Charles Spurgeon, a 19th century pastor in England, was a “Prince of Preachers.”  With a command of the English language and insight on loan from God, he had a way of expressing truth that penetrates my mind and heart.  He wrote a book of daily devotionals, 2 per day, called “Morning and Evening.”  This morning’s reading was powerful insight into what prayer shows me about my own needs.

An excerpt from this morning’s devotional:  “The act of prayer teaches us our unworthiness, which is a very salutary lesson for such proud beings as we are.  If God gave us favours without constraining us to pray for them we should never know how poor we are, but a true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty.   While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness.”

If I am praying much and often, it tells me I realize God alone can grant me wants.  He alone can meet my needs.  And He is rich while I am poor.

Conversely, if I am not much in prayer, what does it tell me? First, that I will try to get what I want by myself, and that God either doesn’t care about what I want or He has no power to give me favor.  Secondly, it  tells me either God does not want to meet my needs, or I don’t even know what I need.  Thirdly, my lack of prayer is revealing on my view of the condition of my soul:  I think I am rich unto myself, not poor nor in need of the riches of God.

Lord, open my eyes today to my poverty. I am pained as I think about my lack of prayer and the message it speaks to me.   Help me to believe you WANT to satisfy my necessities.  Reveal to me my POVERTY and your RICHES so that I will be compelled to pray.  I don’t want to feel guilty for not praying.  I simply want to pray.  Make me desperate for you today, Lord. Just today. I cannot undo my lack of desperateness yesterday.   I cannot worry if’ I’ll be hungry for you tomorrow.  But open my eyes today to hunger and thirst for you, the Satisfier of souls, the Supplier of needs.

(If you want to read Spurgeon’s devotional in its entirety, paste this link into your browser.)

http://blueletterbible.org/morneve/10/1011am.html

Am I using the spiritual gift(s) God has given me?  Or am I flippantly ignoring and abusing them?  Either glory or shame results.

My study this morning in Romans 12:3-8 on spiritual gifts led me to Peter’s words. 1 Peter 4:10-11 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: ¹¹ whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

Here the Lord (through Peter) says that when I speak (e.g., teaching, encouraging a friend who is down, comforting a fellow Christian who is experiencing pain), I should do it as if I was speaking as God’s mouthpiece. How is that? Reverently, wisely, with a sacredness about it. Not flippant, sarcastic speech. Not crude talk or joking. Not carelessly. But as I were uttering words from God Himself.

When I serve, I should do it in the strength that God supplies. In other words, my service shouldn’t look like ordinary service that even a non-Christian would do in normal human strength. My service should look different in God’s power. A power displayed in a humility. Graciousness, with no strings attached, like, “I’m serving you, and I expect to be repaid.” Wholeheartedly, giving all the energy required, not reluctantly or with grumpiness.

Am I faithfully using the gifts God has given me? Am I being responsible with them? Verse 10 clearly says I am to be using them to serve my fellow believers. Am I?

Lord, show me what gifts you have given me. Then help me be a trustworthy son of yours, using your gifts in a responsible way to help your children. Help me speak with reverence. The tongue is a “restless evil, full of deadly poison,” (James 3:8), so help me to have pure, not poisonous, speech. And in my service, grant me grace to have your strength, your mighty power. The power to say “Yes” when I am tired. The strength to give when I have few resources of time or money or energy.

Today, Lord, remind me of the gifts I have been given, and empower me to use them so that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” Amen.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  (Romans 12:1)

Do I find myself lacking motivation for the Christian life?  Am I simply slogging through out of habit?  Am I feeling enslaved to sin, whether it’s laziness or lust or loose lips?  Or, instead, am I increasingly finding an inner drive and power that cannot be stopped or quenched?

This is Paul’s challenge here in Romans 12:1.  In view of God’s mercy– in view of His astonishing, amazing kindness in the face of our relentless and dominating stubbornness and fist-shaking rebellion– present your body to Him.  Present your whole being to God as the only logical, reasonable thing you can do.

How do we present ourselves to Him as living sacrifices?  Go back to chapter 6.  “Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”  (Rom 6:13)

Daily present your body to God as His tool for righteousness.  You belong to Him and to Him alone.  Don’t give yourself– i.e., “don’t present yourself”–  to enslaving passions like you did before.  Rather, live in the freedom and power of the gospel.  The old hymn, “Take my Life” expresses this daily offering well: “Take my life…my moments and days…my hands…my feet…my voice…my lips…my silver and gold…my intellect…my will…my heart…my love…take myself…it shall be no longer mine.”

Get down on your knees the first thing each morning and present yourself to God as His instrument for righteousness.  Your life belongs to Him, not to yourself, since He brought you back from the dead.  Since He showed you astonishing mercy.   2 Cor 5:15 says that “He died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again.”

May the greatest motivation of my life be the mercy of God!  Forsake presenting yourself to sin today.  Instead, present every part of your being to Him!

Ever felt guilty?  What did you do about it?  Read David’s description of his overwhelming guilt in Psalm 38:

“O Lord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath!  2 For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me.  3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin.  4 For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.”

What did David do to provoke such shame and mourning and heaviness?  He doesn’t reveal the specific sins, but he was consumed by them.

My first reaction to David is, “You shouldn’t feel guilty like that. It’s not right for a believer in Jehovah to feel so bad.  Why are you such a negative person?”  But is that the correct assessment?  Should we be so quick to deny David this Psalm?

As I read the Psalm, I realize that the difference between David and me is not that I never feel guilty.  The difference is that when I do, I am not as apt to run to the Lord in prayer, pouring out my heart to Him.  Rather, I am apt to run to myself or run to a friend and pour out my complaint or guilt to man.  Or I might say nothing and withdraw, simply bottling it all up inside.

David ran to the Lord. That’s what made him a man after God’s own heart.  Whether he faced guilt or shame or fear or anger, David always took it to the Lord.  That’s why the Psalms are so raw emotionally. I think, “David, you shouldn’t talk that way to the Lord.  It’s disrespectful and inappropriate.”  But the thing is, David takes it to the Lord.  Hiis complaining and anger and guilt is taken directly to God.  This is faith.  This is what a man after God’s own heart looks like.

The old hymn says,

“What a friend we have in Jesus,  All our sins and griefs to bear!

What a privilege to carry  Ev’rything to God in prayer!

Oh, what peace we often forfeit,  Oh, what needless pain we bear,

All because we do not carry  Ev’rything to God in prayer!”

David took it all to the Lord in prayer.  He let God bear his sins and griefs.  He forfeited no peace.  He bore no needless pain.   All because he carried everything to God in prayer.

Lord, today, prompt me with your Spirit to be aware of my inwardness, my independence, and my lack of faith.  Remind me to be like David, carrying everything to you in prayer:  my guiilt, my fears, my frustrations, and even my joy and happiness.  Like David in Ps 38:22,, “Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.“

I hate waiting in lines.  When I go to the bank or the store, I hate waiting in line.  I hate hitting all the red lights.   I feel like my life is wasting away.  I want to go, to move, to drive, to do.

Recent trials of back pain make me wait.  I have to wait on God.  I have to endure.  I have to learn patience.  And patience is that quality phrased in some Bibles as “long-suffering.”  Able to suffer long.   A friend recently joked and called me Job.  I smiled.  I’m hardly in Job’s league of enduring suffering.  Yet his joke helped me realize that any trials we have are a form of testing much like Job’s.  I sure hope I never experience anything to the level of Job, yet whatever the Lord brings or allows in my life will have the same effect:  to learn to wait.

Psalm 40:1-3 says, “I waited patiently for the Lord;  He inclined to me and heard my cry.  He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.  He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.  Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.”

While I despise the trial of pain itself, I long to have a walk with God like David.  And I long that others in this world would somehow see and fear God and put their trust in Him.

But I have to wait in Him.  One day at a time I have to wait.  Did I say I hated waiting? 

A dear woman in our church wrote a note to Annette and me Sunday that comforted my soul.  She and her husband have endured 1000 times the “waiting” that I have had to, so her words come from a sincere heart.  She quoted from a devotional by Charles Cowman called, “Streams in the Desert.”  An excerpt from it says this:

“Waiting is much more difficult than walking…

“Must life be a failure for one compelled to stand still in enforced inaction and see the great throbbing tides of life go by?  No; victory is then to be gotten by standing still, by quiet waiting. It is a thousand times harder to do this than it was in the active days to rush on in the columns of stirring life.  It requires a grander heroism to stand and wait and not lose heart and not lose hope, to submit to the will of God, to give up work and honors to others, to be quiet, confident and rejoicing, while the happy, busy multitude go on and away.  It is the grandest life “having done all, to stand.””

It requires a grander heroism to stand and wait and not lose heart.  Wow.

Lord, strengthen my soul to quietly wait for you.  Let me not lose heart.  Let me cling to you.  Let me keep my eyes on another world, a glorious world that is only a moment away.

We often live in defeat.  We live as if God didn’t love us.  We live with little power.  Honestly, we live just like everyone else does.

But this passage (Rom 8:28-39) is like smelling salts:  It wakes us from our slumber.  If we apply faith as this passage calls us to, we will live radically different lives.

Rom 8:37  “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

The phrase, “more than conquerors“ means to gain a surpassing victory.  Not just plain victory, but literally we are hyper–conquerors.   We are like a “winner on steroids“.  And a winner through and in Christ.

We are winners with Almighty God on our side (vs. 31).  We are winners with a God who won’t hesitate to give us whatever we need (vs. 32).  We are hyper-winners who are justified, aquitted, not guilty in Christ (vs. 33).  We are conquerors at peace with God and with no condemnation ever hanging over our heads (vs. 34).  We are overcomers who can never be separated from the incredible, passionate love God has for us (vs. 35).  We are hyper-conquerors over our greatest enemy:  death (vs. 39).

How do we win?  Christ.  Only and always Christ. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 15:57)

Albert Barnes says, ““We gain the victory.  That is, they have not power to subdue us;  to alienate our love and confidence; to produce apostasy.  We are the victors, not they.  Our faith is not destroyed; our love is not diminished; our hope is not blasted. But it is not simple victory; it is not mere life, and continuance of what we had before;  it is more than simple triumph;  it augments our faith, increases our strength, expands our love to Christ.”

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