They cried out to the Lord in their distress; he delivered them from their troubles. He calmed the storm, and the waves grew silent. The sailors rejoiced because the waves grew quiet, and he led them to the harbor they desired. (Psalm 107:28-30 NET)
A sailor has to patiently endure his long journey at sea until he reaches land. No matter how skilled he is, the anxiety to finally find safe harbor is present every moment of his voyage. But when storms throw him off course, threatening his life and the safety of his boat, distress and panic can be overwhelming. Many of us have felt that same sense of distress.
Jesus once traveled on a ship that was manned by skilled fishermen who found themselves caught in a violent storm. The Bible says that they despaired for their lives and were certain that they would die. With waves battering their ship and wind tossing them around, they looked for Jesus and were astounded to find Him asleep. When He stood and commanded the winds and waves to be still, they were amazed that He had power even over the forces of nature. This is our God, our Savior. He has power over the storms that threaten us all.
This promise is even more beautiful than the miracle of Jesus calming the storm. Not only will God deliver us from storms of life that terrify us, He will guide us to the safe haven of our desire. He’ll take us to a place where we can be protected and secure – a home.
If you feel like you’re in the middle of some sort of storm in your life, that you fear the worst and that only God’s intervention can rescue you, believe in this promise now. Don’t dwell on how violent the threats are around you or how long and persistent the storm has been. Don’t be impressed with the devil’s illusion that he is more powerful than God. Set your mind on the truth of God’s word, that if you cry out to Him, He will calm the storms and deliver you from your troubles. That place of peace and safety that you long for will be yours as He guides you to it. And as He is guiding you, don’t resist. Perhaps a habit of resisting His guidance is why so many storms have overtaken you. Allow Him to be in control, and this time your obedience will bring you peacefully home.
The Lord says to her, “Stop crying! Do not shed any more tears! For your heartfelt repentance will be rewarded. Your children will return from the land of the enemy. I, the Lord, affirm it!” (Jeremiah 31:16 NET)
One thing I often do that can seem very insensitive, is to tell people who I counsel to stop crying. The reason isn’t because their crying bothers me or that they need to just suck it up and act tough, it’s because God promises to reward them if they turn to Him. “For your heartfelt repentance will be rewarded,” He says. God promises to do more than comfort you, He promises to take away the reason for the tears and restore those things that the devil has stolen from you.
It’s a common thought that we all need a good cry now and then to feel better. But year after year of tears, of mourning the loss of a stable family, happy children, innocence and dreams that were wiped away – none of those tears get to the root of the problem. They only prolong the pain. One goal of the devil is to destroy our faith and keep us in a perpetual state of hopelessness and depression. Our tears give pleasure and sustenance to the devil. He feeds off of our misery and even make us proud of the fact that we have been his victims for so long, so we’ll keep feeding him more bitter tears. If we can carry our Bible around, underlined and dog-eared, quoting scripture and full of self-pity, we can be the devil’s poster-child for a defeated Christian to block the salvation of many.
Refusing to shed tears is an act of faith, of determination that God’s promises will come true and are coming true for you. You may look around you and still see your child in trouble, your job situation unchanging, and your future unsure. But by faith, you can determine what your future will be – one that reflects the power and promises of God. You may not know exactly how it will happen, but to live in that state of expectancy and assurance is what pure, unadulterated faith is.
Don’t wait for your circumstances to change before you start to rejoice and praise God for what He is doing. Don’t act as if being miserable or grumpy is your God-given right. You have the power of faith that can move mountains, and if God already plans to restore you, begin to do what He needs to make that happen. Repent of your fleshly attitudes, or any other sinful behavior that is in your way. Even if your own children are being held captive in Satan’s territory, they will be brought back to you. Faith doesn’t depend on perfect circumstances or cooperating emotions. It just believes against all appearances and all odds. Dry your tears, don’t give any more pleasure to the devil. Know that God is affirming to you today that your repentance will be rewarded.
If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. (John 15:7 NKJV)
As kids we’ve all imagined what it would be like to be granted a wish, find a genie in a bottle, a fairy godmother, an elf or leprechaun with magic powers. With the innocence of childhood to believe in anything, along with that naïve greediness to want everything, we’d picture mountains of candy, worlds of talking toys, and endless summer vacations. As we’ve gotten older and common sense has kicked in, we know that’s just the stuff of fairy tales. Real life, for most, is just hard work and hoping for the best.
But here Jesus is promising something that seems too good to be true. He’s promising that whatever we desire will be done, clear and simple. If that were so, Christians around the world would be living the most amazing and outstanding lives. Whatever they desired, they would get. But we look at our neighbors who might be doing okay, some a little better than the average family, and others less so, and we conclude that Jesus must have been exaggerating. Worst of all, we look at our own lives with the hidden struggles and urgent needs. We pray, and then wonder where our answers are. We silently concede that Jesus really must have been exaggerating.
But the word of God trumps all else. God does not exaggerate. He says, if you abide in Me, and My words abide in you. That means allowing His nature, Spirit to come alive inside of us. His Word has to be alive in our heads, convicting and guiding us every day, comforting us and being the first thing we run to when we have a need. Only a living being can abide somewhere, but many who call themselves Christians treat Jesus and His word as a philosophy that they merely agree with. Their days are filled with busy work, obligations and responsibilities that keep their minds occupied with “reality.” They don’t really abide in Him and His word rarely enters their conscious thoughts. In turn they don’t get what they desire, because their desires are so full of the flesh. When God graciously grants them a blessing, they’ll even take the credit for themselves.
Just as Jesus asks us to work out our salvation daily, this state of abiding in Him has to be a daily practice when we reign in our impulses and calm our thoughts to make sure that we are abiding, dwelling, living in Him, and His word in us. Even the most spiritual person has to work at this, and sometimes he’ll miss opportunities from God – not because he’s sinning, but because he has forgotten to simply abide. I would love to see our desires come true, wouldn’t you? Jesus is showing us that He desires to grant us what we want. It’s time that we put abiding in Him as our top priority every single day.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my distress, but the Lord was my support. He brought me out to a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me. (Psalm 18:17-19 HCSB)
Can you say that God delights in you? What would make God feel so strongly about you of all people? Psalm 147:11 says, “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy.” Those who fear Him have a deep respect for Him and live in obedience to His word, and those who hope in His mercy, trust that He will show them lovingkindness.
It should go without saying that in contrast, God can’t delight in you when you live by knee-jerk reactions and selfish excuses for why you can’t obey Him. Instead, fear His awesome power so that you carefully obey Him and live each moment in submission to Him, and trust in His great mercy so that when problems arise, you can determine your miracle before you see it. This choice causes God to look on you with great delight, with a desire to rescue you from powerful enemies.
God doesn’t promise that enemies won’t try to attack, or that we will never be hated by others. I have heard Christians judge others for not being spiritual enough because they stir up the anger of others. Jesus stirred up anger and He had plenty of enemies. Of course we need to make sure that these negative reactions are because of our love for God, and not because we brought them on by our fleshly behavior. But being attacked by family, friends, coworkers, or total strangers when we live in obedience to God’s word, can’t throw us into fear because of their hostility or rejection. With negative accusations swirling around us, He promises to be our support. He’ll lift us out of that oppression and set us in a spacious place where there is peace and freedom.
It goes against all our instincts to remain calm under fire, whether it’s a physical threat or emotional. Our minds race to figure out what’s going on and how to stop the attack. Those who aren’t spiritual even try to appease their enemies out of pure fear, and that’s when the distinction is made between a true and false believer. Do you fear your enemies more? Then you’ll try to please them by buying some peace. Do you fear God more? Then you’ll stand your ground and obey Him in obedience and trust. It’s in these moments of crisis that your true faith becomes evident. Though you may wrestle with temptations of doubt, your final decision to remain in faith, to hope in His mercy and to never deny Him becomes the catalyst for your rescue in your day of distress.
Be aware as well, that not all enemy attacks come through people who are against you. Satan is the true enemy, and though he does use weak people, he can also attack through circumstances and what may appear to be just plain bad luck. No matter what the attack or from what source, you are promised support, rescue and a spacious place to enjoy the presence of God. Be sure that you that God delights in you. Choose Him over all others, even in your day of distress.
Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. (Matthew 6:9-10 HCSB)
This is the most well known prayer in the Bible, recited by millions in and out of churches around the world. Jesus gave it to us as a model for sincere, effective prayers, but unfortunately it has turned into a robotic ritual for most believers, for many, a way to earn brownie points with God if they repeat it often enough…
But there is something powerful in verse 10. Jesus wants us to expect that what is done in heaven should be done on earth. God’s will in heaven is being accomplished in its fullness. There is no pain, no suffering, there is abundance of light, joy, faithfulness and honest obedience to the Lord. Heaven is perfection, and Jesus wants us to pray for that to manifest here on this fallen and sinful planet. Why would He ask us to pray for this if we aren’t to determine that it’s possible?
Of course we know that evil is in the world and that Satan and his demons will only be thrown into the lake of fire when the final judgment comes. But Jesus wants our lives to begin reflecting the Kingdom of Heaven right here in our own lives, in our own homes. We can’t save every single soul and ensure that everyone serves God with every fiber of their being – we have a hard enough time daily carrying our cross and working out our own salvation “with fear and trembling” as it is! (See Philippians 2:12) But we can allow the will of God in heaven to materialize in and around us in such a way that others can see the reality of God in us.
If heaven is incompatible with addictions, depression, defeatist attitudes, loneliness and misery, then we can’t cave in to the thought that these things are inescapable. Demons are at work to keep us enslaved to their way of life and to convince us to be tolerant and patient. Meanwhile Jesus wants us to look to heaven as our standard. He wants us to live in a piece of heaven right now in this life, and He wants us to pray for it, to fight for it, and to accept nothing less. He obviously doesn’t want us to imagine that it will magically happen because we are good or because we are believers, because He commands us to pray for it to happen. Our fight and determination to overcome is part of faith and our key to opening the way to the Kingdom of God.
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” is a prayer of defiance against the devil’s dominion over this world. It is a prayer of taking back what is rightfully ours, by the shed blood of the Lord Jesus. While most make this prayer in the faint hope that perhaps God might deem us worthy of a few scraps from heaven, Jesus’ meaning was of a completely different nature. Learning from all that He taught His disciples on healing the sick and casting out demons, on rebuking false religion and challenging a radical faith that believes without seeing, Jesus had no interest in teaching rituals with no substance. Understand that today, Jesus has given you the authority to take back the freedom that God created you to have – right here on earth, as it is in heaven.
Then shouldn’t this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be released from this imprisonment on the Sabbath day? (Luke 13:16 NET)
Within this question of Jesus, is a statement – a promise. He had just come across a woman who had such an extreme curvature of the spine that the Bible says she was bent over double. She had come to worship in the synagogue, so we know she was a devout believer in God. Jesus had compassion on her, knowing that she had been suffering from this condition for 18 years. The Bible says that her disability was caused by a spirit. A demon was working inside of her body to create her sickness.
Most average Christians will concede that demons do exist, since the Bible talks about them. Some believe that demons no longer work in people’s lives as they did in Bible times, since we now live in a technologically advanced world, which is laughable, since spiritual beings are far more crafty and powerful than our measly inventions and scientific advances. They are spirits, eternal beings that Jesus said would only be cast into the lake of fire after the final judgment. They are just as prevalent as ever, and have even evolved and advanced along with us. Other Christians however, (and I used to be one) believe that if a demon were to work in a person’s life, it would only be because that person was inherently evil and had willfully invited that demon to enter them.
But Jesus found this poor woman coming to worship God on the Sabbath, in the synagogue. Jesus refers to her as a “daughter of Abraham,” in other words, a true woman of faith. So how could a woman like this have a demon in her body? She wasn’t known to be evil or defiled, otherwise she would never have been allowed into the synagogue at all. The only evidence of the demon’s presence, was her spinal deformity. Jesus recognized that she was a victim of a demonic attack. A victim whom Jesus loved and had compassion on, and immediately he commanded her to be set free. The demon was cast out, she stood up and began praising God for her healing.
In this simple story, God reveals to us these five things. 1. That demonic spirits will viciously attack anyone, even “good” people who have always believed in God. 2. That what may appear to be ordinary sicknesses or problems, can very well be caused by demons. 3. That Jesus sees these demonic attacks as a form of slavery and imprisonment, and totally against the will of God. 4. That He came to give us power over these spirits, to cast them out to be set free. 5. That people with religious spirits (like the Pharisees who criticized Jesus for healing on the Sabbath) will always feel threatened and angered by this authority.
I have seen this over and over again in the 28 years of my ministry. Good-hearted believers in God are often victims of demons that cause incredible physical or emotional pain through a wide variety of problems. They can be easily set free by receiving prayers of deliverance, coupled with building up their own faith and learning to develop a living faith that both honors God and fights the devil. The sicknesses and problems leave along with the demons that are cast out. But as simple as this is, the devil is crafty enough to block it from happening. As he used religiosity in Jesus’ day, he uses is it now. Be wise and humble and receive this promise for you today. Whatever evil has been attacking you, learn to fight it, and use the authority that Jesus has granted us to cast it out in His name.
The good person out of the good treasury of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasury produces evil, for his mouth speaks from what fills his heart. (Luke 6:45 NET)
You’ve heard that famous quote from Abe Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” There’s another truth that needs to be added to that. You can never fool God. Ever.
In this chapter, Jesus teaches about knowing a tree by the fruit it bears. It’s what is hidden deep inside a person that reveals itself eventually, through words, behavior and reactions. A false Christian can parade around as holy and faithful, but in time their hidden attitudes of the flesh will surface and be seen. On the other hand, there can exist among us new believers who are still rough around the edges. They don’t look the part yet, but the purity of their love for God shines through. The wise can spot their sincere hearts, while the unwise are still caught up in judging by traditional appearances. Jesus wants us to be wise and have spiritual eyes to see the good fruit in others, and be aware of the kind of fruit we bear ourselves. That fruit strengthens and refreshes us and sustains our relationship with God.
It’s funny that false Christians even bother to go through the exhausting act of pretending to be a “good tree.” All of that effort to impress others is worthless if in the end they’re swallowed up into hell. How much consolation is it to know that they fooled everyone while they were alive? Let’s be true to what we claim to believe. Either be honest about your mistakes and sins and seek out help or deliverance, or just state the plain truth that you are faithless and don’t want to change. In Jesus’ letter to the Laodicean church in Revelations 3, it was their false Christianity that caused Him to feel such disgust that He said He would vomit them out of His mouth.
Good behavior can be premeditated and faked, but godly reactions to unexpected problems are the litmus test to show what kind of fruit is being borne inside of us. From the treasury of our hearts comes the quick response to injustice, to the needs of others, to the attacks of the devil, and to the dry spells in our lives when it seems like God is taking too long to answer us. Our daily reactions towards difficult people and circumstances are the fruit that prove what kind of treasury is inside of us – good or evil. We are promised good fruit to enjoy and benefit from, as long as the treasury in our hearts is good. Examine yourselves and make the changes you need right now if you see that you still bear the bad fruit of an unclean heart. There’s no fooling God, might as well use that energy to purify what you have inside.
