God was pleased to adopt us as His children. God did not feel sorry for us or pity us and therefore decide to adopt us. No, God loved us when He made and predestined us to be His before the creation of the world (Eph 1:4). His was an adoption of redemption. Ours is the story of the prodigal son. God restored to Himself and to His kingdom those who were created and predestined to be His for His glory and pleasure. And He accomplished all of this through the sacrifice of our loving Savior, Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son.

Give thanks and praise to your heavenly Father today for creating you to be adopted into His family.

For further study: Romans 9:8-13

(Excerpt from Made Like Christ a 30 day Bible study Spiritual Formation Tools page at Christian Counseling Online.)

Meditating on the word of God means that sometimes we won’t even get past the first word, before we feel compelled to stop and soak it in. As I was meditating on Ephesians 1 verse 3 today, I found that to be the case. Have you ever thought about what the word praise means. Here it is used as an action word so we should really understand what it means.

This word translated “praise” in the NIV is the Greek word “eulogetos” from the word “eulogeos” (Strongs G2127) which means to “speak well of”. If we break the word down we get “Eu” (Strongs G2095) which means “well” or “good” and “Logos” (Strongs G3056) meaning “something said.” As an interesting aside, logos is the same word that the apostle John translates as “the Word” when he is speaking about Jesus in John 1. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

So what are we leading up to here? Ephesians 1:3 says Praise or “speak well of” the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (now sit up and take note!) who has “spoken well” of us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing “good words” in Christ (Who, remember we just said, is the Logos!). This words eulogeos also includes the concept of not only words but thoughts. Brothers and sisters in Christ, Ephesians 1:3-14 is all about the good words and thoughts that God has spoken over His children.

So, here is my question, “Will you receive the blessing of God, those well spoken words from God that He has spoken over His beloved children and made secure through His Son Jesus Christ? Or will you exalt your own words and thoughts above the “blessing” of God.” Romans 3:4 says, “Let God be true and every man a liar…so that you (God) may be proved right when you (God) speak and prevail when you judge.”

(Excerpt from Finding Freedom in Christ)

The word describes the enemy as one that is mainly spiritual (Ephesians 6:12). However, the spiritual warfare theater is described according to 2 Corinthians 10:5 as the mind.

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

It is the seat of the will and the intellect, where reasoning goes on, that is the seat of spiritual warfare. Paul further explains this in 2 Timothy 2…

Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. 23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24 And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. (2 Tim 2:22-26)

In warfare, one must protect the boundaries of the theater. In this case, we are referring to ways the word teaches us to protect our minds. Paul, using the emphatic, writes, “Flee the evil desires of youth…” and actively pursue the things of God. Boundaries to put up to help guard your mind are choosing godly behaviors like not getting involved with foolish and stupid arguments with others and might I say, with yourself as well. This is huge because most of us spend inordinate amounts of time dialoguing with ourselves in our minds.

Much of what we are thinking or dialoguing about fall into the categories of: mental arguments, pretensions (a claim concerning one’s own merit or right to honor), quarrels, or vain imaginations that erupt from our subconscious mind and are generally far from being grounded in the word of God. Our inner thoughts betray what is hidden deep within our unconscious. But God’s word says that He desires truth in the inner parts (psalm 51).

How well are you guarding the boundaries of your mind…by taking thoughts captive, by recognizing the unfruitful dialogue that goes round and round, unabated in your mind and unchallenged by God’s truth?

God’s answer to this mental malady is to “gird up the loins of your mind” by immersing yourself in the word of God.

(Excerpt from Finding Freedom in Christ)

One of the biggest mistakes we humans make in trying to describe God is that we give Him His being through the foggy lens of reality we’ve developed over the years of our life experience. God then becomes a being of our own making. He becomes an idol we have formed out of the clay of our gray matter and we give Him a place in our mind and worship a being that has no basis in reality. Others pull Him off the shelf they have set Him on in times of crisis or to argue a point when their sensibilities of Him are disturbed.

“My God would never do [insert whatever offends you about God]” is an overused cliche that some repeat when their beliefs about the ruler of the universe are challenged to the point of crisis. Where did we ever get the right to put God in that box? When we make statements or think such thoughts as this we have created an image of God that simply does not exist.

The only things God would never do are those things that are against His nature, such as lie. The only true reference of God is that which exists in the Bible and through our experiences of Him through the Holy Spirit that is 100% compatible with what is in the Bible. No other ultimate truths of God exist or are available to us outside this reality.

A common argument to the truth of the Bible and who God really is comes from those who question why there is such a division in the Christian church in the form of denominalization. In a discussion I recently had on Twitter someone asked, if there are some 30,000 denominations of Christianity in the world today, who has the right God? (As if our agreement on matters of theology makes God who He is.)

That appears to be a good question, but unfortunately it speaks more about us than it does God. None of us understand God exactly as He is because every Christian has a few, to probably several beliefs of Him that are just plain wrong. However, that doesn’t change who God is. Regardless of the fact that the 30,000 denominations of Christianity in the world and the 6 billion people in the world will all have some different interpretation of the Supreme Being, God is completely outside the fishbowl we live in and never changes who He is. Because we wake up some morning with an apparent epiphany or had some mind altering experience with a chemical substance years ago in the past, that never changes God’s form, essence, being or existence.

God can’t be anything other than who He really is, regardless of what our feeble mind makes Him out to be. How arrogant of us to think we have the power to shape the hands of our Creator. He creates us, shapes us and molds us, not the other way around.

Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’? Isaiah 45:9

God is not subject to the whims of universalist interpretation by Rob Bell, the atheist antagonism of Christopher Hitchins, the mockery of scientist Richard Dawkins or misquoted, misread and misinterpreted verses seen through my own foggy lenses. God is who He is, seek to worship Him as He is.

The word of God was meant to be yoked with prayer, its light always directing the saint’s heart, mind and will to worship, give thanks, repent, and petition the Father to glorify the Son so the Son will bring refulgent glory to the Father. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus taught us how to pray, “Thy will be done.” If we are to bear “much fruit” as true disciples of Christ then our wills must be united with God’s will. This is but just one aspect and purpose of prayer – wrestling with Him to get our minds and hearts and wills, yeah all, aligned with His will.

The Prayer Closet on this site uses the ACTS prayer format – Adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication (aka petition) because this is the pattern revealed in scripture. Most joyfully, prayer is to be done without ceasing. As we learn to hide the word in our hearts (Colossians 3:16), take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) we begin to discover this wonderful, abiding of our spirits with Christ through this vehicle called prayer.

The format of the Prayer Closet on this site is designed for those times during your day when you desire to draw away to a solitary place to spend more intimate time with the Lord, offering yourself as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) to be a vessel of intercession for the Lord’s will and His work. During this time you will want to have your Bible and perhaps a journal and a hymnal or worship music with you. Your Prayer Closet should be a comfortable and quiet place so phones should be silenced.  You may find it helpful to incorporate your prayer time with your Bible reading/study/meditation time allowing the word to fuel your prayers according to the will of and for the glory of God.

This kind of solitary prayer is the most vital time of the saint’s day. It’s vital because this is where we truly learn how to feast on the Bread of Life and Drink the Living Water. It is in the Prayer Closet that the Holy Spirit also fellowships with us in a unique way…rejoicing in the Lord, lighting our path, granting wisdom from on high, entreating God to advance His kingdom , graciously showing us our faults and washing us clean through the power of the cross of Christ. It all happens in the prayer closet and I’m sure it is in the prayer closet where Paul was inspired to write many of His epistles – I’m sure it was in the prayer closet that he grew in strength and wisdom and humility and was able to say one day by the power of the Holy Spirit “whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” (Phil 3:7-8).

It is in the prayer closet through meditation on the word of truth and invocation of the Holy Spirit that proud hearts are humbled, worldly minds are renewed, hard hearts are conformed, weak spirits are strengthened, the beauty of Jesus Christ is revealed, and the God hunger is satisfied.

The ancient philosopher Socrates used the principle, “Know thyself” as a guiding principle contending that the unexamined life is not worth living. I don’t know much about Socrates, or whether he effectively used this guiding principle to truly know himself in the biblical sense, but what I do know is that what he said is true.  Apart from knowing oneself one cannot expect to live a successful life.

Knowing oneself cannot happen apart from knowledge of the Holy One, our Creator God.  And there is no success in life apart from knowing God and His purpose for us. A wasted life, is a life lived out of “self”.  Every life not lived for God is a complete and utter failure.

Listening to John Piper this morning in the early, sleepless, hours I heard him say something to the effect of, “THE most important thing we need to know about ourselves is that we were made for God.”  Wow! If we could boil down our “need to know” to just one thing, this might just be the single most important thing we could ever know. Just as our physical bodies were made for food and they hunger after the food that is needed to keep them vibrant and living; we have a soul, that hungers and thirsts for God. Apart from Jesus Christ our souls cannot have life, health or vitality.

As our maker, Christ alone can satisfy the hunger and thirst of the human soul…Christ alone can feed and nourish the human soul….apart from Him is only sin and death….Are you thirsty? Jesus says, “Come to Me and drink.”

Here’s a link to the John Piper sermon: Out of Your Heart Will Flow Rivers of Living Water

You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God…You were on the holy mount of God…You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you…So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.  Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth…(Ez 28:12-17)

In these passages (Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:12-17) we see allegories, where the prophets are comparing the wicked Kings of Babylon and of Tyre to the fallen angel Lucifer. Matthew Henry (from his Bible commentary) suggests Ezekiel may also at times be referring to the fall of Adam. These passages give us invaluable insight concerning: the origins of evil, the war that rages against us and within us, and the chains that keep us in bondage.

As we read Ezekiel 28:15 “You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you” our sensibilities are jarred. Both Adam and the angels were created in perfection; our hearts are moved, in blatant indignation: how then could “wickedness” be found in them!? As we unfold the wisdom of God in these passages, it leads us to the alarming truth,”your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.”

God gives us a word, through the prophet Ezekiel that if we yield to it, will open up in us a window of deep and profound self awareness. Here we find the source of our sin and our great need for a Savior is exposed to the uttermost. For the substance of sin lies in our “self”. God says, “You were blameless until wickedness was found in you.” That wickedness was the outgrowth of pride working in both the angelic and human hearts. Pride, being an attitude of the mind, radiates a destructive force on the heart and like cancer spreads throughout the whole mind, corrupting one’s wisdom. For all true wisdom comes from God and is meant to point us back to God (the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. (Proverbs 9:10)) In contrast corrupted wisdom points us back to self as the supreme authority.

The substance of pride is “ownership.” When Lucifer began to “own” his beauty there was a wrongful elevation in his thoughts about his own position in the universe (I will raise my throne above the stars of God). He began to delight in his beauty and think “more highly” of himself than he ought (Romans 12:3). To “own” something is to simply forget where it came from. Most don’t give the issue of “ownership” much thought. However, when we “own” our intellect, power, strength, wisdom, talents, abilities etc. it is that seed of ownership conceived in our hearts that gives birth to pride. The prideful heart does not have in mind the things of God, for the goal of pride is self exaltation.

The truth of the matter is we have no intrinsic power what so ever. There is nothing good in us that has its beginning and end in our being, and is under our authority alone. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Col 1:16-17).

In summary, whatever worthy things we may have: intellect, emotions, talent, ability, resources etc. were put there by our Creator. Ownership conceived gives birth to pride. Pride is an attitude of the heart that usurps and denies God’s supreme authority in our life. Possessing something without accountability to God, our ultimate authority, for whom and by whom all things were created, is simply put rebellion against God. Rebellion against God is treason against the Most High…it is saying, as Lucifer did in Ezekiel 28, ‘I am a god’. The Sovereign Lord says this about the prideful, “You think you are as wise as a god.”

Most of us, struggle with pride on some level, but we neglect to address the heinousness of sin. We rather would live in denial, thinking that our pride (anything we “own” including any attitude, thought or belief that is not aligned with God’s truth) is one of the respectable sins. When in reality it is the root of all sin. Pride is “exalting one’s throne above the throne of God.” For the throne is the symbol and place of all God’s authority. Ownership giving birth to pride is the chain that keeps us in bondage.

(Excerpt from Finding Freedom in Christ by Jean LeStourgeon, MA, LMHC)

As Ravenhill put it in “Why Revival Tarries”, “One of these days, some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and beleive it.” Most of us are dazzled by material wealth. We are so dazzled by it, we get mesmerized by the boisterous urgings of the televangelists, shouting into the television cameras during the TBN fund raisers, “call now!! While the portal is open! I feel an annointing now! Don’t miss this opportunity to give!!” All underscored by the promise that the financial seed you sow will reap a multiplied harvest of the amount sown.  The achilles heal of the human race – the love of money – is easily exploited by these ungodly shenanigans.  But, is material wealth the answer to all the world’s and life’s problems? My Bible says, that it’s “faith” not money that makes ”everything possible” (Mark 9:23). Therefore, I conclude, that faith not money is the need of the hour for the church of Jesus Christ. For my Heavenly Father owns it all and as His child and heir I understand that through faith, I have access to all I “need”.

Paul instructs us as to the secret of possessing all things as he did. “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Cor 9:8). The wonderful sublime paradoxes of scripture…When I am poor, I am rich, when I am weak, I am strong, When I am humble, I am exalted. When I have faith, though I may have nothing, I possess all things….that is all things needed for accomplishing the work God has created me to do.

There is no doubt, that money is a valuable commodity, but the one thing all the money in the world cannot buy is faith. “With faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20) .

All things are yours, whether…the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.1 Cor 3:20-23

It wasn’t long ago, when a close friend shared with such excitement, what God was teaching her about His truth. She was particularly inspired by the Truth Project produced by Focus on the Family. During our doctrinal tête-à-tête’s we would frequently challenge each other with professor Tackett’s personal truth challenge, “Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?” As we continued to explore, study and meditate on the scriptures, the Holy Spirit frequently spoke that challenge to our hearts, “Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?”

 As I began to contemplate this poignant question over time, I had to confess that, I felt the same sadness I imagine coming over the rich young ruler, when Jesus told him “sell everything you have and give to the poor, and now you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.” Mark 10:21.

It began to dawn on me more than ever that Jesus really expects us to be willing to give up everything to follow Him.  And that following Him requires trusting and depending on Him alone. Watchman Nee said it something like this in his book The Normal Christian Life, “He is not calling us to be devoted to His cause; He is asking us to yield ourselves unconditionally to His will.”

Nee goes on to say, “A day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ…there must be a day when, without reservation, we surrender everything to him – ourselves, our families, our possessions, our business, and our time. All we are and have becomes his, to be held henceforth entirely at his disposal.” Jesus, King and Creator of the universe, gives us this amazing opportunity to partner with Him in the advancement of His Kingdom in this world…if it were not written in the word, it would be completely grandiose. In exchange for this partnership with Christ, there is not only abundant life to be had in this earthly realm, but a family inheritance waiting for us, true treasure stored up in heaven. Amazing.

If I really believed these truth statements, there would be no earthly treasure stored up in my life that moth and rust could destroy. My life would not be my own. If I really believed this, my life would look so radical to the world and even to the church, people would think I’m a fool. If the church really believed this our communities might actually be turned upside down for the Kingdom of God and  we might see the kingdom of heaven forcefully advancing, as forceful men lay hold of it,  (Matthew 11:12) if we really believed what we say we believe. Do you?