Time Out! Devotions

So give yourselves humbly to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. And when you draw close to God, God will draw close to you. Wash your hands you sinners, and let your hearts be filled with God alone to make them pure and true to Him. Let there  be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and sincere grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Then when you realize your worthlessness before the Lord, He will lift you up, encourage and help you.     (James 4:7-10)

How can you draw close to God? James gives five suggestions:

• “Give yourselves humbly to God.” Realize that you need His forgiveness, and be willing to follow Him.
• “Resist the devil.” Don’t allow him to entice and tempt you.
• “Wash your hands (lead a pure life) and let your hearts be filled with God.” Be cleansed from sin, replacing it with God’s purity.
• Let there be tears, sorrow, and sincere grief for your sins. Don’t be afraid to express deep heartfelt sorrow for them.
• “Realize your worthlessness.” Humble yourself before God and He will lift you up (1 Peter 5:6).
  

Don’t criticize and speak evil about each other, dear brothers. If you do, you will be fighting against God’s law of loving one another, declaring it is wrong. But your job is not to decide whether this law is right or wrong, but to obey it. Only He who made the law can rightly judge among us. He alone decides to save us or destroy. So what right do you have to judge or criticize others?     (James 4:11-12)

Jesus summarized the law as love to God and neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40), and Paul said love demonstrated towards a neighbor fully satisfies the law (Romans 13:8-10). When we fail to love, we are actually breaking God’s law.

Examine your attitudes and actions toward others. Do you build people up or tear them down? When you’re ready to criticize someone, remember God’s law of love and say something good about him or her instead. If you make this a habit, your tendency to find fault with others will diminish and your ability to obey God’s law will increase.

(from the Life Application Bible – Living Bible edition)

(continued from previous post)

But He said to me, “My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you.” So I am very happy to brag about my weaknesses. Then Christ’s power can live in me. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 – NCV)

We are tempted to wait to pray until we know how to pray. We’ve heard the prayers of the spiritually mature. We’ve read of the rigors of the disciplined. And we are convinced we’ve a long way to traverse.

And since we’d rather not pray poorly, we don’t pray. Or we pray infrequently. We are waiting to pray until we learn how to pray.

But the honest prayers of hurting people reach the very heart of God and provide the strength to make it through. God is moved more by our pain than by our eloquence. And He responds. That’s what fathers do.

That’s exactly what Jim Redmond did too.

His son, Derek, a twenty-six-year-old Briton, was favored to win the four-hundred-meter race in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Halfway into his semifinal heat, a fiery pain seared through his right leg. He crumpled to the track with a torn hamstring.

As the medical attendants were approaching, Redmond fought to his feet. “It was an animal instinct,” he would later say. He set out hopping, pushing away the coaches in a crazed attempt to finish the race.

When he reached the stretch, a big man pushed through the crowd. He was wearing a T-shirt that read, “Have you hugged your child today?” and a hat that challenged, “Just Do It.” The man was Jim Redmond, Derek’s father.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told his weeping son.

“Yes, I do,” Derek declared.

“Well, then,” said Jim, “we’re going to finish this together.”

And they did. Jim wrapped Derek’s arm around his shoulder and helped him hobble to the finish line. Fighting off security men, the son’s head sometimes buried in the father’s shoulder, they stayed in Derek’s lane to the end.

The crowd clapped, then stood, then cheered, and then wept as the father and son finished the race.

What made the father do it? What made the father leave the stands to meet his son on the track? Was it the strength of his child? No, it was the pain of his child. His son was hurt and fighting to complete the race. So the father came to help him finish.

God does the same. Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the One who hears it and not the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.

(from Discovering the Power of Prayer by Max Lucado)

(more to come in the next post!)