I Am the Lord’s Servant

Nancy Guthrie’s Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room:

It’s hard to imagine how frightening it must have been for teenage Mary to see an angel and hear him speaking to her. The Bible says that “Gabriel appeared to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored women! The Lord is with you!’ Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. ‘Don’t be afraid, Mary,’ the angel told her, ‘for you have found favor with God!’” (Luke 1:28-30). We can’t help but wonder what the angel looked like and what he sounded like.

As frightening as it must have been to see and hear an angel speaking to her, it must have been even more frightening for Mary to process what the angel was telling her–that she was going to become pregnant, even though she had never been intimate with a man. This would be a scandal in her village. Everyone would whisper about her. She would be shunned and perhaps sent away by her fiance, Joseph, because he would think she had been unfaithful to him. And yet, even though she probably had a million questions and concerns, Mary responded to the angel by welcoming whatever God wanted to do. She said, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true” (Luke 1:38). In a sense she said to God, “I’m yours. You can do anything you want with me,” even though she must have known that this situation would be very hard for her, for Joseph, and for her whole family.

It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan for us. Mary’s example shows us we can also welcome those things we would not necessarily label “good,” confident that God’s gifts sometimes come in perplexing and even painful packages. When we belong to God, we know he will use whatever he allows into our lives for good. Somehow, in God’s hands, these things also become gifts of his grace toward us.

It takes faith—faith to rest in who God is and his love for us; faith to be confident that he is doing something good in and through our difficult circumstances—to see the hard things in our lives as gifts of God’s grace.

GOD IS ON OUR SIDE

It was a gracious revelation to my human spirit when I discovered that the Word of God was actually on my side, operating in my behalf! I was reading Psalm 71 and I came to this amazing statement: "Thou hast given commandment to save me!" My heart has been warmed with that realization ever since. I believe that the Word of the living God has gone throughout all the earth to save me and keep me! Let the theological experts raise their eyebrow -- I do not care! The living Word has charged Himself with responsibility to forgive, to cleanse and to keep me! Let us not be guilty of under rating the Word of God operating on our behalf I dare to say that there is not an uncontrolled stroke or force anywhere in all of God's mighty universe that can take eternal life away from a trusting, believing, obedient child of God. Let us thank God for the Word! It is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword!

Verse
Let them be confounded and consumed that are adversaries to my soul. Psalm 71:13
Thought
I dare to say that there is not an uncontrolled stroke or force anywhere in all of God's mighty universe that can take eternal life away from a trusting, believing, obedient child of God.
Prayer
Lord, thank you for being infinitely more constant than any foe I could ever face.

BROTHERHOOD OF THE REDEEMED

Anyone making even a quick review of Genesis will discover that God has told us more about His presence in creation and in history than about the details of human civilization. We believe that eternity dwells in the Person of God and that the material universe came into being through God's creation. The first man and woman in the human race were created. They failed in their initial encounter with Satan, our archenemy. Following that, the Genesis record becomes a narrative of human failure against the abiding backdrop of God's faithfulness. God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, points out a universal problem: the natural brotherhood of human beings is a sinful brotherhood. It is the brotherhood of all who are spiritually lost. But the Bible has good news. It is the revelation of a new brotherhood, the brotherhood of the redeemed! We know it in our time as the believing church of our Lord Jesus Christ in all nations. It is a new brotherhood among men based on regeneration-and restoration!

Verse
To them gave he power to become the sons of God. John 1:12

Thought
We believe that eternity dwells in the Person of God and that the material universe came into being through God's creation.

Prayer
Lord, thank for taking me from the brotherhood of the lost to the brotherhood of the redeemed.

CHEAP RELIGION

What passes for Christianity in our day is cheap religion! To listen to the current concepts of Christianity, we would conclude it is little more than bits of beautiful poetry, a man-made bouquet of fragrant flowers, a kindly smile for our neighbor and a couple of good deeds on behalf of a brother or sister. When I consider some of the elements now offered in Christianity as acceptable religion, I have to restrain myself lest I speak too disapprovingly. I fear my words would be so strong that I would have to repent of them! And I read in the Scriptures that there are some things God does not want us to say even about the devil. What do we find surfacing in much of our Christian fellowship? The complaint that God takes a long time to work out His will. We do not want to take the time to plow and cultivate. We want the fruit and the harvest right away. We do not want to be engaged in any spiritual battle that takes us into the long night. We want the morning light right now! We do not want the cross-we are more interested in the crown!

Verse
Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. 2 Samuel 24:24

Thought
We want the fruit and the harvest right away. We do not want to be engaged in any spiritual battle that takes us into the long night.

Prayer
Lord, Thank you for the reminder that I have a job to do, and I pray for the grace to complete it.

HUMANS JUDGE THE LORD?

It is a fact that God made us to worship Him, and if we had not fallen with Adam and Eve, worship would have been the most natural thing for us. Sinning was not the natural thing for Adam and Eve, but they disobeyed and fell, losing their privilege of perfect fellowship with God, the Creator. Sin is the unnatural thing; it was never intended by God to be our nature. Men and women who are out of fellowship with God, the Creator, still have an instinct towards some practice of worship. In most of our "civilized" circles, the practice of picking out what we like to worship and rejecting what we do not like is widespread. This has opened up an entire new field for applied psychology and humanism under a variety of religious disguises. Thus men and women set themselves as judges of what the Lord has said-and so they stand with pride and judge the Lord. In the Bible, God takes the matter of worship out of the hands of men and puts it in the hands of the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to worship God without the impartation of the Holy Spirit!

Verse
But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Matthew 15:9

Thought
In the Bible, God takes the matter of worship out of the hands of men and puts it in the hands of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer
Lord, thank you for the fact that you have given me the Holy Spirit so that I can worship you in spirit and in truth.

POSTPONING OBEDIENCE

A notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circle-the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Savior, and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as long as we want to! The truth is that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred Scriptures. Peter makes it plain that we are "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience." It seems most important to me that Peter speaks of his fellow Christians as "obedient children." He knew their spirituality-he was not just giving them an exhortation to be obedient. The entire Bible teaches that true obedience to God and His Christ is one of the toughest requirements in the Christian life. Actually, salvation without obedience is a self-contradicting impossibility! Humans do not want to admit it, but the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans long ago that "by one man's disobedience" came the downfall of the human race!

Verse
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Acts 16:31

Thought
The entire Bible teaches that true obedience to God and His Christ is one of the toughest requirements in the Christian life.

Prayer
Lord, let me always remember that odedience to your will is not just sanctioned, but manditory.

Mercy When Justice Is Deserved

A few weeks back, the junior and senior Sunday school class was discussing the story of Philemon. Philemon was a good man, who most likely treated most of his slaves very well. Thus, when one of his slaves, Onesimus, ran away from him, Philemon—who neither mistreated nor hurt Onesimus unnecessarily—was justifiably frustrated and mad. Once found, a runaway slave was returned to his master who would normally scold and punish his slave as he saw fit. Yet, the letter to Philemon centered on Paul’s pleading on Onesimus’s behalf for Philemon’s mercy where justice was deserved. Philemon was fully justified if he punished Onesimus—that’s what was just—yet Paul entreats him to remember the mercy Philemon received when he received the gospel and treat Onesimus with likewise mercy.

Now read Genesis 50:15-26

Like Philemon, Joseph would have been fully justified if he had chosen to punish his brothers. His brothers sold him into slavery after all; you can’t do much worse than that. His brothers deserved punishment for their actions. Yet, instead of choosing to do what was just, Joseph chose mercy. He knew that he had the right to hurt his brothers as he was hurt (an eye for an eye) but he gave up this right in order to show compassion on his brothers—and by extension, the love and forgiveness of God.
So now we come back to the present. To you. To your specific situation. Have you recently been wronged? Maybe it was really (because most of the time it isn’t) ALL THEIR FAULT. Maybe you truly did absolutely nothing to deserve how your friend, family member, or acquaintance treated you. And you probably have a right to be mad and frustrated. But it is far too easy for us humans to jump to judgment. After all, who are we to judge? We make mistakes all the time; besides, God declares in the Bible that vengeance is His and His alone. Not yours, not mine. His. And before our human nature begins coming up with excuses about how we should STILL have the right to be mad at least, let us look no farther than the ultimate act of mercy: Jesus dying on the cross for our sins. After all, all of Genesis is simply a signpost pointing us to Jesus, is it not? And Joseph is just an example of the mercy that was to be for all humanity. Jesus—God Himself—deserved to punish humankind for our rebellion against our Creator, yet chose to embody humility in his humiliating death on the cross, to save us from our sins.

How can we not be moved? How can we still adamantly declare that we deserve to pay someone back for how they’ve wronged us, when, in fact, this passage, all of Genesis, the whole Bible even points us to the ultimate act of mercy? Forgive my Star Wars allusion, but honestly, let go of your hate. Pray that God will teach you to love as He has loved. And show His mercy and His desire for restoration to your friends today. Who is God putting on your heart that you need—I repeat, NEED—to forgive? I encourage you to prayerfully approach that person today with full forgiveness, keeping in mind that we have already all received the ultimate mercy ourselves.