Our Hope, God's Pleasure

November 12 (Psalm 147:11)

But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him,

     in those who hope in his steadfast love.  (ESV)

God wants you to trust Him.  He wants you to put your faith and hope in Him.  He wants you to look to Him all the time and for everything.

This is utterly contrary to how we truly think.  We can recite this verse and nod in agreement all we want, but we live our lives as if it said, “But the LORD takes pleasure in those who work hard and do everything for themselves, in those who don’t bother Him and prove their love for Him by getting all their tasks done perfectly and on time.”  You can pretend around others, but is that not how you often think?

Now here is the part that makes my heart soar.  God loves it when you trust Him!  He takes pleasure when you put your hope in His steadfast love!  Do you want to please God?  Stop fearing the things of life and putting your hope in your money, your abilities, and the systems of this world.  Put all your eggs into one basket and focus entirely on God.  He loves it when His children do that!

Father, You know how much I need to trust You and how often I put my hope in other things.  I am coming to You now with my weakness.  I try to do and control it all.  You know I can’t, and I know I can’t, but I try just the same.  Break the grip I have over my life so that I may offer it up to You with open hands.  In the name of my Lord, Jesus, the perfect model of trust and obedience, amen.

Copyright © 2017 by Steven R. Perkins

The Center of Our Faith

November 5 (1 Corinthians 15:19)

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.  (ESV)

Does God help us in our daily struggles?  He most certainly does, and it is Jesus Himself who teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer to ask our Father for our daily bread, but there is much more to Jesus and His work than that.  Too often we treat Jesus as little more than a genie in a bottle, a cosmic magician to make all the bad stuff go away or a divine Santa Claus to give us the stuff we want.

If this is the be-all, end-all of our faith, than our faith is pretty shallow indeed.  Our hope in Jesus is not merely that He will help us get through the day, although we do hope that, but that we will be raised to new, eternal life with Him after we have died.  And yes, friends, we are going to die.  It may be easy to forget that or not to think about it in the modern world where countless painkillers line the shelves of the store and we have sufficiently tamed the forces of nature to live comfortably most of the time, but we will die, and our hope in Jesus is for resurrection.

Isn’t that thought amazing?  Doesn’t it pull your head up from the stack of bills to be paid, the homework to be done, and all the frantic getting and spending that consumes our lives?  You can live forever along with and by the power of the resurrected Jesus Christ.  That is the true center of our hope and faith.

Jesus, You have blessed us beyond measure with the gift of eternal life.  Forgive me when I am interested in You only for what You can do for me right now.  You truly are much more to me than that.  May the promise of life forever with You be the center of my faith and therefore of my life.  Amen.

Copyright © 2017 by Steven R. Perkins

November 16 (Matthew 2:18)

“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”  (ESV)

This verse leapt to mind as I heard the news that a fifth Westerner has been savagely executed by the terrorist organization known as ISIS.  This young man, a humanitarian worker in his mid-twenties, was a recent graduate of the high school where I teach.

There are no words in the face of such savagery, such brutality.  Anger and well-intentioned platitudes are equally pointless.  Such events do, however, remind us that we live in a world at war.  There is darkness that wars against light, and so it will be until the One Who is Light from Light, true God from true God, even Jesus Christ our Lord returns.  He was born into just such a world, and savagery and brutality sent Him from it.  The bedrock of our hope is that He triumphed over such evil.  The wickedness of today is the same wickedness of Cavalry, but as Christ’s resurrection showed, that evil was foiled, for He took death and turned it into life for all who would accept the offer of His grace.

As the old hymn sings, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’s blood and righteousness.  I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’s name.  On Christ the solid rock I stand.  All other ground is sinking sand.”

Father, forgive all of us, for we know not what we do.  In acts of heinous murder and in moments of the casual lie, we stand accused before Your holiness.  Thank You for the grace of Jesus that extends to all sinners.  Comfort and bless those who suffer loss at the hands of evil.  We eagerly look forward to the return of Your Son and our Savior, Jesus, in Whose name we pray.  Amen.

Copyright © 2014 by Steven R. Perkins