Category: Daily Lesson

There is a difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow, though both are deeply felt. You can feel genuine sorrow over something you have done. Your mind can become consumed with your failure and offense against God and others. Judas felt this kind of sorrow. He betrayed the Son of God for thirty pieces of silver, the standard price of a slave. Yet his sorrow did not lead him to repent and to seek restoration with his fellow disciples, but rather to a lonely field where, in his anguish, he took his own life (Matt. 27:3-5). Judas carried his sorrow to his grave.

How different Peter’s sorrow was! Peter, too, failed Jesus on the night of His crucifixion. Peter also went out and wept bitterly (Luke 22:62). Yet Peter returned to Jesus and reaffirmed his love for Him (John 21:15-17). Peter was not only remorseful, he was also repentant. Peter’s life changed. There is no record of Peter ever denying his Lord again, even when he was persecuted and threatened with death. Peter repented, turned his life around, and never committed that sin again.

Don’t allow mere unhappiness over what you have done to rob you of genuine repentance. You can blame yourself and be angry with yourself for the sins you have committed, but that is not repentance. Allow the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the gravity of your sins. Ask the Spirit to clearly show you how God views your character. When you see your sin from God’s perspective, you will experience godly sorrow.

Waiting is one of the hardest things to do. We want to be people of action. We feel better if we are doing something to address our need, but waiting forces us to rely on God. David learned what it meant to wait. He was chosen by God to be the next king of Israel, then spent years waiting for the day God’s word would come to pass in his life. As he waited, a paranoid, egocentric king occupied the throne that had been promised to him. David spent his time hiding in caves and living among his enemies. As he waited he saw good friends murdered and his family and possessions taken. He saw Israel’s enemies wreak havoc on his nation. Perhaps no one ever faced greater adversity while waiting upon God’s promise than David did. He certainly understood what it meant to become discouraged and fearful.

But David also enjoyed the reward for waiting upon the Lord. He became the greatest king in Israel’s history, and, more importantly, through his trials he became a man after God’s own heart. The psalms David wrote during his days as a fugitive have been cherished words of encouragement for millions of people through the ages. Through David’s descendants came the Messiah. David’s willingness to wait has blessed us all.

Times of waiting on the Lord can be some of the most precious moments in your life (John 11:1-6). If you are waiting on God for something, read Isaiah 40:31 and find encouragement as you wait for Him to fulfill His promises to you.

Hope in the Christian’s life is not wishful thinking. It is confident expectation. Those without Christ may wish things were different and wish they knew someone who could change their situations. The Christian is personally related to the Lord of the universe, who is sovereign not only over all creation but also over every circumstance we experience. We can live with confidence because our hope is in One who is faithful.

When God speaks, He stands by His word to see that it comes to pass (Isa. 55:11). When God speaks a word to you, trust Him completely, for God never deceives His children. If God has indicated to you that He is going to do something, you can be absolutely confident that He will do it.

Do you wonder why unrighteous people seem to prosper while righteous people suffer? Jesus promised that each would eventually receive a just reward (Luke 16:19-31). Do you wonder if all the effort you have put into training your children in God’s ways will bear fruit when they become adults? God promised it would (Prov. 22:6). Do you wonder if the things you renounced when you became a Christian will be replaced by God’s blessings? Jesus assured us we would receive a hundred times as much (Mark 10:29-30). Do you doubt that Jesus will return and join us with those who have already died? Scripture indicates this certainty (1 Thess. 4:13-18).

Our hope is not mere speculation in what God might do. God has given His word on many areas of life regarding things He will do. We can have confident hope in everything that He has promised.

Bitterness has a tenacious way of taking root deep within the soul and resisting all efforts to weed it out. Bitterness occurs for many reasons. It might come from deep hurts you received as a child, hurts you cannot forget. Time, rather than diminishing the hurt, only seems to sharpen the pain. Bitterness can result from the hurtful words of a friend or coworker. Often the person who hurt you is unaware of the extent of your bitterness. You find yourself rehearsing the offense over and over again, each time driving the root of bitterness deeper within your soul. Bitterness can derive from a sense of being unjustly treated.

Bitterness is easy to justify. You can get so used to a bitter heart that you are even comfortable with it, but it will destroy you. Only God is fully aware of its destructive potential. There is nothing so deeply imbedded in your heart that God’s grace cannot reach down and remove it. No area in your life is so painful that God’s grace cannot bring total healing. No offense committed against you is so heinous that God’s love cannot enable you to forgive.

When you allow bitterness to grow in your life, you reject the grace of God that can free you. If you are honest before God, you will admit the bitterness and allow God to forgive you. Bitterness enslaves you, but God is prepared to remove your bitterness and replace it with His peace and joy.

God promises all believers that if we live righteously and pray fervently, our prayers will be effective and produce significant results. How do we treat a promise like this? We might argue, “But I do pray, and nothing happens!” Our problem is that we do not hold ourselves accountable to the Scripture. God’s Word says that prayer ought to accomplish much. If our prayer life is not accomplishing much, what should we do? If we are praying but seeing no results, should we conclude that this promise is untrue? Should we excuse this Scripture as impractical and unrealistic? Or should we examine ourselves to see if we meet its conditions?

James says that fervent prayer avails much. Could it be that we are not as fervent in our praying as we should be? Fervent prayer means we do not quit easily. Fervent prayer means we purposefully spend sufficient time in intercession. Fervent prayer means we cry out to the Father, sometimes in tears, with our heart and soul. Fervent prayer comes as the Holy Spirit assists us in praying with groanings too deep for words (Rom. 8:26).

According to James, our righteousness will ensure effective prayer. God’s standard of righteousness is different from ours, for He looks beyond our actions, even beyond our thoughts, directly to our hearts. How then should we hold ourselves accountable if our prayers are accomplishing little? If nothing happens when we pray, the problem is not with God. The problem is with us, for God’s word is absolutely reliable. If we adhere to what God requires, He will lead us to pray for things that align with His purposes, and God will answer our prayers in a mighty way.

The nation of Israel was designed to have a place where other nations of the world could come to worship the true God. The temple in Jerusalem was to be the center from which the good news of God’s salvation would spread to every corner of the world. But those who were supposed to be God’s people forsook Him and practiced every kind of sin. Rather than being ambassadors for God, they disgraced His holy name. Rather than attracting the nations of the earth to God, they became stumbling blocks to those who were seeking the true God. The Israelites fell so far from God’s original intent that God judged them and sent them into exile. Yet God promised that one day His people would be an avenue by which others could find salvation.

It is God’s desire that anywhere there is a Christian, God has a way for people to learn of His salvation (Rom. 10:14-15). Whenever an unbeliever meets a Christian, the unbeliever ought to be face to face with everything he needs to know in order to follow Christ.

Sadly, however, Christians can be like the Israelites of Isaiah’s day. We can be so involved in our sin that we are completely disoriented to God, ill-equipped to direct others to Him. If our lives are filled with hypocrisy, we may turn people away from God, rather than helping them come to Him. If our lives are filled with doubt or anger, we will impede others from coming to Christ. Our lives ought to be a highway of holiness, providing easy access to God for anyone around us who seeks Him. Ask God to remove any obstacle in your life that hinders others from coming to know Jesus.

A mark of spiritual maturity is a willingness to sacrifice personal comfort in order to strengthen other believers. Paul urges Christians to pursue only activities that promote peace and behavior that builds up others.

To pursue means to passionately focus one’s undistracted effort toward a goal. This is not a casual matter. It involves using all the resources God has given us to ensure growth and peace in the life of a fellow Christian. To the Colossian church, Paul said he labored, “striving . . . to present every man perfect in Christ” (Col. 1:28-29). This took concentration and effort!

For Paul, choosing to edify Christians meant refraining from any activity that caused others to stumble. He did not concern himself with his own rights or comforts because his greater priority, over his personal freedom, was to lead others to Christian maturity (1 Cor. 14:12, 26). This is how Jesus related to His disciples. He taught them that they could express no greater love than to lay down their lives for one another (John 15:13). As Christians, we ought to be so devoted to strengthening one another’s faith that we pursue this goal relentlessly, even if it means laying down our own lives. This behavior characterized the early churches (Acts 2:40-47). This is what love is like among God’s people (Gal. 6:9-10).

As God reveals to you what those around you need in order to grow in their faith, be prepared to make the necessary sacrifice on behalf of your fellow Christians (Col. 1:29).