Author: Kerry

I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.
1 Timothy 2:1-6

A Better Place

“What can I do to make this world a better place?” A look at the sad, scary state of current events, both local and worldwide, can lead one to wonder, “Is there really anything I can do that will make a difference?”

Yes, there is. The apostle Paul says to us, “Pray.” Paul urges us to pray for everyone. Pray for family, friends, neighbors, citizens of our country and for people around the world. Pray.

Especially pray for all those in authority. Pray for local authorities and national authorities. And pray for kings and authorities around the world. Whether it is the authorities at home or abroad, Paul doesn’t say, “Ridicule them.” He doesn’t say, “Put them down.” He doesn’t say, “Make sure everyone knows their faults.” He says, “Pray for them.” Pray for them so we can live peaceful and quiet lives.

When we live peaceful and quiet lives, we can live in all godliness and holiness. And then we can proclaim the real difference-maker, Jesus. God wants all people to be saved. That happens when people come to a knowledge of the truth. Not just any truth, but the truth that Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and people. The truth that Jesus Christ is the one who has established peace between God and all people. The truth that Jesus Christ is the one who has opened heaven for us. He did that by giving himself as a ransom, by taking our sins upon himself, by offering his body and blood for us on the cross.

Life with Jesus—that’s what truly makes this world a better place.

Prayer:
Lord God, guide and bless all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. Then guide and bless us as we proclaim Jesus, the difference-maker for this life and for eternity. Amen.

Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
Genesis 18:10-14

Laugh with Joy

Sometimes you just gotta laugh—the situation is so absurd that it’s laughable. When Sarah, who was past childbearing age, heard the prediction that she would have a child within a year, she laughed. It was not really laughter with joy. It was more like the laughter of disbelief.

What Sarah didn’t take into account is that it was God talking. He was carrying out his plan of salvation, and when God tells you what he is doing for your salvation, a laugh of disbelief is an inappropriate response. Instead, when God speaks, you are encouraged to laugh with joy.

Even when you were still a sinner, Christ died for you. You just gotta laugh because such mercy and grace are so unexpected. But, instead of laughing in disbelief, you can laugh with joy because it’s true.

Your sins are forgiven through faith in Christ. Even when you don’t feel forgiven, even when accusations are still there to try to make you feel guilty, God speaks the word of forgiveness, and you are genuinely and completely forgiven. You just gotta laugh with the joy that comes from a clean conscience.

No matter how bad it gets here on earth, God says that heaven is your home. No more sorrow or tears there—just rest and peace. Laugh with joy!

Prayer: (Christian Worship: A Lutheran Hymnal – 79)
Oh, joy to know that you, my Friend, are Lord, beginning without end, the First and Last, eternal! And you at length—O glorious grace—will take me to that holy place, the home of joys supernal. Amen.

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:41,42

Better

Mary and Martha are sisters. They trust in Jesus as their Savior and know him personally. They are his friends. One day, Jesus arrives in their home. Mary settles down to listen to Jesus speak. Martha, however, has hospitality on her mind.

Let’s stop, for a moment, to appreciate the pressure Martha is feeling. In our casual culture, you and I may handle some company simply by ordering in a pizza. That is not what Martha faces. In the culture of the 1st Century, hospitality is a sober business. When you open your home to guests, you do all you can to treat them well. Failing to do so is an insult to them and a disgrace to you.

And so here is Martha, laboring to show Jesus the best hospitality she can. And what is her sister doing to help? Nothing. She just sits there, listening to Jesus. Perhaps more than a few of us, therefore, can sympathize with Martha when she finally lets off some steam and asks Jesus, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

Then comes Jesus’ affectionate reply, but a reply packed with meaning.

Does Jesus ever say that Martha is doing a bad thing? Of course not. Showing hospitality is a beautiful fruit of faith. In fact, other parts of the Bible praise it. In this moment, however, Jesus is speaking to what is better.

In the current lifestyle of our society, busyness is a badge of honor. When that busyness, however, even in service to God—when that busyness robs me of the opportunity for the Lord to serve me in his Word, then I’ve lost my way. Then I need to repent of my busyness.

But that’s why Jesus came. He came to wash away my sins of busyness. He came to spend his time perfectly on my behalf. In him, all is well. In him, I can begin again.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, when I lose my way, grant me a repentant heart. Forgive my busyness. Refresh me to choose what is better. Amen.

Turn my eyes away from worthless things.
Psalm 119:37

Eyes

What do our eyes decide what to look at? A compelling article from the University of Melbourne gives this some thought. For quite some time, the dominant theory has been that people’s eyes automatically focus on whatever is bright and shiny in front of them. For example, if you show someone a picture of a drab city street with a bright yellow taxi, the person will first look at the taxi.

Recent work in this area, however, suggests there’s another factor in what our eyes choose to see. Rather than just looking at what is bright and shiny, our eyes also seek out those things that are meaningful to us.

And what is meaningful? There’s the big question. For the answer to that question can vary from person to person.

In Psalm 119, the Holy Spirit moved the psalmist to pray, Turn my eyes away from worthless things. Our ancient enemy, the devil, knows it rarely works for him to attack us directly and demand that we turn our eyes away from Jesus. Instead, he’s learned that the more he can get us to fix our eyes on things other than Jesus—things that seem more important and urgent at the moment—the more he can gently nudge us away from our Savior.

And here’s the tricky part. The thing that pulls our attention away from Jesus does not need to be an inherently bad thing. It might be a wonderful thing. Maybe it’s a relationship, family, hobby, career, retirement planning, or keeping up with the news.

All well and good in and of themselves, but when I slip into presuming that one of these good things is more worthy of my ongoing attention than my Savior, then Satan has set his hooks. Disaster awaits.

Thank God for Jesus. Not only has he washed us clean at the cross, he continues to pursue us with his Holy Spirit. He empowers us to come to repentance, to turn our eyes away from relatively worthless things, to fix our eyes upon him all over again.

Prayer:
Lord, when my eyes begin to fix on something other than you, bring me to repentance. Turn my eyes back to you. Amen.

“My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Exodus 33:14

Long Trip Alone

In the world of country music, Dierks Bentley is a bona fide star. But his talent goes beyond his voice and his performance. Dierks Bentley is a gifted songwriter known for crafting his lyrics with care.

Of the songs he’s written, one has a twist in how it came to be. The song is distinctive in tone. It is slow, thoughtful, somber. The title of the song is “Long Trip Alone.” As he began to write, Bentley had his marriage in mind. Picturing the years of his life as a journey, he intended to describe what it meant to have his spouse by his side. As he wrote, however, his perspective changed. By the time it matured into a finished piece, “Long Trip Alone” was no longer about a husband and wife. Rather, “Long Trip Alone” was about the quiet, desperate need each of us has for the presence of the Lord.

Indeed, as Bentley describes it, your life and mine is “A long trip alone, over sand and stone.” You know the hardships. You know the difficulties. You know the crushing disappointments. Left to ourselves, you and I would wander. We’d walk in circles. We’d stumble and fall. And as we did, the suffocating isolation would just grow worse until our pointlessness came to an end in some dark, despairing place.

That’s what sin does—your sin and mine. Not only has it made the journey of life rugged and painful. It isolates us. It forces each of us to walk the long trip alone—a trip that ends in eternal death.

But that’s why Jesus came. God’s Son became one of us. He took the long trip through this broken world, living a perfect life on our behalf. Then he carried our sins to the cross, where he endured an aloneness that will forever defy description—an aloneness he endured in our place. And because he has, you and I, through faith in him, will never have to walk alone again.

In Exodus 33, the Lord promised Moses, “My Presence will go with you.” In Christ, he makes the same promise to you and me.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, my life would be a long trip alone. Thank you for being by my side. Amen.

Then the LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh . . .? Is anything too hard for the LORD?”
Genesis 18:13,14

Laughter

He’s not exactly a household name today, but back in the 1980s and early 90s, Bill Hicks was a powerful presence in the world of comedy. The kind of comedy that other comedians were talking about.

His routines produced raucous laughter. His material, however, was often dark. He pushed boundaries. And he had some favorite targets. One of them was religion—Christianity in particular. At times he would select a particular teaching and then use his considerable skills to firebomb it with ridicule. Explosions of laughter typically followed.

The laughter of ridicule brings with it a curious thing. It brings with it a sense that the case is now closed, the winning argument has prevailed, and there’s nothing more to be said. Sometimes this is true. And sometimes it is not.

In Genesis chapter 18, the Lord announced to an elderly Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would be with child. Sarah’s reaction? Sarah laughed. Hers, however, was not the laughter of joy. It was the laughter of ridicule.

You and I often encounter the same thing. We don’t simply hear such laughter, however, from critics of Christianity. You and I can also hear such laughter snorting from our old sinful selves. In our heart of hearts, you and I know we have sometimes yielded to the temptation not to take our God seriously—whether it’s one of his promises or part of his will for our lives.

Thank God for Jesus. Thank God that, for all the times Satan has talked us into rolling our eyes over a truth of Scripture, Jesus, our Substitute, never did. And thank God that Jesus has taken all our sinful laughter and paid for it in full at Calvary’s cross.

Sarah’s laughter was not the closing argument. The Lord was. He fulfilled his promise to give Abraham and Sarah a child.

One more thing. Bill Hicks died of cancer in 1994. According to a close friend, there was a shock at his funeral when someone revealed that, before his death, Bill Hicks had confessed his faith in Jesus as his Savior. If that’s the case, Bill now enjoys another kind of laughter. The laughter of joy in Jesus.

Prayer:
Lord, fill my spirit with the laughter of joy in you. Amen.

The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre…
Genesis 18:1

The Opposite

The year is 2011. You are part of a team working beneath an ancient temple in the Far East. You are about to break into several chambers that have not been open for centuries. When you do, you can hardly believe what you find. You see diamonds—bags upon bags of diamonds. You see jewelry—more than you can describe or count. And you see gold coins—ton after ton. It will take time to inventory all that is here, but an initial estimate puts what you’ve found at over twenty billion dollars.

In addition, research has identified the treasure’s origins. Hundreds of years earlier, the temple sat on a popular travel route. As people traveled, they would regularly bring generous offerings to curry favor with the temple’s deity. The mountain of treasure standing before you is a powerful picture of how many view their relationship with a higher power. They ask themselves, “What can I give to God to persuade God to do something good for me?”

We discover that the opposite is true when we read the Bible. The eighteenth chapter of the book of Genesis reports that The LORD appeared to Abraham. Although Abraham welcomes him warmly, it’s clear that the LORD is not there so that Abraham can purchase his favor. His very name, the LORD, emphasizes that he is the one who makes unconditional promises and then does what he must do to carry them out.

This falls right in line with how God reveals himself to us throughout the Bible. He knows we are fallen creatures. He knows that, since our first parents severed their relationship with him, sin has soiled everything—including you and me. For this reason, the very idea that my soiled, sinful hands could somehow curry favor from a God of perfect goodness—such an option was never possible.

And that’s why God sent his Son. On our behalf, Jesus Christ lived the sinless life you and I have failed to live. In our place, Jesus Christ paid for our sin at the cross. The Lord did this not because we had given him some nice jewelry. He did it—because we needed him.

Prayer:
Lord, my whole relationship with you rests upon what you have done for me. Thank you. Amen.

[God the Father] has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:13,14

Rescued

It is a time of intense drama as volunteers frantically dig through rubble to rescue helpless victims after an earthquake. Immense energy is expended to free those trapped in the darkness of demolished ruins. What a relief when a victim is recovered alive and brought to safety!

We were all in need of rescue. Darkness surrounded us as we were trapped under the curse of our own sin, unable to escape. Powerless to push away our guilt, we were destined to face the impenetrable darkness of eternal death.

The Lord came to our rescue. In his infinite mercy, God sent his son, Jesus, to rescue us from our helpless condition. Jesus is the perfect Son who lifted the immeasurable weight of our guilt from us. He willingly carried the heavy load of our sin to the cross, where he died to pay the penalty for our sin completely. What a relief it is to know that we have been brought out of darkness and into the light of forgiveness!

No matter how earth-shaking the events of life may become, we can be confident of the deliverance our Savior won for us. Jesus’ kingdom will endure forever, and we are overjoyed to know he has brought us into that kingdom by his grace.

One day we will dwell with our Savior-King in the heavenly kingdom that he has promised us through his word. In our eternal home we will dwell forever with the King of kings in the secure safety won for us by his love.

Prayer:
Almighty and merciful Father, I am forever grateful for you rescuing me from the darkness of despair and death through Jesus, your beloved Son. Thank you for the light of the Savior that continues to emanate through my life as I await his triumphant return when you will bring me into the heavenly kingdom of glory. Amen.

The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
Galatians 5:17

A Life of Conflict

It’s a common thought that life for Christians ought to become easier, troubles should fade away, and there would be a great sense of peace that settles into everything they feel and think.

The apostle Paul would disagree.

The reality is that, in many ways, the exact opposite is true. The moment the Holy Spirit brings you to faith in Jesus, a conflict begins in your heart—a conflict between the Holy Spirit who has entered your heart and your sinful nature with which you were born.

This conflict is total. The Holy Spirit and your sinful nature agree on nothing. As Paul says, “The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other.”

And make no mistake. This conflict is not some polite, parlor-game debate about ethics and theology. It is a fierce, bitter, ferocious, violent cage-match for the ownership of your soul. In addition, this conflict does not merely last a few months or years. It is life-long. It ends only when you die.

Is such a life of conflict worth it? No doubt, there are times we get tired of the fight. And there are plenty of times when we lose battles. But when we stop and remember what we possess through faith in Jesus Christ—forgiveness of sin, peace with God, deliverance in every difficult moment, eternal life in heaven; when we stop and remember what we have, we know the answer.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, fill me with your Spirit for the lifelong conflict in my heart. Remind me of all the wonderful things I possess through faith in you. Amen.

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Luke 10:36,37

The Perfect Neighbor

A question started all of this. Someone had asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” To answer, Jesus told a story about a man attacked while traveling. He was stripped, beaten, and left for dead.

Two men discovered him on the road. And even though they both shared the same race, culture, and religion as the victim, they both passed him by without helping him. But then a third man encountered him—a Samaritan. In Jesus’ day, the Jews and Samaritans did not get along. In fact, no one would have considered this Samaritan to be the victim’s neighbor.

Yet he was the one who acted like a neighbor to the wounded man. He treated his injuries, put him on a donkey, and brought him to an inn. He spent all night taking care of him, then paid the innkeeper to continue to care for him.

It is easy to miss Jesus’ point here and to think that all Jesus is telling us is that we need to be more like the Good Samaritan. But when Jesus said, “Go and do likewise,” he set an impossibly high standard. It is not possible to love your neighbor the way that God commands.

Thank God, then, that Jesus is the perfect neighbor. He went out of his way to help you when you were dead in your sins. He obeyed God’s law perfectly as your Substitute, so his perfect obedience counts as yours. He also sacrificed his life for you so that all your sins are forgiven.

What a loving Lord! Knowing we could never live up to God’s perfect law, he lived up to it in our place. May this motivate us to serve every person he brings into our lives, showing them the same kind of mercy and love he has shown us.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, make me more like you, that I grow in love for my neighbor. Amen.