Condemnation?

Yesterday, a person accused me that something I did was wrong. I’d not been convicted that it was, so was totally surprised and had nothing to say. The devil, a liar and accuser of God’s people added a few more hits and I began to feel totally condemned. After calming down, I realized this was a spiritual battle, one of Satan’s attempts to provoke me to self-protection and stop me from praying.

My enemy is not flesh and blood, so I prayed for that person and the misunderstanding. I also asked God to show me if there was something in me that needed to be brought before Him in confession and repentance. The pressure eased up and sleep came easy.

However, I woke around 3:30 a.m. with that heavy sense of internal pain again, feeling as if I’d been wounded. With my hubby’s wise help and the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, we began to understand more fully what was going on in my reaction. The Lord also showed us what was driving the person who did this. Peace.

This morning, I was still not sure if I had been in the wrong. The thoughts in my head were vague. God reminded me that conviction from the Holy Spirit is clear. I always know what He is telling me. However, the enemy’s accusations are usually fuzzy yet emotionally painful. I asked God for clarity and He answered in the first verse of today’s devotions: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

This was a big hug. God assures me that even when I do wrong, it is forgiven. Was I wrong? Not if I was following the lead of the Holy Spirit. Was I doing that? I think so. Yes, I know I was. While our actions can never be a hundred percent free from personal desires and hopes, this time what I did was an act of love rather than selfishly motivated.

The passage goes on:

“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1–5)

More hugs from the Lord in those verses. Even though He might possibly have something else in mind to later reveal, right now He knows what I need to hear. What a loving God!

The rest of the reading takes me to the end of Romans 8. After verses 28-29 that tell me God will use all things including this ‘thing’ to transform me into the image of His Son, He says this:

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31–39)

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Jesus, dear Jesus, because of You, I am more than a conqueror over what happens to me. This event will build my spiritual life, not destroy it. I need to abide in You and trust You. Because of You, no one can get away with a false accusation. Any sins I have committed You have also covered. There is no condemnation against me and nothing or no one can separate me from the love of God. 

God’s wisdom covers our mistakes

2 Kings 18:13–19:37, Ephesians 2:1–3:21, Proverbs 8:19–26

Hezekiah was a godly king but when Sennacherib king of Assyria threatened, he “gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house. At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria.” (2 Kings 18:15–16)

The Assyrians came back to the people and said, “Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us . . . .” but Isaiah the prophet told them, “Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land. ” (2 Kings 19:6–7)

Hezekiah also prayed, “. . . O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.” (2 Kings 19:17–19)

The Lord responded, “He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city . . . . for I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

That night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib went home and as he was worshiping in the house of his god, his sons killed him. (2 Kings 19:31–37)

God in His wisdom covered Hezekiah’s mistake of attempting to buy his safety with gold instead of trusting his God. He knows His people are frail and faulty and need His wisdom and grace.

Solomon says that the wisdom of God produces fruit better than fine gold or choice silver. Wisdom “walks in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love it, and filling their treasuries.” (Proverbs 8:19–21) Whether it is gold, silver, or my own ideas about life, God’s wisdom is superior. I cannot live without His wisdom or His grace.

In the NT, the Gospel is a grand display of how God’s wisdom covers my errors. As Paul says, I was once dead in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, living in the passions of my flesh, carrying out the desires of my body and the mind. I was by nature a child of wrath. Ugh!

But God, rich in mercy and because of His great love, made me alive in Christ! By grace I have been saved through faith. This was not my own doing. It is the gift of God, not my works, so I cannot boast. I am His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that I should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:4–10) This too is the wisdom of God; He covers sin with the blood of His Son.

Even more amazing, particularly for the OT saints, is that God would unite Jew and Gentile by faith in Jesus. He says to the Gentiles, “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one . . . that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility . . . . you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God . . . .” (Ephesians 2:11-19)

That means that had both Hezekiah and the king of Assyria known and believed the Gospel, they would not have been enemies but brothers in Christ, united in His grace. 

As Paul says, God is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” through the power of Jesus Christ whose grace and wisdom work amazing changes in His people!

The A-Fib Adventure continues

Yesterday, after posting my devotions on this blog, my heart decided to have hiccups again. At exactly 9:00 a.m., the rhythm faltered and I called for backup. The doctors told me not to let it go a day, but knowing what the ER is like Friday afternoons and evenings, my hubby took me in just before 1:00. 

This time was different. I was not anxious, in part due to knowing what they would do, but mainly because of the Lord’s word to me about having a different attitude toward the threat of death. Even though that outcome was doubtful, the risk is always there with anesthesiology. However, my mind was on the people around me. I was able to talk about Jesus to one of the nurses. Then it came time for the cardioversion (electrical jolt to restore proper heartbeat). I closed my eyes, then opened them in what seemed like only a moment later — and it was done. 

So again, the pulse is back to normal. Doctors changed my medication dose hoping that will keep me stable longer, and until a heart specialist sees me. I slept well and now look at another verse about Jesus as He faced a much more difficult trial than mine will ever be.

And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

Dying on a cross for the sins of the world did not involve any anesthetic. Jesus would not be lying on a bed surrounded by individuals who cared about Him. No one would ask if He was in pain or even care that His anguish would go beyond human imagination. Not one of the people who were there would have any idea what it was like to bear the weight and feel the guilt of all that sin. No one gave a rip that His body would suffer as much as His soul. They just wanted Him dead and gone, out of their faces so they could continue as usual.

For someone who believes in the sovereign power of God, I understand why the crowds said, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” (Matthew 27:40) Jesus could have stopped all that nonsense.

But He didn’t. For the joy set before Him, He stayed there. For the souls that would believe and be saved, He stayed there. For the glory that would go to God because of His plan of redemption, Jesus said, “Not as I will, but as You will” and remained in that place of pure agony.

Yesterday I wondered if this trip for a “zap” could happen many times. The doctor told me he had one patient that came in every other day for weeks, joking that he “put my son through college.” I joked right back and told him I hoped he hadn’t decided now to buy a boat! Nevertheless, for a person who likes to keep up with her to-do list, the prospects of more days of even just four hours in the ER now and then is not high on my priority list.

Yet God reminds me that His will could be just that. Do I trust Him? Do I care that maybe the nurse who heard about Jesus needs to hear again? Or someone else does? Or that maybe He just wants me to have that attitude that Jesus had of “not my will, but Yours be done”?

I fully understand the “if it be possible” part and would like to bypass all this. Yet I also know that “this cup” is a reference to the wrath of God. I will never have to bear that. Whatever God has in mind for me, it will not include the weight and guilt of sin. Jesus has already done that. My sin was taken to the Cross and covered when He died for sin. He bore all the punishment, all the wrath that I deserve. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1) Because of Jesus, any will of God for me, even that which involves suffering, is not about punishment. 

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Lord, I have this notion about how I want to spend my time, but You have plans for me. Those plans could involve hours in a waiting room chair, or hours in a cubicle with an IV in my arm and a cardioversion cart beside my bed ready to knock some sense into my pulse. After yesterday, I see that Your plans might also involve opportunities to tell someone else about Your incredible goodness, or say to them what it means to be in Christ and have Your joy. Whatever it is, I cannot predict it or put it on my to-do list. I can only trust You to put me where You want me and give me the attitude and words that are in Your plan. What is really neat is that this a-fib thing is changing from being an annoying nuisance to another adventure with You at the helm.

Nevertheless

Today’s devotional reading is a continuation from the same passage as yesterday. It is about the amazing and merciful grace of God. It also demonstrates the importance of every Word that God speaks. 

I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. (Psalm 73:22–24)

The psalmist admits his sinfulness. He is ignorant of the ways of God and sometimes foolish and animal-like in his behavior. Nevertheless, God holds his hand, guides him and will take him into eternal glory. This sinner knows he is with God because God is with him.

Spurgeon’s words are wonderful. As I read them, I felt my own heart breathing yes and sighing at the wonder of God’s love. No matter what I do, I can also say, “Nevertheless, I am continually with Him.” Again I paraphrase Spurgeon for I cannot say it better . . .

“Nevertheless” regardless of all that has been confessed, it was still true and certain — David was saved and accepted. The blessing of being continually in God’s presence was still his. He was fully conscious of his own lost estate and of the deceitfulness and vileness of his nature, yet by a glorious outburst of faith, he sings, “Nevertheless I am continually with You.”

This encourages me to confess and acknowledge the same truth. “Nevertheless, since I belong to Christ I am continually with God!” By this I mean that I am continually on His mind, he is always thinking of me for my good. I know this because His Word says so. How amazing!

I am also continually before his eye. His eyes never close in sleep but perpetually watch over my welfare. He guards me like a hen her chicks and a shepherd his flock — no matter what I do.

Further, I am continually in his hand. No one can pluck me out, just as Jesus said. He holds me safe and secure in His care, even when I behave in foolish and ignorant ways.

Spurgeon says that I am continually on God’s heart too. I am worn there as a memorial even as the high priest bore the names of the twelve tribes upon his heart for ever. All of Scripture verifies that God will never leave me or forsake me. He says I am the apple of His eye, a jewel in His crown.

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God, You always think of me. Your love continually yearns towards me. You are always making providence work for my good. You have set me as a signet on Your arm. Your love is strong as death; many waters cannot quench it, neither can the floods drown it.

Surprising grace! You see me in Christ, and although in myself I am  abhorred because of sin, You behold me as wearing Christ’s garments, washed in his blood and covered. I stand accepted in Your presence and am continually in Your favor —“continually with You.”

This is comfort when I am tried and afflicted or vexed with any inner tempest. I can drink in the calm of these words and experience the peace that Your grace gives because, “Nevertheless I am continually with thee.”