From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] daily devotional
Evening...
John 10:9
I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in
and out, and find pasture.
Jesus, the great I AM, is the entrance into the true church, and the way of
access to God Himself. He gives to the man who comes to God by Him four choice
privileges. 1. He shall be saved. The fugitive manslayer passed the gate of the
city of refuge, and was safe. Noah entered the door of the ark, and was secure.
None can be lost who take Jesus as the door of faith to their souls. Entrance
through Jesus into peace is the guarantee of entrance by the same door into
heaven. Jesus is the only door, an open door, a wide door, a safe door; and
blessed is he who rests all his hope of admission to glory upon the crucified
Redeemer. 2. He shall go in. He shall be privileged to go in among the divine
family, sharing the children's bread, and participating in all their honours
and enjoyments. He shall go in to the chambers of communion, to the banquets of
love, to the treasures of the covenant, to the storehouses of the promises. He
shall go in unto the King! of kings in the power of the Holy Spirit, and the
secret of the Lord shall be with him. 3. He shall go out. This blessing is much
forgotten. We go out into the world to labour and suffer, but what a mercy to
go in the name and power of Jesus! We are called to bear witness to the truth,
to cheer the disconsolate, to warn the careless, to win souls, and to glorify
God; and as the angel said to Gideon, "Go in this thy might," even thus the
Lord would have us proceed as His messengers in His name and strength. 4. He
shall find pasture. He who knows Jesus shall never want. Going in and out shall
be alike helpful to him: in fellowship with God he shall grow, and in watering
others he shall be watered. Having made Jesus his all, he shall find all in
Jesus. His soul shall be as a watered garden, and as a well of water whose
waters fail not.
1 Timothy 2:1
(1) I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers,
intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
1 Timothy 4:5
(5) For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
"Intercession" is exactly the same Greek word as is translated " prayer"
I Timothy 4:5. It has an interesting etymology that instructs us on an
important aspect of prayer. The word, a verb, is entugchanein.
It began to appear in Greek centuries before Christ, meaning simply "to
meet a person," as if a person would meet another along the way. However,
through the centuries, the word took on a somewhat different meaning.
Eventually, it meant, not just "to meet," but "to meet and converse." This is
natural because, if a person falls in with another along the way, he usually
does not ignore the other but strikes up a conversation.
Then, as time went by, it began to take on yet a different meaning: "to
have intimate fellowship with the person." To this point, the word describes
how to have a right approach to God. In practical fact, it illustrates that we
are not conversing with God from a distance. We are so intimately associated
with Him that we are His children. This word is describing an intimate family
relationship. God is not way off on the top of a mountain somewhere. Even as
early as Deuteronomy 30:14, He says, "The word is very near you, in your mouth
and in your heart"!
If we are going to have the right kind of fellowship and relationship
with God in prayer, we have to understand that we are in His very presence.
Looking at this as humanly and physically, this is how He can rub off on us. We
are in His fellowship, in His presence. He is not far off. When Christ did gave
His life for us, the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom,
symbolizing that access to God was completely open to Him, and now we have this
same access to the Father through Christ. We are right before His throne when
we are talking to Him.
However, entugchanein continued to change. The change shows up in the
noun form of the word, enteuxis, meaning "a petition to a king." It can be used
in the sense of the king summoning someone into his presence or of someone
presenting a request to the king. Putting these together, it sugests that we
have "intimate access to petition to the king." We do not merely we have
intimate fellowship with just anybody, but to the King of all the universe!
We have both privilege and power in prayer. This is where the concept
"the power of prayer" comes from. Because we have the privilege to come before
the King in intimate fellowship, we have access to His power. It is not that
prayer itself has the power, but that we have access to the One who has the
power.
This means we have to be extra careful what we ask God: He may give us
what we ask, and we will be sorry. Mighty forces can be unleashed when we ask
God for things. God's people have a responsibility to ask of Him things that
are according to His will.
As a tool, prayer is to be used to accomplish a wide variety of things
within God's purpose. It is to be used in regard to the things of this life.
God wants us to pray about this life, as in supplying our daily need. However,
He will primarily use it, not for this life, but for His eternal purpose,
reproducing Himself and creating His holiness in us. His purpose is in
preparing us for the World Tomorrow.
So be warned that His purpose will supersede ours when we pray.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From What Is Prayer?
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daily devotional
Evening...
Psalm 74:16
The night also is Thine.
Yes, Lord, Thou dost not abdicate Thy throne when the sun goeth down, nor
dost Thou leave the world all through these long wintry nights to be the prey
of evil; Thine eyes watch us as the stars, and Thine arms surround us as the
zodiac belts the sky. The dews of kindly sleep and all the influences of the
moon are in Thy hand, and the alarms and solemnities of night are equally with
Thee. This is very sweet to me when watching through the midnight hours, or
tossing to and fro in anguish. There are precious fruits put forth by the moon
as well as by the sun: may my Lord make me to be a favoured partaker in them.
The night of affliction is as much under the arrangement and control of the
Lord of Love as the bright summer days when all is bliss. Jesus is in the
tempest. His love wraps the night about itself as a mantle, but to the eye of
faith the sable robe is scarce a disguise. From the first watch of the night
even unto the break of day the eternal Watcher observes His saints, and
overrules the shades and dews of midnight for His people's highest good. We
believe in no rival deities of good and evil contending for the mastery, but we
hear the voice of Jehovah saying, "I create light and I create darkness; I, the
Lord, do all these things." Gloomy seasons of religious indifference and social
sin are not exempted from the divine purpose. When the altars of truth are
defiled, and the ways of God forsaken, the Lord's servants weep with bitter
sorrow, but they may not despair, for the darkest eras are governed by the
Lord, and shall come to their end at His bidding. What may seem defeat to us
may be victory to Him.
"Though enwrapt in gloomy night,
We perceive no ray of light;
Since the Lord Himself is here,
'Tis not meet that we should fear."
Proverbs 29:15
(15) The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to
himself bringeth his mother to shame.
If a child is "left to himself," where is his training coming
from? Obviously, in this case, mom and dad are not having a great impact on
their child. The training must then be coming from society, most likely from
the child's peers. Because "foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child"
(Proverbs 22:15), a child left to himself brings shame—he is bound to get into
trouble if his training is haphazard or undirected, or if he is not drilled or
disciplined. The flipside of this verse says, "But the rod of correction will
drive it far from him." The rod symbolizes that someone has taken an interest
in the outcome of this child's life. He is giving direction, correction,
instruction, to steer this child where he is to go. The training, the teaching,
makes all the difference in the world.
An example from the life of David illustrates this proverb.
"And [Adonijah's] father had not rebuked him at any time by saying, 'Why have
you done so?' He was also a very good-looking man. His mother had borne him
after Absalom" (I Kings 1:6). David was very old and was very shortly to die.
His family and his close advisors probably knew that he intended to pass his
crown to Solomon. But Adonijah tried to prevent that. He made a political move
to grab the throne before Solomon had a secure grip on it. His ploy failed
because Bathsheba, Solomon's mother, and David's faithful advisors appealed to
the king, and he made it very clear whom he had chosen to succeed him.
David, though a man after God's own heart, did not take an
active hand in teaching Adonijah. In this verse God states why Adonijah
rebelled. In essence, David actually encouraged his son to rebel by not taking
an interest in rearing him. David failed to train him in the way he should go,
so that he would not depart from it. Instead, David trained him in a way that
was bound to produce rebellion. This flaw of David's shows up in others of his
children: Absalom, Amnon, and others. It does not matter whether one is a child
of God having His Spirit or not. If a parent does not carry through with the
right kind of training, then the results will surface in his children.
John W. Ritenbaugh
From Guard the Truth!
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