Increase in me, O Lord!

How shall we reach the lost in our generation?

The situation in Libya is a perfect illustration of the futility of a foreign policy based on money and power.

A Framework for Faith/Spiritual Disciplines

Cherish every practice of devotion greatly.

  - Anonymous, A Rule for Hermits (Irish, 9th century)

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

  - Psalm 42.1,2

Consider how much is bound up in that word, "cherish." What we cherish we delight in and enjoy. Things cherished are precious treasures, to be cared for diligently and shared proudly. Cherished things occupy our minds, thrill our hearts, and never fail to satisfy. We tend to spend a good deal of time and invest much in the way of attention in the things we cherish most.

Do we cherish prayer? Time in God's Word? Moments of solitude or of quiet reflection on the Lord's presence in created things? Does our heart yearn with the yearning of the psalmist, "When shall I come and appear before the Lord?"

Wouldn't that be wonderful? What can make it so? Well, it would help us to cherish our devotional practices if through them we actually engaged the Lord in His glory, partook of His presence, and knew His Spirit working within us to will and do of God's good pleasure. In the presence of the Lord, when we know we're there and we're seeing His beauty and experiencing His glory, then we know fullness of joy and pleasures forever more (Ps. 16.11). Whatever brings us to such a heightened sense of the knowledge of the Lord we will surely cherish, and resort there again and again.

But if our devotions are perfunctory, dutiful, or merely intellectual and academic, we will not cherish them much. We might continue to do them, but not with the kind of joy and intensity of focus that comes from actually meeting the Lord in prayer and in His Word.

In your times of devotions, seek the Lord.Wait patiently and expectantly on Him. Strive to know His presence and to engage His glory. Don't let Him go until He blesses you. If your disciplines and devotions don't yield this, then get some help revamping and retooling them. Because this is what they're for.

God longs for us to know Him and to experience His glory in transforming ways. Spiritual disciplines are the arena for this, and, when they yield that sweet and awesome encounter with the glory of God, we will know joy and pleasure, and we will cherish those times more and more.

Today at The Fellowship

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God is speaking through the things He has made.

Can we depend on a view of ethics based solely on passion and the will to compromise?

A Work of God’s Law--The Spirit of God is the Father’s great promise to His children, as Jesus explained. He gives us new life; he works in us unto sanctification and for the Kingdom; He will keep us unto the Day of Redemption. He is our great Treasure, Resource, and Deposit.

A Work of Power--We scarcely ever scratch the surface of what God by His Spirit is able to do in and through us. One reason this is so is a kind of naïve humility: we don’t want to think too highly of ourselves.

A Work of Warning--The Holy Spirit works with the Law of God from within His residence in our souls, illuminating and renewing our minds, cleansing our hearts, and fortifying our consciences to will what is upright and good.

A Work of Instruction--The Spirit of God is alone able to teach us the things that pertain to salvation: “Spirit of God, my Teacher Be!/Showing the things of Christ to me.”

A Work of Conviction--We have already seen that the Law of God is able to define and expose sin, so that sinners might see their need for repentance and cry out to God for mercy.

The fact that we have become believers in Jesus Christ, so that our sins are forgiven, does not mean that we cease from sinning. We deceive ourselves if we think that this is somehow so (1 Jn. 1.8-10).

An Inward Work--I frequently hear from others that keeping the Law of God leads to hypocrisy and self-righteousness, like the Pharisees of old. Certainly there is a measure of truth in that. But...