Editor’s Note: The AMI QT Devotionals for February 15-16 are provided by Doug Tritton. Doug, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania, is currently pursuing a M.Div. at Gordon Conwell Seminary while working fulltime. He is married to Cindy and they serve at Symphony Church in Boston.
Devotional Thoughts for Today
Acts 4:1-4
And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day, for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed, and the number of the men came to about five thousand.
In my current job, I work on the release of tech products. There is much momentum as we work on the hottest new trend and put great effort into launching the product; but then once we finish and release it, there is a lull. Since we are not in sales, we do not know right away how the product is doing in the market—and so all we can do is wait and see.
In some ways, this is what Peter and John may have been feeling. They had been ministering to people, Peter had just given a powerful sermon, but now they were sitting in prison, blind to what fruit that may have resulted from their ministry.
Yet, we as readers of the Bible know what happened: “many of those who had heard the word believed” (v.4). Though Peter and John were not aware of this at the time, God was at work, drawing thousands of people to Himself. What they needed to do was to simply wait and see what God was doing, because ultimately He was the One in control.
In our ministries, we need to remind ourselves who is in control. We often can get so result-oriented that we forget that God is the one who is at work, not us. And then we lose heart because we do not see immediate fruit. But instead of worrying—wait and see. Wait and see what fruit God is going to bring through your ministry. Wait and see how God is at work around you. Wait and see that our God is faithful to us.
Doing any sort of ministry is challenging—we want to see results. But God is in control and He is the One we need to trust. Today, let’s surrender our work, our ministries, and everything else to Him!
Prayer
Lord, thank You for being in control. So often we try to take control of our lives, orchestrating our own success, our own results, when really everything is in Your hands. Help us to surrender to You, to trust that You really are sovereign. Come and have Your way in our lives!
Bible Reading for Today: Genesis 45
Lunch Break Study
Read Psalm 127:1-2: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Questions to Consider
- Why is it “vain” to build without God or watch over the city without God?
- How is sleep or rest a sign of trust?
- Are there any “houses” that you are building in vain? Reflect on how you trust God with these things.
Notes
- Remember the message of Ecclesiastes: anything done apart from God is vanity. All work, all pursuits are vanity when not done with God, because He is the one in control and He can easily disrupt our plans—just like He did at Babel!
- When we rest or sleep, we choose not to do some activity or task. While this could seem like laziness (and it sometimes can be!), choosing to rest instead of getting something done is showing that we trust God more than ourselves. Remember, “It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest”!
- Think carefully about this. Try to practically apply this truth in your life, trusting God to be in control of all your pursuits.
Evening Reflection
Are you nervous about something coming up, or maybe worried about the results of something you are doing? Lay these things up to God and allow Him to bring you peace and comfort. Trust that though you may be sleeping, God is always at work around you, and He is the one in control.
Here is a sobering thought for Valentine’s Day, a day reserved to celebrate significant others in our lives: Have you ever been used by someone, especially those who are close to you? It’s natural to expect care and concern from those who we think love us, but when we find out we have been used and disregarded, our spirits can sink to the dark depths due to the deeply cutting hurt we suffer (Gaylin, Feelings, 148-164). Former Columbia University psychiatry professor Willard Gaylin insightfully describes the feeling of being used when he writes, “The sense of being used . . . arises from the fear that the person dealing with us is not involved with us in emotional ties and affection—where there may be mutual use—but is simply using us as an instrument, a vehicle of his own purposes. We then are equated with the things in his life. We are signs of his needs, not of his affections.
Sometimes the Bible calls on us to be used: although I doubt Jesus meant in Ma tthew 5:40-1 that we should let thieves steal whatever they want from us because we should never resist. (Hyperbole seems to be in play here.) Nevertheless, Jesus conveys the message that sometimes doing good means letting ourselves be used by others for the glory of God. Jesus should know: while He let Judas to use Him to profit himself materially, Jesus allowed it to profit us spiritually.
Theologian Jack Deere, who lost both his father and son to suicide, wrote, “Time does not heal shame. Shame will not go away by itself. It might be hidden for a little while but sooner or later, it comes back. . . . It’s always there and it tells you this: ‘You know, if these people really knew what you were like, they wouldn’t even want you in this room.’ And because you’ve got this gaping hole you can’t share with anyone, you feel so lonely in the room and like you really need to keep this secret.”
Philosopher Avishai Margalit describes guilt as that reaction when we view ourselves from the eyes of our inner conscience, making us pale, and shame as that emotion when we view ourselves from the eyes of the other, making us blush. In any case, the two serve as a devastating duo in our psyche: they can make us feel dirty, hypocritical, secretive, alone, burdened, despairing. They are the sorrowful children of our aspirations towards the highest moral ideals coupled with the wretchedness of our fallen, sinful selves. While other tortures may come from external forces, the torture of guilt and shame can be an especially painful assault as it comes from within. I once heard a young man, who had actually overcome his sin of masturbating to pornography, confess, “I don’t know which is harder: stopping porn or dealing with the guilt that I’ve had since stopping.”
We want to be a good person, yet, we fail in so many ways. And it frustrates us to no end; evidently, that’s how Paul felt as well. We want to forgive or stop our sexual sin, yet we find ourselves not being who we want to be. For many, this routine of failure can cause painful questioning: Is God even with me? How can I live with these feelings of self-doubt, loathing, and shame? Am I even a Christian? How can I change?
And that was the experience of a pastor who finally found freedom from years of torturous struggle with strip clubs and pornography. He confessed: “I cannot tell you why I had to endure ten years of near-possession before being ready for deliverance…. But what I can tell you, especially those of you who have hung on every turn of my own pilgrimage because it so closely corresponds to yours, is that God did come through for me. The phrase may sound heretical, but to me, after so many years of failure, it felt as if he had suddenly decided to be there after a long absence. I prayed, hid nothing (hide nothing from God?), and he heard me.”
In the pit of “momentary affliction,” there is the struggle for meaning, answers, comfort, God; the darkness covers us. Jesus is the light, but sometimes, Jesus does not take away the pain—the cancer is still there, the job is still lost, our loved ones are still dead.
“After hearing your testimony about family turmoil,” someone says, “mine is just like yours”; but, after hearing that person’s story, you realize that what appear to be similar stories on the surface, they are actually quite different—while you spoke of unilateral forgiveness, the other person was talking about a conditional forgiveness: They are not the same.
Editor’s Note: The AMI QT devotionals from February 8 to 14 are co-written by the AMI Teaching Pastor Ryun Chang (Ph.D.) and Joshua Chang, a graduate of Swarthmore College and currently a student at Yale Divinity School. They are taking a break from the study of Acts.
I’m ashamed to admit this, but I once saw a movie with an absurd amount of violence and foul language. After it was over, however, I felt strongly defiled—scenes of gore were now flashing through my head, curse words now seemed on the tip of my tongue. I realized I couldn’t watch a movie like that again—it prods me on a path I do not want to follow. The movie portrayed itself as harmless fun; it taught no official doctrine explicitly against Christ. But its ethic was one of glorified violence and vile speech, and I could feel it setting my heart on the ways of the world and not of God. I felt like “an ox going to the slaughter.”
Christiana is a slim, healthy woman who was raised on nutritious meals. When she goes off to college, however, she encounters the university dining scene. She had never eaten french fries before, but, boy, are they so tasty! Unlimited ice cream! Buffet lines of fried chicken and burgers! The first few weeks of this new diet has caused a little waistline tightness, but she thinks, It’s no big deal; I still eat my salads, she reassures herself. Then, after the semester is over, her parents are mortified to see their now hefty daughter plodding down the airport return gate.
Many of us grew up being taught that no sin is worse than any other – in the sense that hatred in heart and murder in body both played a part in nailing Jesus to the cross for the salvation of the world. But if you’re like me, there are times when you feel much worse about some of your transgressions and failures than others. There are ways we fall short that are bearable for us, we can carry our sins before God and receive grace and forgiveness. But there are those dark and painful moments when we fall so far short of God’s glory, our own expectations of ourselves, and the disconnect between who we should be and who we are appears so vast, that it’s utterly crippling and we find ourselves in despair.
The famed apologist Ravi Zacharias writes: “I recall on one campus some years ago finishing a tough series of meetings. On the day I was departing from that city, my host mentioned to me that he had brought his neighbor, a medical doctor, to the last meeting. ‘She is a skeptic through and through,’ he said. ‘Would you like to know what her response was to your presentation last night?’ he asked. Knowing full well that I had no choice, I answered rather eagerly in the affirmative. This was his reply of sentiments: ‘Powerful… simply powerful… I wonder what he’s like in his private life.’ That was her one-line response to a three-hour evening. In short, the entire weight of the argument rested, for her, on the coherence between the argument and the enfleshing of the argument. The reasoning was not good enough. The practical impact in the private life of the reasoned was the final test.”