Motives

What an amazing experience to have been a follower of Christ during his earthly ministry. Imagine sitting in the crowd listening to him teach, counsel and correct the world in which you lived. Consider the enormous privilege of being able to ask your specific questions and having God’s perfect wisdom delivered to you by the mouth of Christ himself. But even with all of that, Judas proved to be a traitor. He was given every advantage, including daily, personal communication with the incarnate Creator; yet Judas callously turned on Christ and betrayed him for a few thousand dollars. The Apostle John gives us some insight to Judas’ mind, as he recounts a scene from the defector’s life with Christ. He reveals that from the beginning Judas had been in it for all the wrong reasons (John 12:4-6). While at the time he seemed sincere enough to be trusted as the chief financial officer, and his loyalty was never doubted by the others (John 13:28-29), the truth was, he was a classic hypocrite. His goals were nefarious and his agenda was selfish. He did not have God’s interests in view, but instead he utilized his association with Christ as a means to his own self-serving ends. That is a scary reality – intimately acquainted with Jesus, but never on the same page, constantly associated with Christ, but never truly aligned. Judas’ life, if nothing else, should serve as a clarion call for us to reconsider our motives. His betrayal should remind us to always make certain that we are “in this” for the right reasons.

For more sermons and devotionals on God's Truth, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org

Supreme Relationship

Some of the most challenging words Christ ever spoke concerned the disastrous problem of allowing our relationships with loved ones to be of greater importance than our relationship with him. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” Jesus said, “and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). These words are discordant in the ears of today’s Christians who have been raised with the church’s relatively recent obsession with the family. Focusing on the family, “family radio” and the slew of “family-friendly” Christian services and ministries have led many to wrongly conclude that the apex of Christianity is some kind of idyllic family-centered life. But that is certainly not what we find in the Bible. The Scripture tells us that the only appropriate center for anyone’s life is the triune God. Every other interest, pursuit or relationship will ultimately fail in serving as the governing, central and chief love of a human heart. Only when God is the unrivaled focus and purpose of our soul will we be enabled to function as we ought in any area of life. Kids make for a lousy god. So do marriages. And so do careers, houses, reputations and good health. While we all enjoy the blessings of good families and all that may come with them, we must remember that we were made to exclusively worship and serve our Maker. We must never allow ourselves to love any of his gifts more than the Giver himself.

For more sermons and devotionals on God's Truth, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org

Doubt

It’s not just Thomas; every Christian has moments and even seasons of doubt. But the best prescription when doubts arise is to go back to Christ’s credentials and the reliability of the biblical documents. Consider the fact that our confidence is rooted in one who regularly pointed to how the entirety of his life perfectly fulfilled the ancient and exacting prophecies of Scripture (Luke 24:24-27). There is no avoiding the truth that the Old Testament manuscripts about the Messiah preceded their fulfillment by hundreds of years – several discoveries have repeatedly confirmed this fact. From his ancestral heritage (Jeremiah 23:5), the city of his birth (Micah 5:2), the time of his appearing (Daniel 9:24-27), to his death and resurrection (Isaiah 53:4-12), these and many other exacting prophecies show that Christ is not some random rabbi whose new religion happened to catch on. And because any motivated student can quickly research and discover that the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, which predicted the life and ministry of Christ, along with the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, that recorded his life and teachings, are the most broadly documented and best preserved and transmitted manuscripts in all of human history, it is hard to dismiss the foundation of Christianity because of some passing feelings of skepticism. An objective look at truth has a great way of dispelling our periodic doubts. So expect our spiritual enemy to inject doubt from time to time (that’s what he has been doing from the beginning), but respond with your own counterattack by going back to Christ’s credentials and the integrity of the biblical documents

For more sermons and devotionals on God's Truth, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org

Prayer Requests

Be careful what you repeatedly ask of God. You can’t always judge a prayer by its answer. While it’s true that many times in his kindness God withholds granting what we foolishly or selfishly request (James 4:3), there are plenty of biblical examples where God eventually grants the persistent yet imprudent prayers of his people. Consider Israel’s repeated cry for a king. “We want to be like every other nation!” they relentlessly sniveled. So at last God said, “Fine, here you go” (see 1 Samuel 8-9). God answered their prayer with exactly the type of leader they requested, but it certainly wasn’t in their best interest. We may think of God giving non-Christians over to their sin when they are obstinate in chasing what is wrong (Romans 1:24-28), but how often do we Christians doggedly pursue our own interests in our prayer lives without sincerely following Christ’s example of tempering every request with “…nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42)? We need to learn to be flexible in our asking. We must be honest and humble about our limitations. We may not know what is actually best. We need to be less obstinate concerning our prayer requests and more trusting that God may have a different path or some creative means to accomplish his will in our lives. So pray, and be specific, but always end your prayers with a malleable heart, which believes that God knows best how to lead and direct his children.

For more sermons and devotionals on God's Truth, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org