Real Love

Having spent years walking through Israel with Jesus, having listened to him teach, and having seen him heal the sick and even raise the dead, the Apostle John distilled Christ’s love into this intriguing statement: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16a). Without reference to any warm feelings or emotions, John elevates the painful sacrifice of Christ’s execution as his defining act of love. While the connection of biblical love with Christ’s tortuous death may sound familiar to experienced churchgoers, I would argue the paradox is often missed in the minds of modern Christians. Maybe we can more readily see it when we read the rest of John’s sentence: “…and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16b). As we imagine the biblical call to love our fellow Christians, I suspect we envision the joy and camaraderie of spiritual brothers and sisters happily encouraging each other over a meal or after a prayer meeting. I don’t think we visualize the pain of death. Yet, our call to “love” each other is a call to sacrifice our comfort, our freedoms, or our advantages for the good and benefit of others. This “dying” to ourselves and our own agendas comes incrementally when we love in the manner of Christ. But don’t miss the fact that those painful sacrifices are the essence of Christlike love. So don’t hold back today. Go the extra mile, stay the extra hour, or spend the extra dollar for the edification of a brother or sister in Christ.

For more sermons and devotionals on Real Love, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org. 

Giver of All Good

The Bible tells us that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17). God is certainly benevolent and generous to us. He gives a variety of good things, from the gift of life in a newborn baby, to the satisfying experience of a good meal after a long day’s work. No matter how profound or how seemingly mundane, the good we experience comes from the mind and intentionality of a good God. One of the reasons the connection between the good gifts and the generous Giver is so critically important to keep in mind is because, like spoiled and presumptuous children, we can easily become ingrates. Thanksgiving is not an extracurricular activity reserved for the deeply pious or the overly thoughtful. Being purposefully thankful is at the heart of true Christianity. To celebrate the redemption of Christ, or to be grateful for a good night’s sleep is a reflection of our awareness that God is God, and that we are utterly dependent on his kindness. So today, be cognizant of the blessings that God is dispensing in your life, and take the time to express your sincere gratitude to the Giver of all good things.

For more sermons and devotionals on the Giver of All Good, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org. 

Tree of Life

Proverbs 13:12 says that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” While that principle holds true for all varieties of hopes and desires, the ultimate hope of the Christian life is bound up in the arrival of Christ and his kingdom (Titus 2:13). That is one reason the “tree of life” finds a prominent place in the descriptions of our eternal home in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19). So then, if our supreme hopes and desires are in the right place we should expect that a healthy Christian life would always carry some palpable level of “heart sickness,” as we ache for the consummation of God’s eschatological plan. Paul often revealed his godly and mature “unsettled spirit” that “groaned” and “longed” to see us all “put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Corinthians 5:2). He knew that “to be with Christ” was “far better” than any pleasurable experience this world could possibly afford (Philippians 1:23). Therefore, if you sense you are growing in Christ, but can’t shake that blue sense of dissatisfaction about your present experience and the state of the world, rest assured your spiritual growth is right on track. That ache is a sign of your increasing maturity. Make sure it is tempered with a joyful anticipation, and don’t allow it to degenerate into bitterness. Be reminded each day that with the imminent arrival of our King, the definitive “tree of life” will be here before you know it.

For more sermons and devotionals on the Tree of Life, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org. 

Bearing Real Fruit

Jesus said, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). That kind of straightforward evaluation should not only be applied to “them,” but also to us. In the upper room, not long before his crucifixion, Jesus told his twelve apostles, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8). At that time, you’ll remember, one of the Twelve was secretly conspiring to betray Christ, cashing in his association with the Messiah for thirty pieces of silver. Judas wasn’t intent on bearing “much fruit,” instead he was busy keeping up appearances while working out his own selfish agenda. All too often people who associate with the church are adamant about publically “professing to know God,” while privately “denying him by their deeds” (Titus 1:16). Of course, no Christian has achieved sinlessness (1 John 1:8; James 3:2; Ecclesiastes 7:20), but we need to be honest with ourselves—fairly comparing our claims to follow Christ with an actual pattern of following him (2 Corinthians 13:5; 1 John 3:2-10). Genuine Christianity transforms lives (2 Corinthians 5:17). The indwelling Holy Spirit always conditions real disciples to repudiate hypocrisy, driving them to pursue the kind of bona fide fruit-bearing that demonstrates the reality of their faith.

For more sermons and devotionals on Bearing Real Fruit, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org. 

The God Who Is

God, by definition, is “Almighty.” In our desire to “humanize” God and relate to the softer and gentler side of Deity we often lose sight of the fact that the God who actually exists is a God who possesses all authority, all power, and all dominion. He is a Being who is unchallenged in his rank, sovereignty, and supremacy. He speaks things into existence, and at will chooses things to come to an end. There are times in life when we sense the profundity of this core truth with fresh insight—usually in some circumstance when we’ve reached the end of our own strength. Hannah, for instance, facing her own inability and experiencing God’s sovereign power over her reproductive life exhorts her generation: “Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth… The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts” (1 Samuel 3:3, 6-7). Don’t wait for some crisis or trial to sharpen your focus on the God who is. As the psalmist wrote, “Let the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm… Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you” (Psalm 33:8-9, Psalm 20-22).

For more sermons and devotionals on The God Who Is, please go to the Focal Point Ministries website at www.focalpointministries.org. 

Life's Detours

We all experience life’s detours—those unexpected twists and turns which disappoint and frustrate us because they’ve disrupted our well-laid plans. When the next one comes our way, let’s be careful how we respond. If the disappointment turns into anger and bitterness, then we know we’ve clearly lost sight of one of the central tenets of biblical Christianity—namely, that God is sovereign. Of course this is not some kind of fatalism that gives us license to rejoice in our failures or the sins that others commit against us. God’s sovereignty doesn’t preclude the fact that sin is sin and worthy of our regret and repentance. But it should keep us from wallowing in our hurt and becoming disgruntled when circumstances beyond our control take us down an unforeseen path that lands us in a place we didn’t want to go. In part because none of it was “unforeseen” to the God who loves us, and more importantly, because the “twists and turns”, we are told, are all a part of his wise plan to accomplish with our lives something better than our well-laid plans ever could (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28; Psalm 119:71; Proverbs 19:21; Acts 2:23-24; etc.). So let’s trust in our sovereign God and get over our disappointment quickly. He is working out a plan that will glorify himself, and will be good for us in the long run.

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

Fear of God

Here is one of the most simple, yet most serious warnings found in the Bible: “God is opposed to the proud” (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). The last thing we as God’s children should want is to dabble in the archetypal sin that was the initial cause of all the rebellion and corruption in the universe (Ezekiel 28:14-17). We are shown in God’s word that pride’s antithesis and remedy is the fear of the Lord (Romans 11:20; Jeremiah 44:10; Proverbs 8:13). For those who have repented of their sins and put their trust in Christ this fear is not the kind that dreads the punishment of hell (1 John 4:16-18). Instead, the fear of God that is considered a virtue in Scripture is a kind of humble awareness that our merciful Savior is also our omnipotent and omniscient Father—who will one day call us to give an account for our stewardship (1 Peter 1:16-17; 2 Corinthians 5:10-11; Romans 14:12). Because the idea of “fear” doesn’t harmonize well with the popular misconceptions of a domesticated god, many dismiss this essential virtue and important safeguard, thinking that it couldn’t possibly coexist with their quest to love God. But the truth is that “the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him” (Psalm 25:14), and any true knowledge of God is impossible to attain without it (Proverbs 9:10). So let us fight the subtle temptations to arrogance, pride, and self-promotion by humbly drawing near to God as we learn the fear of the Lord.

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