Category Archives: John

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The Emotional God

He Feels Deeply For You

We belong to a caring, compassionate God. God the Father feels—he even dances over you with delight (Zephaniah 3:17); God the Son definitely feels, weeping openly over the death of his friend, Lazarus (John 11:35); God the Holy Spirit feels—he can be grieved and pleased (Ephesians 4:30, Galatians 6:8). That’s good news, by the way, because it gives him an unfettered capacity to relate to our feelings and us great confidence to come before a caring, understanding God to express our deepest feelings.

The Journey: John 11:33-36

When Jesus saw Mary weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!”

Jesus felt things very deeply—and I am so glad he did. Jesus was fully human, yet fully God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. His whole incarnational purpose was to live among us (John 1:15) in order to bring God close (Isaiah 7:14), reveal who God is and what God is like to us (Colossians 1:15,19-20), and through his redeeming sacrifice bring us back into a right relationship with our Father and Creator (Colossians 1:21-22).

In coming to Planet Earth to reveal God and redeem man, we do not find in Jesus an uncaring, distant, emotionless Deity, we find one who knew full well what it was like to be one of us. Therefore, he was the perfect bridge between the Divine and the fallen. In his earthly journey, God the Son experienced—and expressed—a wide range of emotions that were uniquely human. Just in John 11 and 12 alone, we see several occasions where humanity “leaked” from Deity:

  • He got angry and upset: “When Jesus saw Mary weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled.” (John 11:33, NLT)
  • He expressed unmitigated grief and the free flow of tears: “Then Jesus wept.” (John 11:35, NLT)
  • He refused to be pacified when an issue was unresolved: “Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance. ‘Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them.’” (John 11:38, NLT)
  • He got fed up: “Jesus replied, ‘Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial.’” (John 12:7, NLT)
  • He felt concern over the future: “Now my soul is deeply troubled. Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But this is the very reason I came!” (John 12:27, NLT)

In other Gospel accounts, we discover Jesus expressing other quite human emotion:

  • He was frustrated with his disciples’ thick-headedness: “Jesus asked them, ‘Are you still so dull?’” (Matthew 15:16, NLT)
  • He was overcome by the weight of responsibility: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” (Mark 14:34, NLT)
  • He felt irrepressible joy: “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’” Luke 10:21, NLT)

Jesus, the perfect God-man, was able to feel things uniquely human: Sorrow, anger, frustration, spiritual exhaustion, and a tremendous capacity for joy. But are those emotions uniquely human? No, in truth, they are completely Divine. These feelings are not of just human origin; rather, they are feelings that originate within the very being of a feeling God, who has simply placed them within the genetic code of that part of his creation he holds most dear—human beings, which includes you and me.

The fact that you and I feel simply reminds us that our Creator feels. What that means, among other things, is that we belong to a caring, compassionate God. God the Father feels—he even dances over you with delight (Zephaniah 3:17); God the Son definitely feels, as we have just seen; God the Holy Spirit feels—he can be grieved and pleased (Ephesians 4:30, Galatians 6:8). That is good news, because it gives him an unfettered capacity to relate to our feelings and us great confidence to come before a caring, understanding God to express our deepest feelings. Hebrews 4:15-16 says,

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Yes, God feels. Jesus clearly demonstrated that. So come confidently to a caring God to pour out your deepest, most inmost feelings. His great promise is that you can exchange your feelings for his mercy, your emotions for his grace, your tears for his comfort, your fears for his strength and anything else you are carrying, good or bad, you can turn over to a Father who can definitely relate.

Now that is something you can feel really good about!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for caring so deeply for me, for feeling my pain, for carrying my wounds, for delighting over me with joy and for being emotionally connected to me. I am your dearly loved child, and I will never get over that!
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Now That’s Security

No One Can Snatch Me Away From Jesus

If your salvation were all up to you, you would have good reason to be insecure about it. But it’s not; it’s riding on some pretty big shoulders: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are at work right now to perfect what they have begun in you, and will exert the full power of their Divine Being to bring your eternal life to completion. Yes, as much as that seems impossible right now, one day, you will stand without a single fault in God’s glorious presence because a joyful Trinity will make sure of it. As Thomas Watson said, “God’s decree is the very pillar and basis on which the saint’s perseverance depends. That decree ties the knot of adoption so fast, that neither sin, death, nor hell, can break it asunder.”

The Journey: John 10:28-29

I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand.

Once you have committed your life to Jesus Christ, can you ever lose your salvation? That question has been debated for hundreds of years by some very smart people—with great and convincing arguments on both sides. So I am not going to resolve the question in this blog—I am not even going to try.

With absolute certainly, however, I can say this: If—and “if” is what is in question, so it is a very big “if”—if a Christian can lose their salvation, then to somehow manage to lose it would have to be the most difficult achievement in entire universe. Why? Because, according to John 10:28, Jesus is the one who gave you your salvation, and according to his own words, once he has given it, you will never perish. Furthermore, he said that no one can snatch you away from him. That is because, according to John 10:29, the Father is the one who gave you to Jesus. Now since no one and no thing is more powerful than God—not by miles; not even close—tell me, who is going to pry you and your salvation from the grip of God’s grace?

Now that is security!

I love how other New Testament writers got in on the discussion about your salvation. The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1:6,

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Now that is some security you got there!

And what about Jude? Here is what he said about the matters as he closed out his letter,

Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.

If your salvation were all up to you, you would have good reason to be insecure about it. But it’s not; it’s riding on some pretty big shoulders: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are at work right now to perfect what they have begun in you, and will exert the full power of their Divine Being to bring your eternal life to completion. Yes, as much as that seems impossible right now, one day, you will stand without a single fault in God’s glorious presence because a joyful Trinity will make sure of it. As Thomas Watson said, “God’s decree is the very pillar and basis on which the saint’s perseverance depends. That decree ties the knot of adoption so fast, that neither sin, death, nor hell, can break it asunder.”

Now that is security!

In light of all that God has done to save you, and all that he is doing to keep you saved, doesn’t that make you want to offer yourself to him in even greater consecration? Perhaps you ought to tell him that.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, I am yours for all eternity. Thank you for adopting me into your forever family. Now help me to live in the security and confidence that nothing can snatch me out of your hand.
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One For The Win Column

Game, Set, Match!

Satan is real, but Jesus has defeated him. Furthermore, as a Christ-follower, you, too, have power and authority to defeat the devil. In Luke 10:17-19, we are told, “the seventy-two returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’ Jesus replied, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven. I have given you authority to…overcome all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you.’” I like that, don’t you? Not only do you have power and authority over the Enemy, Jesus has guaranteed your victory. I prefer those kinds of fights: ones that I know I’ll win! So if you will stay alert to the conflict, wise up to the ways of the Evil One, suit up in the armor of God, and take him on in the authority and power of Jesus name, you will win. Guaranteed!

The Journey: John 10:10

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

You have an enemy. His name is Satan. Jesus called him a thief and a liar. His main weapons are subtly and deception—and he’s pretty good at it, since he has been at it since the beginning of human history.

The Enemy hates God, and everything of God, which includes you. He has a nefarious plan for your life. He wants to rob you of the abundance of God, destroy your identity and destiny as a child of God, and kill you, body, soul and most of all, spirit, keeping you from eternity with God. In fact, even right now he is strategically and specifically working to do you in. C.S. Lewis said, “The enemy will not see you vanish into God’s company without an effort to reclaim you.”

The real problem that is you may be completely oblivious to the work of the Enemy. Out of ignorance, disbelief, or plain old lassitude and indifference, most of Satan’s victims fiddle while he goes about his evil work undetected. George Barna, a Christian researcher and pollster, asked people to respond to this statement in a national survey: “Satan, is not a living being, but is a symbol of evil.” Among those who claimed to be born again, 32% agreed strongly, 11% agreed somewhat and 5% didn’t know. That means that of the total number responding, 48% of born again believers either agreed that Satan is only symbolic or weren’t sure!

Barna’s findings would suggest that half of you reading this devotional, in spite of what the Bible clearly teaches, think of the devil only as a boogie-man from a spiritual fairy tale, not a real being bent on destroying you. Jesus would beg to differ with you. He wants you to know that Satan and his demonic legions are alive and well on Planet Earth. Satan is the enemy of God, and because he can’t do anything to God, he chooses to attack what is most precious to God—that is, you.

Now it is critical to your well-being—spiritual, physical, relational, financial—for you to understand that bit of bad news in order for you to fully employ the Good News in Hebrews 2:14, which reminds us that Jesus came “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.” You are not alone in this fight against the Evil One, nor are you doomed to defeat. 1 John 3:8 tells us, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

Yes, Satan is real, but Jesus has defeated him. Furthermore, as a Christ-follower, you, too, have power and authority to defeat the devil. In Luke 10:17-19, we are told, “the seventy-two returned with joy and said, ‘Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.’ Jesus replied, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven. I have given you authority to…overcome all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you.’”

I like that, don’t you? Not only do you have power and authority over the Enemy, Jesus has guaranteed your victory. I prefer those kinds of fights…ones that I know I’ll win!

So here’s the deal: If you will stay alert to the conflict, wise up to the ways of your enemy, suit up in the armor of God, and take him on in the authority and power of Jesus name, you will win. Guaranteed!

Keep that in mind today—and go give ‘em heaven!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, keep me wise to the ways of the enemy today. Lead me away from temptation and keep me from the evil one. Help me to walk in the victory over Satan that you secured at Calvary.
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Customer Satisfaction

Never underestimate the simple power of a personal testimony. When you speak for Christ as a satisfied customer, as one whose life has been changed forever, as one who was once spiritually blinded by sin but now can see by God’s grace, there is no argument. It’s simply your experience with God, no one else’s. Now your testimony may not be as dramatic as the healing of the man who had been born blind, but it is just as persuasive as his. You, too, are a satisfied customer, and a satisfied customer makes the most compelling witness of all.

The Journey: John 9:25

“I don’t know whether he is a sinner,” the man replied. “But I know this: I was blind, and now I can see!”

The Pharisees didn’t like the fact that Jesus had used the Sabbath to heal a man who had been born blind. The truth is, they didn’t like Jesus at all, and they were looking for him to slip up so they could do away with him once and for all. It wasn’t the first time he had “violated” their Sabbath policies by doing God’s work, but perhaps this latest “Sabbath miracle” was their chance.

They found the man Jesus had healed and began to question him: Had he really been born blind? Was this a hoax? Was he secretly a disciple of Jesus? Would a true man of God really heal on the Sabbath?

These weren’t just the innocent questions of a curious group. This was an interrogation. The tone of the Pharisees was intimidating and threatening, and the implication was that it wouldn’t go well for this healed man and his family if he didn’t repudiate both the miracle and the miracle worker.

Then, in a flash of unrehearsed inspiration and simple brilliance, the man parries their attack and thrusts the most persuasive of all daggers into their opposition against Jesus: The testimony of a satisfied customer. All this man knew was that he was once blind, but now he could see. Case closed; end of story. The Pharisees were defenseless. What response could they give against such overwhelming evidence?

That is the simple power of a personal testimony. When you speak for Christ as a satisfied customer, as one whose life has been changed forever, as one who was once spiritually blinded by sin but now can see by God’s grace, there is no argue against that? Now your testimony may not be as dramatic as the healing of the man who had been born blind, but it is just as powerfully persuasive as his. You, too, are a satisfied customer, and a satisfied customer makes the most compelling witness of all.

Alexander MacLaren wrote, “We must have the glory sink into us before it can be reflected from us. In deep inward beholding we must have Christ in our hearts, that He may shine forth from our lives.” Reflect back on what Jesus has done for you. Let it sink in. Then take a few moments today to write your story out—one or two pages will be enough. Simply describe what your life was like before Christ, how you came to know him, and the joys and benefits of what it means to now be his follower.

I guarantee, God will give you an opportunity before too long to share your story with someone who needs to know Jesus.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, without you I am totally lost. Would you give me a picture of that? Help me to remember, so that I never forget. Let the glory of your salvation sink in, so that it can reflect out. Cause my life to be the powerful testimony of a satisfied customer.
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A Reason For Suffering

God is Still the Healer

Jesus’ disciples asked if a certain man had been born blind because of his or his parents’ sin. Jesus told them that it was neither, but it was for the purpose of displaying God’s power. Remember that, in this age of flamboyant faith healers where you’re often given the impression that it is their spirituality and theatrics that creates the healing. It is not; it is God’s power alone. God is the healer, not the person praying, and he alone deserves the credit.

The Journey: John 9:2-3

“Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” Jesus answered, “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins. This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”

Where does suffering originate? When someone gets sick, contracts a disease, or is born with a disability, is that the result of personal sin—either theirs or their parents? Has the devil inflicted the suffering upon them? Did God cause it? When we, or the people we love, are forced to endure suffering, we get pretty passionate about finding answers to those questions.

What Jesus said was that not all sickness and suffering is the result of a specific sin. However, in a general sense, because we live in a world broken by sin, bad stuff that was not a part of God’s original plan for human beings now happens. And to be sure, the Bible does teach that I can bring some physical suffering on myself. If I do not follow God’s principles, my body will experience the consequence. If I do not eat right, sleep enough and exercise regularly—which is sin, since my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit—then I should not be surprised when my body reacts with an infirmity. If I do not listen when God’s Word says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but pray about everything” and I worry a lot—which is a sin—if I get an ulcer, then I am to blame. If resentment builds in my spirit—which is a sin, since I am not to allow bitterness to take root and defile me—then the doctors say that what is eating me will not only eat away at my mental health, but it will also take a bite out of my physical health.

So when it comes to suffering and sickness, I need to pay attention to the sin-factor in my life. When sin is at the root, then James says that confession and prayer are the appropriate responses to my suffering:

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. (James 5:13-16, NLT)

However, not all suffering is the result of sin. Jesus blew that idea out of the water here in John 9 when he talked about the man born blind and clears up the notion that the blindness was the result of neither his nor his parents’ sin. Sometimes God permits suffering in your life simply because He wants to heal you and let it be a testimony to the world. John 11:4 tells the story of Lazarus, who was sick and near death. In that case, Jesus said, “The purpose of his illness is not death, for the glory of God.”

Now God doesn’t heal every sickness; if he did, none of us would ever die and go to heaven. But for sickness that is within the Lord’s will to heal, James 5:14 says that we are to do a couple of things: One, we are take the initiative and summon the spiritual leaders of the church. And, two, we are to have those elders anoint us with oil and pray.

This prayer for healing is to be done “in the name of the Lord.” The “name” represents Christ’s authority, which is the basis for all healing. When we offer prayer for healing under these conditions and in that manner, James says, “such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.” (James 5:15, NLT)

God is the healer, not the person praying. Let’s never forget that! In this age of flamboyant faith healers, sometimes you get the idea that it is their deep spirituality and flamboyant theatrics that gets the job done. It is not; God alone deserves the credit.

That brings us back to what Jesus said about suffering and sickness: Sometime it is not the result of sin. It is simply so that God’s power and glory can be revealed in the restoration!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, you prompted your prophet Jeremiah to declare of you, “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.” (Jer. 30:17) Today, I take your declaration as a personal promise for my life and for my loved ones. Heal us, O God!
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Jesus—The Great “I AM”

You’ve Got To Love Him, Or Hate Him—He Leaves You With No Other Choice

Jesus! You’ve got to do something with him. You’ve got to love him or hate him…but you really can’t live with anything in between and have an intellectually honest life. So be honest—where do you line up with Jesus? I hope you go with what he claimed, and proved, about himself.

The Journey: John 8:58-59

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I Am!” At that point they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus was hidden from them and left the Temple.

There were many reasons, I suppose, the Jews wanted to kill Jesus: They were jealous of his popularity with the people. They hated that he didn’t defer to their spiritual authority and were put off that he wasn’t impressed by their religious pedigree. They were irked that he ministered to marginalized people, hung out with the wrong crowd, operated outside the lines of Jewish protocol and a thousand other things that he did and didn’t do that bugged the daylights out of them. In general, the genuine authority and real power that Jesus displayed in his life and ministry exposed the spiritual impotence of these Jewish elites, which in turn, brought out some fierce insecurities displayed in their childish opposition and irrational hatred of the Lord.

But the main reason their hatred turned murderous? It wasn’t that Jesus sort of acted like God. It wasn’t that he beat around the bush about his deity. It wasn’t that he made some veiled and esoteric claim about Messiahship. No—he flat out claimed to be God. That is why they wanted to kill him. In fact, Jesus committed the ultimate faux pas by using the revered designation for God that no god-fearing Jew would utter so causally and irreverently: “I AM!” Are you kidding me: “Before Abraham was, I Am!” What was he thinking? Saying that about yourself in that culture could get you killed.

Of course, Jesus knew that. In fact, his bold claim would get him killed. Jesus didn’t care—he was God come in the flesh, and he wasn’t going to back away from that claim one inch. That is why he came, and that is precisely what he claimed—no ifs ands or buts about it.

When you consider that claim alone Jesus made about himself, you are forced to eliminate all of the other nice-sounding, politically correct things people say they believe about him. In other words, Jesus cannot be just a good teacher, just a great moral leader, just a respected prophet, just a great figure of history. With Jesus, you have to eliminate “just” from your vocabulary. Jesus left the Jews with no other option, and he doesn’t leave you with another option either. As C.S. Lewis said,

“The discrepancy between the depth and sanity of his moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind his theological teaching unless he is indeed God has never been satisfactorily got over…[With Jesus] you must make a choice. Either He was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman, or something worse. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.”

I am sure glad the Great I Am forced that choice on me! How about you?

Jesus! You’ve got to do something with him. You’ve got to love him or hate him…but you really can’t live with anything in between and live an intellectually honest life. So be honest—where do you line up with Jesus? I hope you go with what he claimed, and proved, about himself.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for revealing yourself in your Son, Jesus. And thank you for making me your child by grace through faith in him. I will be forever grateful that I personally know the Great I Am!
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An Explosion of Grace

Not Guilty. Paid in Full. Completely Forgiven.

Not Guilty. Paid in full. Completely forgiven. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound! If by grace you are saved, have you thanked God lately for the grace that has covered all of your sins! Perhaps now would be a great time to do that. And maybe today would be a great day to extend his grace to another undeserving sinner like you.

The Journey: John 8:11

Jesus said to [the adulterous woman], “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

If I were writing this story instead of John, the scene would have called for Jesus to order down fire from heaven to torch this nasty bunch of Pharisees who had brought the adulterous woman before the Lord. At the very least, I would have had Jesus snatching the poor lady from their grasp and beaming over to Galilee to set her free. That would have made a great story—Oscar-worthy, I’m sure!

But as we’ve come to expect of Jesus, he does the unexpected. Instead of special effects and edge-of-your-seat drama, he simply stoops over and writes in the sand. Do you ever wonder what he wrote? “Jesus was here!” or perhaps the Ten Commandments, or better yet, a list of the Pharisees’ secret sins or the names of their mistresses?

Whatever it was, the religious “Nazis” kept pressing until finally he said, “Look, if any of you are without sin, you can be the first one to throw a stone at her.” Then he began to scribble again, and with those words, Jesus lobbed a grenade into their midst that exploded their self-righteousness. Now defenseless, one-by-one the Pharisees, from the oldest to the youngest, walked away, leaving only Jesus and this sinful woman.

Now what would happen to the adulterous woman? Could she expect to get preached at again, some more condemnation, another helping of humiliation and a pile of rejection? That had been the pattern so far. Instead, Jesus gently asks, “Where are your accusers? Has no one judged you guilty?”

She replied, “Sir, they’re gone…they didn’t judge me guilty.”

Then Jesus lobbed another grenade—this one a grace-grenade that utterly exploded this sinful woman’s self-condemnation and turned her sad world right-side up: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

So just what was it that Jesus wrote in the sand? I think it is highly likely that he bent over and with his finger, etched these words: “Not guilty!”

A few weeks later, Jesus again wrote those very same words in the sand. This time it was not with his finger, but with blood that dripped from his nail-pierced hands and feet, leaving an indelible stain on the ground at the foot of the cross. This time it wasn’t just meant for an adulterous woman, it was meant for you unfaithful, guilty people like you and me:

“Not Guilty. Paid in full. Completely forgiven.”

I don’t know what that grace-explosion does for you, but it makes me want to “go and sin no more.”

Have you thanked the Lord lately for his grace—grace that has covered all of your sins! Perhaps now would be a great time to do that. And maybe today would be a great day to extend his grace to another undeserving sinner like you.

“This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners, for by a wonderful exchange our sins are now not ours but Christ’s, and Christ’s righteousness is not Christ’s, but ours.” ~Martin Luther

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, thank you for you grace. Please give me more. And help me to rightly understand it so that I want to go and sin no more.