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Soul Happiness

Jesus’ Path to the Blessed Life

If we are going to be the kind of Christ-followers that God can bless, our behavior will have to align with our beliefs. What we “know” must become what we “do.” Specifically, we will have to live like Jesus lived, which means serving like Jesus served. Jesus made that perfectly clear when he said, “Since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:13-15) That is Jesus’ path to the blessed life!

The Journey: John 13:17

Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.

If we are going to be the kind of Christ-followers that God can bless, our behavior will have to align with our beliefs. What we “know” must become what we “do.” Specifically, we will have to live like Jesus lived, which means serving like Jesus served. Jesus made that perfectly clear when he said,

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you. (John 13:13-15, NLT)

So why is serving such a big deal?

First, quite simply, we are called to serve! Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-7, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God…took on the very nature of a servant.” In Galatians 5:13, Paul urged us to “serve one another in love.” When we are serving, we are fulfilling our basic Christian calling, and taking a huge step toward the blessed life Jesus promised.

Second, we were created to serve! Christians serve! Like a fish swims and a bird flies, Christians serve! Ephesians 2:10 reminds us “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Think about it: Before you were even conceived, God laid out specific plans just for you. You are not just an after-thought; you don’t just exist; you are on this earth not just to be a potted plant, you were born not just to consume, but to contribute. God shaped you to serve him. That places a big responsibility on your shoulders. Who you are is not just a product of random combination of your parent’s DNA. No—God was there at the moment you were conceived, even before, according to Ephesians 2:10, deliberately shaping you to serve his purposes through your life.

Third, service is what we contribute to the Body of Christ. God has a very specific purpose in mind for our call to serve: Not just going around helping people out randomly—although that is not a bad idea—but he specifically created us, converted us and called us to contribute to the life, health and mission of the local church.

I Peter 4:10 says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” How is God’s grace distributed? Not just in our private times with God…not just in corporate worship as we experience his marvelous presence, but as we serve one another. After salvation, serving is the primary means of God’s grace coming into our lives.

Fourth, service is what captures the world’s attention. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 5:16, NLT) Here in John 13, Jesus said, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples: That you have love for one another.” (John 13:35)

It’s by authentic servanthood that we become living proof of a loving God.

Roy Hattersley, a columnist for the U.K. Guardian and an outspoken atheist laments, “It ought to be possible to live a Christian life without being a Christian.” But after watching the Salvation Army lead several other faith-based organizations in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, wrote,

“Notable by their absence were teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers’ clubs, and atheists’ associations—the sort of people who scoff at religion’s intellectual absurdity… [Christians] are the people most likely to take the risks and make the sacrifices involved in helping others. Civilized people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags, and—probably most difficult of all—argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. The only possible conclusion is that faith comes with a packet of moral imperatives that, while they do not condition the attitude of all believers, influence enough of them to make [Christians] morally superior to atheists like me.”

The spotlight never shines more brightly on Jesus than when Christians serve. “By this, all will know that you are my disciples.”

Fifth, service causes happiness in your soul. There is something ennobling about serving others. Paul tells us in Acts 20:35, “Remember that our Lord Jesus said, ‘More blessings come from giving than from receiving.’”

Do you want to live an incredibly blessed life? Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, I want to obey you in all things. Help me. I want that to be the essential characteristic of my life.
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Very Spiritual Devils

No Devil Is So Dangerous As The Religious Devil

Chronic criticism betrays a deeper agenda and uglier issues of character in the critic’s life. Don’t get me wrong—constructive criticism is not a bad thing, if offered in the right spirit. It is chronic criticizers that I am talking about. In truth, they suffer from the Judas Syndrome: not betrayal, not thievery, but destructive criticism is their sin. So here’s the deal: If you have to be around someone who suffers this sort of Judas Syndrome, lovingly confront them, as Jesus did. If they don’t see their sin and change their ways, establish some boundaries with them. Don’t let them poison you and cripple your church. And most of all, don’t be one! Just remember, no one has ever built a statue to a betrayer, a thief, or a critic.

The Journey: John 12:8

You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.

To call someone a “Judas” is to label them a betrayer of the worst kind. It is an accusation that is reserved only for the worst kind of relational offense, since to call another by that name usually implies an irreparable breach in the relationship. After all, who wants to have anything to do with a backstabbing betrayer?

Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, to co-opt Franklin Roosevelt’s famous phrase, is an act that will “forever live in infamy.” But what Judas did to Jesus didn’t make him evil, it only revealed the evil that had, like cancer, been eating away at his character for some time. The fact is, in Jesus’ own words, “one of you [disciples] is a devil!” (John 6:70). That is, Judas was a devil of the worst kind: he was one of them; a church-going one. As Joseph Hall has said, “No devil is so dangerous as the religious devil.”

As you might imagine of someone who would betray the Lord, this notorious disciple exhibited some other character flaws that mostly go unnoticed in light of his more famous sin. In this account here in John 12, we are told that Judas protested Mary’s act of anointing Jesus with expensive perfume because it could have fetched a handsome price at the market, and money from the sale could have been used to help the poor. Of course, Judas had a hidden motive. Since he was treasurer for this small band of disciples, he apparently dipped his hand in the till from time to time to fund his own needs. Judas was not only a betrayer, but according to John he was also a thief. (John 12:6)

Yet as the Gospels are prone to do, there is another side to Judas that is uncomfortably close to so many people who sit beside you every Sunday in the pews of your church. They are the ones who, like clockwork, criticize everything from the room temperature to the sound level to the length and content of the sermon to the unfriendliness of the people to the call for financial commitment, ad nauseam. No matter what, they are never satisfied; there is always a better alternative—and although they are quick to protest, their solutions are never quite clear or doable. In truth, rather than wanting change, they simply want to gripe. They may smile and sing and put a coin or two in the offering plate, yet they are unwitting tools of Satan. The great Swiss theologian Karl Bath was speaking of them when he said, “The devil may also make use of morality.” They are very spiritual devils!

It wasn’t only Judas that Jesus had in mind when he uttered this gentle but pointed rebuke, “for the poor you have always”, he was speaking to the legion of church folk who believe their gift to the church is the ministry of criticism. In truth, their chronic criticism betrays a deeper agenda and uglier issues of character.

Don’t get me wrong—constructive criticism is not a bad thing, if offered in the right spirit, and conflict that is resolved Biblically in a Christ-like spirit can actually strengthen the church. It is chronic criticizers that I am talking about. In truth, they suffer from the Judas Syndrome: not betrayal, not thievery, but destructive criticism is their sin.

So here’s the deal: If you have to be around someone who suffers this sort of Judas Syndrome, lovingly confront them, as Jesus did. If they don’t see their sin and change their ways, establish some boundaries with them. Don’t let them poison you and cripple your church.

And most of all, don’t be one! Just remember, no one has ever built a statue to a betrayer, a thief, or a critic. C.S. Lewi said, “The devil loves ‘curing’ a small fault by giving you a great one.” Are you guilty of covering your own character flaws and deflecting Holy Spirit conviction meant for you with destructive criticism of others? If so, you may be guilty of the Judas Syndrome. Ask the Lord to show you where you need personal reformation. Then ask him to give you the courage to deal with issues that are keeping you from greater obedience and usefulness to him.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, show me how chronic criticism of others may be my way of deflecting conviction the Holy Spirit is bringing into my own life. And fill me with courage on this day to deal with the junk in my own life so I might be fully pleasing and blessable before you.
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Jettison Your Agenda

Never Elevate The Status Quo Over God's Plan

A love affair with your comfort zone is the greatest barrier to the risky adventure of radical faith to which God is calling you. You see, sticking with the status quo of what you prefer is an agenda that is different than what God has in mind. I would encourage you on this day to make a spiritual determination that no longer permits personal preference and creature comfort to determine your steps of faith. Jettison your agenda and you will be on the cusp of the adventure of your life!

The Journey: John 11:47-48

Then the leading priests and Pharisees called the high council together. “What are we going to do?” they asked each other. “This man certainly performs many miraculous signs. If we allow him to go on like this, soon everyone will believe in him. Then the Roman army will come and destroy both our Temple and our nation.”

This chapter is amazing on a couple of levels. First of all, the raising of Lazarus from the dead has to be one of the most dramatic miracles in the entire Bible, outside of Christ’s own resurrection.

This is a perfect set up for the authentication of Jesus’ messianic ministry—and he knows it. He knows Lazarus’ sickness will lead to death, yet he waits until the man dies to come and pray for him. He knows that God the Father has given him authority and power over death, yet he prays anyway in front of the crowd that God will release resurrection power through him to bring forth this man from death. He knows that the Jews are criticizing his inability to prevent this death. In their minds, he is just another so-called messiah—all hat and no cattle. He knows that everyone in this scene is thinking that after four days in the tomb, death has done its nasty business on the body of Lazarus—as the King James says, “He stinketh!”—and it is well beyond resurrection.

This is the perfect set up for one of the outstanding acts of God ever. God seems to operate at his best in these situations. Yes, Jesus could have gone to Bethany much earlier and healed Lazarus before it got to this point, but that miracle would not have even come close to the glory this miracle would bring. God had an agenda—he always does: To glorify himself.

The Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus had an agenda too. They loved the status quo—their positions of power, the religious monopoly they held over the people, the spiritual racket that kept them in their places of wealth and honor. They had come to despise Jesus because he was threatening their way of life. His radical message and rising popularity were making their cozy way of life vulnerable to a Roman crackdown, and the potential loss of that prevented them from seeing and accepting even an outstanding act of God like Lazarus’ resurrection.

That is the second amazing thing about this story. It is almost as amazing as Lazarus’ resurrection. The Jews had witnessed this incredible, undeniable miracle with their own eyes, yet rejected it because, at least in their minds, it threatened their way of life.

That is the problem with personal agendas. They keep us from seeing how far superior God’s agenda is to our own. We do everything in our power to resist and avoid the short-term discomfort God may be allowing in our lives in order to preserve the comfort that we have come to prefer—even at the expense of a resurrection.

How do we do this? Just think about it—you will probably come up with plenty of examples. Have you ever stayed home from church because you had a headache? You didn’t feel well enough to go to the very place that prays for the sick to be healed. Have you withheld a financial gift from God because that money was dedicated to something you wanted to do? Have you ever sat in your pew when the pastor called people forward for prayer because you were uncomfortable and worried about what people might think? Have you ever held back on an adventure of faith because you felt unqualified and ill-equipped for the challenge?

It is most likely that you have an agenda that is different than God’s—perhaps more than a few. I know that I do.

What do you say we make a spiritual determination today that our agenda will no longer control our lives? If you will reject the status quo for the risky adventure of following God’s agenda, you will be on the cusp of the adventure of your life—maybe even a resurrection!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, show me where my love affair with the status quo is keeping me from a personal resurrection to radical faith. Help me to tap into the gift of courage you have given me to jettison my comfort zone for the risky adventure of faith.
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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.