There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
A nationwide survey shows no significant rise in Christian revival among Americans following the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on Sept. 10, 2025, during a speaking event at Utah Valley University. He was 31.
Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center, led by veteran researcher George Barna, announced on March 3 the results of the seventh American Worldview Inventory 2026.
Responses from American adults showed that any increased interest in the Christian faith has not translated into measurable growth in a biblical worldview, despite widespread discussion about whether the tragedy might spark spiritual renewal or revival in the American Church.
Barna himself expressed concern about the loss of faith among his fellow Americans. Yet he noted that historical research shows that worldviews develop in early life and continue through young adulthood.
“A quarter century ago, 12% of the adult population held a biblical worldview,” Barna said.
“Since then, we have seen a steady reduction in that incidence. We reached a low point—4%—in 2023.
“The fact that we have not plumbed new depths since then hopefully suggests that we have bottomed out and are in line to experience positive growth in biblical thought and action.”
Although 12% of American adults had a biblical worldview in 1994, that number was halved to 6% by 2020, dropped to 4% in 2023 and remains 4% in 2026, according to the latest research.
Barna said further decline is not inevitable or irreversible. He referred to the experience of students at Arizona Christian University (ACU).
The researcher said there has been an 833% increase in the number of students developing a biblical worldview between their freshman year and graduation. This is based on research begun in 2020 by Barna.
That means the typical ACU graduate is 28 times more likely than a typical 21 to 24-year-old in the U.S. to live as an “Integrated Disciple” with a full biblical worldview, according to the cultural center.
Barna attributes that transformation to the “immersive biblical worldview environment” at the university, where every class, every extracurricular activity, and even the relational atmosphere on campus is intentionally designed to facilitate worldview development.
However, the AWVI 2026 research indicates a lack of integrated disciples in American culture.
Barna urged parents, churches, and Christian schools to “get serious” about the worldview development of young people.
“Make no mistake about it, we are losing American society and all that it has historically represented because we have succumbed to the influence of the culture instead of the exhortations and promises of God,” he said.
“Entertainment and media messages, as well as public policies and errant public education, have distorted the thinking and behavior of our young people,” Barna added.
“It is time to reclaim the culture for Christ, who died for each of us. With just 1% of Gen Z exhibiting a biblical worldview, the ways of Christ are facing extinction in America unless we act today,” he said.
“The ACU discipleship model persuasively shows a turnaround is very possible—but it must be intentional and strategic, and requires an immersive, multi-year commitment.”
According to Barna, the situation remains urgent. He said the very fate of the American nation “hangs in the balance.”
“The national divide is an indication of the spiritual battle for the soul of America,” said Barna.
“Jesus commanded us to make disciples. A disciple is one who imitates Christ, reflecting his beliefs and behaviors.
“You cannot become a genuine disciple of Jesus without having a biblical worldview, since that outlook on life is the outlook that Jesus had. And because you do what you believe, if you do not think like Jesus, you will not act like Jesus.
“Parents, grandparents, teachers, and pastors need to get on top of this now. If we lose another generation to secular humanism, postmodernism, Eastern mysticism, Marxism and all of the other unbiblical philosophies of life, we will lose America itself.”
The latest survey also found that only 10% of American adults qualify as “Emergent Followers,” defined as “individuals who possess a substantial number of beliefs and behaviors consistent with biblical principles, but not enough to be considered integrated disciples.” This number declined from 25% in 2020 and 14% in 2023.
Meanwhile, 85% of U.S. adults fall into the “World Citizen” category. This means they may embrace some biblical principles but generally believe and behave in ways that conflict with biblical teaching. That segment has grown 16% from the 69% measured in 2020.
The cultural center conducted the latest research in January among a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults under the guidance of Barna himself.
Some 53 worldview questions were answered about beliefs and behavior. The research remains the only nationally representative annual tracking study of the worldview of American adults, according to the cultural research center.
Other findings included a decline in adherents with a biblical worldview attending evangelical churches, from 21% in 2020 to 11% in 2026.
Religious leaders gather around President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, March 5, 2026.
In what has become an annual ritual, evangelical leaders gathered around President Donald Trump in the Oval Office March 5 and prayed over him and for U.S. success in the war against Iran.
The photo-op prayer time was organized by Paula White Cain, head of the White House Office on Faith and a health-and-wealth televangelist known for her controversial fundraising approaches.
A video released by the White House and shared by others across social media Thursday shows 20 people gathered around Trump, who is seated behind the Resolute Desk. Not all those in the prayer circle can be identified but the group includes Cain; Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church of Dallas; Ralph Reed of Faith and Freedom Coalition; and Gary Bauer of Family Research Council.
Tom Mullins of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., led the spoken prayer. He is founding pastor of Christ Fellowship, a multi‐site church of 30,000 people meeting on 15 campuses around South Florida.
Praying to God on behalf of Trump, Mullins said: “I pray for your grace and your protection over him. I pray for your grace and your protection over our troops and all of our men and women serving in our armed forces. And father we just pray you continue to give our president the strength that he needs to lead our nation as we come back to one nation under God.”
Nate Schatzline, a member of the Texas House of Representative and leader at Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, Texas, also was among those present. He posted on X: “What an honor to pray over President @realdonaldtrump in the Oval Office today as faith leaders from across America commit to mobilize the Church to bring Revival & Reformation to America! President Trump has done more for the faith community, for the unborn, for the next generation, & for religious liberty than any other President in U.S. history! We stand with you President Trump!”
He also thanked White “for faithfully leading the White House Faith Office and fighting for religious liberty every day!”
Ralph Reed of Faith and Freedom Coalition portrayed the prayer session as also asking God’s support for U.S. troops in their attacks on Iran: “I am grateful to President Trump for his courageous decision to strike the terrorist regime in Iran. I am honored to pray for him & our armed forces at the White House. May God grant victory & freedom for the Iranian people.”
Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, also was present. He wrote on X: “I had the privilege of joining a group of faith leaders in the Oval Office to pray with and over the president of the United States during a moment of significant responsibility for our nation and the world. … We prayed for wisdom, protection and God’s guidance as he leads during a consequential moment in global affairs.
“What made the moment especially meaningful was the context in which it occurred. As the president continues to serve as commander-in-chief during Operation Epic Fury, with U.S. forces targeting Iranian Regime infrastructure and missile capabilities, the Oval Office was opened for prayer. Even in the midst of global conflict and immense responsibility, we paused to seek God’s wisdom and covering. Leadership at the highest level requires humility, discernment and dependence upon God.
“We prayed for the president, for the United States, for our military personnel and for peace through strength in this critical hour. Moments like this serve as a powerful reminder that faith still has a place in the highest rooms of leadership and that prayer remains one of the most meaningful acts we can offer on behalf of our nation.”
The prayer service happened just hours after Trump fired Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security and nominated Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace her. According to multiple reports, the final straw for Noem was her recent testimony before a congressional committee that went badly awry.
Mullin is a devout Pentecostal who is loved by Trump’s evangelical base.
The most pressing question we face today is that of the Psalmist: “What is man?” So urgent is the question of man that the question of God has re-emerged among our intellectual and cultural leaders. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Niall Ferguson, Paul Kingsnorth, and Russell Brand have all recently professed faith. Tom Holland and Elon Musk have commented on the importance of Christianity to culture. Most surprisingly, Richard Dawkins has claimed the mantle of “cultural Christian,” though he subsequently assured the world that reports of his spiritual evolution had been greatly exaggerated.
This development is not unprecedented. In 1950, Partisan Review ran a series titled “Religion and the Intellectuals.” The authors included Hannah Arendt, W. H. Auden, I. A. Richards, John Dewey, Robert Graves, A. J. Ayer, Sidney Hook, and Paul Tillich. The editors’ introduction could describe our own moment:
One of the most significant tendencies of our time, especially in this decade, has been the new turn toward religion among intellectuals and the growing disfavor with which secular attitudes and perspectives are now regarded in not a few circles that lay claim to the leadership of culture. There is no doubt that the number of intellectuals professing religious sympathies, beliefs, or doctrines is greater now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that this number is continually increasing or becoming more articulate. If we seek to relate our period to the recent past, the first decades of this century begin to look like decades of triumphant naturalism; and if the present tendency continues, the mid-century years may go down in history as the years of conversion and return.
That last claim now looks wide of the mark. As significant as that revival of elite sympathy for religion might then have seemed, it did not initiate a long-term change in the overall direction of the West or the cultural fortunes of Christianity.
It is too early to know whether today’s revival will prove more than a fad. But like the earlier one, it indicates something about its context. Today, as in the aftermath of World War II, what it means to be human is contested. Those who perceive this are seeking a stable foundation for an answer, and they are seeking it in religion. The turn to theological matters is one response to an anthropological problem.
It was likewise in 1950, as the world emerged from the slaughter of war, facing the realities of the Holocaust and the spread of communism. Technology, too, posed new challenges. As Sartre commented, the advent of atomic weapons placed human beings in an unprecedented situation: They had to decide to continue to exist. Today the question of what it means to be human is, if anything, more vexed. Yet the shift in the rhetoric surrounding religion offers a glimmer of cultural and political hope.
To adapt a phrase from Nietzsche, the problem in our modern world is that man is dead and we have killed him. The concept of human nature is no longer subject to any kind of consensus, with obvious and catastrophic implications for society. Man has been abolished. So what has led to this abolition? Four causes suggest themselves: Human nature has been dismantled, disenchanted, disembodied, and desecrated.
The dismantling has various causes. The Christianity that shaped western societies’ anthropology was teleological, exemplified by the thought of Thomas Aquinas and summarized in the first question-and-answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Humanity was defined by a purpose that transcended the desires of any individual. Man had ends that defined him, some natural, some supernatural. But teleology has been rare in western thinking for generations. As science restricted its consideration of causes to the efficient and the material, understandings of the significance of the world, and therefore of human nature, were transformed. The most obvious examples are theories of evolution that eschew final causality. As they have shaped the modern cultural mindset, they have dismantled the notion of human exceptionalism. When man has no God-given end, he has no stable or distinct nature. In killing God, we kill man.
The point was made by Nietzsche in his critique of Kant. One could not murder God and then expect human nature to do the late God’s work for him. If God had died, so had the notion that human beings were made in his image. Nietzsche’s program was pursued with vigor in the twentieth century by Michel Foucault, who dismantled the notion of human beings as self-constituting, rational agents. He saw them as the hapless products of networks of discursive power relations, a view that now rings out from countless university seminar rooms and underpins the rhetoric of identity politics, left and right.
The irony is that man’s very brilliance—instanced by his intellectual curiosity, analytical abilities, and technological achievements—is what enables him to assert his unexceptional status. Confusion over the question “What is a woman?” has generated headlines in recent years, but it is the result of deeper confusion over the question “What does it mean to be human?” The answer seems to be: “We don’t know whether it means anything at all. Man is a directionless clump of animated cells, drifting through time and space.”
The disenchantment of human nature has many causes and takes many forms. Georg Lukács’s concept of reification points to some of them. The industrialized society and the bureaucratized state treat people as commodities, interchangeable with one another, lacking intrinsic value as individual persons. Industrialization detached labor from community significance. But blaming industrial capitalism alone is tendentious Marxism. The ideologies of the left have also played a role. The sexual revolution, that progressive watershed, has arguably done more than anything to turn people into things. And pornography, the most consistent iteration of the logic of the revolution, makes sex into a commodity, turning the actors on the screen into objects for consumers.
Then there is the transformation of abortion from an evil into a regrettable necessity and then into a right to be celebrated. Society’s moral imagination has been shaped by the logic of the sexual revolution, in which children are deemed accidental to sex; the humanity of the child in the womb has thus been stripped of its mysterious personhood. Much the same is accomplished by reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and surrogacy. Though these phenomena witness to the good, indeed very human, desire to have children, they also propose children as things, as consumer items made to order, not begotten in mystery. Motherhood too is transformed, with egg donation and surrogacy turning women into service providers or reproductive machines.
Recent reports that the United Kingdom is on the verge of being able to manufacture sperms and eggs in the laboratory are a harbinger of what is to come. Gene editing, embryo screening, and the commercialization of fertility all tend to the disenchantment and commodification of human life. The term “designer babies” reflects a plausible concept. Human beings, once begotten through the sexual union of two persons, are set to become consumer products. Persons have become things.
The third element of our culture of dehumanization is that of disembodiment. Radical feminism since de Beauvoir has tended to treat women’s bodies and procreative functions as problems that must be solved if sexual equality is to be achieved. This has been reinforced by technologies that subvert natural bodily ends, treating them as bugs rather than features. The body is a hindrance to liberation of the self.
Disembodiment is not restricted to sexual matters. The more our interactions are mediated by technology, whether Uber apps or social media sites, the less important our bodies become. Never in human history has life required less actual, physical, interpersonal engagement. The ascendancy of chatbots, AI, and robotics will only compound this. I can order a meal, ride in a taxi, even have a romantic conversation without ever having to engage another person.
The convenience hides the cost. George Orwell once sent an angry note to a publisher, denouncing Stephen Spender for his homosexuality. Eight months later, he wrote to Spender to apologize. Spender wondered what had led to this change of heart. The answer was that in the interim, Orwell had encountered Spender in person. He explained:
Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should have been bound to change my attitude, because when you meet anyone in the flesh you realise immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas.
Meeting Spender in real life humanized him. He became a person, not simply an idea. We might add that it also humanized Orwell. Bodily interaction is key here: Looking into the eyes of another person involves a degree of communion; it reveals that person as a human being, such as we are ourselves. Bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, to borrow biblical language.
Today social media have universalized disembodied social interaction and perhaps made it normative for interpersonal engagement. Disembodied interaction often reduces interlocutors to the sum of the opinions they express and thereby turns them from real persons into aggregates of ideological fragments. No wonder social media can prove to be a cesspool.
The consequences are not restricted to social media. Part of what makes surrogacy plausible is the assumption that the experience of pregnancy is of little importance to the relationship of mother and child—that the maternal bond occurs postpartum. One might object that adoption assumes the same, but the cases are not parallel. In adoption, a couple takes the place of biological parents who should be there but for some reason are not. It presents itself not as a normative model for parenting, but as compensation for a privation. Surrogacy introduces a new model of what a parent is—a model in which gestation is accidental. And it reinforces the transformation of the body into a commodity.
The transgender issue is also pertinent, given that it involves a psychologized view of identity that marginalizes the sexed nature of the body and also the belief that bodies are simply raw material. Such ideas are plausible partly because of the way in which society’s intuitions about embodiment have been shaped by technology.
And then, once again, there is pornography. I noted above its role in disenchanting human nature. It also serves to disembody it—perhaps a counter-intuitive claim, given the central role of bodies in pornography. But pornography separates sex from relationships, indeed from physical contact with another person. Consumers enjoy that quintessentially embodied form of human behavior in a manner that detaches them from any of the ordinary concomitants of sex, from personal hygiene to the effort involved in romantic relationships, not to mention marriage.
Pornography also points to the fourth element of the modern assault on human nature: Human nature has been desecrated. Sex has historically been regarded as having sacred connotations. The Torah deals with sexual matters in terms of cleanness and uncleanness. The Qur’an prescribes postcoital washings. Paul in the New Testament sees sex as a matter of great importance, such that a man’s use of a prostitute involves a fundamental disruption of his humanity and his relationship to the church. To consider sex sacred makes sense, for in creating new life, it is the act that makes humans most like God. The sexual revolution did not simply make sex into recreation; it stripped it, and therefore the human nature of which it is a central part, of its sacredness.
The concept of desecration helps to clarify the delight some people take in the dismantling, disenchanting, and disembodiment of human nature, which those categories in themselves cannot explain. To wish abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare” is to hold a disenchanted view of human nature. But to glory in it as a “reproductive right” bespeaks an exhilaration that only transgression can deliver. Current pro-abortion politics are the politics of transgression, specifically the transgression of what was once considered sacred.
The same applies to death. Cultures have typically surrounded the end of life, no less than its beginning, with sacred significance. The Torah’s approach to sex and cleanness has parallels in its regulation of the treatment of dead bodies. Even today, our laws against the abuse of corpses often use the language of desecration. And yet western societies are making great efforts to transform death from a mystery into a medical procedure—a procedure that governs not just late-stage terminal illness but old age in general, depression, indeed any condition that can be presented as burdensome to the individual, the family, or even the state.
Human nature has been demolished, disenchanted, disembodied, and desecrated. The results are the cause of much of the moral chaos that characterizes contemporary Western societies. The Psalmist’s question “What is man?” was originally meant to express wonder at his undeserved status before God. In our mouths, it expresses our nothingness.
This brings us to the continuity between orthodox Christians and cultural Christians: a shared desire to respond to the chaos on the basis of a stable anthropology, a retrieval of what it means to be human. How can this be done? The question is difficult, because of at least two challenges, which I note here merely as matter for future discussion. First, there is the fact that, whatever its theoretical origins in nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought, as a practical matter the abolition of man has been accomplished by means of technological developments on which we all now depend. The concept of human nature has become negotiable because it seems inseparable from, and largely subject to, the technologies by which we relate to the world and to each other. Nor can we simply withdraw from this technological context. Modern-day anchorites might call us to do so, but it is worth remembering that Simon Stylites could stand at the top of his pole only because other, lesser mortals produced and supplied the food that kept him alive. We must find ways to recover human nature that do not present an unrealistic romanticism as normative for the majority of people.
Second, there is the fact that a lack of social consensus on the existence of God, let alone on religious dogma and practice, precludes consensus on any view of human nature grounded in the divine image. This lack of consensus is a problem, since the response to the desecration of human nature must be its consecration, and consecration must occur in a religious context. Given the secularity of our contemporary context, Christians must be modest about what we can achieve.
Nonetheless, some progress can be made on the first three elements of the anthropological crisis. The Christian distinction between natural and supernatural ends is helpful here. The two cannot be absolutely separated in Christian theology, but evidence suggests that on at least some natural ends, consensus between the religious and the nonreligious can be reached. The revival of interest in religion among intellectuals, even where it is pragmatic rather than dogmatic, witnesses to a shared intuition that our cultural problems arise from anthropological confusion. That fact should encourage us. It may not amount to a return to Christian civilization, if ever there truly was such a thing. But it may mark an era in which discussion of a new humanism can be pursued by both the religious and the nonreligious.
It is no surprise to Christians that attempts to deny human nature end up either in confusion or subject to a dialectical transformation into the opposite of what was intended. Those confusions and transformations are visible to many secular thinkers, too. Therefore, pointing out the failure of secular policies to deliver on their promises is useful in building a humanist alliance and in putting anti-humanists on the defensive. Such immanent critique is a way of making space for genuine dialogue and constructive policy formulation.
Transgender ideology is a good example. At its heart lies an obvious contradiction: It authorizes disembodiment in its denial of the relevance of sexed physiology to gender identity; yet it insists on the transformation of the body, if an individual is to be authentically who he or she really is. The body is simultaneously of no importance and of overwhelming importance. Further, allowing psychological states to determine identity risks incoherence. Why cannot a man be a wolf, for example, if he is convinced that that is what he is? Yet can a human being self-consciously be a wolf, when one attribute of wolfness is unconsciousness of one’s wolfish essence?
The trans issue also exacerbates a strange contradiction within the culture of death. In at least two cases in Canada, depressed individuals have been refused medically assisted deaths after having undergone gender transition surgery. The surgeries had left these individuals in physical and mental pain, but their requests for medically assisted death were refused. We thus note the contradiction generated by progressivism’s commitment both to trans ideology and assisted suicide, for to grant medically assisted death in these cases would be to acknowledge that gender transition does not always resolve gender dysphoria. It would seem that in our progressive Animal Farm, some causes of suffering are more equal than others.
The issue of biological men competing in women’s sports has gripped the public imagination, since its focus on fairness circumvents the issue that makes trans ideology plausible to so many: its foundation in psychologized selfhood and happiness. The sports issue thus offers the opportunity for highlighting the importance of embodiment. Which is more plausible—the prose of a Judith Butler, the libertarianism of the ACLU, or that picture of Riley Gaines standing on a podium beside a man posing as a woman? The case for a new humanism is there made incarnate.
The transgender issue is connected to IVF. President Trump’s actions regarding transgenderism are most welcome, but his promotion of IVF suggests that these policies are not driven by a coherent anthropology. The Trump administration is not wrestling with the broader question: What status should we grant biological limitations in an era of Promethean technology? Disappointing as the inconsistency is, it offers a chance for serious discussion about why these policy decisions are inconsistent.
The sexual revolution is also ripe for critique. Its intention was to liberate, but it has ended up turning everyone into objects. Easy access to the pill was sold as good news for women, but men have gained, too, from the promiscuity it enabled. And, despite the claims of some feminists, pornography is bad news for women, with its exploitative labor practices and transformation of the sexual expectations of its users.
Much of this has recently been pointed out by Mary Harrington and Louise Perry, writers who use secular arguments and evidence. Their work protests both the disembodiment of human nature and its disenchantment, seeing in the sexual revolution a prime example of promises betrayed and humans dehumanized. Likewise, when Jonathan Haidt warns of the effects of social media on young people, he speaks not in religious terms, but from an understanding that human nature is not infinitely pliable. There is the work of David Berlinski, an avowedly secular thinker. There is support across traditional political divides for anti-pornography initiatives. Many parents are becoming skeptical of the role of screens and smartphones in the lives of children. Combine these developments with the renewed interest among intellectuals in Christianity and its cultural influence, and the moment may have arrived for a new humanism. We need not wait for consensus on religious premises before starting these discussions. We need only point to the internal contradictions and the catastrophic consequences of our modern anti-humanist ways.
None of this is to say that a new humanism will certainly emerge in this earthly city. We may not win the day, and one who puts on his armor should not boast as one who takes it off. But there are signs that the anti-humanism of our age is overreaching by pressing the dismantling, disenchantment, and disembodiment of human nature to extremes. Many are realizing that we can fight human nature for only so long. It remains to be seen whether we will self-destruct or a new consensus on what it means to be human will shape our political discourse, our social policies, and our communities. The struggle for our cultural and political future is not best understood as a struggle between right and left, conservative and progressive, but as one between humanists and anti-humanists. And given the lateness of the day, I submit that the hour for advocating a new humanism is upon us.
This essay was delivered as the 2025 D.C. Lecture.
While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” (24:4–7)
The women were standing in or just outside the tomb, shocked and perplexed because the body of Jesus was gone. Suddenly, they went from being puzzled to being terrified. As they stood there in the light of dawn trying to figure out what could have happened to the corpse, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing. Matthew (28:2) and John (20:12) identify them as angels, appearing in human form (cf. Gen. 18:2; 19:1–5; Dan. 10:16). Although there were two of them (perhaps as witnesses; cf. Deut. 19:15), only one spoke. Similarly, although there were two demon-possessed men at Gerasa (Matt. 8:28), only one spoke (Mark 5:2, 7; Luke 8:27–28), and while there were two blind men healed on the road near Jericho (Matt. 20:30), Mark (10:46) and Luke (18:35) mention only the one who spoke. Their dazzling clothing (cf. Matt. 17:2; Acts 1:10; Rev. 19:14) identified them as divine messengers. Understandably, the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground (cf. Luke 1:12; 2:9; Dan. 8:15–18; 10:9; Matt. 28:2–4; Acts 10:3–4; Rev. 22:8). In a mild rebuke the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One, the one who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), the one over whom death no longer is master (Rom. 6:9), the one who was dead, but now is alive forevermore (Rev. 1:18) among the dead?” This angelic question is the first announcement that Jesus was alive. The angels went on to say, “He is not here, but He has risen” (lit., “been raised”; the Greek verb is in the passive voice [cf. Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15, 26; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30, 33, 34, 37; Rom. 4:24–25; 6:4, 9; 7:4; 8:11, 34; 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14; 15:4, 12–20; 2 Cor. 4:14; Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:20; Col. 2:12; 1 Thess. 1:10; 1 Peter 1:21]). “Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again” (Matt. 16:21; 17:22–23; 20:17–19; 26:2; 27:63). Since Jesus had predicted His resurrection, they should have been expecting it. But they obviously did not, since they brought spices with which to anoint His dead body.
MacArthur, J. (2014). Luke 18–24 (pp. 410–411). Moody Publishers.
4–7 The designation of Jesus as Lord in v 3 is available to Luke’s audience, but not to the women, who then are lacking in interpretive resources. Expecting a corpse to anoint, they can only respond to its absence with bewilderment. Resolution for the puzzle with which they are faced comes in the form of an angelophany, to which they respond, typically, with fear and reverence.4 The angels address the women as though the latter were persons on a quest—though, in comparison with other quest stories in the Third Gospel, this one is unusual. In such stories generally, persons approach Jesus in the hope of human restoration (e.g., 5:17–26; 7:1–10; 17:12–19; 19:1–10). These women come looking for Jesus, but they want to minister to him, and, as they quickly discover, because they lack understanding, they are looking in the wrong place. The angels first admonish them, employing language that is reminiscent of Jesus’ rejoinder to the Sadducees in 20:38: God is not the God of the dead but of the living! That is, in spite of their devout intentions in coming to anoint Jesus’ body, these women have failed to grasp Jesus’ message about the resurrection and, thus, have not taken with appropriate gravity the power of God. The antidote for this miscalculation is remembrance. The women are addressed as persons who had themselves received Jesus’ teaching in Galilee, and the angel’s message fuses Jesus’ predictions during the Galilean phase of his ministry (9:22, 44). Thus they are reminded that the career of the Son of Man blends the two motifs of suffering and vindication, and that in doing so he fulfills the divine will. Two innovations in this Son of Man saying indicate the different narrative placements of the Galilean sayings and of this one. First, the term “crucified” is used, rather than “killed,” reflecting the actual form of execution. Second, those responsible for Jesus’ death are labeled as “sinners”; from the heavenly perspective, the repudiation and killing of Jesus was an evil act. Importantly, the women are given no commission, but are themselves treated as recipients of Jesus’ words and summoned simply to authentic understanding. Their reception of the resurrection message “… confirms their discipleship and the instruction they have received as disciples.”
Green, J. B. (1997). The Gospel of Luke (pp. 837–838). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Sermon No. 730 delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, January 20, 1867, by C.H.Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in Me.” — John 14:1.
THE DISCIPLES had been like lambs carried in the warm bosom of a loving Shepherd. They were now about to be left by Him and would hear the howling of the wolves and endure the terrors of the snowstorm. They had been like tender plants conserved in a hothouse, a warm and genial atmosphere had always surrounded them—they were now to endure the wintry world with its nipping frosts. And so it was to be proven whether or not they had an inward vitality which could exist when outward protections were withdrawn.
Their Master, their Head, was to be taken from them. Well might they cry with Elisha, “My Father, my Father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” We too, dear Friends, though we have not enjoyed, perhaps, so entire an immunity as did the Apostles, were at one time very graciously shielded from trouble. We had a summertime of joy and an autumn of peace far different than this present winter of our discontent. It frequently happens that after conversion, God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, gives to the weaklings of the flock a period of repose during which they rejoice with David, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters.” But for all of us there will come a time of trouble similar to that sorrowful occasion which led the Savior to utter these memorable heart-cheering words.
If our conscious communion with Jesus should not be interrupted, yet some other form of tribulation awaits us, for the testimony of earth’s poet that, “man is made to mourn,” is well borne out by the inspired declaration, “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards.” We must not expect that we shall be exceptions to the general lot of our race! There is no discharge in this war. We must all be conscripts in the armies of grief. We, too, shall do battle with strong temptations and feel the wounds of adversity. Albeit that yonder ship so lately launched upon a glassy sea has all her streamers flying, and rejoices in a favorable wind—let her captain remember that the sea is treacherous, that winds are variable, and that the stoutest vessel may find it more than difficult to outride a hurricane.
I rejoice to see the courage of that young man who has but just joined the army of the Church militant, and is buckling on the glittering armor of faith! As yet there are no dents and bruises on that fair helmet and burnished breastplate. But let the wearer reckon upon blows, and bruises, and bloodstains! No, let him rejoice if he endure hardness as a good soldier, for without the fight where would be the victory? Brethren in our Lord Jesus, without due trial, where would be our experience? And without the experience, where would be the holy increase of our faith, and the joyful triumph of our love through the manifested power of Christ?
We must expect, then, to walk with our Lord to the gates of Gethsemane—both His and ours! We must expect to cross the Brook Kedron in company with our Master, and it will be well if we hear Him say to us as He did to His disciples on that eventful night, “Let not your hearts be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in Me.”
My Brothers and Sisters, some of us live at this hour in the midst of trouble. We do not remember any period more dark with portents of evil than the present watch of earth’s long night. Few events have occurred of late to cheer the general gloom. Our hopeful spirit has been accustomed to say, all things considered, there are no times like the times present. Think about whether any times have been more vexatious and troublesome than those which just now are passing over our head.
The political atmosphere is far from being clear, no, it is thick and heavy with death-damps of mutual distrust which bring no increase to England’s greatness, but greatly the reverse. There are those who think that our trade, especially in its more speculative department, has become thoroughly rotten. And one thing is quite certain—many well-known infamous transactions have sapped the foundations of credit and stained our national honor. Is all England bankrupt, and our wealth a sham? Let us hope not.
But who can see without alarm the great portion of our trade which is going from us through the folly of the many who combine to regulate what ought to be left perfectly free? If our trade continues much longer to depart from us, we shall become a generation of beggars who will deserve no pity because we brought our poverty upon ourselves. There are, we fear, dark days coming upon this land. In fact, the dark days are here, for in no year of the last twenty has there been, Brethren, such deep and wide-spread distress in London as at the present moment.
I am far from endorsing all the fears of the timid, yet I do see much ground for pleading earnestly with God to send to our rulers political wisdom to end the bitter disputes of class with class, and to grant to our whole nation Divine Grace to repent of its many sins, that the chastening rod may be withdrawn.
Apart from these, we have each a share of home-trials. Is there one here who is happy enough to wholly escape from the troubles of the earth? Some have the wolf at the door—shortness of bread just now is felt in the houses of many a Christian—some of you are compelled to eat your bread with carefulness. You go to your God in the morning and ask Him to provide for you your daily food, and repeat that prayer with more meaning than usual, for just now God is making us feel that He can break the staff of bread and send a famine in the land if He so wills it.
Many who are not altogether poor are, nevertheless, in sorrow, for reverses in business have, during the last few months, brought the affairs of many of the Lord’s people into a very perilous state, so that they cannot but be troubled in spirit. Vexatious abound and many a path is strewn with thorns. If this is not the shape of our trouble, sickness may be raging where penury has not entered. Beyond all these there may be afflictions which it were not well to mention—griefs which must be carried by the mother alone—trials which the father alone must bear, or sorrows in which none but the daughter can share.
We all have our homes full of trials. Day by day this bitter manna falls around the camp. Trials arising among the Church of God are many, and we might add, that to the genuine Christian they are as heavy as any which he has to bear. I am sure, to those of us who have to look upon the Church with the anxious eye of loving shepherds, to those of us who are set by God for the guidance and rule of His people, there are troubles enough, and more than enough, to bow us to the earth. In the best-ordered Church, such as this is and long has been, it must needs be that offenses come. Sometimes it is a jealousy between Brothers. At another time a strife between Sisters.
Sometimes it is this one who has fallen into gross sin (God forgive these who have pierced us through with many sorrows!) and another time it is a gradual backsliding which the pastor can detect, but which the subject of it cannot discern. Sometimes it is a heresy, which, springing up, troubles us. At another time it is a slander, which, like a deadly serpent, creeps through the grass. I have had little enough to complain of in these respects, but still such things are with us, even with us, and we must not count them strange, as though some strange thing had happened to us. While men are imperfect there will be sins among the best of them which will cause sorrow both to themselves and to those of the Lord’s people who are in fellowship with them.
Worst of all are soul troubles. God save you from these! Oh the grief of being conscious of having fallen from high places of enjoyment! Conscious of having wasted opportunities for eminent usefulness! Conscious of having been lax in prayer, of having been negligent in study, of having been—alas, that we should have to add it—unguarded in word and act! Ah, Friends, when the soul feels all this and cannot get to the blood of sprinkling as it would—cannot return to the light of God’s countenance as it would desire—it is trouble, indeed! It is terrible to be compelled to sit and sing—
“Where is the blessedness I knew, When first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view Of Jesus and His Word?”
But my tale is all too long. It is clear that this mortal life has troubles enough. Suppose that these should meet and that the man, as a patriot, is oppressed with the ills of his country? Suppose, as a father and a husband, he is depressed with the cares of home? Or as a Christian he is afflicted with the troubles in the Church, and as a saint made to walk heavily before the Lord because of inward afflictions? “Why, then, he is in a sorry plight,” you say. Indeed he is! But, blessed be God, he is in a plight in which the words of the text are still applicable to him—”Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in Me.”
Ceasing from this dolorous prelude, let us observe that the advice of the text is very timely and wise. Secondly, let us notice that the advice of the text is practicable. It is not given us to mock us—we must seek to carry it out! And lastly, and perhaps that last may yield us good cheer, the advice of the text is very precious.
I. FIRST, THEN, THE ADVICE OF THE TEXT IS VERY TIMELY AND WISE
There is no need to say, “Let not your heart be troubled,” when you are not in affliction. When all things go well with you, you will need another caution— “Let not your heart be exalted above measure: if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” The word, “Let not your heart be troubled,” is timely, and it is wise.
A few minutes thought will lead you to see it. It is the easiest thing in the world, in times of difficulty, to let the heart be troubled. It is very natural for us to give up and drift with the stream, to feel that it is of no use “taking arms against” such “a sea of trouble”—that it is better to lie passive and to say, “If one must be ruined, so let it be.” Despairing idleness is easy enough, especially to evil rebellious spirits who are willing enough to get into further mischief that they may have more with which to blame God, against whose Providence they have quarreled. Our Lord will not have us be so rebellious. He bids us pluck up heart and be of good courage in the worst possible condition—and here is the wisdom of His advice, namely, that
a troubled heart will not help us in our difficulties or out of them.
It has never been perceived in time of drought that lamentations have brought showers of rain, or that in seasons of frost, doubts, fears, and discouragements, have produced a thaw. We have never heard of a man, whose business was declining, who managed to multiply the number of his customers by unbelief in God. I do not remember reading of a person, whose wife or child was sick, who discovered any miraculous healing power in rebellion against the Most High. It is a dark night, but the darkness of your heart will not light a candle for you. It is a terrible tempest, but to quench the fires of comfort and open the doors to admit the howling winds into the chambers of your spirit will not stay the storm.
No good comes out of fretful, petulant, unbelieving heart-trouble. This lion yields no honey. If it would help you, you might reasonably sit down and weep till the tears had washed away your woe. If it were really to some practical benefit to be suspicious of God and distrustful of Providence, why, then, you might have a shadow of excuse—but as this is a mine out of which no one ever dug any silver, as this is a fishery out of which the diver never brought up a pearl—we would say, “Renounce that which cannot be of service to you, for as it can do no good, it is certain that it does much mischief.”
A doubting, fretful spirit takes from us the joys we have.
You have not all you could wish, but you still have more than you deserve. Your circumstances are not what they might be, but still they are not even now so bad as the circumstances of some others. Your unbelief makes you forget that health still remains for you if poverty oppresses you. And if both health and abundance have departed, you are still a child of God and your name is not blotted out from the roll of the chosen! Why, Brothers and Sisters, there are flowers that bloom in winter, if we have but grace to see them! Never was there a night so dark for the soul but what some lone star of hope might be discerned! And never a spiritual tempest so terrible but what there was a haven into which the soul could dock if it had but enough confidence in God to make a run for it.
Rest assured that though you have fallen very low, you might have fallen lower if it were not that underneath are the everlasting arms. A doubting, distrustful spirit will wither the few blossoms which remain upon your bough, and if half the wells are frozen by affliction, unbelief will freeze the other half by its despondency. Brothers and Sisters, you will win no good, but you may get incalculable mischief by a troubled heart—it is a root which bears no fruit except wormwood!
A troubled heart makes that which is bad worse.
It magnifies, aggravates, caricatures, misrepresents. If but an ordinary foe is in your way, a troubled heart makes him swell into a giant. “We were in their sight but as grasshoppers,” said the ten evil spies. “Yes, and we were but as grasshoppers in our own sight when we saw them.” But it was not so. No doubt the men were very tall, but they were not so big, after all, as to make an ordinary six-foot man look like a grasshopper! Their fears made them grasshoppers by first making them fools. If they had possessed but ordinary courage they would have been men—but being cowardly they subsided into grasshoppers.
After all, what is an extra three, four, or five feet of flesh to a man? Is not the bravest soul the tallest? If he of shorter stature is but nimble and courageous, he will have the best of it. Little David made short work of great Goliath. Yet so it is—unbelief makes out our difficulties to be most gigantic and then it leads us to suppose that never a soul had such difficulties before—and so we egotistically lament, “I am the man that has seen affliction.” We claim to be peers in the realm of misery, if not the emperors of the kingdom of grief. Yet it is not so. Why? What ails you? The headache is excruciating? Well, it is bad enough, but what would you say if you had seven such aches at once, and cold and nakedness to back them?
The twitches of rheumatism are horrible? Right well can I endorse that statement! But what then? Why there have been men who have lived with such tortures thrice told all their lives—like Baxter—who could tell all his bones because each one had made itself heard by its own peculiar pain. I know that you and I often suffer under depression of spirit and physical pain, but what is our complaint compared with the diseases of Calvin, the man who preached at the break of every day to the students in the cathedral, and worked on till long past midnight, and was all the while a mass of disease—a complicated agony?
You are poor? Ah yes, but you have your own room, scanty as it is, and there are hundreds in the workhouse who find sorry comfort there. It is true you have to work hard! Yes, but think of the Huguenot galley slave in the olden times, who for the love of Christ was bound with chains to the oar, and scarcely knew rest day nor night. Think of the sufferings of the martyrs of Smithfield, or of the saints who rotted in their prisons. Above all, let your eyes turn to the great Apostle and High priest of your profession, and “consider Him who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest you be weary and faint in your mind.”—
“His way was much rougher and darker than mine, Did Christ, my Lord, suffer, and shall I repine?”
Yet this is the habit of Unbelief—to draw our picture in the blackest possible colors—to tell us that the road is unusually rough and utterly impassable. He tells us that the storm is such a tornado as never blew before, and that our name will be down in the wreck register—that it is impossible that we should ever reach the haven.
Moreover, a troubled heart is most dishonorable to God.
It makes the Christian think very harshly of his tender heavenly Friend. It leads him to suspect eternal faithfulness and to doubt unchangeable love. Is this a little thing? It breathes into the Christian a proud rebellious spirit. He judges his Judge, and misjudges. He has not learned Job’s philosophy. He cannot say, “Shall we receive good from the hand of the Lord, and shall we not also receive evil? The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, and blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Inward distress makes the humble, meek, teachable child of God to become a willful, wicked, rebellious offender in spirit. Is this a little thing? And meanwhile it makes the family and the outsiders who know the Christian to doubt the reality of those Truths of God of which the Christian used to boast in his brighter days. Satan suggests to them, “You see, these Christian people are no better sustained than others. The props which they leaned upon when they did not want them are of no service to them now that they do require them.”
“See,” says the Fiend, “they are as petulant, as unbelieving, and as rebellious as the rest of mankind! It is all a sham, a piece of enthusiasm which will not endure an ordinary trial.” Is this a small matter? Surely there are mouths enough to revile the Throne of God! There are lips enough to utter blasphemy against Him without His own dear children turning against Him because He frowns upon them. Surely they should be bowed to the earth at the mere suspicion that they could do such a thing, and cry to God to save them from a troubled heart lest they should rebel against Him!
I feel, with regard to the Christian Church, that the truth which I am endeavoring to bring forward is above all things essential. The mischief of the Christian Church at large is a lack of holy confidence in God. The reason why we have had, as a Church, I believe, unprecedented prosperity has been that on the whole we have been a courageous, hopeful, and joyous body of Christian people who have believed in our own principles most intensely, and have endeavored to propagate them with the most vehement earnestness.
Now I can suppose the devil coming in among us and endeavoring to dishearten us by this or that supposed failure or difficulty. “Oh,” says he, “will you ever win the victory? See! Sin still abounds, notwithstanding all the preaching and all the praying. Are not the jails full? Do you see any great moral change worked after all? Surely you will not make the advances you expected—you may as well give it up.” Yes, and when once an army can be demoralized by a lack of spirit— when once the British soldier can be assured that he cannot win the day—that even at the push of the bayonet nothing can await him but defeat, then the rational conclusion he draws is that every man had better take care of himself, and look to his heels and fly to his home.
But oh, if we can feel that the victory is not precarious nor even doubtful but absolutely certain! If each one of us can rest assured that the Lord of Hosts is with us! That the God of Jacob is our refuge. That the most discouraging circumstances which can possibly occur are only mere incidents in the great struggle—mere eddies in the mighty current that is bearing everything before it. If we can but feel that sooner should Heaven and earth pass away than God’s promise be broken! I say, if we can keep our courage up at all times—if from the youngest of us who have lately joined, to the venerable veterans who have for years fought at our side we can feel that we must win, that the purposes of God must be fulfilled, that the kingdoms of this world must become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ—then we shall see bright and glorious things!
Some of you grow discouraged because you have taught in the Sunday school and you have seen no conversions in your class, and you want to sneak away among the baggage. Others of you have tried to preach in the streets and you did not get on, and you feel half inclined not to do anything more. Isn’t this right? Some of you have not felt as happy with other Christian people as you would like to be. You do not think others respect you quite up to the mark that you have marked for yourselves on your thermometer of dignity, and you are inclined to run away. Isn’t this right?
Now I will boldly say to those of you who are inclined to run, run—for our resolution is to stand fast. Those who are afraid, let them go to their homes—for our eyes are on the battle and the crown. Those of you who cannot bear a little roughness and cannot fight for Christ, I had almost said, we shall be better without your cowardly spirits—but I would rather pray for you, that you may pluck up heart and cry with holy boldness, “Nothing shall discourage us.” If all the devils in Hell should appear visibly before us, and show their teeth with flame pouring from their mouths as from ten
thousand ovens, yet so long as the Lord of Hosts lives, by His Grace we will not fear, but lift up our banners and laugh our enemies to scorn!—
“We will in life and death His steadfast truth declare, And publish with our latest breath His love and guardian care.”
There is a great deal more to say, but we cannot say it. Perhaps you will think it over, and perhaps you will perceive that of all the mischiefs that might happen to a good man, it is certainly one of the greatest to let his heart be troubled. And that of all the good things that belong to a Christian soldier, a bold heart and confidence in God are not the least! As long as we do not lose heart we have not lost the day. But if confidence in God departs, then the floods have burst into the vessel, and what can save it? What indeed, but that eternal love which comes in to the rescue even at our extremity?
II. In the second place, THE ADVICE THAT IS GIVEN IS PRACTICABLE—it can be carried out.
“Let not your heart be troubled.” “Oh,” says somebody, “that’s very easy to say, but very hard to do.” Here’s a man who has fallen into a deep ditch and you lean over the hurdle and say to him,” Don’t be troubled about it.” “Ah,” he says, “that’s very pretty for you that are standing up there, but how am I to be at ease while up to my neck in mire?”
There is a noble ship stranded and liable to be broken up by the breakers, and we speak from a trumpet and say to the mariners on board, “Don’t be alarmed.” “Oh,” they say, “very likely not, when every timber is shivering and the vessel is going to pieces!” But when He who speaks is full of love, pity, and might, and has it in His own power to make His advice become prophetic of deliverance, we need not raise difficulties, but we may conclude that if Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled,” our heart need not be troubled!
There is a way of keeping the heart out of trouble, and the Savior prescribes the method.
First, He indicates that our resort must be to faith.
If in your worst times you would keep your head above water, the life belt must be faith. Now, Christian, do you not know this? In the olden times how were men kept from perishing but by faith? Read that mighty chapter in Hebrews, and see what faith did—how Believers overcame armies, put to flight the army of aliens, quenched the violence of fire—and stopped the mouths of lions! There is nothing which faith has not done or cannot do! Faith is girdled about with the Omnipotence of God for her girdle. She is the great wonder-worker.
Why, there were men in the olden times whose troubles were greater than yours, whose discouragement’s and difficulties in serving God were a great deal more severe than any you and I have known, yet they trusted God! They trusted God, and they were not confounded. They rested in Him, and they were not ashamed. Their puny arms worked miracles, and their uplifted voices in prayer brought blessings from on high. What God did of old He will do now—He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Christian, betake yourself to faith. Did not faith bring your first comfort to you? Remember when you were in despair under a sense of sin? What brought you joy? Was it good works? Was it your inward feelings? The first ray of light that came to your poor dark spirit, did it not come from the Cross through believing? Oh, that blessed day when first I cast myself on Jesus and saw my sins numbered on the scapegoat’s head of old! What a flood of light faith brought then! Open the same window, for the sun is in the same place and you will get light from it. Go not, I pray you, to any other well but to this well of your spiritual Bethlehem which is within the gate, the water of which is still sweet and still free to you.
Ah, dear Friends, there is one reason why you should resort to faith, namely, that it is the only thing you have to resort to!
What can you do if you do not trust your God? Under many troubles, when they are real troubles, the creature is evidently put to a nonplus and human ingenuity, itself, fails. We are like the seamen in a storm who reel to and fro and stagger like drunken men and are at their wits end. Oh let us, now that every other anchor is drug, cast out the great sheet anchor, for that will hold. Now that every refuge has failed, let us fly to the Strong for strength, for God will be our helper!
Surely it ought not to be difficult for a child to believe his father! It should not, therefore, be difficult for us to trust in our God, and so to lift our spirits out of the tumult of their doubts. Somebody will say, “Well, I can understand that faith is a practical way of getting out of trouble, but I cannot understand how we are to have faith.” Well, in this the Savior helps us. You remember what He said when the people were hungry—”Give you them to eat.” “Ah,” they said, “there are so many! How can we feed them?”
The Master began by saying, “How many loaves have you?” That is just what He says here. He says, “It is faith that will get you out of trouble, but how much faith have you?” He answers for them, “You believe in God.” I must do the same by you. Faith is that which will deliver you. You say, “Where am I to get it?” Well, you have some already, have you not? You have five barley loaves and a few small fishes. You are unbelieving creatures but you have some measure of faith. You believe that there is a God.
“Yes,” you say. You believe He is unchangeable. You believe that He is full of love, good and kind, and true and faithful. Now really, that is a great deal to begin with! You believe in God—the most of us believe in a great deal more than that—we not only believe in a God, and in the excellence of His Character, but we believe that He has a chosen people. We believe that He has made a Covenant with them, ordered in all things and sure. We believe that the promises of His Covenant will be fulfilled, that He never puts away His people. We believe that all things work together for good to them that love God. We believe that the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. We believe that the Holy Spirit is given to dwell in His people.
Now this is a great deal, a solid fulcrum upon which to place the lever. If you believe all that, you have only properly to employ this faith in order to lift your soul out of the horrible ditch of doubt and fear into which it has stumbled. You believe all this? Surely, then, there is some room for hope and confidence! The Savior goes on to say, “You believe in God,” very well, exercise that same faith with regard to the case in hand. The case in hand was this—could they trust a dying Savior? Could they rest upon One who was about to be crucified, dead and buried—who would be gone from them except that His poor mangled body would remain in their midst?
“Now,” says Jesus, “you see you have had enough of faith to believe in God. Now exercise that same faith upon Me. Trust Me as you trust God.” From this I infer that the drift of the exhortation I am to give you this morning is this. “You have believed God about other things. Exercise that same faith about this thing whatever it may be. You have believed God concerning the pardon of your soul, believe God about the child, about the wife, about the money, about the present difficulty. You have believed, concerning God, the great invisible One, and His great spiritual promises—now believe concerning this visible thing, this loss of yours, this cross of yours, this trial, this present affliction—exercise faith about that.
Jesus Christ did, in effect, say to His people, “It is true I am going from you, but I want you to believe that I am not going far. I shall be in the same house as you are in, for my Father’s house has many rooms in it. And though you will be here in these earthly mansions and I shall be in the heavenly mansions, yet they are all in the Father’s house, for in My Father’s house are many dwelling places.” “I want you to believe,” says Jesus, “that when I am away from you I am about your interests, I am preparing a place for you, and moreover that I intend coming back to you. My heart will be with you, and My Person shall soon return to you.”
Now then, the drift of that applied to our case is this—believe that the present loss you sustain, or the present discouragement which threatens to overwhelm you—believe that God has a high design in it!
That as Christ’s departure was to prepare eternal mansions for His people, so your present loss is to prepare you for a spiritual gain. I like that word of Christ when He says, “If it were not so I would have told you.” When a man makes a general statement, if he knows an exception he ought to mention it. And if he does not mention it his statement is not strictly true. Jesus says, “If it were not so I would have told you.”
There is a great word of His which says, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” A very awkward thing has happened to you. The trouble which you are now suffering is a very singular one. Now, if ever there had been any exception to the rule which we have quoted, God, in honor, would have told it to you when He made the general statement, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Such is His love and wisdom that if there had been one trial that could happen to one of His people which would not work for the good of that child of His, He would have said, “Dear child, there is an exception—one trouble will happen to you which will not work for your good.”
I am positive that there is no exception to the statement that all things work together for good to them that love God, because if there had been an exception He would have put it in—He would have told us of it that we might know how far to trust and when to leave off trusting—how far to rejoice and when to be cast down. Your case, then, is no exception to the rule! All that is happening is working for your everlasting benefit!
Another place, however, another place will reveal this to you. Think of your Father’s house and its mansions, and it will mitigate your griefs. “Alas for us if you were all, and nothing beyond, O earth!” There is another and a better land, and in your Father’s house, where the many mansions are, it may be you shall be privileged to understand how these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, have worked out for you a far more exceedingly and eternal weight of glory.
Before I close this point, let me say it ought to be a great deal easier for you and me to live above heart-trouble than it was to the Apostles. I mean easier than it was to the Apostles at the time when the Savior spoke to them and for forty days afterwards. You say, “How was that?” Why because you have three things which they had not. You have experience of many past troubles out of which you have been delivered. They had only been converted at the outside of three years. They had not known much trouble, for Jesus in the flesh had dwelt among them to screen off troubles from them.
Some of you have been converted 30, 40—what if I say 60 years? And you have had abundance of trouble—you have not been screened from it. Now all this experience ought to make it easier for you to say, “My heart shall not be troubled.” Again, you have received the Holy Spirit, and they had not. The Holy Spirit was not given, as you remember, until the day of Pentecost. His direct government in the Church was not required while Christ was here. You have the Spirit, the Comforter to abide with you forever! Surely you ought to be less distracted than they were!
Thirdly, you have the whole of Scripture—they had but a part. They certainly had not the richest Scriptures of all, for they had not the Evangelists nor any of the New Testament, and having, as we have, all that store of promise and comfort, we ought, surely, to find it no hard work to obey the sweet precept, “Let not your heart be troubled.”
III. THE EXHORTATION OF THE TEXT OUGHT TO BE VERY PRECIOUS TO ALL OF US THIS MORNING,
and we should make a point of pleading for the Holy Spirit’s aid to enable us to carry it out. Remember that the loving advice came from Him who said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Who could have said it but the Lord Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief?
The mother says to the child, “Do not cry, child, be patient.” That sounds very differently from what it would have done if the schoolmaster had said it. Or if a stranger in the street had spoken. “Do not let your heart be troubled,” might be a stinging remark from a stranger! But coming from the Savior, who “knows what strong temptations mean, for He has felt the same,” it drops like virgin honey for sweetness, and like the balm of Gilead for healing power. Jesus says, “Let not your heart be troubled.” His own face was towards the Cross. He was hard by the olivepress of Gethsemane. He was about to be troubled as never man was troubled, and yet among His last words were these, “Let not your hearts be troubled,” as if He wanted to monopolize all tears and would not have them shed so much as one!
He said it as if He longed to take all the heart-trouble Himself and remove it far from them. He said it as if He would have them exercise their hearts so much with believing that they would not have the smallest room left for grief! As if He would have them so much taken up with the glorious result of His sufferings in procuring for them eternal mansions that they would not think about their own present losses, but let them be swallowed up in a mighty sea of joyful expectation. Oh the tenderness of Christ! “Let not your hearts be troubled.”
He is not here, this morning, in Person, (would God He were!) but oh, if He will but look at us out of those eyes of His which wept, and make us feel that this cheering word wells up from that heart which was pierced with the spear, we shall find it to be a blessed word to our soul! Say it, sweet Jesus! Say to every mourner, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Brothers and Sisters, the text should have to us the dignity of a command as well as the sweetness of counsel. Shall we be tormented with trouble after the Captain has said, “Let not your heart be troubled”?
The Master of your spirit, who has bought you with His precious blood, demands that the harp strings of your heart should resound to the touch of His love, and of His love, alone. And will you surrender those strings to be dolorously smitten by grief and unbelief? No, rather like George Herbert, say, “My harp shall find You, and every string shall have its attribute to sing. At Your Word, instead of mourning, I will bring forth joy! As You bid me I will put off my sackcloth and cast away my ashes and I will rejoice in the Lord always, and yet again I will rejoice.”
Prize the counsel, because it comes from the Well-Beloved. Prize it, next, because it points to Him.
He says, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” You know, if it were not for the connection which requires the particular construction here used, one would have looked to find these words, “You believe in Me, believe also in God.” Jesus was speaking to Jews—disciples, who from their youth up had learned to believe in Emmanuel—believe in Me. There, there—there is the very cream of the whole matter! If you want comfort, Christian, you must hear Jesus say, Believe also in Me. You must approach afresh to the Fountain, and believe in the power of the blood! You must take that fair linen of His righteousness and put it on, and believe that—
“With His spotless vesture on, You’re holy as the Holy One.”
You must see Jesus dead in His grave and believe that you died there in Him, and that your sin was buried there in Him. You must see Him rise, and you must believe also in Him, that His resurrection was your resurrection, that you are risen in Him! You must mark Him as He climbs the starry way up to the appointed throne of His reward! This must be your belief, also, in Him, that He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Himself. You must see Him far above all principalities and powers—the ever-living and reigning Lord—and you must believe that because He lives you shall live, also.
You must see Him with all things put under His feet, and you must believe that all things are under His feet for you—sin, death, Hell, things present and things to come—all subject unto the Son that He may give to you and to as many as the Father has given Him, eternal life! Oh, this is comfort! No place for a child’s aching head like its mother’s bosom! No shadow of a great rock in this weary land like our Savior’s love consciously overshadowing us! His own side is the place where He does from the sun protect His flock. This is the pasture where He makes them lie down! This is the river from which He gives them drink, namely, Himself. Communion with Jesus is glory!
The saints feast, but it is upon His flesh! They drink, but it is of His blood! They triumph, but it is in His shame! They rejoice, but it is in His grief! They live, but it is with His life! And they reign, but it is through His power! It is precious advice, then, because it comes from Him and points to Him.
Once more, it is precious advice because it speaks of Him.
It says. “In My Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you: I go to prepare a place for you.” Jesus is here seen in action—anything which makes us remember Christ should be prized. Jesus Christ comes to comfort us—and that comfort is all about Himself. We should greatly prize it. We want to know more of Jesus. One great deficiency is our ignorance of Him, and if the advice of this morning is calculated to make us know Him better and value Him more, let us prize it! Think of all He said and did, and what He is doing for us now.
Now let your thoughts see Him beyond the glittering starry sky with the many crowns upon His head. See Him as your Representative, claiming your rights, pleading before the Throne for you, scattering blessings for you on earth, and preparing joys for you above! That is the last thought, namely, that the advice is precious, because it hints that we are to be with Him forever. “An hour with my God,” says the hymn, “will make up for it all.” So it will. But what will an eternity with our God be? Forever to behold Him smiling! Forever to dwell in Him! “Abide in Me.” That is Heaven on earth. “Abide in Me” is all the Heaven we shall want in Heaven!
He is preparing the place now, making it ready for us above, and here below making us ready for it. Courage, then, Brothers and Sisters, courage! Let us not fret about the way—our heads are towards home. We are not outward-bound vessels, thank God. Every wind that blows is bringing us nearer to our native land. Our tents are frail, we often pitch and strike them, but we nightly pitch them—
“A day’s march nearer home.”
Be of good cheer, soldier! The battle must soon end. And that bloodstained banner, when it shall wave so high, and that shout of triumph, when it shall thrill from so many thousand lips, and that grand assembly of heroes—all of them made more than conquerors, and the sight of the King in His beauty, riding in the chariot of His triumph, paved with love for the daughters of Jerusalem, and the acclamations of spirits glorified, and the shouts and joyful music of cherubims and seraphims—all these shall make up for all the battles of today—
“And they who, with their Master, Have conquered in the fight, Forever and forever Are clad in robes of light.”
A recent survey of American adults found that despite a surge of interest in Christianity and church attendance in the months since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the number of people who adhere to a biblical worldview remains critically low, including just 1% of Gen Z.
Conducted in January by Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center under the guidance of researcher George Barna, the latest installment of the American Worldview Inventory asked 2,000 American adults a series of 53 questions to discern if they live consistently with a biblical worldview.
“The survey results indicate that despite the increased attention given to faith matters after the Charlie Kirk murder, and the growth in church attendance and individuals purchasing Bibles immediately after that incident, there is no hint of improvement when it comes to biblical worldview,” the survey said.
The results found that only 4% of Americans overall possess “religious beliefs and worldview-related behaviors … consistent with biblical principles, beliefs and behavior,” according to a demographic the survey called “Integrated Disciples.”
Ten percent qualified as “Emergent Followers,” defined as those whose biblical worldview is marked by syncretism. The vast majority — 85% — classified as “World Citizens,” who might have some beliefs and behaviors consistent with a biblical worldview, but overall adhere to something else. The last category has grown 16 percentage points from the 69% measured in 2020.
Rates were especially low among young people, and the survey found a large age gap among the generations. Among Gen Z adults, only 1% had a biblical worldview, compared to 2% of millennials, and 7% of Gen X, baby boomers, and those older.
A segment of the survey examined the effect of church attendance on a biblical worldview and found that the rate of “Integrated Disciples” among Evangelical churchgoers has plummeted in recent years, from 21% in 2020 to 11% this year.
Evangelical churchgoers were only modestly more likely to have a biblical worldview compared to those who attend churches that don’t generally believe that Jesus Christ is the only means to salvation or that the Bible is the Word of God and a reliable guide for life.
The survey found that 53% of self-identified Christian respondents classified as “Notional Christians,” which the survey defined as those who do not believe that salvation comes through a personal confession of sin and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior.
The survey also saw a strong correlation between biblical worldview and political orientation, with 12% of political conservatives possessing one, compared to only 1% of moderates and 1% of liberals. Even among conservatives, the rate has dropped from 16% in 2020.
Among those who identify as LGBT, only one-half of one percent had a biblical worldview, compared to 5% who identify as straight.
Commenting on the results of the AWI 2026 survey, Barna said “the fate of our nation hangs in the balance” and that “the national divide is an indication of the spiritual battle for the soul of America.”
Describing the situation as “urgent,” Barna warned that Americans are losing their historically Christian culture, and that with just 1% of Gen Z exhibiting a biblical worldview, it potentially faces “extinction” if trends are not reversed.
“Make no mistake about it, we are losing American society and all that it has historically represented because we have succumbed to the influence of the culture instead of the exhortations and promises of God,” he said. “Entertainment and media messages as well as public policies and errant public education have distorted the thinking and behavior of our young people.”
Barna suggested that even though the numbers remain sobering, the fact that they haven’t continued to decline might offer hope that improvement is on the horizon.
“A quarter century ago, 12% of the adult population held a biblical worldview,” he said. “Since then, we have seen a steady reduction in that incidence. We reached a low point — 4% — in 2023.”
“The fact that we have not plumbed new depths since then hopefully suggests that we have bottomed out and are in line to experience positive growth in biblical thought and action.”
According to recent data from Pew Research Center‘s Religious Landscape Study analyzed by Lifeway Research, younger members of Gen Z — those born 2003 to 2007 — report higher levels of religious engagement than slightly older peers born between 1995 and 2002, pointing to a possible shift. Among that group, 61% identify with a religion, 35% pray daily, 37% say religion is very important in their lives and 41% attend services at least monthly.
How great You are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like You, and there is no God besides You, according to all that I have heard with my ears. (2 Samuel 7:22; 1 Chronicles 17:20)
O Lord, the God of our fathers, are You not the God who is in heaven? Are You not the ruler over all the kingdoms of the nations? Power and might are in Your hand, and no one is able to withstand You. (2 Chronicles 20:6)
For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light. (Psalm 36:9)
O come, let us sing to the Lord; Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout for joy to Him with psalms. The Lord is the great God, The great King above all gods. O come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. He is our God and we are the people of His pasture And the sheep under His care. (Psalm 95:1–3, 6–7)
I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. May my meditation be pleasing to Him; I will be glad in the Lord. (Psalm 104:33–34)
Pause to express your thoughts of praise and worship.
Confession
Out of the depths I have called to You, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice, And let Your ears be attentive To the voice of my supplications. If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared. (Psalm 130:1–4)
You have been just in all that has happened to me; You have acted faithfully, while I did wrong. (Nehemiah 9:33)
I return to the Lord my God, For I have stumbled because of my iniquity. I take words with me and return to the Lord, Saying, “Take away all iniquity and receive me graciously, That I may offer the fruit of my lips.” (Hosea 14:1–2)
Ask the Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the Lord and thank Him for His forgiveness.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness. God will not always strive with us, Nor will He harbor His anger forever; He does not treat us as our sins deserve Or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His love for those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on His children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. You know how I am formed; You remember that I am dust. (Psalm 103:8–14)
Renewal
Lord, renew me by Your Spirit as I offer these prayers to You:
Who is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master finds so doing when he comes. (Matthew 24:45–46)
May I watch and pray so that I will not fall into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Matthew 26:41)
May I abide in Christ, so that when He appears, I will have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. (1 John 2:28)
May I be ready, for the Son of Man will come at an hour when I do not expect Him. (Matthew 24:44; Luke 12:40)
Pause to add your own prayers for personal renewal.
Petition
Father, using Your word as a guide, I offer You my prayers concerning my need for wisdom.
May God grant me, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in my inner being, so that Christ may dwell in my heart through faith. And may I, being rooted and grounded in love, be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and height and depth of the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that I may be filled to all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16–19)
If I have found grace in Your sight, teach me Your ways, so I may know You and continue to find favor with You. (Exodus 33:13)
Whatever I do, may I do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)
May I not let Your word depart from my mouth, but meditate on it day and night, so that I may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then I will make my way prosperous, and I will act wisely. (Joshua 1:8)
May I meditate on Your precepts And consider Your ways. May I delight in Your statutes, And not forget Your word. Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I may live and keep Your word. Open my eyes that I may see Wonderful things from Your law. (Psalm 119:15–18)
Let me be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19–20)
May I guard my heart with all diligence, For out of it flow the issues of life. May I put away perversity from my mouth And keep corrupt talk far from my lips. May I let my eyes look straight ahead, And fix my gaze straight before me. May I ponder the path of my feet So that all my ways will be established. May I not turn to the right or to the left But keep my foot from evil. (Proverbs 4:23–27)
Let my light shine before men, that they may see my good deeds and praise my Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13–16)
May I do all things without complaining or arguing, so that I may become blameless and pure, a child of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom I shine as a light in the world, holding fast the word of life. (Philippians 2:14–16)
May I clothe myself with humility toward others, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. May I humble myself under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt me in due time, casting all my anxiety upon Him, because He cares for me. (1 Peter 5:5–7)
Pause here to express any additional personal requests, especially concerning family and ministry:Family Ministry Sharing Christ with others Helping others grow in Him Career
My activities for this day Special concerns
Intercession
Lord, I now prepare my heart for intercessory prayer for missions.
Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified, just as it is with you, and that we may be delivered from perverse and evil men, for not all have faith. (2 Thessalonians 3:1–2)
The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, I will pray that the Lord of the harvest will send out workers into His harvest. (Matthew 9:37–38; Luke 10:2)
In the spirit of these passages, I pray for:Local missions National missions World missions The fulfillment of the Great Commission Special concerns
Affirmation
Feed my mind and heart, O Lord, as I affirm these truths from Your word concerning my hope as a follower of Christ:
I do not lose heart; even though my outward man is perishing, yet my inner man is being renewed day by day. For this light affliction which is momentary is working for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while I do not look at the things which are seen but at the things which are unseen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)
Peace You leave with me; Your peace You give to me. Not as the world gives, do You give to me. I will not let my heart be troubled nor let it be fearful. (John 14:27)
Those who wait for the Lord Will renew their strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles; They will run and not grow weary; They will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:31)
I am always of good courage and know that as long as I am at home in the body, I am away from the Lord. For I live by faith, not by sight. I am of good courage and would prefer to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:6–8)
Since I am a child of God, I am an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ, if indeed I share in His sufferings in order that I may also share in His glory. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to me. (Romans 8:17–18)
Pause to reflect upon these biblical affirmations.
Thanksgiving
For who You are and for what You have done, accept my thanks, O Lord:
I will praise You, O Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. (Psalm 9:1–2)
We give thanks to You, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign. (Revelation 11:17)
I will sing of Your strength, Yes, I will sing of Your mercy in the morning, For You have been my stronghold, My refuge in times of trouble. To You, O my Strength, I will sing praises, For God is my fortress, my loving God. (Psalm 59:16–17)
Pause to offer your own expressions of thanksgiving.
Closing Prayer
Teach me to number my days, That I may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)
Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God Than dwell in the tents of the wicked. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord will give grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold From those who walk in integrity. O Lord of hosts, Blessed is the man who trusts in You! (Psalm 84:10–12)
To the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. (1 Timothy 1:17)
Boa, K. (1993). Handbook to prayer: praying scripture back to God. Atlanta: Trinity House.
PERFECT LOVE AND THE CHRISTIAN’S CONFIDENCE IN JUDGMENT
By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. (4:17–21)
Confidence in the day of judgment is the experience of believers who not only know when they have an accurate grasp of the gospel and other biblical doctrines, but also when love is perfected within them (cf. 1 Cor. 13:10–13; Gal. 5:24–25; Eph. 5:15–21; Col. 3:12–17). The day of judgment refers in the broadest sense to the final time of reckoning before God (cf. 2:28). John says believers can live their lives with confidence (literally, “boldness”) as they look to the day when Christ returns and they stand before God (1 Cor. 3:9–15; 2 Cor. 5:10; cf. James 1:12; Rev. 2:10). In 3:21 John used the same word (parrēsia) to refer to the confidence believers can have that God will grant their prayer requests. In the present verse the apostle declares that boldness and lack of fear should characterize believers (cf. Rom. 5:2; Heb. 6:19) whenever they think ahead to God’s time of judgment (cf. Titus 2:13). Why can believers have such confidence? Because as He is, so also are we in this world. This stunning statement means the Father treats the saints the same way He does His Son Jesus Christ. God clothes believers with the righteousness of Christ (Rom. 3:21–22; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9), and grants the Son’s perfect love (Matt. 9:36; John 10:11, 14–16; 13:1; 14:21) and obedience (cf. John 4:34; 5:30; 18:37). Someday believers will stand before God’s throne as confidently as their Lord and Savior does. When they reach that final accounting, they will see the fulfillment of 1 John 3:2b, “We [believers] know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” Those whose perfect (complete, mature) love demonstrates the reality of their salvation need have no fear of the return of Christ or God’s judgment, because perfect love casts out fear. That kind of love dispels fear because fear involves punishment, and believers perfected in love do not face final punishment (Rom. 5:9; 1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9; cf. Eph. 5:6). However, anyone who fears God’s judgment is not perfected in love. Someone who professes Christ but fears His return evidences that something is seriously amiss, because all true saints love His appearing (2 Tim. 4:8; cf. James 1:12). The motive for those who have such confident assurance regarding the future is obvious: we [Christians] love, because He first loved us. It was God’s perfect and eternal love that first sovereignly drew believers to Him (4:10; John 15:9, 16, 19; Acts 13:48; Rom. 5:8; Eph. 1:4), thus enabling them to reflect His love to others. The apostle repeats his warning (cf. 2:4, 9; 3:10, 17; 4:8) that anyone who claims to love God but does not love others is a deceiver: If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. It is absurd to claim to love the invisible God but at the same time not show love to His people. John counters that hypocritical notion with a closing command: this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. Brotherly love seeks nothing in return; instead it unconditionally forgives (cf. Matt. 18:21–22), bears others’ burdens (Gal. 6:2), and sacrifices to meet their needs (Acts 20:35; Phil. 2:3–4). Yet it is also a righteous love that tolerates neither false doctrine nor habitual sin (1 Tim. 5:20; cf. 2 Thess. 3:15). God’s perfect love is a blessing for believers to know and a joy for them to manifest to others. Although it enhances and enriches the emotional love they have for other people, perfect love far transcends any kind of feeling the world might experience. It is a complete, mature love that reflects the essence of God and the work of Christ and flows through believers to anybody with a need (3:17; Matt. 25:34–40; 2 Cor. 8:1–7; 9:7–15; James 1:27; cf. Matt. 5:16; Acts 9:36; Titus 3:8), especially others in the family of God (Gal. 6:2, 10; cf. 1 Tim. 5:8; Heb. 6:9–10). This love, which has characterized the triune God from eternity past, is also the mark of His children (John 13:35). Because this love so clearly comes from Him, those who love like Him can be assured that He is their Father. As the hymn “I Am His, and He Is Mine” so aptly expresses:
Loved with everlasting love, Led by grace that love to know; Gracious Spirit from above, Thou hast taught me it is so! O, this full and perfect peace! O, this transport all divine! In a love which cannot cease, I am His, and He is mine.
MacArthur, J. (2007). 1, 2, 3 John (pp. 170–172). Moody Publishers.
Love’s Perfection (vv. 17–21)
In verses 13–16 John has developed the first of two ideas introduced for the first time in verse 12, the indwelling of the Christian by God. Now he returns to the second of those two ideas, the perfection of love, and explains what he means practically. Earlier, when he had said, “If we love each other, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us,” the reader might well have been left with the question of how such a thing could be possible. God’s attributes are perfection; he is perfection. Consequently, we might wonder how God’s love could be perfected in us, or anywhere else for that matter. Now John explains his meaning, showing that his emphasis was not so much upon that love that God has in himself (which obviously is already perfect) but rather upon our love both for God and one another. This has its source in God and is brought to completion by him. “Made complete” here does not mean totally without flaw in a moral or any other sense. It means “whole” or “mature,” and it refers to that state of mind and activity in which the Christian is to find himself when the love of God within him, expressing itself in the believer’s own love, has accomplished that which God fully intends it to accomplish. No doubt there are many aspects of love’s perfection, but from this greater number John singles out two. First, there is confidence in view of God’s coming judgment (vv. 17–18). Second, there is love of the brethren (vv. 19–21).
Confidence
This is the third time in the letter that the word “confidence” (parrēsia) occurs, and it will occur once more. In two of the four instances it refers to confidence before God in reference to prayer (3:21; 5:14). In the other two instances, one of which is this text, it refers to confidence before God in view of Christ’s return and the execution of his righteous judgment against sin (2:28; 4:17). The idea of God’s judgment is an unpopular one today, but it is not necessarily less popular than it was in John’s time. The problem is simply that men and women do not like the idea of having to account to God for their actions. So they tend to discount the idea, hoping that the day of judgment might just go away. But judgment is the only logical idea of the three ideas usually associated with the end times. In most systems of theology the end events focus around three things: the return of Christ, the resurrection, and the judgment. But neither the return of Christ nor the resurrection is logical. Jesus came once and was rejected. He was crucified. If he never came back, this would be logical; and no one, least of all ourselves, could blame him. Yet against logic he is returning. The resurrection is not logical either, for even the Bible declares of our bodies, “Dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19). Logically no one could expect more. But judgment? That is the most logical event the future holds for any man or woman. Moreover, the day of judgment is as fixed in God’s eternal timetable as any other day in world history. This is the significance of the word “day.” Technically speaking, the day of judgment is not necessarily a twenty-four-hour period. At all events, it certainly includes a series of judgments upon the earth (Revelation 6–16), the beast and the false prophet (Rev. 19:20), the gentile nations (Joel 3:14; Matt. 25:31–46), Israel (Ezek. 20:33–44), and all individuals at the judgment of the great white throne (Rev. 20:11–15). The reason it is called a “day” is that it is fixed in God’s timetable and will surely come. In view of this logical and unalterable day in which the thoughts and deeds of men and women are to be judged, an individual might well fear. But John says that in the case of Christians perfect love casts out terror. This does not mean that love for God is the ground of our acceptance before him. The only possible ground is the death of Christ for us and faith in him. It means rather that by love for God any unreasonable fears are quieted and we come to rest in the fact that the one who was for us in Christ will allow nothing to destroy the eternal relationship that the death of Christ established (Rom. 8:31–39). It is possible to be a Christian and still be filled with fear in view of God’s judgment. Some branches of the Christian church even encourage such fear on the part of their adherents. But the fear is unnecessary, and mature love defeats it. Bengel, in one of his excellent Latin expressions, gives the proper course of progress in the Christian life: “neither love nor fear, fear without love, both fear and love, love without fear.” The sinner must begin by fearing the God against whom he has sinned; but, having believed in Christ who has atoned for sin, he may put away fear and grow in confidence before him.
Love of the Brethren
The second area in which love finds perfection is in reference to our love for the brethren; for it is there, according to John, that real love is to be seen and measured. John begins this section by a broad statement: “We love because he first loved us.” But lest a person apply this to a love for God exclusive of a love for human beings, John immediately goes on to show that anyone who is attempting to separate the two is a liar, for love cannot be so differentiated. John’s reasoning at this point is interesting. He argues that it is easier to love men than God; therefore, if there is no love for men, love for God is absent also, regardless of what the person professing to love God may say verbally. How many Christians really believe that it is easier to love men than God? Possibly it is a very small number, for our natural inclination is to think that it is easier to love God simply because he is worthy of our love and that it is difficult to love men because they are not lovable or lovely. Yet this passage says exactly the opposite, implying, no doubt, that unless we are really loving our Christian brothers and sisters on the horizontal level, we are deluding ourselves in regard to what we consider to be our love for God on the vertical. Unless we can love men and women, we cannot love God. Unless we actually do love them, we do not love the one who created them and in whose image they were and are created. We can put this in other terms. Earlier in this book we considered the difference between philia-love and agapē-love; philia-love is strong brotherly affection. It might be described as the highest love of which man in himself is capable. Agapē-love is divine love. It might be described as the love of which only God and those who are indwelt by God are capable. These verses are the equivalent of saying that a person cannot practice agapē-love unless he can first practice philia-love. Without the love of men, the love of God is impossible. It is possible, moreover, that another conclusion may be drawn from this text. It is the conclusion that it is in learning to love men that we learn to love God. On the one hand, there are undoubtedly those who loudly profess to love God but who do not love their Christian brothers and sisters. John rightly calls such liars. But on the other hand, it is also possible that there are many who recognize that they do not really love God (at least not as much as they would like to) and who wonder how they might learn to love him better. “I cannot see him,” they might argue. “At times he seems so far away and so unreal. How can I learn to love him? How can I make progress in this that I know to be my privilege and Christian duty?” On the basis of these verses we are justified in arguing that John might well reply to such that a Christian learns to love God by loving those he can actually see. This does not replace the revelation of God’s love at the cross of Jesus Christ, of course. It is there that we learn what love is. Nevertheless, it does supplement it practically, for it is by practicing a real and self-sacrificing love for one another that we learn to love the one who sacrificed himself for us.
Conclusion
At the beginning of this chapter the question was asked, Which is the most important of John’s three tests: righteousness, love, or truth? We answered that love was the most important, but at this point we have several additional insights for knowing why. The first reason is obviously that we need love most, particularly in the so-called evangelical churches. These have sound doctrine, at least to a point. There is a measure of righteousness. But often, sadly, there is very little love. Without it, however, there is no true demonstration of the life of Christ within or true worship of the Father. The second reason is that Jesus himself made love the first and second of the commandments. The first commandment is love for God (Deut. 6:4). The second is love for one another (Lev. 19:18). The two properly belong together. As Jesus said, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:40). The third reason is that it was the realization of this double love in us for both God and man that was the object of Christ’s coming. This is what John seems to speak about in the opening verses of the letter when he says, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1:3). That is, the coming of Christ is proclaimed so that those who hear of his incarnation and death might believe in him and thereby learn to love both God and one another. The devil is the one who disrupts. The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who draws together. Moreover, in the drawing together into fellowship, love is the key factor. Little surprise then that we have this commandment from him: “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
Boice, J. M. (2004). The Epistles of John: an expositional commentary (pp. 119–122). Baker Books.
“My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” —John Calvin
Hypocrisy and Sincerity
Of all the spiritual dangers to which Christ alerted His disciples, few of them outweigh His warnings concerning hypocrisy. And our Lord left little room for confusion about what He meant. One need only read the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ calls out the dangers of hypocrisy when it invades prayer, fasting, giving to the poor, or practices of righteousness (Matt. 6:1–6, 16). He is even more explicit in the Seven Woes, where He hammers the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who “preach, but do not practice”; do their religious deeds “to be seen”; love seats and titles of honor; are blind to worldlines, justice, and mercy; strain out gnats while swallowing camels; and appear clean without but are unclean within (Matt. 23:1–36). This is the spiritual hazard that Christ described as “leaven,” which spreads invisibly and thoroughly (Luke 12:1).
By talking about hypocrisy, Christ was invoking a familiar and graphic image to illustrate when you and I pretend to be something that we are not. The root of the word hypocrite refers to an actor. In ancient Greece, actors wore masks to indicate what parts they were playing. Those in the audience would see the facial shell, which hid the real person underneath. This illustrates the concept of hypocrisy—what others see makes a pleasant impression, but it is false. Our religious mask betrays what is truly underneath. The thin veneer of our religious hypocrisy hides the cheap material within. It is a lie.
The opposite of hypocrisy is sincerity. Sincerity has no mask, whether it is on stage or not. It is bona fide. What we see and hear is real, not feigned nor fake. This is the genius of John Calvin’s motto: “My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.” This is what God wants us to offer Him—what we are and what we have without hesitating or pretending. He wants a sincere heart (Eph. 6:5), a sincere mind (2 Peter 3:1), a sincere faith (1 Tim. 1:5; 2 Tim. 1:5), a sincere brotherly love (Rom. 12:9–10), a sincere wisdom (James 3:17), and a sincere devotion (2 Cor. 11:3).
However, it is one thing to see the danger of hypocrisy and the appeal of sincerity. It is another thing to approach these things practically. How do we recognize our hypocrisy and then subdue it? How do we become more sincere? How do we avoid being fake or false and at the same time try to be more genuine? These seem like vague ideas. Perhaps a helpful way to get at such vital questions is to begin by asking, Where do hypocrisy and sincerity come from?
Duplicity and Simplicity
For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. (2 Cor.1:12)
In one of John Newton’s letters he discusses Paul’s phrase “with simplicity and godly sincerity” (2 Cor 1:12). Newton says sincerity primarily directs our conduct as it appears in the sight of men, while our simplicity primarily respects the frame of our spirit as it appears in the sight of God.1 Sincerity is what others see; simplicity is what God sees. Clearly Paul is not using simplicity—as we might—to refer to being ignorant or lacking sophistication. Instead, he is talking about what is uncomplicated or undivided. The simple man or woman has a singular focus. Their path is clear and they will not deviate from it. Their sincerity flows from the simplicity of their character.
The opposite of simplicity is duplicity. A person of duplicity is unsure of himself because his is vexed with conflicting motives and goals. He is caught between what he is trying to project and what he really is. He is two-faced because he is double-minded. The artificial persona on the outside reflects the duplicitous person on the inside. As Newton says, “They are not simple, and therefore they cannot be sincere.”2 Our task, then, is to apply ourselves to heart-work, and here is where our Lord’s teaching is so helpful.
A Divided Heart and a Pure Heart
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. (Matt. 5:8)
Paul’s point in 2 Corinthians is strikingly similar to what our Lord teaches in the phrase “Blessed are the pure in heart” (Matt. 5:8). It is important to note that our Lord does not mean a heart that is washed clean. Here He uses “pure” to signify what is undivided or without mixture—a similar idea is what is printed on bottled water: “100% pure spring water.” It is water without contaminants. So also, a pure heart lacks the contaminants of idolatry. It is not divided in its interests and it does not have mixed motives. It is unified by a singular devotion.
The simple man or woman has a singular focus.
This is what David meant when he prayed, “Unite my heart” (Ps. 86:11). He longed for a heart free from all that would distract him from fearing God. Asaph prayed similarly: “Whom have I in heaven but you? There is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Ps. 73:25). Elijah appealed to the same desire when he asked, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions?” (1 Kings 18:21). Joshua meant the same when he said, “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Josh. 24:15). In each case, God’s people are being called to put aside their divided loyalties and to follow God with a pure heart.
The larger point is that a duplicitous heart is divided in its interests and seeks to serve two masters. But the heart of godly simplicity is united in its desire and seeks only one thing. Christ told Martha that she was distracted by many things, whereas He commended Mary who had chosen the one thing necessary. As J.C. Ryle wrote, “The right heart is honest, and single, and true. . . . There is nothing about it of falsehood, hypocrisy, or part-acting. It is not double or divided.”3 The simple heart puts its hand to the plow and does not look back.
The key, then, to putting hypocrisy to death and fanning sincerity into flame is to orient our hearts toward godly simplicity—toward a pure, undivided, and singular commitment to God. Such a heart has one leading aim; one deliberate, unreserved desire; one great devotion to which everything else is subordinate. A heart ruled by a simplicity of love for God is not tempted to insincerity. It will have no rivals. Such a Christian feels no need to be evasive or to disguise his actions. He does not need to conceal his character, because his motives are of one piece and one design—whether in public or in private. He is not afraid of being found out.4 He is what he appears to be.
Godly simplicity naturally comes when we truly grasp the truth of the gospel—when we know our own unworthiness and are desperate for God’s grace; when we grasp the power of Christ’s death and resurrection to redeem us from sin’s condemnation and power; when we rest in our adoption and full acceptance before God; when we sense our ongoing need of His grace in order to resist temptation and to walk in obedience; when we know the regular cycles of repentance and faith. These are the sorts of thoughts that will make us simple-hearted as we seek God’s face. These are the truths that will liberate us to serve Him sincerely.5 And they will cause us to look to our Savior with eyes of faith and hearts full of loving gratitude.
In so doing, we look to One whose heart is perfectly ruled by one simple and righteous end. When the moment came for Christ to save us from the curse of our sin, He did not hesitate or halt between two opinions. He was not divided in His heart about delivering Himself up to the cruelties of those who would torture and crucify Him. He was not torn between two opinions about whether to pour out His life unto death.6 He did all this for us, but not just for us.
He was obedient unto a death on the cross because His true love was to do the will of the One who sent Him, His Father in heaven. His singular devotion and the self-sacrifice of His life was perfect, due to the simplicity of His heart. No love was ever so pure or so strong as this love. And this is the love at work in our hearts so that we might love God and neighbor as Christ has loved us. Simply put, this is what enables us to say, more and more genuinely, “My heart I offer to you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.”
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on March 10, 2021.
In this article I am borrowing language from Newton’s letter. John Newton, “On Simplicity and Godly Sincerity,” in The Works of John Newton, vol. 1 (1839; repr., Edinburgh, Scotland: Banner of Truth, 2015), 209–13. ↩︎
It’s Witness Wednesday! Join Todd Friel on campus at Kennesaw State University to discuss Jesus Christ, His gospel and THE truth – not my truth, or your truth, but the truth – Jesus Christ himself. Prepare to be challenged and encouraged as real, every day beliefs are put to the test of biblical truth.
Segment 1
• Luke says truth is “whatever works for you.” Todd presses the logic: if truth is personal, could someone justify harming children if it benefits them?
• The conversation exposes the collapse of moral relativism—without an objective authority, right and wrong become mere preferences.
• Todd asks the ultimate courtroom question: If Luke stood before God today, why should he be forgiven?
Segment 2
• Luke wrestles with a common college dilemma: If people grow up in different religions, how can anyone claim Christianity is the truth?
• Todd argues that truth ends the search—if Jesus truly rose from the dead, competing worldviews are eliminated.
• Luke admits he’s still searching, prompting Todd to explain why the gospel uniquely answers life’s biggest questions.
Segment 3
• Malcolm confidently says he believes in God and purpose—but struggles to explain why someone else should believe the gospel.
• Todd walks him through a simple apologetic: complex design points to a Creator and a moral lawgiver.
• The conversation pivots to the core issue: if we are guilty before a holy God, how can justice be satisfied?
Segment 4
• Kenya believes good people go to God by doing right and asking forgiveness—but Todd presses the problem: would a just judge simply overlook crimes?
• Through careful questions, Todd helps Kenya see why Jesus’ death is necessary for God to forgive sinners without ignoring justice.
• The conversation ends with the most urgent question: If someone were about to die, what must they do right now to be saved?
Ed Grifenhagen — a devout Jew — was about 13 years into his marriage when he told his wife he had a plan, one he said at the time “shouldn’t be too hard” to accomplish.
His endeavor was to disprove Scripture by reading through the Old and New Testaments.
Now a devout Christian, Grifenhagen told CBN News his pompous pronouncement that his attempt at falsifying the Bible would be a simple task was “the most arrogant thing I think I’ve ever said.”
“I thought, if I’m not gonna believe it, I need to read what I profess to not believe,” he explained of his reasoning for cracking open the pages of Scripture. “[I] was obsessed with reading it.”
From January to September of 2000, Grifenhagen pored over the pages of the Old Testament. When he finished it, his curiosity got the better of him. Fearful of his father’s upbraiding, the Christian-curious Jew ran a clandestine errand to a faith-based bookstore, where he picked up a copy of the New Testament.
Grifenhagen said he resorted to his own devices to get a copy of the full Bible because — despite growing up in the buckle of the Bible Belt — not a single Christian in Columbus, Georgia, shared the Gospel with him in his first 35 years of life.
From September to November of that year, he read the pages of the New Testament, as well as a handful of books by Christian apologist Josh McDowell and atheist-turned-believer Lee Strobel.
Exactly one year from the start of his journey to disprove the God of the Bible, on Jan. 17, 2001, Grifenhagen arrived at a conclusion altogether different from what he believed just a short 12 months prior.
“I realized that I believed every single word in that book, and I was just blown away,” he reflected. “The book that I professed to not believe in, I ended up believing every word was true and infallible and inherent, and … I just cried out to the Lord to save me.”
“I was wrecked and He rescued me,” Grifenhagen added.
As his faith evolved and his understanding of Scripture deepened, the evangelical pastor found yet another curiosity: understanding the Hebrew origins of the Christian faith.
“From the first verse of Genesis,” he said, “it all points to Jesus.”
Grifenhagen, now a preacher and evangelist, began studying the etymology of the Bible, which led him to compile a devotional, “365 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know.”
Studying the original Hebrew words of Scripture has enriched Grifenhagen’s faith by revealing the depth of meaning behind the passages of the Old and New Testaments.
You can listen to our full conversation with Grifenhagen in the video above.
David, king of Israel, is well-known for many things, from his astounding faith before Goliath, to his terrible sins against Bathsheba and her husband, to his heartfelt psalms of praise and repentance. Here are five things about David you should also know.
1. David descended from a gentile.
David was the son of Jesse from the tribe of Judah, but his line wasn’t pristine. Like Jesus, he had significant sinners and even a gentile in his family history (Gen. 38; Ruth 4:17). The gentile was his great-grandmother Ruth, that remarkable Moabitess who declared to her Jewish mother-in-law, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). This reminds us that greatness in God’s house is not limited to those with “pure” pedigrees, just as it is not guaranteed to those with them.
2. David was an unexpected king.
The first king of Israel stood out because of his physical appearance—Saul was very tall (1 Sam. 9:2)—but David did not stand out in the same way. He was the youngest of eight sons, and when Samuel first comes to Jesse’s house to anoint a new king in Saul’s place, he is certain it will be David’s eldest brother, Eliab (1 Sam. 16:6). But God tells him not to look at height or outward appearance, because He doesn’t select kings based on stature. He looks on the heart, and David stands out from among the rest because he is “a man after [God’s] own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14). Nevertheless, Jesse makes all seven of David’s brothers pass before Samuel—and get rejected—before calling David in from watching the sheep (1 Sam. 16:10–13).
3. David was a shepherd at heart.
David’s occupation before becoming a soldier in Saul’s army was to keep his father’s sheep. Remarkably, he killed lions and bears in defense of his flock, not only from a distance with a sling but sometimes by catching them “by the beard” and striking them (1 Sam. 17:35). He seemed genuinely to know their needs and to care for his sheep, which remained true even when he moved to tending people (Ps. 78:70–72). David’s shepherding heart and experience provided a picture for him of God’s perfect care for His sheep, which David captures movingly in Psalm 23. We also see that when Nathan confronts David about his sin with Bathsheba, he brings it home to his heart by telling a story about a poor man and his little ewe lamb (2 Sam. 12).
4. David tried to build Solomon’s temple.
Once David was finally settled as king in Jerusalem, he realized he was living in a house of cedar but the ark of God only in a tent. So he set out to build a house for God, but God stopped him. Instead, God tells David that He will build him a house—not another physical structure, of course, but a dynasty that will culminate with One who will reign forever and ever (2 Sam. 7:1–17). Thus, the building of the temple fell to David’s son Solomon. We learn later that God kept David from building the temple in part because he was a man of war and had shed much blood (1 Chron. 28:2–3). Nevertheless, David prepared nearly everything for Solomon to execute the work (1 Chron. 22:5).
5. David awaited a greater Son.
David received God’s promise to him of an everlasting house with great joy and gratitude (2 Sam. 7:18–29). David came to understand that one of his offspring will also be his Lord, which he expresses in Psalm 110: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’ ” Jesus quotes this psalm as evidence of David’s understanding that one of his future sons according to the flesh would also be his “Lord” (in addition to the Lord his God) and therefore greater than any merely natural offspring.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on October 3, 2022.
Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God, Because praise is pleasant and beautiful. (Psalm 147:1)
Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever, For wisdom and power belong to Him. He changes the times and the seasons; He raises up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what is in the darkness, And light dwells with Him. (Daniel 2:20–22)
O God, You are my God; Earnestly I seek You; My soul thirsts for You; My body longs for You, In a dry and weary land Where there is no water. I have seen You in the sanctuary And beheld Your power and Your glory. Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, My lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods, And my mouth will praise You with joyful lips. When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You through the watches of the night. Because You have been my help, I will rejoice in the shadow of Your wings. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me. (Psalm 63:1–8)
The Lord lives! Blessed be my Rock! Exalted be God, the Rock of my salvation! (2 Samuel 22:47; Psalm 18:46)
Pause to express your thoughts of praise and worship.
Confession
O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger Or chasten me in Your wrath. Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are in distress. My soul also is greatly troubled; But You, O Lord, how long? (Psalm 6:1–3)
Woe to me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts. (Isaiah 6:5)
There is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good And never sins. (Ecclesiastes 7:20)
Truly I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. (Joshua 7:20)
If I claim to be without sin, I deceive myself, and the truth is not in me. If I confess my sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive me my sins and purify me from all unrighteousness. If I claim I have not sinned, I make Him a liar and His word is not in me. (1 John 1:8–10)
Ask the Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the Lord and thank Him for His forgiveness.
I will sing praises to the Lord And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. For His anger lasts only a moment, But His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:4–5)
Renewal
Lord, renew me by Your Spirit as I offer these prayers to You:
May I love the Lord my God, obey His voice, and hold fast to Him. For the Lord is my life and the length of my days. (Deuteronomy 30:20)
May I be holy to You, for You the Lord are holy, and You have set me apart to be Your own. (Leviticus 20:26)
I have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. Therefore, may I put away all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. (1 Peter 1:23; 2:1)
Since I call on the Father who judges each man’s work impartially, may I conduct myself in fear during the time of my sojourn on earth. (1 Peter 1:17)
Pause to add your own prayers for personal renewal.
Petition
Father, using Your word as a guide, I offer You my prayers concerning these practical exhortations.
May the God of my Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give me a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the full knowledge of Him, and may the eyes of my heart be enlightened, in order that I may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the incomparable greatness of His power toward us who believe. God’s power is according to the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:17–21)
May I rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for me in Christ Jesus. May I examine all things, hold fast to the good, and abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18, 21–22)
I will consider it all joy whenever I fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of my faith produces endurance. And I will let endurance finish its work, so that I may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. If I lack wisdom, may I ask of God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to me. (James 1:2–5)
May I be steadfast, immovable, abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that my labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)
May I be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power as I put on the full armor of God, so that I will be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. (Ephesians 6:10–11)
May I prepare my mind for action and be self-controlled, setting my hope fully on the grace to be brought to me at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As an obedient child, may I not conform myself to the former lusts I had when I lived in ignorance, but as He who called me is holy, so may I be holy in all my conduct, because it is written: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:13–16)
May I be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let my requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)
Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—may I think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)
Pause here to express any additional personal requests, especially concerning faithfulness as a steward:Of time Of talents Of treasure Of truth Of relationships
My activities for this day Special concerns
Intercession
Lord, I now prepare my heart for intercessory prayer for government.
We should offer petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings on behalf of all men, for kings and all those who are in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and reverence. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1–4)
In the spirit of this passage, I pray for:Spiritual revival Local government State government National government Current events and concerns
Affirmation
Feed my mind and heart, O Lord, as I affirm these truths from Your word concerning the Scriptures:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)
The word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12–13)
Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)
Like Ezra, I want to set my heart to study the word of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach it to others. (Ezra 7:10)
I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart. (Psalm 40:8)
Pause to reflect upon these biblical affirmations.
Thanksgiving
For who You are and for what You have done, accept my thanks, O Lord:
The Lord is great and greatly to be praised; He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, But the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before Him; Strength and joy are in His place. I will ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. I will ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name And worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. (1 Chronicles 16:25–29)
Through Jesus, I will continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. (Hebrews 13:15)
God is my refuge and strength, An ever-present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)
My heart rejoices in the Lord; My horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth boasts over my enemies, For I delight in Your salvation. There is no one holy like the Lord; There is no one besides You; Nor is there any Rock like our God. (1 Samuel 2:1–2)
Pause to offer your own expressions of thanksgiving.
Closing Prayer
The Lord will keep me from all evil; He will preserve my soul. The Lord will watch over my coming and going From this time forth and forever. (Psalm 121:7–8)
The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you And be gracious to you; The Lord turn His face toward you And give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)
The God of hope will fill me with all joy and peace as I trust in Him, so that I may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)
Boa, K. (1993). Handbook to prayer: praying scripture back to God. Atlanta: Trinity House.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. (4:13–14)
The first negative response to God’s will is foolishly ignoring it, living as if God did not exist or was indifferent to and benign toward human behavior. James addressed such people in familiar Old Testament prophetic style (cf. Isa. 1:18); his words come now are an insistent, even brash call for attention. They also indicate disapproval for the conduct they address. James is in effect saying “Listen up!” or “Get this!” The phrase come now appears in the New Testament only here and in 5:1. The targets of James’s rebuke are those who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” The Greek text literally reads “the ones who are saying,” indicating people who habitually live without regard for God’s will. The underlying Greek verb, legō, means to say something based on reason or logic. James rebuked those who habitually think through and articulate their plans as if God did not exist or care (cf. 4:11–12). The specific illustration James chose was one that would have been familiar to his readers. Many Jewish people dispersed throughout the ancient world were successful businessmen, itinerant merchants who naturally sought out the flourishing trade centers in which to do business. Wise planning and strategizing in business is not, of course, sinful in and of itself but commendable. No spiritual principles are violated by anything the businessmen said. The problem lies in what they did not do. They did extensive planning, but in the course of their planning, they totally ignored God; God was not part of their agenda. Like Satan’s five self-centered “I wills” (Isa. 14:13–14) that caused his fall, the businessmen’s statement contains five presumptuous elements indicating their ill-advised confidence. First, they chose their own time, today or tomorrow. Second, they chose their own location for doing business, such and such a city. Third, they chose their own duration, deciding to spend a year there. Fourth, they chose their own enterprise, to engage in business (literally, “to travel into an area for trade”). Finally, they chose their own goal or objective, to make a profit. James is not attacking their profit motive, but their exclusion of God. Allowing for no contingencies, they planned as if they were omniscient, omnipotent, and invulnerable. In Luke 12:16–21 the Lord Jesus Christ told a parable illustrating the folly of presumptuously leaving God out of one’s planning:
And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
In verse 14, James gives two important reasons those who presumptuously leave God out of their planning are foolish. First, James says to such people, You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. Like the rich fool in our Lord’s parable, they were ignorant of the future. Proverbs 27:1 expresses the same principle: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.” Life is far from simple. It is a complex matrix of forces, events, people, contingencies, and circumstances over which we have little or no control, making it impossible for anyone to ascertain, design, or assure any specific future. Despite that, some people foolishly imagine that they are in charge of their lives. Sadly, such people ignore not only the existence of God’s will, but also its benefit. Christians have the comfort of knowing that the sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent God of the universe controls every event and circumstance of their lives and weaves them all into His perfect plan for them (Rom. 8:28). David wrote, “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it” (Ps. 37:3–5). In a similar vein, Solomon wrote, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5–6). James gave those tempted to do so a second reason that leaving God out of one’s planning is foolish: the brevity of life. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while, James reminded them, and then vanishes away. Life is as transitory as a puff of smoke from a fire; the steam that rises from a cup of coffee; or one’s breath, briefly visible on a cold day. How foolish, in light of the brevity and frailty of earthly life, to plan and live it without consideration for God’s will. The Bible repeatedly stresses the shortness of human life. Job, possibly the first book of Scripture to be written, says much about life’s ephemeral nature. In 7:6 Job lamented, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and come to an end without hope,” while in 7:9 he added, “When a cloud vanishes, it is gone, so he who goes down to Sheol [the abode of the dead] does not come up.” “We are only of yesterday and know nothing,” said Job’s friend Bildad the Shuhite, “because our days on earth are as a shadow” (8:9). Continuing his lament, Job said, “Now my days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. They slip by like reed boats, like an eagle that swoops on its prey” (9:25–26). Job’s complaint to God in 14:1–2 aptly summarizes the frailty and brevity of human existence: “Man, who is born of woman, is short-lived and full of turmoil. Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain.” The Psalms also stress the transitory nature of human life. “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,” wrote Moses, “or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away” (Ps. 90:10). “My days are like a lengthened shadow,” the psalmist mourned, “and I wither away like grass” (Ps. 102:11). Summing up the Bible’s teaching on the brevity of human life, David wrote, “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer” (Ps. 103:15–16; cf. Isa. 40:6–8; 1 Pet. 1:24). Their ignorance of the future and the frailty and brevity of human life should give pause to those who foolishly ignore God’s will.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1998). James (pp. 231–233). Moody Press.
Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. If we have no idea what the immediate future will bring us, then what is the purpose of life? The writer of Ecclesiastes repeatedly mentions life’s brevity and characteristically comments on the meaninglessness of man’s pursuit of material possessions. Nevertheless, at the conclusion of his book he states the purpose of life: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Eccl. 12:13). Seventeenth-century British theologians asked, “What is the chief end of man?” And they answered, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” The merchants James addresses have not asked about the meaning and duration of life. They have neglected the counsel of Solomon: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Prov. 27:1). They talk about the future with absolute certainty. Yet they have no control over it. They live their life but fail to inquire into its purpose. They are blind and ignorant. James compares human life to a mist that quickly appears and then disappears. What is a mist? Nothing but vapor that vanishes before the rising sun. It is frail and lacks durability (compare Ps. 39:6, 11; 102:3; Hos. 13:3). Moses, who lived to be 120 years old, wrote a prayer in which he said, The length of our days is seventy years— or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. [Ps. 90:10]
Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of James and the Epistles of John (Vol. 14, pp. 147–148). Baker Book House.
I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! O fear the Lord, you His saints, For those who fear Him lack nothing. (Psalm 34:8–9)
I thank You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, And my soul knows it full well. (Psalm 139:14)
All Your works will praise you, O Lord, And Your saints will bless You. They will speak of the glory of Your kingdom And talk of Your power, So that all men may know of Your mighty acts And the glorious majesty of Your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, And Your dominion endures through all generations. (Psalm 145:10–13)
Blessed are You, O Lord, God of Israel, our father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for everything in heaven and earth is Yours. Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom, and You are exalted as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You are the ruler of all things. In Your hand is power and might to exalt and to give strength to all. Therefore, my God, I give You thanks and praise Your glorious name. (1 Chronicles 29:10–13)
Pause to express your thoughts of praise and worship.
Confession
God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has resisted Him without harm? (Job 9:4)
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity And in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to You And did not hide my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” And You forgave the guilt of my sin. (Psalm 32:1–5)
Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has injured us but He will bind up our wounds. After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live before Him. (Hosea 6:1–2)
Ask the Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the Lord and thank Him for His forgiveness.
I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins. (Isaiah 43:25)
This is what the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation; In quietness and trust is your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)
Renewal
Lord, renew me by Your Spirit as I offer these prayers to You:
May I not profane Your holy name, but acknowledge You as holy before others. You are the Lord, who sanctifies me. (Leviticus 22:32)
May I be a person of faith, who does not doubt the promises of God, and not a double-minded man, who is unstable in all his ways. (James 1:6, 8)
May I abound in love and faith toward the Lord Jesus and to all the saints. (Philemon 5)
May I be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 2:1)
Pause to add your own prayers for personal renewal.
Petition
Father, using Your word as a guide, I offer You my prayers concerning my love for others.
Concerning love, You have said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:37–40)
Whatever I want others to do to me, may I also do to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy; love does not boast, it is not arrogant, it does not behave rudely; it does not seek its own, it is not provoked, it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4–8)
May I love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me. (Matthew 5:44)
May I be an imitator of God as a beloved child, and walk in love, just as Christ loved me and gave Himself up for me as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1–2)
May I sanctify Christ as Lord in my heart, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks me to give the reason for the hope that is in me, but with gentleness and respect. (1 Peter 3:15)
I should walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of every opportunity. My speech should always be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that I may know how to answer each person. (Colossians 4:5–6)
Is this not the fast You have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the cords of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke? Is it not to share our food with the hungry And to provide the poor wanderer with shelter; When we see the naked, to clothe him, And not to turn away from our own flesh? Then our light will break forth like the dawn, And our healing will quickly appear, And our righteousness will go before us; The glory of the Lord will be our rear guard. Then we will call, and the Lord will answer; We will cry, and He will say, “Here I am.” (Isaiah 58:6–9)
May I not let any corrupt word come out of my mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may impart grace to those who hear. May I not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom I was sealed for the day of redemption. May I put away all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander, along with all malice. And may I be kind and compassionate to others, forgiving them just as God in Christ also forgave me. (Ephesians 4:29–32)
May I do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility may I esteem others as more important than myself. Let me look not only to my own interests, but also to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3–4)
May I be of one mind with others and be sympathetic: loving them as brothers and sisters, being compassionate and humble. May I not return evil for evil or insult for insult, but blessing instead, because to this I was called, that I may inherit a blessing. (1 Peter 3:8–9)
Pause here to express any additional personal requests, especially concerning relationships with others:Greater love and compassion for others Loved ones Those who do not know Christ Those in need
My activities for this day Special concerns
Intercession
Lord, I now prepare my heart for intercessory prayer for evangelism.
May I devote myself to prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. I pray that God may open to me a door for the word, so that I may speak the mystery of Christ and proclaim it clearly, as I ought to speak. (Colossians 4:2–4)
I pray that words may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. (Ephesians 6:19)
In the spirit of these passages, I pray for those who do not know Christ:Friends Relatives Neighbors Coworkers Special opportunities
Affirmation
Feed my mind and heart, O Lord, as I affirm these truths from Your word concerning my life in Christ:
You have shown me what is good; And what does the Lord require of me But to act justly and to love mercy And to walk humbly with my God? (Micah 6:8)
Though I walk in the flesh, I do not war according to the flesh. The weapons of my warfare are not fleshly, but divinely powerful to overthrow strongholds, casting down arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:3–5)
May I not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but of the world. And the world and its lusts are passing away, but the one who does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15–17)
I will not lay up for myself treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But I will lay up for myself treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where my treasure is, there my heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19–21; Luke 12:34)
I make it my ambition to please the Lord, whether I am at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:9–10)
Pause to reflect upon these biblical affirmations.
Thanksgiving
For who You are and for what You have done, accept my thanks, O Lord:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven for us who through faith are guarded by the power of God for salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3–5)
Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is nothing on earth I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:25–26)
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 42:11)
I call this to mind, And therefore I have hope: The Lord’s mercies never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:21–23)
Pause to offer your own expressions of thanksgiving.
Closing Prayer
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
God is able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or think, according to His power that is at work within us. To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever. (Ephesians 3:20–21)
Boa, K. (1993). Handbook to prayer: praying scripture back to God. Atlanta: Trinity House.
A CONTENTED PERSON IS STRENGTHENED BY DIVINE POWER
I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. (4:13)
No matter how difficult his struggles may have been, Paul had a spiritual undergirding, an invisible means of support. His adequacy and sufficiency came from his union with the adequate and sufficient Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20). When Paul wrote I can do all things he had in mind physical, not spiritual things. Ischuō (I can do) means “to be strong,” “to have power,” or “to have resources.” It is variously translated “overpowered” (Acts 19:16), “prevailing” (Acts 19:20), and “effective” (James 5:16). The Greek text emphasizes the word translated all things (a reference to physical needs; cf. vv. 11–12) by placing it first in the sentence. Paul was strong enough to endure anything through Him who strengthen[ed] him (cf. 1 Tim. 1:12; 2 Tim. 4:17). The apostle does not, of course, mean that he could physically survive indefinitely without food, water, sleep, or shelter. What he is saying is that when he reached the limit of his resources and strength, even to the point of death, he was infused with the strength of Christ. He could overcome the most dire physical difficulties because of the inner, spiritual strength God had given him. In the words of Isaiah,
He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary. (Isa. 40:29–31)
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this truth in Paul’s life comes from 2 Corinthians 12:7–10:
Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul was tormented by a “thorn in the flesh,” most likely a demon who was behind the false teachers tearing up his beloved church in Corinth. This was the worst of all trials for him, because of his “concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28). He repeatedly begged the Lord to deliver him from the torment of that demonic attack on the church. But instead of delivering him, the Lord pointed Paul to the sufficiency of His grace. Contentment comes to believers who rely on the sustaining grace of Christ infused into believers when they have no strength of their own. In that sense, contentment is a by-product of distress. Lest any doubt the sufficiency of Christ’s strengthening power, it is the same power Paul described in his prayer in Ephesians 3:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.… Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us. (Eph. 3:14–16, 20)
God’s power that indwells believers is far more than sufficient to strengthen and sustain them in any trial. Contentment belongs to those who confidently trust in that power rather than in their own resources. Jeremiah Burroughs observes,
A Christian finds satisfaction in every circumstance by getting strength from another, by going out of himself to Jesus Christ, by his faith acting upon Christ, and bringing the strength of Jesus Christ into his own soul, he is thereby enabled to bear whatever God lays on him, by the strength that he finds from Jesus Christ.… There is strength in Christ not only to sanctify and save us, but strength to support us under all our burdens and afflictions, and Christ expects that when we are under any burden, we should act our faith upon him to draw virtue and strength from him. (The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, 63)
It is important to note that only those who live lives of obedience to God’s will can count on His power to sustain them. Those whose continued sin has led them into the pit of despair cannot expect God to bring them contentment from their circumstances. In fact, He may even add to their difficulties to chasten them and bring them to repentance. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones compares the flow of God’s power into the believer’s life to the issue of physical health:
Now I suggest that that is analogous to this whole subject of power in one’s life as a Christian. Health is something that results from right living. Health cannot be obtained directly or immediately or in and of itself. There is a sense in which I am prepared to say that a man should not think of his health as such at all. Health is the result of right living, and I say exactly the same thing about this question of power in our Christian lives. Or let me use another illustration. Take this question of preaching. No subject is discussed more often than power in preaching. “Oh, that I might have power in preaching,” says the preacher and he goes on his knees and prays for power. I think that that may be quite wrong. It certainly is if it is the only thing that the preacher does. The way to have power is to prepare your message carefully. Study the Word of God, think it out, analyse it, put it in order, do your utmost. That is that message God is most likely to bless—the indirect approach rather than the direct. It is exactly the same in this matter of power and ability to live the Christian life. In addition to our prayer for power and ability we must obey certain primary rules and laws. I can therefore summarise the teaching like this. The secret of power is to discover and to learn from the New Testament what is possible for us in Christ. What I have to do is to go to Christ. I must spend my time with Him. I must meditate upon Him, I must get to know Him. That was Paul’s ambition—“that I might know Him.” I must maintain my contact and communion with Christ and I must concentrate on knowing Him. What else? I must do exactly what He tells me. I must avoid things that would hamper. If in the midst of persecution we want to feel as Paul felt, we must live as Paul lived. I must do what He tells me, both to do and not to do. I must read the Bible, I must exercise, I must practise the Christian life, I must live the Christian life in all its fullness. (Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965], 298–99)
God’s power will bring contentment to those who have no strength of their own, but only if they have been living righteously. There is no quick fix, no shortcut to contentment. It comes only to those strengthened by divine power, and that divine power does not come from counselors, therapy, or self-help formulas, but only from consistent godly living.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2001). Philippians (pp. 302–305). Moody Press.
Paul, then, is saying that in every particular circumstance as well as in all circumstances generally he has learned the secret of contentment. The cause that accounts for this soul-sufficiency, that is, the Person who taught and is constantly teaching him this secret, is indicated in the words, I can do all things in him who infuses strength into me. Surely, a wonderful testimony! Whatever needs to be done Paul can do, for he is in Christ (Phil. 3:9), being by the indwelling presence of Christ’s Spirit and by Spirit-wrought faith in vital union and intimate fellowship with his Lord and Savior. Christ’s grace is sufficient for him and his power rests on him (2 Cor. 12:9). This wonderful Helper is standing by him (2 Tim. 4:17) as the great Enabler (1 Tim. 1:12). The Lord is for Paul the Fountain of Wisdom, encouragement, and energy, actually infusing strength into him for every need. It is for that reason that the apostle is even able to say. “Wherefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions and frustrations, for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
Hendriksen, W., & Kistemaker, S. J. (1953–2001). Exposition of Philippians (Vol. 5, p. 206). Baker Book House.
“Repentance is not a ritual to be performed; it is a life posture. It is not merely about stopping bad habits; it is about embracing God’s mercy and surrendering our lives to Him. It is not something we muster up by our own strength; it is a gift that flows from God’s love, drawing us to Himself.”
One of the most remarkable and yet most neglected themes in Scripture is the call to repentance. In the prophets of the Old Testament, we see God’s people repeatedly summoned to turn—not simply to behave better or to correct their actions, but to turn back to God Himself. It was always relational: a call to restoration, not just reform.
Yet even today, repentance is often compromised in the way it is understood, presented, and practised within the church.
Why Repentance Matters
Repentance sits at the very heart of the Christian message. The Bible unfolds the staggering story of God’s grace in rescuing a fallen humanity. Since the fall in Genesis 3, the human condition has been marked by rebellion against God—a rebellion that is not merely behavioural, but deeply relational. We do not first stand neutral before God, awaiting an introduction; we are spiritually dead and estranged from Him.
Into this broken story, God speaks His love. In Christ, He takes the initiative to reconcile us to Himself—paying the penalty for our rebellion, breaking sin’s power, and making possible a restored relationship between Creator and creature. Because God doesn’t merely invite us to His side, but pursues our hearts through His providence and mercy, our response must be more than a superficial adjustment. It must be a true turning—not just of actions, but of direction, affection, and allegiance.
Repentance, then, is not an optional add-on to the Christian life. It is an essential response—the appropriate and inevitable reaction to God’s gift of grace. Without it, we miss the very heart of the Gospel.
How Repentance Gets Compromised
We compromise repentance whenever we lose sight of God’s initiative and instead make repentance about us. When the focus shifts from God’s heart toward ours, repentance becomes a task we perform rather than a posture we receive. We begin to think:
“Repentance is something I must muster up.”
“If I make myself sorry enough, then God will respond.”
“Repentance earns grace.”
But this is a distortion of the Gospel. To imagine God waiting for us to pull ourselves together before He shows mercy is to misunderstand the nature of grace entirely. It’s like imagining a fiancé who pursues someone over many years, only for the other person to think, “Now that you’ve earned my love, I’ll let you marry me.” Repentance is not something God earns from us; it is a response to God’s already-won love.
In the Old Testament, this distortion took many forms. In Hosea, Israel’s repentance was often superficial—words and rituals without the true turning of the heart. They offered sacrifices and performed religious acts, but they did not turn to God in genuine trust and affection. God Himself declared that He desired steadfast love and knowledge of Him more than external ritual.
Repentance Is a Turn To, Not Merely a Turn From
At its core, repentance is relational. It is not primarily about turning away from sin as if that alone makes us acceptable to God. Instead, it is about turning to God Himself—acknowledging His glory, His purposes, and His mercy extended to us in Christ. Repentance is a response to God’s loving pursuit of us.
This distinction matters. True repentance does involve a turning from sin—but that turning becomes a fruit of our turning to God. When someone truly embraces God’s mercy, the direction of their life inevitably changes. But the beginning of repentance is always toward God, not merely away from wrong things.
Sadly, when repentance is compromised, it becomes understandable only as improved behaviour. It becomes a checklist of actions—a list of things to stop doing and start doing. But the prophets remind us that turning from sin without turning to the Lord can be hollow. Israel in Hosea could recite religious devotion convincingly, yet their hearts remained distant from God.
What True Repentance Looks Like
So what is true repentance when it is uncompromised?
1. It begins with God’s initiative. Repentance is not something we produce independently of God. Scripture emphasises that God’s kindness leads us to repentance—that it is the work of God’s Holy Spirit in our hearts that awakens us to our need of Him.
2. It is a relational turning. True repentance is about re-orienting the heart toward God. It acknowledges that sin is not merely hurtful behaviour but a rejection of God’s lordship and goodness. This aligns with the biblical emphasis that repentance involves turning toward God in trust and love.
3. It is humble and empty-handed. When we come to God repentant, we bring nothing of our own merit—no self-improvement, no spiritual checklist. We come with a recognition that we are entirely dependent on His mercy, like children coming home or an orphan entering the embrace of a loving Father.
4. It leads to life-changing transformation. While repentance begins with turning toward God, it naturally results in change—a life increasingly shaped by holiness, love, and obedience. But these fruits are the result of our turning to God, not the cause of His pardon.
Repentance and the Gospel Today
We live in a culture where the idea of repentance is often misunderstood or minimised. In some Christian circles, it’s relegated to a vague sense of “being sorry” or “feeling bad about sin.” But the Bible calls us to something deeper: a radical turn of heart to God, recognising His grace in Christ and responding with trust and obedience.
Repentance is not a ritual to be performed; it is a life posture. It is not merely about stopping bad habits; it is about embracing God’s mercy and surrendering our lives to Him. It is not something we muster up by our own strength; it is a gift that flows from God’s love, drawing us to Himself.
Whether we are encountering God for the first time or walking with Him for many years, the call is the same: turn to Him with an open heart, trust Him with your life, and let Him be your all. In that turn, we find not only forgiveness, but intimacy with the God who loves us beyond measure.
The renowned theologian Karl Barth famously spoke of the need of the believer to hold a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. But he also insisted that it was the Bible that should be used to help us understand the events recorded in the daily news, and not the other way around.
My own website of course has taken this to heart. It obviously looks at culture in great detail and in its various aspects, but it seeks to do so from the standpoint of biblical revelation. And ultimately it seeks to share the good news of Christ with others. As I state on my website:
[CultureWatch] offers reflection and commentary drawing upon the wealth of wisdom found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It offers reflective and incisive commentary on a wide range of issues, helping to sort through the maze of competing opinions, worldviews, ideologies and value systems. It will discuss critically and soberly where our culture is heading.
There is nothing new in seeking to assess – and reach – the surrounding culture in such a way. It has been happening since the earliest days of Christian mission. Simply think of Paul’s missionary approach in Athens as recorded in Acts 17:16-34. He sought to find common ground with those he interacted with at the Areopagus (Mars Hill) in order to best share Jesus Christ with them.
Believers over the past two millennia have been seeking to do the same, with entire libraries now holding books by theologians, missionaries, apologists and Christian leaders discussing such matters. And the gist of the matter is this: we have an unchanging gospel, but we have changing cultures. So how can we best reach each new generation with the everlasting Christian message?
Here I want to simply draw your attention to a couple of recent witnesses and their thoughts on this issue.
Lesslie Newbigin
My first key thinker on this is the noted British missiologist and theologian Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998). One of his very important books is Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel in Western Culture (Eerdmans, 1986). This volume grew out of the Warfield lectures he gave at Princeton Theological Seminary in early 1984.
After being a missionary in India for almost four decades, he experienced real culture shock when he returned to England. He explains in Chapter 1 (“Post-Enlightenment Culture as a Missionary Problem”) what his concerns are:
My purpose in these chapters is to consider what would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and the culture that is shared by the peoples of Europe and North America, their colonial and cultural offshoots, and the growing company of educated leaders in the cities of the world—the culture which those of us who share it usually describe as “modern.” The phenomenon usually called “modernization,” which is being promoted throughout much of the Third World through the university and technical training network, the multinational corporations, and the media, is in fact the co-option of the leadership of those nations into the particular culture that had its origin among the peoples of western Europe. For the moment, and pending closer examination of it, I shall simply refer to it as “modern Western culture.”
The angle from which I am approaching the study is that of a foreign missionary. After having spent most of my life as a missionary in India, I was called to teach missiology and then to become a missionary in a typical inner-city area in England. This succession of roles has forced me to ask the question I have posed as the theme of this book: What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call “modern Western culture”? (p. 1)
His entire volume is crucial reading, but one more quote near the end of the book is also worth sharing here:
The church is the bearer to all the nations of a gospel that announces the kingdom, the reign, and the sovereignty of God. It calls men and women to repent of their false loyalty to other powers, to become believers in the one true sovereignty, and so to become corporately a sign, instrument, and foretaste of that sovereignty of the one true and living God over all nature, all nations, and all human lives. It is not meant to call men and women out of the world into a safe religious enclave but to call them out in order to send them back as agents of God’s kingship. (p. 124)
Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World by Gould, Paul M. (Author), J. P. Moreland (Foreword)
Paul M. Gould
My second author is Christian philosopher and apologist Paul Gould. Some years ago he penned a significant volume titled Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World (Zondervan, 2019).
Not surprisingly, Gould appeals to Newbigin early on. He writes:
In the year 1936, a twenty-seven-year-old man named Lesslie Newbigin set out from England for India to share Christ among the Hindus. Newbigin faithfully ministered in India for the next thirty-eight years. When he returned to his home country in 1974, he found it had become a drastically different country from the one he left. It was becoming increasingly a post-Christian nation, one in need of a fresh missionary encounter.
It was during this time that Newbigin wrote what is now considered a modern classic on mission, Foolishness to the Greeks. In his book, he explores the most crucial question of our time. He asks:
“What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call ‘modern Western culture’?”
This is the question to be asked of any post-Christian culture. Newbigin is interested in how we can talk to others about Jesus in a way that is understood by those becoming further and further removed from Christianity’s language and worldview. This is the “missionary encounter” Newbigin has in mind. And while Newbigin’s question is essential for us to answer today, it also leads us to an even bigger question: What do you make of Jesus Christ? Newbigin understood that every person in every culture is shaped by what sociologist Peter Berger calls “plausibility structures.” Berger says every culture has a collective mind-set, a collective imagination, and a collective conscience. This combined outlook shapes the culture’s view of the world and what is judged within the culture as plausible or implausible. Is this a genuine possibility . . . or just an outrageous idea?
Newbigin knew that we fail to have genuine missionary encounters if we fail to understand those we seek to reach with the gospel. Our words and our message must be understandable. In a post-Christian society, talk about Jesus is no different from talk about Zeus or Hermes. We sound foolish, and our beliefs appear implausible and meaningless.
How can we have a genuine missionary encounter in our culture? (pp. 19-20)
Gould describes cultural apologetics as “the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying.” (p. 21) The remainder of the book of course spells all this out in some detail.
In the book’s Appendix, he reminds us of Paul’s method at Mars Hill:
-First, Paul sought to understand the culture.
-Second, Paul identified a starting point from which to build a bridge to Jesus and the gospel.
-Third, Paul set out his case for Jesus and the gospel, addressing barriers to belief along the way.
-Finally, in a way his listeners could understand, Paul brought them to a place where they could consider the ultimate question: What do you make of Jesus Christ?
He continues:
These four bulleted “steps” can serve as a guide in applying the model set forth in this book to other cultures or subcultures. Faithful and meaningful evangelism and apologetics begin with under-standing. Like Paul, we must seek to understand those we hope to reach. Toward that end, Newbigin’s question is as good as any: What is the culture’s dominant way of perceiving, thinking, and living? We must also recognize the dominant culture-shaping institutions within any particular culture, as well as its sacred beliefs and plausibility structure. We must apply the insight of four-dimensional ministry to each culture we seek to reach. Importantly, the third (depth) and fourth (time) dimension point to the importance of global concerns and the call to “faithful presence” within the culture-shaping institutions, whatever they may be. This, of course, requires time, compassion, vision, money, cooperation, intellectual and moral virtue, and the grace of God.
By understanding a culture, possible starting points from which to build a bridge to Jesus and the gospel will become apparent… (pp. 217-218)
Yes correct. Several years ago I said this in an article:
Some things change in life. Some things do not change. Knowing which is which is vital. As to the former, people change. Cultures change. Societies change. But as to the latter, God does not change. The Christian gospel does not change. Our fundamental need as human beings does not change.
So how does the Christian know how best to present an unchanging gospel to a changing world? At the risk of oversimplifying things, when it comes to the gospel and our presentation of it, there have been three quite broad options to run with. They are:
-Keep the message and the methods the same – fundamentalist Christians.
-Keep the message but change the methods – evangelical Christians.
-Change the message and the methods – progressive Christians.
By considering the whole of the Gospel of Mark, we’ll observe real people as illustrations of the four kinds of heart-soils that either reject or receive the sown Word of God. Where do the Herodians and Pharisees fit in? What about Judas? Peter?…Mark situates these and the other persons in his Gospel to show you in flesh and blood the hearts that ground their faith or unbelief.
The Gospel of Mark is an incredible, fast-paced race to the cross to see who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. It’s often the first Gospel people will recommend to new readers of the Bible or to those interested in a short and salvifically sweet presentation of the gospel. From its brevity and other factors some will wrongly conclude that it’s low on Christology or on the Deity of Christ. This view mistakes brevity for superficiality. Such a view is badly mistaken. The Gospel of Mark is rich, deep, and wide of the treasures of the Kingdom of God.
As tempted as I am to explore the high Christology and high view of the Godness of Jesus, I will focus my literary efforts instead on the depth of discipleship. Mark justifies my approach, as I will demonstrate, through one of Jesus’ parables. A key theme in the Gospel of Mark is what true disciples look like. Arguably the most popular parable Jesus ever told is his Parable of the Sower. One of the intriguing features we observe by reading Matthew, Mark, and Luke is that Mattthew and Luke pervade with parables, whereas Mark’s Gospel contains very few by comparison. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells only four parables, possibly one or two more.[1]This is a very low number compared to the many we find in Matthew and Luke.
Book length is a factor for the difference. Mark has 16 (mostly short) chapters, whereas Matthew and Luke have, respectively, 28 and 24 (usually lengthy) chapters. But is length the only factor? I suggest not. I believe that Mark has narrowed the parables to a few, and has given one parable pride of place: The Parable of the Sower. This parable takes up 20 verses (when we combine both its telling and its interpretation), whereas the other three total 21 verses combined. The Parable of the Sower is the first parable mentioned in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus tells us that if we cannot understand this parable, we will fail to understand the others (4:13).
I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be in my mouth. My soul will make its boast in the Lord; The humble will hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me, And let us exalt His name together. (Psalm 34:1–3)
Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous; Praise is becoming to the upright. (Psalm 33:1)
As for me, I will always have hope, And I will praise You more and more. My mouth will tell of Your righteousness And of Your salvation all day long, Though I know not its measure. I will come in the strength of the Lord God; I will proclaim Your righteousness, Yours alone. Since my youth, O God, You have taught me, And to this day I declare Your wondrous deeds. (Psalm 71:14–17)
Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; Come before Him with joyful singing. The Lord, He is God. It is He who made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. I will enter Your gates with thanksgiving And Your courts with praise; I will give thanks to You and bless Your name. For the Lord is good And Your lovingkindness endures forever; Your faithfulness continues through all generations. (Psalm 100:1–5)
Pause to express your thoughts of praise and worship.
Confession
Have mercy on me, O God, According to Your loyal love; According to the greatness of Your compassion Blot out my transgressions. Wash me completely from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge. (Psalm 51:1–4)
Who can discern his errors? Cleanse me from hidden faults. Keep Your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, And innocent of great transgression. (Psalm 19:12–13)
Ask the Spirit to search your heart and reveal any areas of unconfessed sin. Acknowledge these to the Lord and thank Him for His forgiveness.
Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean; Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Cause me to hear joy and gladness, That the bones You have crushed may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins And blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from Your presence Or take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And uphold me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You. (Psalm 51:7–13)
Renewal
Lord, renew me by Your Spirit as I offer these prayers to You:
May I return to my God, Maintain mercy and justice, And wait on my God continually. (Hosea 12:6)
May I rejoice in my tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into my heart through the Holy Spirit who was given to me. (Romans 5:3–5)
May I rejoice in hope, persevere in affliction, and continue steadfastly in prayer. (Romans 12:12)
May I not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time I will reap a harvest if I do not give up. (Galatians 6:9)
Pause to add your own prayers for personal renewal.
Petition
Father, using Your word as a guide, I offer You my prayers concerning growth in holiness.
If I abide in You, and Your words abide in me, I can ask whatever I wish, and it will be done for me. By this is Your Father glorified, that I bear much fruit, showing myself to be Your disciple. As the Father has loved You, You also have loved me. May I abide in Your love. If I keep Your commandments, I will abide in Your love, just as You kept Your Father’s commandments and abide in His love. You have told me this so that Your joy may be in me and that my joy may be full. (John 15:7–11)
Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts, And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23–24)
O Lord, set a guard over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart turn aside to any evil thing. (Psalm 141:3–4a)
Direct my footsteps according to Your word, And let no iniquity have dominion over me. (Psalm 119:133)
May I be diligent to add to my faith, virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are mine in increasing measure, they will keep me from being barren and unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5–8)
I will not let sin reign in my mortal body that I should obey its lusts. Nor will I present the members of my body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but I will present myself to God as one who is alive from the dead and my members as instruments of righteousness to God. (Romans 6:12–13)
As an alien and a stranger in the world, may I abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against my soul. (1 Peter 2:11)
The works of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, revelries, and the like. Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:19–23)
May I put away all filthiness and the overflow of wickedness, and in meekness accept the word planted in me, which is able to save my soul. May I be a doer of the word and not merely a hearer who deceives himself. (James 1:21–22)
As I walk in the Spirit, I will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh; for they oppose each other, so that I may not do the things that I wish. But if I am led by the Spirit, I am not under the law. (Galatians 5:16–18)
Pause here to express any additional personal requests, especially concerning spiritual insight:Understanding and insight into the word Understanding my identity in Christ Who I am Where I came from Where I am going Understanding God’s purpose for my life
My activities for this day Special concerns
Intercession
Lord, I now prepare my heart for intercessory prayer for believers.
May your love abound more and more in full knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ—having been filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11)
Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in good health, even as your soul prospers. (3 John 2)
In the spirit of these passages, I pray for:Personal friends Those in ministry Those who are oppressed and in need Special concerns
Affirmation
Feed my mind and heart, O Lord, as I affirm these truths from Your word concerning my identity in Christ:
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, they have become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)
If I died with Christ, I believe that I will also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, cannot die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. In the same way, may I consider myself to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:8–11)
I did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but I received the Spirit of adoption by whom I cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself testifies with my spirit that I am a child of God. (Romans 8:15–16)
My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in me, whom I have from God, and I am not my own. For I was bought at a price; therefore may I glorify God in my body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)
Pause to reflect upon these biblical affirmations.
Thanksgiving
For who You are and for what You have done, accept my thanks, O Lord:
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High Will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust.” (Psalm 91:1–2)
The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1)
Lord, thank You that You have made these promises: For those who revere Your name, the Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in His wings. And they will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. (Malachi 4:2)
Because I love You, You will deliver me; You will protect me, for I acknowledge Your name. I will call upon You, and You will answer me; You will be with me in trouble, You will deliver me and honor me. With long life You will satisfy me And show me Your salvation. (Psalm 91:14–16)
Pause to offer your own expressions of thanksgiving.
Closing Prayer
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23:6)
Every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea and all that is in them, will sing: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb Be blessing and honor and glory and power For ever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13)
May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip us in every good thing to do His will, working in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. (Hebrews 13:20–21)
Boa, K. (1993). Handbook to prayer: praying scripture back to God. Atlanta: Trinity House.
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