Afraid? Dismayed?

Afraid? Dismayed? by Mark Altrogge

Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s….Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”  (2 CH 20.15, 17)

When we face a “great horde”, be it actual enemies, financial problems, rebellious children, marital problems, sickness, or our own gigantic sin that looms before us, we can be tempted in two ways.  We can be tempted to be afraid and tempted to be dismayed.  God told Jehoshaphat two times not to give in to these temptations.
Do not be afraid or dismayed.  Don’t fear and don’t be discouraged.
God tells us not to yield to fear or discouragement,  for the battle belongs to him.  He is waging war against the sin in our life and in the life of that rebellious teen.  He is fighting the fear and unbelief in our hearts.  He is fighting for our holiness and joy.  The battle is not ours but God’s.
We must guard against this double-edged temptation.  We must battle fear and discouragement.
“Do not be dismayed” has to do with the present. We can be dismayed at the state of our marriage or how our kids are doing.  We can be discouraged at our slow progress to conquer a sin.
“Do not be afraid” has to do with the future. We fear for our teen if she continues the direction she’s going.  We fear there won’t be enough money next month.  We fear that this pain won’t go away.  God tells us not to be fearful for the future, nor be discouraged about the present.
A sister I know had been battling depression and was experiencing powerful emotions of discouragement and fear.  One day on her way into a store, she passed  a Salvation Army Lady collecting money.  She’d just heard a message about casting our bread upon the waters, so she went back and gave a dollar, and the lady gave her a little envelope with a card inside.  She opened it and the card read:

Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s.’

God specifically spoke to her about the very emotions she was struggling with and greatly encouraged her that day, and he wants to encourage you today.  Do not be dismayed at what you see, nor afraid of what may be – the battle is the Lord’s.

5 Ways Sin is Serious

5 Ways Sin is Serious

By: John Piper In Psalm 51, as he laments and repents of his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, David confesses at least five ways that his sin is extremely serious.
1. He says that he can’t get the sin out of his mind.
It is blazoned on his conscience. Verse 3:

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Ever before him. The tape keeps playing. And he can’t stop it.
2. He says that his exceeding sinfulness is only against God.
Nathan had said David despised God and scorned his word. So David says in verse 4,

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

This doesn’t mean Bathsheba and Uriah and the baby weren’t hurt. It means that what makes sin sin is that it is against God. Hurting man is bad. It is horribly bad. But that’s not the horror of sin. Sin is an attack on God—a belittling of God. David admits this in striking terms: “Against you, you only, have I sinned.”
3. He doesn't justify himself.
David vindicates God, not himself. There is no self-justification. No defense. No escape. Verse 4:

…so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

God is justified. God is blameless. If God casts David into hell, God will be innocent.
This is radical God-centered repentance. This is the way saved people think and feel. God would be just to damn me. And that I am still breathing is sheer mercy. And that I am forgiven is sheer blood-bought mercy. David vindicates the righteousness of God, not himself.
4. He intensifies his guilt by drawing attention to his inborn corruption.
Verse 5:

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Some people use their inborn corruption to diminish their personal guilt. David does the opposite. For him the fact that he committed adultery and murdered and lied are expressions of something worse: He is by nature that way.
If God does not rescue him, he will do more and more evil.
5. He admits that he sinned not just against external law but against God’s merciful light in his heart.
Verse 6:

Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

God had been his teacher. God had made him wise. David had done so many wise things. And then sin got the upper hand. For David, this made it all the worse. “I have been blessed with so much knowledge and so much wisdom. O how deep must be my depravity that it could sin against so much light.”
So in those five ways at least David joins the prophet Nathan and God in condemning his sin and confessing the depths of his corruption.

9 Ways to Know the Gospel is True

9 Ways to Know the Gospel of Christ Is True

  By: John Piper 1. Jesus Christ, as he is presented to us in the New Testament, and as he stands forth from all its writings, is too single and too great to have been invented so uniformly by all these writers.
The force of Jesus Christ unleashed these writings; the writings did not create the force. Jesus is far bigger and more compelling than any of his witnesses. His reality stands behind these writings as a great, global event stands behind a thousand newscasters. Something stupendous unleashed these diverse witnesses to tell these stunning and varied, yet unified, stories of Jesus Christ.
2. Nobody has ever explained the empty tomb of Jesus in the hostile environment of Jerusalem where the enemies of Jesus would have given anything to produce the corpse, but could not.
The earliest attempts to cover the scandal of resurrection were manifestly contradictory to all human experience—disciples do not steal a body (Matthew 28:13) and then sacrifice their lives to preach a glorious gospel of grace on the basis of the deception. Modern theories that Jesus didn't die but swooned, and then awoke in the tomb and moved the stone and tricked his skeptical disciples into believing he was risen as the Lord of the universe don't persuade.
3. Cynical opponents of Christianity abounded where claims were made that many eyewitnesses were available to consult concerning the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
"After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:6). Such claims would be exposed as immediate falsehood if they could. But we know of no exposure. Eyewitnesses of the risen Lord abounded when the crucial claims were being made.
4. The early church was an indomitable force of faith and love and sacrifice on the basis of the reality of Jesus Christ.
The character of this church, and the nature of the gospel of grace and forgiveness, and the undaunted courage of men and women—even unto death—do not fit the hypothesis of mass hysteria. They simply were not like that. Something utterly real and magnificent had happened in the world and they were close enough to know it, and be assured of it, and be gripped by its power. That something was Jesus Christ, as all of them testified, even as they died singing.
5. The prophesies of the Old Testament find stunning fulfillment in the history of Jesus Christ.
The witness to these fulfillments are too many, too diverse, too subtle and too interwoven into the history of the New Testament church and its many writings to be fabricated by some great conspiracy. Down to the details, Jesus Christ fulfilled dozens of Old Testament prophecies that vindicate his truth.
6. The witnesses to Jesus Christ who wrote the New Testament gospels and letters are not gullible or deceitful or demented.
This is manifest from the writings themselves. The books bear the marks of intelligence and clear-headedness and maturity and a moral vision that is compelling. They win our trust as witnesses, especially when all taken together with one great unifying, but distinctively told, message about Jesus Christ.
7. The worldview that emerges from the writings of the New Testament makes more sense out of more reality than any other worldview.
It not only fits the human heart, but also the cosmos and history and God as he reveals himself in nature and conscience. Some may come to this conclusion after much reflection, others may arrive at this conviction by a pre-reflective, intuitive sense of the deep suitability of Christ and his message to the world that they know.
8. When one sees Christ as he is portrayed truly in the gospel, there shines forth a spiritual light that is a self-authenticating.
This is "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" (2 Corinthians 4:6), and it is as immediately perceived by the Spirit-awakened heart as light is perceived by the open eye. The eye does not argue that there is light. It sees light.
9. When we see and believe the glory of God in the gospel, the Holy Spirit is given to us so that the love of God might be "poured out in our hearts" (Romans 5:5).
This experience of the love of God known in the heart through the gospel of Him who died for us while we were yet ungodly assures us that the hope awakened by all the evidences we have seen will not disappoint us.

Prayerlessness is Unbelief

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2009/11/06/prayerlessness-is-unbelief/

Prayerlessness is Unbelief

Kevin DeYoung

Prayer is essential for the Christian, as much for what it says about us as for what it can do through God.  The simple act of getting on our knees (or faces or feet or whatever) for 5 or 50 minutes every day is the surest sign of our humility and dependence on our Father in heaven.  There may be many reasons for our prayerlessness—time management, busyness, lack of concentration—but most fundamentally, we ask not because we think we need not or we think God can give not. Deep down we feel secure when we have money in the bank, a healthy report from the doctor, and powerful people on our side.  We do not trust in God alone.  Prayerlessness is an expression of our meager confidence in God’s ability to provide and of our strong confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves without God’s help.
Too often when we struggle with prayer we focus on the wrong things.  We focus on praying better instead of focusing on knowing better the one to whom we pray.  We focus on our need for discipline rather than our need for God.  Almost all of us want to pray more frequently, and yet our lives seem too disordered.  But in God’s mind our messy, chaotic lives are an impetus to prayer instead of an obstacle to prayer.
You don’t need to work and work at discipline nearly as much as you need faith.  You don’t need an ordered life to enable prayer, you need a messy life to drive you to prayer.  You don’t need to have everything in order before you can pray.  You need to know you’re disordered so you will pray.  You don’t need your life to be fixed up.  You need a broken heart.  You need to think to yourself: “Tomorrow is another day that I need God.  I need to know him. I need forgiveness. I need help. I need protection. I need deliverance. I need patience. I need courage. Therefore, I need prayer.”
If you know you are needy and believe that God helps the needy, you will pray.  Conversely, if we seldom pray, the problem goes much deeper than a lack of organization and follow through.  The heart that never talks to God is the heart that trusts in itself and not in the power of God.  Prayerlessness is unbelief.
Prayerfulness, on the other hand is an evidence of humility and faith, which is why God loves it when we pray.