Time Out! Devotions

1 Peter 5:6-7 (NIV)

⁶ Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. ⁷ Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.

Several weeks after one of my conferences, a friend shared with me the story of a dear Christian woman who had attended. She had lived in a deep depression for several years. She “survived” by leaning on her friends, three counseling sessions a week, and a variety of prescription drugs.

During the conference, this woman realized that her support system included everybody and everything but God. She had not cast her anxiety on Christ and she was anything but dependent on Him. She took her conference syllabus home and began focusing on her identity in Christ and expressing confidence in Him to meet her daily needs. She radically threw off all her other supports (a practice I do not recommend) and decided to trust in Christ alone to relieve her depression. She began living by faith in God, rather than men, and renewing her mind according to Scripture. After only one month, she was a completely different person. The support of a caring community can become a poor substitute for our own personal relationship with God.

Persons who want to move forward in Christian maturity can certainly benefit from the discipling of others. And those who seek freedom from their past can be helped through the counseling of others. But ultimately every Christian is responsible for his or her own maturity and freedom in Christ. Nobody can make you grow. That’s your decision and daily responsibility. We absolutely need God, and we also need the support of one another. Thankfully, none of us walks through the disciplines of personal maturity and freedom alone. The indwelling Christ is eagerly willing to walk with us each step of the way.

Prayer: Lord, I affirm my total dependence on You for daily growth, victory and freedom.

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Freedom in Christ

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(from Crosswalk.com)

Seven-year-old Mencia Abreu and her brothers, Alex—age five—and Ricky—age two—slept wherever their parents laid them down. Sometimes on the streets of Queens, New York. Sometimes in a shelter or a grimy room in a cheap hotel. They played in alleys, parking lots, and dark hallways that smelled of stale liquor.

But one day, the Abreu children’s fragile world was shattered when Jose, their dad, was arrested on drug charges. Suddenly they were fatherless as well as homeless.

In jail, Jose was devastated. Overwhelmed by guilt, he had no hope that he could ever make things right again.

Then, in his most desperate moment, Jose met the God of mercy and forgiveness. Jose accepted Christ as his savior.

He grew rapidly in his new faith and eagerly shared it with his wife, Mayra. But Mayra was hopelessly addicted to cocaine and wanted nothing to do with her husband’s Jesus.

But God had other plans.

On Christmas Eve, the Abreus heard a knock on the door. “There was a UPS guy with a big box,” Mayra explains. It said, “from Jose Abreu.” But how could that be? Jose was in jail. Then Mayra remembered Angel Tree.

The kids were ecstatic. There were gifts from Dad!

As Mayra recalls: “I cannot describe to you the joy that my children and I felt when we opened [the presents]. I thanked God right there. I cried, and went on my knees. This is when I knew that God loved me, and I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into my life.”

She also prayed that God would free her from her addiction to cocaine. And He did—believe it or not—on the spot.

That story took place 16 years ago. But even more amazing is what happened afterward. Reunited after Jose’s release, Mayra and Jose devoted their lives to serving prisoners and their families through Prison Fellowship and its great program Angel Tree. They even took children of prisoners into their home while their mothers were in prison, adopting numbers of them.

Jose went home to the Lord in 2008, but Mayra continues her work of love.  And it all started with a knock on the door—because someone cared enough to send Christmas gifts, and the Gospel, through Angel Tree.

This year, we need you to be part of the next miracle in someone’s life. We have an extraordinary challenge ahead of us. Churches across the country have committed to reach more than 300,000 prisoners’ kids with gifts and the Gospel this Christmas.

But as of right now, we have 50,000 children signed up for Angel Tree who live in remote areas of the country where there are no churches. And we need your help to reach them.

But you can help. Please go to AngelTree.org. For each donation you make of $35.20, we will send a prisoner’s child a Christmas gift, an age-appropriate book containing the Gospel, and actual greetings from their parent in prison.

When you go to AngelTree.org, you can even specify the age and gender of the child you’d like to reach. And of course, you can reach more than just one child if you are so led. It’s so simple, but so important.

And, like the Abreus, it can even bring a whole family into the kingdom of God.

James 5:17-18: Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (NIV)

In the preceding verse, James 5:16, James wrote: “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Now he explains how righteous Elijah prayed, as an example and encouragement to us. The story starts in 1 Kings 17:1 where Elijah confronts King Ahab (who has forsaken God) and tells him that God would stop the rain for three years. How did Elijah know? He would have known the Jewish law well, and God had said that if His people turned away from Him, He would stop the rain, the ground would become hard and the crops would not grow (cf Leviticus 26:18-20). So Elijah (a man of the Spirit and of prayer) would have prayed that God should keep His promise.

After three and a half years, God’s Spirit spoke to Elijah, telling him to announce that God was going to start the rain again (cf 1 Kings 18:1). And after a confrontation with the pagan prophets on Mount Carmel (cf 1 Kings 18:16-46), the rain started to fall. James says that Elijah was an ordinary man, but one who was right with God. The prophet knew what displeased God, and the penalty for such disobedience. So, in faith and supported by the Holy Spirit, he prayed that God would keep His promise.

Elijah’s story of earnest, persistent and effective prayer, at the end of the Letter of James, is in sharp contrast to the half-hearted, double-minded prayer at the beginning (cf James 1:6-8). The unstable man of chapter 1, does not receive anything from the Lord: the righteous man of chapter 5, sees the answer to his prayer. What makes the difference? Elijah was trusting that God’s Word was true and reliable, and that it was right to persist in asking God to fulfill His promises. Elijah’s secret was simple: first He read God’s Word, then he was grieved by godlessness, then he remembered God’s Word, then he prayed in accordance with God’s Word and believed that God would keep His promises. God’s answer was straightforward: “Yes!” Do you pray like that? Is that how you pray for your work colleagues, family and church? If not, get back into the Bible, and start trusting that God means what He says: then keep praying until God answers!

Prayer:

Almighty God. Thank You that I do not have to imagine what pleases You, because You tell me in the Bible. Help me to search the Scriptures so that I may pray effectively in line with your Word. May my passion to learn from Your Word each day grow so that I will become a stable and righteous Christian – able to pray effectively for my work colleagues, family, and church. For Jesus’ Christ’s sake. Amen.