Humble But Victorious

1 Peter 5:5 – 9 (NIV): All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." 6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith.

    Peter pleads with us to be humble. This is the one trait we must possess to be used of God. He cannot use people who are full of pride. (In this case, a proud person is one who says, "I'm doing it my way and I don't care what God wants.") A humble person is submissive to authority. He respects and listens to people who are more mature. A humble person doesn't think he has all the answers. He puts others first, realizing that we're all in this together.
    Then Peter writes, "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." Notice this verse follows his reminding us to be humble. A proud person says he doesn't need God, but a humble person gives God all of his cares, worries and anxiety. A humble person knows he needs God and cries out to him. Go ahead, cry out to God -- he loves you more than you can imagine.
    And while you are at it, ask God for help defeating your enemy the devil. The devil is real - he is our enemy and he is seeking someone to devour. He will steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). He is like a lion on the prowl. Don't try to outsmart him. Don't ignore him or pretend he doesn't exist. But he is a defeated enemy and he knows it. How do we beat him? Peter says to resist him, standing firm in the faith. James says, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.” (James 4:7-8). Paul says to put on "your armor" (Ephesians 6). We defeat him with God's power, not ours. We beat him by resisting his lies and standing firm in our faith. Stand firm, be humble, and hang in there!

Amazing Grace

Romans 5: 6-9 (NIV): You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!

 

    The verses on the “Roman Road” to salvation are 3:23, 6:23, 5:8, 10:9-10, 10: 13. Since this passage contains the middle verse, you could call it the heart of the Gospel. It tells us that God loves us so much that he came and died for us - even while we were his enemies. He died for us while we were sinners who did not believe in him or even know him. That's an amazing truth - that's amazing grace! What this tells us is that God's love is unconditional. We did not and cannot earn it.

    It is important for us to know this because it reminds us that God loves everyone and we cannot earn more of his love than anyone else. Even while we were under God's wrath, he still loved us enough to die for us. So we should never look down our noses at another person or think that God loves us more. This passage also reminds us to love each other unconditionally, like God does.

    This brings up an interesting question: If we can't make God love us more than he already does, why try? For me, it’s because I want to please him and I want him to be proud of me. I want to build a friendship with him; I want to know him more and more and become more and more like Christ. Hebrews 11 talks about people who show their faith and then says, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.”

    God, like any good parent, loves his children whether they are good or bad, but I want to be a child who is pleasing to him. How about you - are you God's child? Then make him proud!

Delight Yourself in the Lord

Psalm 37: 4 – 9 (NIV): 4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: 6 He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. 7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. 8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret--it leads only to evil. 9 For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.

    David was seeing something that bothered him. He was seeing wicked men succeed in life. That went against the prevailing thought of the day. He had probably been taught that God would cause you to succeed if he was pleased with you. We still struggle with this idea today – won’t God bless us with success if we trust in him?

    But the world is simply not that black and white. Some people become very successful even though they do not care for God. Some people who love God just can’t seem to get ahead. David encourages us to keep on trusting in God no matter what we see around us. To delight in God is to enjoy him. And not just a little, but enjoy him most of all. This is the heart of the message of the Bible: God wants us to fellowship with him, to love him, to depend on him, to receive our joy from him. When we do this, he will take care of us.

    Waiting patiently for God is trusting in him even when we are not seeing him act on our behalf. We pray to God and tell him our needs, then we wait on him to answer. This is what trust is all about. For one thing, we trust that God knows better than we do what our desires and needs truly are. When he hope in God – and this means we put our trust completely in him – we will inherit “the land”, we will possess his promises. And God promises courage, strength, joy, and above all, salvation.