Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates

 no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD. Isaiah 54:17 (NIV) This is a powerful promise. Yet it's not like God's people deserved it. They were habitually disobedient to the God of their fathers. If we repent of our disobedience, trust in the Lord, and become his servants, this verse can become true of us. As Jesus said, we don't need to fear those who kill the body and can't touch our souls. When satan himself accuses us, we can refute even him by pleading the blood of Jesus. We deserve to be condemned. We don't deserve vindication. Yet if we trust in Christ crucified on our behalf, we can refute our accusers. The Lord doesn't want anyone to perish. He wants us all to come to faith. We just need to trust in him. 'LORD God Almighty, may this verse be true of us, through faith in Christ crucified, in ...

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12 (ESV) 'All roads lead to God', people often say. There's a sense in which that's true. We'll all stand before God's throne of judgement.  Only one road leads to salvation. It's not a religion. It's not even the Biblical religion of caring for needy people and being uncorrupted by the world. We can't be saved by our own efforts. All our righteousness is like filthy rags. Only through the Lord Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, can we be saved. Salvation is of the Lord, as Jonah said. God has decreed that His Son, and His death on our behalf, is the means by which we must be saved. There is no other way. 'Abba God, please help us to trust You for salvation, for sending the Lord Jesus for our deliverance. In His name we pray, amen'.

that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:10-11 (ESV) When the Apostle Paul talks about knowledge here, he's not talking about intellectualism. He's talking about relational intimacy. We're not just to know in our heads that Jesus died and rose again. We're to die to self like He died for us. We are naturally risk averse as humans. We don't, by default, embrace suffering. Yet the mystery of the gospel is that through the suffering of Jesus, we can know peace with God. God is able to bring good out of suffering. We assume suffering is unremittingly bad. Yet the Bible teaches that because of Christ crucified, it can be redemptive. Thankfully, suffering isn't the end of the story. There's an eternity to come. There's the resurrection of the dead, which we can be assured of by the resurrection of the ...

And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Exodus 33:14 (ESV) When you're about to move to a new country, you want to know that God's with you and that He'll give you rest. To be honest, even if you're not about to move to a new country, you ought to want to know that! If God is for us, who can be against us? I've only moved to another country once: from England to Wales for university. I can testify that as a believer in Jesus, God's presence went with me, and He gave me rest. I did have to work for my degree though! When God's people disbelieved that they could take the promised land, God consigned them to forty years in the wilderness. They swiftly changed their tune and insisted that they could do it, but He warned them that He wouldn't be with them at that time. It's essential to keep in step with the Holy Spirit of God. If God doesn't go with us, we shouldn't be going. Of course we have to do something, but i...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 (ESV) Sometimes, books try to be clever and start somewhere other than the beginning. They then have flashbacks to the beginning of their plots later on. The Bible is more WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). Before the beginning, there was God. He's always been and He always will be. We can't get our heads round God's everlastingness, but if we could put God in a box, He wouldn't be God, the box would! God created time. He started the clock. He made the universe and all of its contents. Biblically, there are three heavens. There's the sky- the earth's atmosphere. Then there's outer space. Finally there's the spiritual realm where God dwells. The earth of course is our home planet. 'God, thank You for creating us. Please help us to live for Your glory as You deserve. In the name of the everlasting Word made flesh, amen'.

So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31 (NLT) Glory is somewhat of a religious jargon word. A similar word nowadays is 'fame'. We're to live to make God famous. To eat in a way that glorifies God would be to not eat in excess. It would also be to share with those in need. There should also be times of fasting to show God we mean business. To drink in a way that glorifies God would be to not drink in excess. We don't have to be teetotal. Yet we do have to drink in moderation. Whatever we do, should be for the ultimate purpose of making God famous. If He's saved us, we should realise that we owe Him everything. He deserves to be glorified by us, and by others who glorify Him for His work in our lives. 'God Almighty, please help us to do everything for Your glory, because You have given everything for us in sending Your Son to give His life for us. In His name we pray, amen'.

Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 1 John 4:11 (NLT) God loved us so much that He sent his Son to give His life for us. We deserve His condemnation. Yet we can receive His acceptance. Because God has loved us so much, we ought to love one another. If we claim to love God, but don't love one another, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. We don't love others to earn God's acceptance. It's because God loves and accepts us that we love others. We love, because He first loved us. We should love each other enough to die for one another. Day to day though, love is expressed in countless small blessings to others. If we don't love in the small things, we won't love in the big things. 'Loving heavenly Father, we're so grateful for Your love to us, demonstrated by Your Son's sacrifice on our behalf. Please help us to love one another as we ought, in His name we pray, amen'.

 Let the righteous one rejoice in the LORD     and take refuge in him!   Let all the upright in heart exult! Psalm 64:10 ESV We might assume the righteous one would rejoice in Himself. We might think that righteous people would be all self-congratulatory. Yet the psalmist commands the righteous to rejoice in the LORD. We become righteous through faith in the LORD. We don't become righteous by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We need to take refuge in Him. We need to take refuge in God from the condemnation we deserve for our natural unrighteousness. We need His salvation. We need Christ's righteousness to be credited to our bankrupt spiritual accounts. We have every reason to rejoice in the LORD. If our salvation depended on ourselves, we'd be miserable. After all, we let ourselves down, never mind God Himself. Yet because salvation depends on God we have hope. 'God of our salvation, we rejoice in You for sending Christ to bear our punishment and to be our rig...

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? Hebrews 12:7 ESV  We might not like the thought of being disciplined. Yet discipline is a quality we all need to develop. By being disciplined, hopefully we become disciplined.  God can use difficult circumstances to discipline us. The Hebrew Christians were coming to realise that the Christian life requires endurance. They were being persecuted for abandoning Judaism for Christ.  The writer to the Hebrew Christians was helping them to realise that God could turn what seemed like a negative into a positive. Getting disciplined by our parents never felt good at the time. Yet hopefully it produced the good outcome of making us disciplined.  None of us are naturally self controlled. We need God to develop that fruit in us. He often does so through challenging circumstances, but He always gives us the grace to endure.  'Dear Father in...