Perspective on the Unseen

To hold a biblical perspective on reality is to affirm that there is more to reality than what meets the eye. In fact, what you don’t see matters far more than what you do see. Paul writes, “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). It’s not that the present universe isn’t important, it’s just that we need to be repeatedly reminded that all of the current physical creation “will perish,” and that God “will change it like a robe,” but the Lord and his people “will have no end” (Psalm 102:25-28). It might be compared to your computer. There is a lot you can physically see, touch and analyze – you can test the power supply, touch the memory chips, and dissect the motherboard – but far more important, is the data which resides on and is expressed through the hardware. Those digital realities are what really matter to us. That is what we value. That is what we will carefully preserve and keep to transcend the limited lifespan of our aging and soon-to-be-outdated laptops. The Bible asserts that the physical world was created by our non-physical God, as a vehicle to embody and express the unseen spirits of men, women and children. As others have rightly said, “you do not have a spirit; you are a spirit, who has a body.” And because of the sentence of sin, the bodies we have will continue to age on this decaying planet while we and it “wait with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” to be “set free from bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:19-21).

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

Vigilant Living

There is a kind of sober, vigilant, circumspect mindset that the Scripture consistently promotes and calls his people to maintain. Paul rebukes the Corinthians both metaphorically and literally: “Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning” (1 Corinthians 15:34). That groggy, kick-back, chill-out attitude, which seems to hold sway in affluent church cultures during peacetime has no place among Christians at any time or in any age. Christ’s followers must always be alert, cognizant of their spiritual enemies, and on the lookout for those strategic opportunities to advance the kingdom of God, in order to push back those stubborn and insidious “gates of hell” (Matthew 16:18). This is why the Bible regularly calls us to sustain a watchful and attentive attitude. Notice how the Holy Spirit exhorts us: “Let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6). That particular exhortation is quickly followed by a military analogy that begins by again calling us to “be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thessalonians 5:8). We can be certain that whatever works to desensitize our thinking or lulls us into some level of passivity is positively not from God. The Spirit’s influence on your life is always going to lead you to be “preparing your mind for action” and beckon you to be “sober-minded” (1 Peter 1:13). So stay focused and alert, ready for whatever God has for you to face today.

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

Parenting

Parenting is hard work. Particularly because we are called by God to direct and correct young human beings who are born sinners (Psalm 51:5), by nature chafe against the instructions of God (Romans 8:7; 1 Corinthians 2:14), and are obstinately focused on pleasing their own selfish appetites (Ephesians 2:3). And yet, even from the youngest of years, this work to curtail, limit, shape and redirect young rebellious lives is precisely what God requires us to do (Ephesians 6:4; Proverbs 22:15). Of course, our ultimate goal is to bring them to a mature understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but at the same time, throughout each season of immaturity our job is to reign in, curb and restrain their innate impulses to do what is sinful (1 Samuel 3:13). For even before the transforming work of regeneration takes place, “a child makes himself known by his acts” (Proverbs 20:11) and parents are evaluated by either the submission or the insubordination of their children (Titus 1:6). And considering the great personal costs to your child for his or her moral choices (Galatians 6:8), it makes sense that a mom or dad’s effort in this task is seen as the definitive measure of parental love (Proverbs 13:24). It should come as no surprise that when permissiveness characterizes a home, shame, regret and disgrace will surely follow (Proverbs 29:15). So if you are in the throes of correcting and corralling young sinners, take heart, your consistent, firm and loving discipline will reap a harvest of peace and righteousness (Proverbs 29:17).

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

Spiritual Sensitivity

The lenses of our eyes are extremely sensitive. It doesn’t take but a speck of dust to stop us in our tracks so that we can delicately and diligently work to extract the irritating particle. That’s what makes Christ’s illustration concerning the undetected “log in our eye” such an extreme indictment regarding our moral and spiritual insensitivity. His analogy in Matthew 7 is intended to underscore our predisposition to maintaining a keen awareness regarding other people’s sins, while neglecting to ever critically evaluate ourselves. This can be seen in how we read the Bible – especially its many denunciations. How often do we read about God’s stinging rebukes or promised judgments on the doubting Israelites or the compromising nations, without ever pausing to see ourselves in those passages? How regularly do we read stories of disobedience to God and rebellion against his holy precepts, only to regretfully affirm God’s displeasure with someone else? This is a dangerous practice and one that we must ask God to help us overcome. We must be willing, first and foremost, to stare intently into God’s word as “a mirror” reflecting our own lives (James 1:22-25). We must linger over each Scriptural rebuke and allow God’s Spirit to “search the heart and test the mind” (Jeremiah 17:10). “Then,” Jesus said, “you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5).

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

True Truth

As many faithful defenders of the Christian faith have pointed out, the truths we speak of as Christians, are claims we assert to be “true truth”. We do not presume to be proffering religious preferences or personal values. We are boldly claiming that our statements regarding God, life, death, heaven, and hell are realities – “real realities”. Of course, that only pertains to those statements that accurately reiterate, reflect or replicate the statements we find in God’s word. “God’s word” – that is a big claim. But it’s one that we Christians allege can be backed up by the evidence we find on the pages of the Bible. It is no ordinary book. Actually, there is not another book like it. It was penned over a 1,500-year span and is generously punctuated by precise depictions of future events given years, decades, and in some cases even millennia before they happened. The Bible bears the marks of being a book that was ultimately “breathed out” by the only one who could have so specially “declared the end from the beginning” (2 Timothy 3:16; Isaiah 46:8-11). So if God himself was the governing force behind the production of this information, then we can and should be much more confident when we present biblical truths to our confused, conflicted and desperately needy society.

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

Sharing Meals

God can accomplish a lot of good in the lives of his people when they take their meals together. Think of how often throughout the Bible a feast, a banquet, a breakfast, lunch or dinner serves as the setting for some profound lesson, as an opportunity to give thanks, as a celebration of an important work of God, or simply as the setting for his people to deepen and strengthen their camaraderie as a spiritual family. From the festivals of Israel to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, common meals persistently reappear in the pages of Scripture as God’s means of doing something important and advantageous for his children. Sharing meals was not only a routine part of the church’s formal gatherings in the first-century, but it was also their practice to informally eat together in each other’s homes with glad and generous hearts (Acts 2:46). Often the encouragement, comfort, joy, thanksgiving and mutual support we need as Christians in the twenty-first century is deficient because we neglect this simple yet effective means of connecting and relating. So before you plan your menu for the week, or decide what errands you’ll run on your lunch breaks, make a couple of calls or send a couple of emails to see if you can’t take a few of those meals with some fellow disciples of Christ. It may just be the context God uses to do something good and important in your life.

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

Dependence

Comprehending something of our real and absolute dependence on God is foundational to everything in the Christian life. It is where Paul began with the Athenians when, after proclaiming that God was their Creator, he asserted that “he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). That is a kind of moment-by-moment, breath-by-breath involvement of God that seems to be easily forgotten by most Christians these days. And yet, this is certainly not because the Bible doesn’t persistently declare God’s involvement. We see it from the beginning, when it is said that humanity commenced with God’s personal issuance of “the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). It is sung in the Psalter of Israel that God himself “is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9). Job said that if God “should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together and man would return to the dust” (Job 34:14-15). Paul told the Colossians that it is Christ who “is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). So when we are tempted to think that the triune God is distant or disconnected from our lives, we need to remember that nothing could be further from the truth. He not only created us, he actively sustains us. Were he to ignore us, even for a moment, we would cease to exist. So then, especially as Christians, we must live with a perpetual awareness that God “is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27-28).

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