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Jesus said, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.”
God’s Justice Bought Me – Jesus paid the price for my sin on the cross of Calvary. “You are not your own, you were bought at a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
God’s Mercy Caught Me – After the price for my sin had been paid by Jesus, and justice was no longer in the way, mercy came running after me. God chased after me. What an incredible lesson in reconciliation – the One in the right chasing after the ones in the wrong.
God’s Grace Wrought Me – Now that He has caught me, God is shaping me. Every day His grace molds me into the character of Jesus.
God’s Example Taught Me – “He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:19-20) In the same way that God reconciled me to Himself, I am to go with the Good News and reconcile others to God and to each other.
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…
LifeLink Devotional for Wednesday, January 1, 2025
We are more apathetic than we will admit. Especially when it comes to conflict resolution. I know all too well about the “sweep it under the rug” philosophy of problem solving. I grew up in a Scandinavian home. But we’re not the only ones who have adopted and promoted this attitude. Somehow the Biblical admonition to “be at peace with one another” has been misunderstood and misapplied. Being at peace with one another doesn’t mean pretending that the problem never existed. Being at peace means to resolve the problem so that it doesn’t matter anymore. Peace isn’t the burial of issues. Peace is the healing of the pain of issues. But we have been duped into believing that time heals all pain. If we would just set aside our differences for long enough we will eventually forget that they exist. We have become apathetic towards conflict resolution. We have created a false sense of peace based on a wrong understanding of reconciliation.
What if God had done with our sin what we do with the wrongs of others? What hope would we have if God simply swept our sin under the rug and ignored it, hoping that somehow it would go away so that we could relate to Him again? We would have to believe in a less than holy and less than just God. We would even have to minimize His love for us, because true love heals, not hides.
God didn’t hide sin until after it had been justly dealt with. He didn’t offer eternal forgiveness until sin had been publicly paid for. He didn’t provide healing from the pain of sin until it had been openly confessed by the offender. He didn’t invite us to a restored relationship until after the relationship with His Son had been forsaken. He didn’t reconcile us to Himself until He had first reconciled His Son to Himself by raising Him from the dead. He didn’t offer false peace based on ignorance of sin, but rather He offered true peace based on the knowledge and the forgiveness of sin.
2 Corinthians 5:18 “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…”
Every necessary requisite to a reconciled relationship with God was initiated and implemented by God. When He saw our sin, He set in motion the strategy of salvation. “He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:5-7)
When we accept what God did in Christ on the cross, and repent of our sin, our relationship with God is eternally reconciled. He did what I couldn’t. Surrender all your efforts to be made right. Make a clean sweep of the past and accept what Jesus has done for you.
LifeLink Devotional for Tuesday, December 31, 2024
One of the characteristics of reconciliation is restoration. It is difficult for me to consider the validity of anyone saying they have been reconciled to another person unless it includes the marvelous grace of forgiveness leading to restoration of the previous status of the relationship. Restoration to a previous state is not possible unless everything that damaged the relationship is removed and declared irrelevant.
Biblical reconciliation results in the restoration of our relationship with God to a former status. What former status is that? The status of intimate and secure relationship with God based on righteousness. We do not bring our sin with us into this relationship. Reconciliation requires the renouncing of anything that was responsible for the breakup.
There is tension between what the Bible says and what the world says is necessary for reconciliation. The world has declared war on the Biblical definition by stating that the only thing required for people to live in harmony with one another is tolerance. The biblical model of reconciliation challenges that philosophy by emphasizing the need for repentance and change.
In the Bible, reconciliation is all about change. In fact, the Greek word for reconciliation that the Apostle Paul uses in his writings means simply “to change completely”.
There is an ancient and deceptive philosophy called Gnosticism. It teaches that God is only concerned with the spirit and cannot be involved with the physical. That belief is still prevalent today and forms the foundation of the philosophy of tolerance. It is held by those who support and pursue the gratification of the flesh and all its desires. Mainstream culture today believes that people can be reconciled to one another without a change in behavior or beliefs. Logically, then, those same people conclude that the spiritual can also be reconciled to God without change in belief or behavior.
This is contrary to what the Bible teaches about the saving grace of God in Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 5:17-19 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.”
Saved people have the power of the Holy Spirit in them. He is creating the character of Jesus Christ in them. He is moving them toward holiness and the rejection of sinful behavior. True reconciliation with God requires repentance from sin. Unity and harmony with God are not possible when we intentionally continue in what God calls sin and reject the Holy Spirit’s transformational influence.
True reconciliation is based upon and results in change. As our Scripture passage said, every part of our lives that was once connected to and controlled by sin is gone when we are in Christ. We are a new creation, with a new purpose – to do the work of God.
Change. When we repent of our sin, we admit the need for change. God grants forgiveness, and there is a change in our spiritual standing before God. Our change in standing produces a change in our social behavior before man. When we are in Christ, we are to put off all the activity of the flesh so that our lives are lived in righteousness and holiness.
When we come to Christ for salvation, admitting to and repenting of our sinful nature, He changes us. The very life of Jesus Christ is created in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are new. Our minds are transformed. Our actions will follow our hearts. We are designed in our salvation to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
When we repent of our sin and believe in Christ’s righteousness that was made available to us when He paid our sin debt on the cross, we are reconciled to God and restored to our former relationship status. As a result, we renounce sin and live to reflect the glory of our spiritual condition. Then, one day, Jesus will return and finalize the reconciliation when He takes us into His perfect presence.
That’s reconciliation – restoration to God, complete and eternal.
As we prepare to enter a new year my mind has been captivated by a word. I am going to study it thoroughly. It is a word that has both secular and spiritual applications. In its most basic dictionary definition, it means “to restore to balance.” It can specifically apply to the restoration of friendship, the balancing of finances, or the composition of music to create harmony. In the Greek language it means “to change or exchange so that favor is restored.” You have probably figured out by now that the word is reconcile.
When we think of reconciliation, we probably think first of people who are restored to relationship after they have been separated by hurt and anger. But to even understand that completely, we must begin with the ultimate act and example of reconciliation – God restoring our relationship with Him. My mind is swimming with a multitude of ideas and insights into God’s work of reconciliation, and in the coming devotionals we will try to investigate them. But let me lay the proper foundation for this study by sharing with you a story told by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
“A certain king was very rich. His power was known throughout the world. But he was most unhappy, for he desired a wife. Without a queen, the vast palace was empty. One day, while riding through the streets of a small village, he saw a beautiful peasant girl. So lovely was she that the heart of the king was won. He wanted her more than anything he had ever desired. On succeeding days, he would ride by her house on the mere hope of seeing her for a moment in passing.
“He wondered how he might win her love. He thought, I will draw up a royal decree and require her to be brought before me to become the queen of my land. But, as he considered, he realized that she was a subject and would be forced to obey. He could never be certain that he had won her love.
“Then, he said to himself, “I shall call on her in person. I will dress in my finest royal garb, wear my diamond rings, my silver sword, my shiny black boots, and my most colorful tunic. I will overwhelm her and sweep her off her feet to become my bride.” But, as he pondered the idea, he knew that he would always wonder whether she had married him for the riches and power he could give her.
“Then, he decided to dress as a peasant, drive to the town, and have his carriage let him off. In disguise, he would approach her house. But, somehow the duplicity of this plan did not appeal to him.
“At last, he knew what he must do. He would shed his royal robes. He would go to the village and become one of the peasants. He would work and suffer with them. He would actually become a peasant. He would give up his rights to the throne to win the heart of his heart’s love. This he did, and he won his wife.”
This is what God did for us. To win the hearts of His heart’s love, He became one of us in Christ. He made himself of no reputation. He became a servant. He humbled himself. He became obedient, even to the point of death. The Apostle Paul says, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself.”
God sought to restore favor between himself and man. To do so, he made an exchange that brought change. Not change to Him, for He never changes. His exchange brings change to us, which in turn changes our relationship with God. According to Colossians chapter one, we were once alienated from God and were enemies in our minds because of our evil behavior. But now he has reconciled us by Christ’s physical body through death to present us holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. Amazing! Awesome! We have been reconciled to God. This is incredible news. I can’t wait to see what else God is going to teach us in the days ahead.
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