DAILY DEVOTIONAL – October 7, 2020
“Happy Feet”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, as You stood on trial before Pontius Pilate, falsely accused, You told Pilate, “anyone on the side of truth listens to me.” Lord we live in a world that pridefully denies the truth, and we admit Lord, that before You so mercifully revealed Yourself to us, we too were lost in the lies of the Devil and in our own sin. Jesus, in Your mercy, we pray that You would use even us to proclaim the truth of God’s love and forgiveness that can only be found in You. Amen.
Scripture: Romans 10:13-15
13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Daily Devotional – “Happy Feet”
It doesn’t matter what politician or political party it is, I am always amazed at the absolutely fantastic and absolutely impossible claims made by politicians, and especially in an election year. Every four years someone else tells us they have finally figured out all the answers to all of our problems. Every four years later, we find out that not only does no one have the perfect political answer to our problems, but we can’t even begin to count the number of problems we have! Though most of the world won’t admit it, we are sinners, and we specialize in inventing new problems we can’t solve for ourselves. How refreshing it would be to hear any politician in any position say something like, “You know folks, I don’t have a lot of answers. I’m only human. I can’t promise you something I’m not sure I can provide. What I can promise you is, I will follow the One who does have all the answers the best I know how.”
We live in a culture and society today that is lost in a vicious cycle of self-justification. Those who hate religion claim that to believe in God, or in Jesus, is a crutch for those who are too weak to deal with the reality of the world, and that if we would only turn to a different political position, rely more on science, trust more in human reason, or some other false idol in Hollywood or on a professional sports team, then we would see that the world is not so bad and that all the broken parts can be fixed.
There are consequences to living in denial of the fundamental reality of our sinful nature. It causes us to turn a deaf ear to important warnings we might otherwise heed. According to a study released by AAA Auto Club back in 2019, at least two (2) people are killed every single day because they ignore the warning of a yellow light, run a red light, and then run into the very thing the yellow light was warning them about. Tragically, countless hundreds if not thousands more people die every day having ignored the clear warnings God has given. No matter how much better we think humanity has become over the years, either morally or intellectually, the huge flashing yellow light of death reminds us that the life and salvation we seek will never come from anything of mankind; all men die. To turn from God and ignore the obvious sinfulness of humanity and turn to human knowledge, politics, medicine, or anything of man for the hope we desire, will have dreadful consequences not only in this life, but the next.
Faith in God and in Christ is anything but a “crutch.” In fact, the whole reason people hate religion, and Christianity in particular, is because Jesus and the Word of God make it painfully clear that the hearts of all men and women, of all mankind, are helplessly wicked from birth – that we have not only been corrupted since the fall of Adam and Eve but continue in our own personal rebellion and sinfulness against God. If there is any weakness, it is found in denying that evil is real, denying that the Devil is real, and that we ourselves are the ones responsible for bringing evil into our own lives. It’s one thing to be suspicious of the “narrative” presented by the media and their biases, it’s quite another to deny what we all know so intimately – the darkness that is in all of us. It’s not “make-believe” to believe that evil is real, but it is pure fantasy to deny what we all know to be true within us.
Jesus says in Mark 7:21-23, “For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come–sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
True strength and hope in the midst of this tragic world can only be found in confessing our wickedness and sinfulness to God and pleading for His mercy; His mercy that has in fact been given in the blood of His Son Jesus. We cannot save ourselves from ourselves. We can only rely on He who is bigger than we are, He who is truly holy and righteous, He who is perfect in both love and justice and He who has provided both to us in Jesus Christ. When we acknowledge our need for a Savior and turn to Jesus as the One True savior of the world, God has promised to forgive us for Christ’s sake and to make us a new creation in Christ Jesus and give us a new heart toward God and toward one another. This message of God’s love and transformative grace found only in Christ Jesus is the only hope humanity has – the only hope we have to be saved from sin and death and to be saved from our own wickedness and evil.
Seeing the turmoil, unrest, and suffering that sin has brought into this world whenever we turn on the news should break our hearts. It breaks God’s heart. Jesus wept over the death of His friend Lazarus, but Jesus didn’t just weep, He took action and rose Lazarus from the dead. We are not Christ, and neither has Jesus called us to go into the world trying to resurrect the dead, but He has called us as His people, commanded us, and sent us to be His ambassadors and give the world the only hope that there is; the message of Jesus Christ and the salvation from evil and sin and death that can only be found in Him. Romans 10 said, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” Christians, all Christians, not just pastors, have already been sent. You have been sent, my friends. If you know the truth of Christ, then Christ has given you the truth and has already sent you to proclaim that truth. When we sit and watch our televisions at night, it is not enough to just shake our heads and complain to our friends about how bad things are. Christ calls us to take action, to be available to be used by Him in order to bring hope to a dying and wicked world through the message of and the message in Jesus Christ.
God bless you my friends, and may God bless those to whom you bring hope today with the Good News of Jesus. Remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
