WordPoints

Dear Lord,

As the sun rises and this new day begins, make me mindful of the grace that you have shown in giving me one more day in which to live. Had You dealt with me in strict justice, my days would have come to an end long ago; yet You have been patient and longsuffering. You have given me yet another new day. I thank you so very, very much.

Help me not to receive this day of grace in vain. May I keep in mind that what has come to me this morning is a gift. Let me not take it for granted or fail to respond with awareness, humility, and gratitude.

Help me, O Lord, to respond to Your grace by living soberly and righteously this whole day through, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts. May Your grace have its proper effect upon me and make me more obedient to You, in the sheer joy of gratitude for Your mercy.

Through Jesus Christ I offer these thanks and make these petitions. Amen.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

A dear friend wrote yesterday to say that she and her husband were discouraged. The work they are trying to do is hard, and they don’t often see any evidence of progress. I know this couple well enough to know that the devil is not going to take what they are doing lying down. He is going to RESIST in sufficient force that they are going to be discouraged from time to time. Frankly, I would be worried if they weren’t discouraged. That would probably be a sign they weren’t doing anything the devil was taking notice of.

When we are trying to grow spiritually and do the Lord’s work, there is only one way to avoid discouragement, and that is to do nothing with any RISK attached to it. And unfortunately, that is how many people live their lives. Feeling good emotionally is all that matters to them, and so they simply PLAY IT SAFE — they never do anything where discouragement would even be a POSSIBILITY.

Teddy Roosevelt said it well many years ago. He wasn’t talking about spiritual matters, of course, but what he said certainly applies: “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doers of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcomings, who knows the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the high achievement of triumph and who at worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows his place shall never be with those timid and cold souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

In the Scriptures, what we see is that great OPPORTUNITY is almost always accompanied by great OPPOSITION. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great and effective DOOR has opened to me, and there are many ADVERSARIES” (1 Corinthians 16:8,9).

So are you DISCOURAGED? Good. So am I. That’s a sign that we’re doing something that is meeting RESISTANCE.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

Rarely a day goes by now that we don’t hear of some new person who has been diagnosed with cancer — someone else finds out that they may not have as long to live as they thought.

Somewhere in our brains we understand that life is a “vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:13-15). But the way we procrastinate our work in the Lord, you’d think we had an unlimited amount of time. “No problem,” we say. “If we don’t get it done today, we can always do it tomorrow.”

The truth is, not even Jesus had unlimited time to get His work done. He said, “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4).

There will be important things to do in heaven, no doubt, but as far as the work of THIS world goes, IT HAS TO BE DONE IN THIS WORLD. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; FOR THERE IS NO WORK OR DEVICE OR KNOWLEDGE OR WISDOM IN THE GRAVE WHERE YOU ARE GOING” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

I don’t know about you, but I am behind schedule in the work that the Lord is going to hold me accountable for. Ideally, the OPPORTUNITY given for a person’s work and the WORK ITSELF should run out at about the same time. When that happens, a person can say, as the Lord did, “It is finished” (John 19:30). For me to be able to say that, however, I’m going to have to pick up the pace of my work.

When the time comes for any of us to die, the Lord will be saying, “Your time is finished.” But that can mean two different things. To some, “Your time is finished” will mean “What you’ve done is enough, so come on home and rest,” but to others, “Your time is finished” will mean “I’m not giving you any more time. You’ve wasted what you were given, so depart from Me.”

The Lord guarantees us the ability and opportunity to get done WHAT HE WANTS US TO DO. (I believe that’s the point of Philippians 4:13.) But the time He gives us will only be sufficient IF WE DON’T WASTE IT. If we don’t work while we can, the whistle for “quitting time” may blow before we’ve finished our work.

So I say to you: if there is something we know the Lord is going to expect us to have done, WE’D BETTER GET BUSY DOING IT. We need to work “like there’s no tomorrow” — for no tomorrow may be exactly what we get.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com

As the year begins to wind down and we look forward to a new year (yes, I know it hardly seems possible), it may be a good time to think about our DAILY BIBLE READING HABITS.

There are two basic opinions about daily Bible reading:

(1) READ SOMETHING FROM THE BIBLE EVERY DAY. Those who take this position emphasize the need to be exposed to something from God’s word every day but are not concerned whether they cover the whole Bible on any regular schedule.

(2) READ ALL OF THE BIBLE EVERY SO OFTEN. Those who take this position emphasize the importance of reading the entire Bible as often as possible.

Personally, I come down in favor of the second position. I believe we need to be exposed to EVERY PAGE IN THE BIBLE on some kind of regular schedule. If it is the Scriptures that make us “wise for salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15), then we need exposure to ALL OF THE SCRIPTURES as often as possible.

(1) Every part of God’s word is there for a purpose, whether we can see it or not. We must avoid focusing totally on the sections of the Bible that we “like.”

(2) We need to see the whole of the Bible as well as the individual parts. Reading the entire Bible every year or two helps us to keep the “big picture” in mind.

(3) There ought not to be any part of the Bible that we haven’t read “recently.” I once heard an older preacher confess, after he had been asked to speak on Zephaniah, “I haven’t looked at that book in over 40 years!” Obviously, he had not been following any kind of daily reading program that covered the whole Bible every so often.

(4) As with our physical food, we need a “balanced diet” of Bible reading. The parts that we have been avoiding may contain the very truths in which our present “nutrition” is deficient.

(5) There is great value in the DISCIPLINE that it takes to read the whole Bible. The effort and sacrifice that go into such a plan are beneficial because they increase our ability to do difficult things.

So if you’ve been following a daily Bible reading plan that has taken you through the entire Bible this year, that’s great. If not, PLEASE CONSIDER THE VALUE OF SUCH A PLAN AS THE NEW YEAR APPROACHES.

Gary Henry – WordPoints.com