In Christ Alone

Deuteronomy 13:4 (NLT)

4 Serve only the Lord your God and fear him alone. Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him.

As prescribing a preservative from the temptation: "Keep close to your duty, and you keep out of harm's way. God never leaves us till we leave him.' Or, As furnishing us with an answer to the temptation; say, "It is written, Thou shalt walk after the Lord, and cleave unto him; and therefore what have I to do with idols? [Matthew Henry Commentary]

In his book Fill These Hearts, Christopher West describes a surprising and simple discovery that changed his marriage:

Years ago [my wife] and I were out to dinner and she observed that something was different about our marriage in recent years, something good. She asked me if I had any insight into what it was. After reflecting a bit I said with a smile, "Yeah, I think I know what it is. I think I've been realizing deep in my heart that you can't satisfy me." She got a big smile on her face and said, "Yeah, that's it. And I've been realizing the same thing: you can't satisfy me either." I imagine anyone overhearing us in the restaurant would have thought we were about to get divorced, but to us that realization was cause for joy and celebration. We had never felt closer and freer in our love.

I love my wife more than words can express, and I know she loves me. But I can't possibly be her ultimate satisfaction, and she can't be mine.

And that's why our conversation at the restaurant was cause for rejoicing. Only to the degree that we stop expecting others to be "god" for us, are we free to love others as they really are, warts and all, without demanding perfection of them, whether a spouse, a friend, a son or daughter, or any other relationship. And only to the degree that we are free from idolizing … human beings are we also free to take our ache for perfect fulfillment to the One who alone can satisfy it.

In Christ alone my hope is found; He is my light, my strength, my song; This cornerstone, this solid ground, Firm through the fiercest drought and storm. What heights of love, what depths of peace,

When fears are stilled, when strivings cease! My comforter, my all in all—Here in the love of Christ I stand. [In Christ Alone, written by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend]

God helps us face the storms of life

Isaiah 43:11-12 (NLT)

11 I, yes I, am the Lord, and there is no other Savior. 12 First I predicted your rescue, then I saved you and proclaimed it to the world. No foreign god has ever done this. You are witnesses that I am the only God,” says the Lord.

See what it is that the great God glories in, not so much that he is the only ruler as that he is the only Saviour; for he delights to do good: he is the Saviour of all men, 1 Tim. 4:10. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

For the past 25 years, Jim Cantore, The Weather Channel's "Storm-tracker," has tracked, chased, run into, and then reported on some of the most extreme storms on the planet. A 2011 USA Today article on Cantore noted, "Whether he is leaning into the ferocious winds of a hurricane or shivering as a blast of polar air drops down from the Arctic, Cantore, 47, is often on the scene to help viewers appreciate how weather tests us."

In the spring of 2011, Cantore provided coverage in the midst of the severe tornado outbreaks in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Joplin, Missouri. Both towns suffered extensive damage. "It was as unthinkable as you would think," Cantore says. "Houses were piled up into corners, and the streets looked more like movie sets."

But according to Cantore, these kinds of storms pale in comparison to the personal storms of life that some people experience on a daily basis. In particular, Cantore thinks of his two children, both of whom were born with Fragile X syndrome, a genetic disorder that can lead to autism-like symptoms. Cantore says that his children have the real storms of life, or what he calls the "storms that hurt the most and never go away."

Cantore says, "What my children have to deal with on a daily basis is by far more difficult than anything I will ever come in contact with." [Jonathan Lebowitz, "Jim Cantore Has Weathered 25 Years of Chasing Big Storms," USA Today (8-10-11); submitted by Van Morris, Mt. Washington, Kentucky]

We all face the storms of life, but God is there not as a ruler over us, but as a savior, as one who loves us and cares for us. In our times of pain God picks us up and holds us tight.

Searching for God

Psalm 63:1 (NLT)

1 O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

God's lovingkindness is in itself, and in the account of all the saints, better than life. It is our spiritual life, and that is better than temporal life, Ps. 30:5. It is better, a thousand times, to die in God's favour than to live under his wrath. David in the wilderness finds, by comfortable experience, that God's lovingkindness is better than life; and therefore (says he) my lips shall praise thee. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

"I don't believe in God, but I miss him."

This is the opening line from a book titled Nothing to Be Afraid Of by the award-winning British writer, Julian Barnes. Barnes, who describes himself as an agnostic, writes, "I was never baptized, never sent to Sunday school. I have never been to a normal church service in my life." And yet this agnostic intellectual still feels haunted by the beauty of Christian art and music and by what he calls the "wake up call to morality."

[Matt Woodley, Editor, PreachingToday.com; source: James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular (Eerdmans, 2014), pp. 4-5]

Our soul thirsts for God and longs to be with Him. Even the author above who claims to be agnostic feels God tugging at his heart.

Trust in The Lord Our Eternal Rock

Isaiah 26:4 (NIV)

4 Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.

"Let us make ourselves easy by trusting in the Lord for ever; since God has promised peace to those that stay themselves upon him, let us not lose the benefit of that promise, but repose an entire confidence in him. Trust in him for ever, at all times, when you have nothing else to trust to; trust in him for that peace, that portion, which will be for ever.' Whatever we trust to the world for, it will be but for a moment: all we expect from it is confined within the limits of time. But what we trust in God for will last as long as we shall last. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

I remember watching a father play with his little boy, repeatedly throwing him in the air and catching him just before he hit the ground. The child is relaxed and having a great time saying, "Do it again! Do it again!"

I thought, If that was me, I 'd be stiff as a board .

"Can you explain why he's so relaxed, even when he's out of control?" I asked the father.

"It's very simple," he said. "We have a history together. We've played this game before, and I've never dropped him." [Rod Cooper, "Worship or Worry?" Preaching Today, Tape No. 108.]

God is our eternal Rock and is always there to catch us when we fall, so let us trust in The Lord Forever!

Seek The Lord and Call on Him

Isaiah 55:6 (NLT)

6 Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near.

Let them pray, and their prayers shall be heard and answered: "Seek the Lord while he may be found. Seek him whom you have left by revolting from your allegiance to him and whom you have lost by provoking him to withdraw his favour from you. Call upon him now while he is near, and within call.' [Matthew Henry Commentary]

Psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Grosz points to research that shows we usually don't respond when a fire alarm rings. Instead, of leaving the building immediately, we stand around and wait for more clues. But then even with more information, we still won't make a move—and sometimes that proves deadly. For instance, in 1985, 56 people were killed when a fire broke out in the stands of a soccer match in England. Close examination of television footage later showed that fans did not react immediately and continued to watch both the fire and the game, failing to move towards the exits.

Research has also shown that when we do move, we follow old habits. We don't trust emergency exits. We almost always try to exit a room through the same door we entered. After a fire in the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Kentucky left 177 people dead, forensic experts confirmed that many of the victims sought to pay before leaving, and so died in a queue.

Grosz concludes:

After 25 years as a psychoanalyst, I can't say that this surprises me. We resist change. Committing ourselves to a small change, even one that is unmistakably in our best interest, is often more frightening than ignoring a dangerous situation. We don't want an exit if we don't know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency … We want to know what new story we're stepping into before we exit the old one. [Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (W.W Norton & Company, 2013), pp. 122-123]

Don’t resist the one who is calling you, for God is calling you to come close and leave sin behind. 

The influence of Jesus on us and Our influence on others

Philippians 1:9-10 (NIV)

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

Paul often let his friends know what it was he begged of God for them, that they might know what to beg for themselves and be directed in their own prayers, and that they might be encouraged to hope they should receive from God the quickening, strengthening, everlasting, comforting grace, which so powerful an intercessor as Paul asked of God for them. It is an encouragement to us to know that we are prayed for by our friends, who, we have reason to think, have an interest at the throne of grace. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

In some ways, our biggest challenge in gauging Jesus' influence is that we take for granted the ways in which our world has been shaped by him. For example, children would be thought of differently because of Jesus. Historian O. M. Bakke wrote a study called When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, in which he noted that in the ancient world, children usually didn't get named until the eighth day or so. Up until then there was a chance that the infant would be killed or left to die of exposure — particularly if it was deformed or of the unpreferred gender. This custom changed because of a group of people who remembered that they were followers of a man who said, "Let the little children come to me."

Jesus never married. But his treatment of women led to the formation of a community that was so congenial to women that they would join it in record numbers … Jesus never wrote a book. Yet his call to love God with all one's mind would lead to a community with such a reverence for learning that when the classical world was destroyed in what are sometimes called the Dark Ages, that little community would preserve what was left of its learning. In time, the movement he started would give rise to libraries and then guilds of learning …

He never held an office or led an army … And yet the movement he started would eventually mean the end of emperor worship, be cited in documents like the Magna Carta, begin a tradition of common law and limited government, and undermine the power of the state rather than reinforce it as other religions in the empire had done. It is because of his movement that language such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" entered history.

The Roman Empire into which Jesus was born could be splendid but also cruel, especially for the malformed and diseased and enslaved. This one teacher had said, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me." An idea slowly emerged that the suffering of every single individual human being matters and that those who are able to help ought to do so. Hospitals and relief efforts of all kinds emerged from this movement; even today they often carry names that remind us of him and his teachings.

Humility, which was scorned in the ancient world, became enshrined in a cross and was eventually championed as a virtue. Enemies, who were thought to be worthy of vengeance ("help your friends and punish your enemies"), came to be seen as worthy of love. Forgiveness moved from weakness to an act of moral beauty. Even in death, Jesus' influence is hard to escape. The practice of burial in graveyards or cemeteries was taken from his followers … It expressed the hope of resurrection … Death did not end Jesus' influence. In many ways, it just started it. [John Ortberg, Who Is This Man? (Zondervan, 2012), pp. 14-16}

Hold on to Your Confidence

Hebrews 10:35-36 (NKJV)

35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. 36 For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise:

He (the apostle) exhorts them not to cast away their confidence, that is, their holy courage and boldness, but to hold fast that profession for which they had suffered so much before, and borne those sufferings so well. [Matthew Henry Commentary]

The 1958 film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is the true story of Gladys Aylward (Ingrid Bergman), an English servant who became a faithful missionary in a remote region of northern China. The China Inland Mission Center in England refused to sponsor her due to her lack of vocation and experience. Consequently, in 1932 she set out on her own, believing with all her heart she was called by God. Not officially under the authority of the Mission, she was free to stay in China according to her own discretion.

She finds work running an inn for traveling mule drivers. After the death of the inn manager, a seasoned missionary, a government official delivers a letter to Gladys, which states that funding for the Inn will be cut off because of her lack of experience.

Bewildered by the news, Gladys expresses her concerns to the Chinese government official, Captain Lin Nan, who delivered the message: "One reason and always the same one: I'm not qualified. I was a servant in England. That's what they mean. But I came here when they said I couldn't. And I'll stay here though they say I can't."

When Captain Lin Nan kindly offers to escort her to Sien Chen, where she will deport, Gladys stubbornly insists, "I'm not going to leave!"

Captain Lin Nan tries to dissuade her: she's broke, and vendors won't give her credit; she has no friends; and she is in an isolated country with inveterate problems. "It isn't your country. It isn't your problem," he says. "You're white. You shouldn't be in China at all."

Emphasizing her resolve to stay, Gladys reminds the captain, "I came here to be of value."

Mildly irritated, the captain says, "How? By trying to make people believe what you believe? By saving souls who don't want to be saved? Who will agree to anything for an extra bowl of rice, and laugh at you once the rice is eaten?" When Gladys attempts a retort, he says, "The dangers that confront you—those are real. Leave now, while you still can. Go back to England where you belong."

"If I feel that God wants me in China," Gladys argues, "then that's where I belong."

Lin Nan resigns, leaving Gladys in God's hands. As he leaves, Gladys cries out, "Oh, Captain Lin Nan. I know you think I'm stubborn. But I'm not ungrateful. For you to be concerned, to bother, it is very kind."

"If I were really kind," Lin Nan responds, "I'd have you ordered out of Bien Chen. But since I'm not obsessed with souls or lives, I wish you well."

Because she stays, God uses Gladys to convert the village's mandarin governor to Christianity. And when the Japanese army attacks China, she heroically leads over 100 orphan children to safety through numerous mountains, avoiding enemy soldiers.

[The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (Twentieth Century Fox, 1958), not rated, directed by Mark Robson, screenplay written by Isobel Lennart, based on The Small Woman, by Alan Burgess]

Each of you are of value and importance. Keep enduring life that you may do the will of God and not let your confidence be thrown aside.