Category Archives: Devotional

The Wonders of Calvary

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This is a prayer of thanksgiving penned by Charles H. Spurgeon. In it he demonstrates a wonder and awe of God who stoops down to save mankind.  This provides a good reminder of the depth and the riches of the love of God for us.

CH Spurgeon
Great God, there was a time when we dreaded the thought of coming near to You, for we were guilty and You were angry with us, but now we will praise You because Your anger is turned away and You comfort us.  Yes, and the very throne which once was a place of dread has now become the place of shelter.  I flee to You to hide me.

We long now to get away from the world, even from the remembrance of it and have fellowship with the world to come by speaking with Him that was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty.  Lord we have been worried and wearied oftentimes with care, but with You care comes to an end, all things are with You, and when we live in You, we live in wealth, in sure repose, in constant joy.

We have to battle with the sons of men against a thousand errors and unrighteousnesses, but when we flee to You, there is all truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace.  Above all, we have to battle with ourselves, and we are very much ashamed of ourselves.  After many years of great mercy, after tasting of the powers of the world to come, we still are so weak, so foolish; but oh! when we get away from self to God, there all is truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, victory.

Oh! bring us, then, we pray You, now near to Yourself.  Let us bathe ourselves in communion with our God.  Blessed be the love which chose us before the world began.  We can never sufficiently adore You for Your sovereignty, the sovereignty of love which saw us in the ruins of the Fall, yet loved us anyway.

We praise the God of the Eternal Council Chamber and of the Everlasting Covenant, but where shall we find sufficiently fit words with which to praise Him who gave us grace in Christ His Son, before He spread the starry sky.

We also bless You, O God, as the God of our redemption, for You have so loved us as to give even Your dear Son for us.  He gave Himself, His very life for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity and separate us unto Himself to be His peculiar people, zealous for good works.

Never can we sufficiently adore free grace and undying love.  The wonders of Calvary never cease to be wonders, they are growing more marvelous in our esteem as we think of Him who washed us from our sins in His own blood.  Nor can we cease to praise the God of our regeneration who found us dead and made us live, found us at enmity and reconciled us, found us loving the things of this world and lifted us out of the muck and mire of selfishness and worldliness in the love of divine everlasting things.

O Spirit of God, we love You this day, especially for dwelling in us.  How can You abide in so rude a habitation, How can You make these bodies to be Your temples, and yet You do so, for which let Your name be held in reverence so long as we live.

O Lord, we would delight ourselves in You this day.  Give us faith and love and hope that with these three graces we may draw very near to the Triune God.  You will keep us, You will preserve us, You will feed us, You will lead us, and You will bring us to the mind of God, and there will You show us Your love, and in the glory everlasting and boundless, there will You make us know and taste and feel the joys that cannot be expressed.

But a little longer waiting and we shall come to the golden shore; but a little longer fighting and we shall receive the crown of life that does not fade away.

Lord, get us up above the world.  Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, and mount and bear us on Your wings, far from these inferior sorrows and inferior joys, up where eternal ages roll.  May we ascend in joyful contemplation, and may our spirit come back again, strong for all its service, armed for all its battles, armored for all its dangers, and made ready to live heaven on earth until soon we shall live heaven in heaven.  Great Father, be with Your waiting people, any in great trouble please greatly help; any that are despondent sweetly comfort and cheer; any that have erred and are smarting under their own sin, bring them back and heal their wounds; any that are panting after holiness give them the desire of their hearts; any that are longing for usefulness lead them in ways of usefulness.

Lord, we want to live while we live.  We do pray that we may not merely groan out an existence here below, nor live as earthworms crawling back in our holes and dragging now and then a withered leaf with us; but Oh! give us to live as we ought to live, with a new life that You have put in us, with the divine quickening which has lifted us as much above common men as men are lifted above the beasts that perish.

Do not let us always be hampered like poor half-hatched birds within the egg; may we chip the shell today and get out in the glorious liberty of the children of God.  Grant us this, we pray You.

Lord, visit our church.  We have heard Your message to the churches at Ephesus; it is a message to us also.  Oh! do not let any of us lose our first love.  Let not our church grow cold and dead.  We are not, we fear, what once we were.  Lord revive us!

All our help must come from You.  Give back to the church its love, its confidence, its holy daring, its consecration, its generousness, its holiness.  Give back all it ever had and give it much more.  Take every member and wash his feet, sweet Lord, most tenderly, and set us with clean feet in a clean road, with a clean heart to guide them, and bless us as You will in a divine fashion.

Bless us, our Father, and let all the churches of Jesus Christ partake of care and tenderness.  Walking among the golden candlesticks trim every lamp and make every light, even though it burns feebly now, to shine out gloriously through Your care.

Now bless the sinners.  Lord convert them.  O God, save men, save this great city, this wicked city, this slumbering dead city.  Lord, arouse it, arouse it by any means, that it may turn to its God.  Lord save sinners all the world over, and let Your precious Word be fulfilled.  “Behold He comes with clouds.”  Why do You delay?  Delay no longer, O, our Lord.  And now to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Available at http://www.believersweb.org/view.cfm?ID=460  

Are You Living An Offended Life?

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Most people would answer this question in the negative. Of course they are not living that way.  But if you want to know if you are living an offended life, then pay close attention to how you react to the mention of certain people’s names or what you think and how you act when you are in their presence.

Author John Bevere in his book “The Bait of Satan,” explains that people can live an offended life without even knowing it because they are so focused on the hurt done to them.

Offense that is harbored and allowed to have free rein produces varying degrees of anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, strife, bitterness, hatred, and envy. These emotions in turn produce division, separation, broken relationships, betrayal, and even a cooling of faith and love.

Clearly, the devil utilizes the bait of offense to destroy us and other people.  So what must we know and do?

First we must realize that we have a choice whether to pick up the bait of offense.  I have a dear friend who many years ago made this statement that has stuck with me for decades. He said, “I’m not smart enough to be offended.”  In his own humorous way, he was saying, “I love you and will not let words or actions come between us.” The Bible says that love covers a multitude of sin.

The point is this – we have a choice whether or not we will become offended or whether or not we will forgive.  Remember friends, forgiveness has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the one receiving forgiveness deserves it.  What it all boils down to ultimately is this –  do you want to remain free of the rotten results of harboring an offense?

Then secondly, we must determine to forgive those who have hurt us. I am convinced that a big reason love among Christians is growing cold is because people refuse to forgive. They believe they are justified in their feelings.  Perhaps they have never been told that Christians must forgive.  Perhaps they don’t understand that their holding onto hurt has frozen them in time, effectively making them a prisoner of the one they believe has hurt them.

Friends, God’s way for His children is that we live in peace with one another.  You cannot do that when you are living an offended life.

I recommend you pick up a copy of John Bevere’s book, “The Bait of Satan,” and begin reading and praying for your own deliverance from this heinous trap of our enemy.

When you do you will experience a transforming moment in your life.

Gourmet Meal or Crumbs?

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Wedding-Rings-480x359

Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Ephesians 5:22, 25

“Love makes the world go round” is a cute adage that is simple in its message but deficient in explaining exactly how that works.  Love is as the poet says a “mysterious thing” and something that is both fleeting and enduring. Love has the capacity to satisfy the soul like a gourmet meal or it can starve the one who receives only crumbs.

Let me cut to the chase here folks.  How would you describe your relationship with your spouse? Would you give it a thumb up or a thumb down?  I don’t mean is everything going great right now because truth is, almost every marriage has a few pot holes every now and then.  What I am asking is this – is your marriage on solid footing?  Is the foundation of your spousal relationship solid?

If you cannot say “yes it is,” then let me encourage you today to begin the process of evaluating why. The decision to begin to build a solid foundation for your marriage may be an individual one, but to make it happen takes team work.

Taking the necessary steps to construct, restore, or repair a damaged marriage must begin with determining to love your spouse even though they may be behaving in an unloving way.  Let me issue a caveat here – I am not suggesting that you should accept abusive behavior in the name of love, and that includes physical, verbal, or emotional abuse. But I am suggesting that you live the truth that love is not primarily an emotion. It is a decision in the biblical sense.  So determine to honor your covenant vows to love your spouse through the thick and thin of life.

Next, determine to be honest and transparent with your spouse. This will require a generous amount of trust.  Some information will be hard to share and the fear of being judged can be a tremendous weight.  Press on anyway.  If not initially, your spouse will in time see that your love for him/her outweighs the hurt, because the goal in being honest with one another is to begin to build accountability, which ultimately leads to trust.

When trust is an integral part of the marriage relationship then you are able to overcome those things that previously were stumbling blocks.  In effect you are being equipped to demonstrate love in the biblical sense. Friends, your spouse deserves the best you can give not the left over crumbs.

That is a transforming truth.

A Prayer for Those Battling Sin

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John Owen Puritan theologian John Owen wrote the classic work The Mortification of Sin in 1656 to analyze and apply what Paul meant in Romans 8:13 when he said, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you “put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Owen has much to share about the important topic of killing our sin including what we need to believe about our common struggle, what mortifying sin is and isn’t, and practical principles for putting your sin to death. Below is a prayer based on the book that should help us mortify our sin and live in joyful obedience to Christ:

Most Gracious Heavenly Father,

I come to you a needy and contrite sinner,
with no power on my own to put to death the deeds of the body.

Daily come to my aid making it my business
to mortify the indwelling power of sin in my life.

May I never attempt to mortify in my own strength,
forgetting that without Your Spirit my efforts will be in vain.

Lord, through Your Spirit help me put to death
the subtle and crafty strength of the enemy.

As I wake each day, give me strength to remember my task of killing sin,
and remember that sin will kill me if I do not kill it.

Keep me from ever letting up in my battle with sin,
knowing constantly that sin will take advantage.

Help my heart abound in grace that flows from your Spirit,
and destroy in my heart the consuming lust for sin.

Give me a life characterized by the mortification of sin,
and give me life, vigor and comfort
for my life and for that battle.

Lord, each day remind me to strive after total obedience,
and so weaken the power of sin upon my life.

Aid me to know the methods and occasions for sin’s success,
and to fight and contend constantly for holiness.

May I constantly be aware of the guilt, danger, and evil of sin,
knowing that without you, I fall into a seared conscience,
hardness of heart, and deception of my soul.

Lord grant that your holy law is always upon my mind,
so that it may guide me and cause me to fear you.

By the graces of Your Spirit,
implant humility to weaken pride,
purity of mind to cleanse uncleanness,
heavenly-mindedness to counter a love for this world.

May Your Spirit,
cause my heart to abound in grace and the fruits that are contrary to the flesh,
consume and expose the root of my sin,
bring the cross of Christ into my heart through faith.

For it is only by gazing at the grace displayed on the cross of Christ
that I will be able experience its sin killing power.

I pray this in the powerful name of Jesus Christ that is above every name,
AMEN.

Author: Kevin Halloran. You can follow Kevin on Twitter @KP_Halloran or on his blog Kevin Halloran – Books, Christ, Culture

Direct Link to this post – http://www.kevinhalloran.net/tag/prayer/

Men – Pray For Your Wives (Part 5)

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In this series of posts we have discussed the need we have as men to pray for our wives. If you’ve been with us for the first four parts in this series, you’ve learned that the biggest reason we need to pray for our wives is so we might be changed. No doubt this reasoning has taken many of you by surprise.

Men we pray for our wives so that God will fundamentally change us; so that we will have hearts in-tune with God’s heart for our wives. It is easy to develop tunnel-vision so that all we see are our perspectives, our struggles, and our needs in the marriage. We want God to incline our heart to our wife; to enable us to show compassion always, to demonstrate a respectful attitude without a hint of condescension.

Today I discuss the last two reasons we pray for our wives. The first is because she needs it. Men, here’s a newsflash – our wives are sinners too. Ok, we don’t need a headline to know that right? But in the midst of all this talk about praying for our wives so that we will be changed, lies this nugget of truth – our beloved, the one we are called to honor, esteem, and celebrate as God’s gift to us, is herself a sinner in need of forgiveness and grace. Pray God will grant her that each day.

Then secondly, we must pray for our wives because this is the primary weapon of our warfare on her behalf. Life is a spiritual struggle. The stresses we face as men are equally present in our wives’ lives. Today many wives work outside the home, juggling career with responsibilities to children, family, home, church, and community. Where will her support come from if not from us?

Men, when you read the Apostle Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians to take up your spiritual armor every day in order to stand firm against the schemes of the devil, do you read this challenge in the context of your marriage? Do you understand that one very effective strategy of our enemy has been to undermine the marriage relationship?

When husbands do not pray for their wives there is left a gaping hole in the battlements. Neglected prayer leaves a powerful weapon lying on the spiritual battlefield that we must occupy.

Men, love your wives as Christ loved the Church. This includes praying for her so that you will become all she needs you to be in Christ.

Be the transformation you want to see. God bless you today as you seek Him.