I know some folks who think at the ends of their days, God will weigh their good deeds and their bad deeds. If they’re good enough — if their good works outweigh the bad — God lets them into heaven.
Not so, says the Bible.
Romans 3:23 (ERV)
All have sinned and are not good enough
to share God’s divine greatness.
God is good. Thankfully, He’s also gracious. And for we who believe, grace is enough.
Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV)
I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
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Paul wasn’t afraid to ask for God’s biggest and best.
Don’t be afraid to pray extravagantly.
Leviticus 16:12 (NIV)
He [Aaron the priest] is to take a censer full of burning coals from the altar before the Lord and two handfuls of finely ground fragrant incense and take them behind the curtain.
Two handfuls of prayerful incense! My experience with incense has been limited to cones and sticks—more like pinches than handfuls.
Sometimes our prayers are all pinches: a quick prayer in the morning, another short prayer as at bedtime, grace before meals, pleas for safety behind the wheel. Our slivers of prayer waft up to God.
Lord, I long for handfuls of fragrant prayer!
Psalm 141:2 (GW)
Let my prayer be accepted
as sweet-smelling incense
in your presence.
My prayers have an odor. Are they
O God, who created my sense of smell, may my prayers — at least most of them! — be pleasing to Your sense of smell.
Ephesians 6:18 (NIV)
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
“On all occasions.”
“Always.”
Wow! I fall short. Not even close.
Teach me to pray, Lord, all the time, for all time.
“A man may read the figures on the dial, but he cannot tell how the day goes unless the sun is shining on it; so we may read the Bible over, but we cannot learn the purpose till the spirit of God shine upon it and into our hearts.”
Thomas Watson (1620-1686)
I have the Holy Spirit, the world’s best teacher. I should leap out of bed every morning, raring to get started. Truth is, I long to hit the alarm’s off button, roll over and snooze. I drag myself to the coffee pot, fill my cup and swipe my phone. I put the Holy Spirit on hold.
Friends, it should not be this way! I want to be the eager student described in God’s Word:
Isaiah 50:4 (NIV)
The Sovereign Lord . . . wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
2 Peter 1:20-21 (NIV)
No prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
Bible study is my personal meet-the-author event. It’s a conversation with the Holy Spirit. He talks, I listen. I talk, He answers.
Jesus said,
Matthew 4:4 (NIV)
Man shall not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes
from the mouth of God.
Jesus calls us to live, not by what we put in our mouths, but by what comes from God’s mouth to our ears.
