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Your Confidence in the Un-Random God

Your Heavenly Father Leaves Nothing Up To Chance

There is nothing random about God; nothing is left up to chance. The God of the Bible is the sovereign Lord of the universe, and is ruling over the details of history to bring about his perfect plan. What may seem like happenstance or coincidence, God has foreordained, caused, or permitted in his perfect will. Coincidence is simply a sovereign act of God for which he chooses to remain unseen, a miracle for which he prefers anonymity. God is in control of all things, and that includes your life.

The Journey: Matthew 2:5,15,18,23

For thus it is written in the prophets…

The birth and life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world, was not the product of random events. It was the direct result of prophetic fulfillment. Thus, the phrase linking Christ’s life to Old Testament prophecy is repeated four times here in this second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.

Those details of Jesus’ life had been laid out in the mind of God from eternity past and had been written down in the inspired utterances of the prophets of old hundreds of years before Christ was born. The fulfillment of scores of prophecies in minute detail of the birth, life, death, and resurrection Jesus leaves us with a pretty amazing track record of prophetic accuracy…leaving no doubt that those prophecies detailing his second coming will most certainly be fulfilled, too.

There is nothing random about God; nothing is left up to chance. The God of the Bible is the sovereign Lord of the universe, and is ruling over the details of history to bring about his perfect plan. What may seem like happenstance or coincidence, God has foreordained, caused, or permitted in his perfect will. Coincidence is simply a sovereign act of God for which he chooses to remain unseen, a miracle for which he prefers anonymity.

God is in control of all things, and that includes your life. David wrote in Psalm 139:16,

You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.

God’s Word invites you to live with amazing confidence today, knowing that he is in control of all things, including even the smallest details of your life. Therefore, you can say, “all things will work together for my good and his glory.”

As John Newton said, “We serve a gracious Master who knows how to overrule even our mistakes to His glory and our own advantage.” You can take that to the bank!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, I will live confidently and expectantly this day, and this year, knowing that my life is a part of your greater plan. Take over my life completely, and may every detail of my existence serve your purposes perfectly and bring great glory to your name.
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Delayed, But Not Denied

God Will Fulfill All Of His Promises To You

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promises…leading us along the best and straightest paths to Himself.” Catch that? He fulfills his promises—all of them! So which one are you claiming. If there are over 7,000 promises that God has made to his people in the Bible, shouldn’t you be claiming one or two of them for yourself? Look up a couple of promises in God’s Word, memorize them and pray them back to God every day this week.

The Journey: Matthew 1:1-2

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren.

Back in the day when I was growing up, you had two choices in Bible versions: The King James or the King James.  And the King James used the word “begat” when listing the genealogies of the Bible, as is the case in this chapter.  To read through what seems likean unending lists of mostly boring and meaningless names in these genealogical record took real commitment. Matthew 1 is a case in point: “Judah begat Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez begat Hezron, and Hezron begat Ram…” and so forth.

Perhaps you were tempted to skip over this chapter today, or maybe just to just read through these names a little faster than normal. That’s what we tend to do with genealogies—the “begats”. If we read them at all, we just breeze through them. They’re to be endured, not enjoyed; tolerated, not celebrated. That’s understandable. The names are hard to pronounce. We don’t have any historical context for most of these people. Reading these names is akin of reading from the phone book.

Yet we believe the inspired Word of God is inerrant in all it affirms, the only authoritative and infallible rule of faith and conduct. That means every chapter, every verse and every line is God’s perfect Word for us—even the genealogies. They are not here by mistake; they are not here just as filler. They are here by God’s design for our benefit. So, in a sense, these genealogies are truly “Designer genes”.

If you have ever researched your genealogy by looking up your family tree, you know that what you are looking at is the historical thumbprint that provides context to the ongoing story of your life. That’s why God spent valuable ink in His Word passing these genealogies to us. And this genealogy in Matthew is important because these names not only remind us of how Jesus got here. They tell us the story of who God is. And since God is our Father, the stories behind these names reveal the “Designer genes” that make us, spiritually speaking, who we are.

This particular genealogy tells a wonderful story—a very important story that you and I really need to know: It tells the story that God is the God of promise.

The very first line in Matthew 1:1 says, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham.” The birth of Jesus was the result of a Divine promise made thousands of years before his birth. The God of the Bible is a God who makes promises—and is faithful to keep them—every one! The Bible contains about 7,000 promises, and two of them stand head and shoulders above the rest: The Abrahamic and the Davidic covenants. Abraham and David are two significant Old Testament characters. God made promises to them in response to their faithfulness.

To David, God made the promise of an everlasting throne 1 Chronicles 17:11-14, “When your days are over and you go to be with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom…I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son…I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.”

But God not only promised David an enduring throne, he promised Abraham a universal seed. God told Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 that through his genealogy the whole world would be blessed. That didn’t happen for Abraham through Isaac, or Jacob, or Judah. It didn’t even happen for David through Solomon. The enduring throne and the universal blessing were revealed and fulfilled hundreds of years later through Jesus Christ.

The point is that in this genealogy, we see that God always keeps his promises. They may be so slow in coming, but they are never late. God’s promises may seem delayed, but they are never denied. And every time you read this genealogy, or any Bible genealogy for that matter, you are seeing how the God of history, in his sovereign timing, fulfills what he has promised.

And the God who made 7,000 promises in his Word, many of them direct promises to you, will fulfill them all in his sovereign time! It doesn’t matter when he fulfills them or how…it only matters that he will.

And he will, because he’s the God who fulfills!

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

God, you keep all of your promises. You’ve proven that throughout human history. Now there is one more I am calling upon you to fulfill this year. Along the way in 2019, conform me to the image of your Son. In all the circumstances that come my way, good and bad, make me more like Jesus!
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A Day To Begin Again

The Journey to Christlikeness

The New Year is just a few hours old, and I don’t know what this year holds for you and me, but I know Who holds this year. He is Immanuel, the God who is with us each step of the way. And since he is with us – behind us, in front of us, alongside us – he will fulfill each of his promises and accomplish all of his purposes—not the least of which is to conform us to the likeness of his Son. He is the unstoppable God, and making us more like Christ is his target – and he never misses. He will get us there looking a lot more like Jesus!

The Journey: Matthew 1:22-23

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”

For me, the launch of the New Year is always the opportunity to begin again. I’ve set new goals for myself, and today I continue the march toward that which God has called me: The transformation of my life into complete Christlikeness. Like the Apostle Paul, this will be my consuming passion this year:

Until Christ is formed in you! (Galatians 4:19)

One of those critical goals that will propel me forward toward Christlikeness is to have a “quiet time” with God every single day this year. I know of no more powerful and profound, yet simple key to Christian growth, spiritual health and life change than to read, meditate on, and pray over God’s Word. You cannot grow and you will not be “bless-able” without the intimate relationship with God that comes through his Word. It will not be apart from reading, memorizing, meditating, absorbing, obeying and loving God’s Word that God will truly take over Ray Noah in the next 365 days.

So I want to invite you to join me on this journey. I will be reading the Gospels four times this year—one chapter each day Monday through Friday. When I get through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, I will return to Matthew and begin again.

So why the gospels, you ask? Well, if I am going to look more like Jesus this year, I figured spending time listening to his words, watching his life, and absorbing his ways couldn’t hurt. And what better way to do that than by saturating my life in his story, which is contained in these four gospels.

Now as you start off today’s reading in Matthew 1, you are immediately confronted with a list of names, which, for the most part, are meaningless to you. You may be tempted just to skip past these names, but I want to challenge you not to do that. You see, each name, just like in your own family history, tells a story. And that story reveals God’s activity in fulfilling his divine purpose to bring about the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus did not just suddenly appear in history without context—his birth was the result of God’s eternal plan.

Not only do these names show us how God was fulfilling his sovereign purpose, they show us how he was fulfilling his divine promise. Jesus was born as a result of a promise God had made hundreds of years before, first to Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15), then to Abraham (Genesis 12:3) and to King David (I Chronicles 17:11-14). God never breaks a promise—you can count on that!

Furthermore, these names not only tell the story of God’s purpose and God’s promise, but they tell us the story of God’s grace in using fallen and quite flawed human beings as the conduit through whom his Son would be born. In this listing of the Messiah’s progenitors are some unlikely and undeserving people: Tamar, a Gentile woman who slept with her father-in-law; Rahab, a Gentile prostitute; Ruth, a Gentile woman from the hated Moabite nation; and Bathsheba, who is listed as the “wife of Uriah the Hittite”, the woman with whom King David had an adulterous affair.

It is nothing less than amazing that God would use people you would never expect as the human conduit through which he would fulfill his purposes and his promises. And if God would use people like them, he will use people like you and me. That is the grace of God!

This opening chapter here in Matthew’s Gospel that begins with all these strange and boring names tells us the amazing story of how our purposeful, faithful and gracious God went to extreme lengths to reach us and redeem us with his love. He didn’t send his love through a written message, or a public service announcement, or a sign in the heavens. He sent himself! He sent his love through a baby born in a manger, who was called Immanuel—which means, “God is now with us.”

Here we are at the beginning of the New Year, and I don’t know what this year holds for you and me, but I know Who holds this year. He is Immanuel. He is God, and he is with us. He is the God who will fulfill each of his promises and who will accomplish all of his purposes—not the least of which is to conform us to the likeness of his Son. He is the unstoppable God, and making us more like Christ is his target—and he never misses!

And he is the God who has every right to rule my life—and yours!

Have you set some action steps that will allow God to completely rule your life this year? I hope so. I have—I’ve listed 5 of them below (I have a few more that I’ll not bore you with at the moment). Take some time to write down your action steps—and if you don’t mind, share them with someone to whom you will be accountable.

  1. To have a daily quiet time with God—Bible reading, journaling and prayer.
  2. To share my faith with a lost person at least once per month.
  3. To live a morally pure and God-pleasing life each of the next 365 days.
  4. To look more like Christ in my thinking, feeling and acting life—that my growth in Christ-likeness will be evident to my family, associates and followers.
  5. To know and do God’s perfect will.

A Simple Prayer To Be More Like Jesus:

Lord, I really need your help on this. This year, pull out all the stops to conform me to the image of your Son. 365 days from now, may there be a noticeable change in me—may people actually mistake me for Jesus!
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God, Give Me A Super-Abundant New Year

An Audacious Prayer For Starting 2019

You are launching into a new year. You can slip into it quietly, or you can burst into it bigly. If your desire is to rise above your pain this year—your history, your constraints, your character—then lift it to God. If your goal is God’s uncommon blessing in your life this year, dare to ask him for it. If your dream is to seize new territory this year—spiritual, financial, relational abundance—ask God to bring it under your span of control. Just pray—bigly. God may just grant your request for a super-abundant 2019!

A Simple Prayer for God to Bless Me Bigly:

God, bless me bigly in 2019. In whatever I set out to do, grant me divine success—a lot of it! Cause your presence to go before me and let your hand be upon me. Keep me from being harmed and keep me from causing pain. Increase my Kingdom impact. I pray this for your glory alone. Amen.
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God Has Been Good

A Final Reflection for 2018

On a personal level, as I review the ups and downs of this past year, I have to agree with God’s self-testimony: “I have given you success. I have had your back—day and night. I have given you everything you needed.” Yes, in looking back over 2018, and for that matter, over all of my life, I can honestly say, “God has been good.”

Going Deep // Focus: Deuteronomy 2:7

For the Lord your God has blessed you in everything you have done. He has watched your every step through this great wilderness. During these forty years, the Lord your God has been with you, and you have lacked nothing.

In Deuteronomy 2, Moses is recounting the wilderness journey of the Israelites over the forty years between exiting Egypt and possessing the Promised Land. Mostly in this chapter, he gives a blow by blow account of their battles with enemy nations who opposed their travel—nations who paid dearly for their opposition to God’s plan. And in the middle of his account, Moses makes this amazing statement of how God has tenderly cared for Israel at each step of the way. Actually, Moses is directly quoting the Lord himself. In the statement, we see God’s own assessment of how he has carried his people all these years:

I have given you success.
I have had your back—day and night.
I have given you everything you needed.

Now of course, as Christians, you and I know that to be theologically true of God. He cares for us; he carries us. We sing about it every time we gather for worship. We remind one another that very truth to encourage us through the rough spots of life. Intellectually, we affirm in our minds that the Lord will provide—he is Jehovah Jireh, after all, the God who supplies all of our needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Yet, if we are to be honest about it, there are seasons where we question God’s care. There are spells where we don’t feel too successful, and we wonder if God even notices. We go through a deep disappointment or a painful failure or a tremendous loss, and we can’t see any evidence whatsoever that the Lord had our back. We pray for an answer—a provision, a healing, a breakthrough—and get a big fat nothing burger instead of everything we needed.

Most of us would never say that out loud—a few brave, unfiltered souls would, but you and I are too “holy” to say anything like that—but we are thinking that very thing to ourselves. Maybe in our prayers we let it slip, “God, where were you?” While disappointment with God is not something we like to dwell on and certainly don’t broadcast, it is a part of the journey for most, if not all believers. Yet God still says the same thing to us as he did to the Israelites: I have given you success, I have protected you, I have provided everything you needed.

Think about those statements from the view of the Israelites on their journey. They spent forty years meandering through a desert, with no end in sight, instead of making their beds in the land God had promised them. They were thirsty to the point of death on several occasions. They were sick and tired of eating the same thing day after day for forty years. They had to fight for their lives against enemy nations bent on destroying them—with bigger and better equipped armies than Israel’s. My guess is there were plenty of people on plenty of occasions who felt deeply disappointed with God’s care and provision.

Yet those emotions are based on just a relatively short slice of history—both the Israelites and ours. We see things in brief moments of time and make assessments about God. If we are in a season of success and wellbeing, we overflow with joy and thanks to God. But if the season is filled with disappointment and loss, we wonder where God is. The point is, they are just that: seasons. Seasons have a beginning and an ending. And while we only see what is right in front of us, God is over it all, watching out for us, allowing according to his impeccable wisdom what will develop our character and our faithfulness through experiences of joy as well as sorrow, and always leading us to where he desires to take us.

On a personal level, as I review the ups and downs of my seasons, I have to admit to the self-testimony the Lord gives:

I have given you success.
I have had your back—day and night.
I have given you everything you needed.

In looking back over all the seasons of my life, I can honestly say, “God has been good.” That indisputable fact leads me to declare trust in his goodness in any current season, whether pleasant or rough.

Yes, God has been good. I bet you can say that too!

Thrive: Review your life this past year—both the good and the bad. Now offer up a declaration of trust by telling the Lord, “God, you are good!”

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The Quest for Holiness is the Great Business of Life

Don't Forget - God Is Holy

There is something deep within my spirit that cries out to know God in his holiness. I’m guessing that is your longing, too. Perhaps I really don’t know what I am longing for, or what it will require of me. Nevertheless, there is no greater thing in this life than the pursuit of holiness. As Professor Leland Ryken has noted, for the Puritans, “the quest for … holiness was the great business of life.” The great business of life—that is what it must become for us if we are to truly worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

Enduring Truth // Focus: Psalm 96:9

Worship the LORD in the splendor of his holiness; tremble before him, all the earth.

I don’t know that we really “get” the holiness of God. And that’s too bad. We throw that term around a lot—holiness—and we have a sense that his holiness is not to be trifled with, but I don’t think we know how to wrap our minds around the concept of a holy God.

We know God as a loving Father—guiding, providing and protecting. That one’s easier to absorb, at least in theory. We know God as revealed through his Son, Jesus—compassionate, servant-hearted, gentle and caring. We know God through the infilling of the Holy Spirit—empowering, energizing and enabling us to do his bidding. But the holiness of God—do we really know him that way?

The saints of old did. When God passed by Moses in the cleft of the rock, Moses tasted the holiness of God. When Elijah called down fire from heaven on the false prophets, the people saw the holiness of God. When Ananias and Saphira were struck dead for lying to the Holy Spirit, the church knew the holiness of God. When the Apostle John received his revelation, we are told that he “fell at his feet as though dead.” (Revelation 1:7) The pure in heart were somehow able to partake in the holiness of God without being consumed by it; the impure weren’t so fortunate!

Leland Ryken noted that “for the Puritans, the God-centered life meant making the quest for spiritual and moral holiness … the great business of life.” I wish that for you—and for me, too—that holiness would be the great business of our lives; that we could partake in God’s holiness without being consumed by it. Frankly, though, I’m not sure how we can come into that kind of experience—and perhaps I don’t really know what I am asking for. Yet there is something deep within my spirit that cries out to know God in his holiness. I’m guessing that longing is in your heart, too.

How do we posture ourselves for an experience of the holiness of Almighty God? Andrew Murray wrote, “Nothing but the knowledge of God, as the Holy One, will make us holy. And how are we to obtain that knowledge of God, except in the inner chamber, our private place of prayer? It is a thing utterly impossible unless we take time and allow the holiness of God to shine on us.”

Beyond the positional holiness imputed to us at salvation and the empirical holiness of our obedience to Christ, may the Lord grant us a deeper, transformational revelation of Divine holiness so we can truly worship Almighty God in the splendor of his holiness.

Thrive: Offer this simple but sincere prayer to the One who hears and answers prayer: Oh that I may know the beauty of your holiness![/shareable]

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Beware the God of Money

You, Wealth, God and Eternity

Jesus talked more about money than about heaven or hell. The focus of many of his parables was that very subject. So was the subject of a good number of his teachings. That’s because Jesus fully understood the death-grip money could have on the human soul. Greed, materialism, selfishness, competition, worry, just to name a few, and worst of all, the love of money, always crowd out our love for God along with the joy and hope we have in him.

Enduring Truth // Focus: Luke 16:11

And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?

It has been said that Jesus talked more about money than about heaven or hell. Many of his parables centered around that very subject, as did his other teachings. That’s because Jesus fully understood the death-grip money could have on the human soul.

Whether or not there was (or is) a literal god of money, I don’t know. Some have supposed that is what Jesus referenced when he spoke of “mammon”. But for sure, the love of money leads to all sorts of problems in this world, and in our lives: Greed, materialism, selfishness, worry, just to name a few. Worst of all, the love of money always crowds out the love of God. That is why Jesus said in Luke 16:13 (NLT),

No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

In other words, we are to love God and use money—not vice versa.

Yet as critical as what Jesus said about God and money is, there is yet another facet to this teaching that you as a Christ-follower need to understand: How you use money now will have a direct bearing on the Kingdom authority God wants to release to you in this life, and in his eternal kingdom. That is what Jesus meant in Luke 16:11 when he said if you can’t be trusted with wealth in this world, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?

How you are handling your wealth—your money, home, cars and possessions—is not just isolated to the physical world of the present. It is, in reality, a test-run that will determine the extent to which God will entrust to you authority in realms much more important—the spiritual realm of the Kingdom Life now and the eternal realm of the ageless world to come.

Ask yourself this question today: Who has me? Money or God? Am I loving God and using money? Or in reality—and just take a look at your checkbook register or your Quicken summary if you are unsure what reality is—are you bowing at the altar of Mammon?

Thrive: Offer this prayer: “Lord, help me to use my money, to the very last cent, in a way that is pleasing to you. When I stand before you some day, may you say of me that I loved you and used money to store up wealth in the eternal kingdom.”