AUGUST 1

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES

For the promises part each day, I’ll give you comments from prominent Christian pastors and teachers for Biblical promises.

THESE COMMENTS ARE FROM JOHN PIPER’S BOOK, “THE PLEASURES OF GOD.” FOR THIS PROMISE:

Zephaniah 3:17 ~ ~ “The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory;  He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will be quiet in his love;  He will exult over you with loud singing.”

Can you imagine what it would be like to hear God singing?  A mere SPOKEN word from His mouth brought the universe into existence.  What would happen if God lifted up His voice and not only spoke but sang!!!!   Perhaps a new heaven and a new earth would be created.

Isaiah 65:17-18  “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth….I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.”

What do you hear when you imagine the voice of God singing?

 I hear the booming of Niagara Falls mingled with the trickle of a mossy mountain stream.

 I hear the blast of Mt. St. Helens mingled with a kitten’s purr.

 I hear the power of an East Coast hurricane and the barely audible puff of a night snow in the woods,

 I hear the unimaginable roar of the sun, 865,000 miles thick, 1,300,000 times bigger than earth, and nothing but fire, 1,000,000 degrees centigrade on the cooler surface.  But I hear this unimaginable roar mingled with the tender, warm crackling of logs in the living room on a cozy winter’s night.

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This month we will continue the book, “Whatever Happens – How to Stand Firm in Your Faith When the World is Falling Apart.”  By a contemporary author of many best-selling Christian books, Robert J. Morgan.  He took care of his wife when she had MS, until she went home to her Savior.  “He knows of which he speaks.”  I pray that this book blesses you.

 WHATEVER HAPPENS, GROW DEEPER EACH MORNING

I WANT TO KNOW CHRIST

Philippians 3:7-11

“7 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Elizabeth Gibson was walking through New York city’s Upper West Side when she saw a pile of trash.  The garbage truck was just down the street, headed that way.  Among the debris, she spotted a piece of canvas with a lot of colored oils on it.  She pulled it from the trash, took it home, studied it, and tried to figure out what to do with it.  It was too large for her small apartment, yet she loved the colors.  Where had it come from?  Why did it so attract her?

With the help of the Antiques roadshow, she discovered it was a rare painting by a famous Mexican artist and worth over a million dollars.  Yet someone had thrown it out with the trash.

So many people don’t know the difference between trash and treasure!  The apostle Paul, however, did, and he explained it in Philippians 3, beginning with verse 7  (our verses above).

My mother taught bookkeeping when I was in high school, and I was one of her students.  She taught us about balance sheets.  On one side are all our debts and liabilities.  On the other side are our assets.  We all have a balance sheet, whether we realize it or not, whether it’s written or not.  Well, in this passage, the apostle Paul took his personal balance sheet and turned it upside down.  He said, “the things I thought were assets, I now consider to be liabilities, and the things I thought were liabilities, I now consider assets.”

He said it quite plainly:  Everything in this world is garbage compared to the surpassing worth of personally knowing Jesus Christ.

I remember the first time I heard Graham Kendrick’s wonderful song “Knowing You,” which is based on this passage.  The closing line says, “There is no greater thing.”  Though it’s one of those contemporary songs that comes and goes, pushed off the charts by newer songs, it’s one I’ve never forgotten and frequently still sing.  Paul would have liked it too.

I recently had an interview with Sam Rohrer, president of American Pastor’s Network.  Sam, a Pennsylvania politician, served almost two decades as a state representative in Harrisburg.  He told me that the Pennsylvania capitol building is filled with scriptures, words engraved on the walls.  In fact, there are 59 verses etched onto the walls of that beautiful building.  Sam told me he used to take people on Biblical tours of the statehouse.  “Let me take you on a trip through the capitol building,”  he would tell friends.  “I can lead you to heaven through the Senate chamber.”

He was referring to the power of the gospel, engraved on the walls of the Senate.  The only way to get to heaven is through our faith in the power of the gospel, which represents the death and resurrection of a sinless Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We hear the message of Jesus, realize that’s what we need more than anything else in this world, confess our sins, place ourselves in His hands, and welcome Him into our lives as savior and Lord.  Finding Him is the most important thing in the world.  Compared to that, everything else is garbage.

What the world holds in contempt, we hold in rapturous contemplation.  We go back two thousand years, and there amid the smoldering ruins of the gloomy day of anguish near the trash heaps of Jerusalem, we find an old rugged cross.  We find it, and with the hymn writer, we declare:  “I’ll cherish that old rugged cross, till our trophies at last I lay down;  I will cling to that old rugged cross, and exchange it some day for a crown.”

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