You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol. … You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. —Exodus 20:3-6

The first three of the Ten Commandments are letting us see just a little bit of what God is like. These commands are deep teaching. In a sense they were spoon-feeding Israel, and yet the words are so profound, so deep. Israel was a redeemed community. As we have seen, the word redeemed means that they had been bought back. God loved the people of Israel. They knew God, but only just.

How well do you know God? How well would you like to know Him? How deeply is it burning in you that you would love to know Him better? If that deep desire is there, it means that there is a special anointing—the power of the Holy Spirit—on you. There could be no greater desire on earth. So you can mark it down; the flesh did not put that desire there. The devil did not put that there. This is one desire, if it is there, that only God could put there. And for giving you that kind of thirst and longing, be thankful for it. Take it with both hands and walk in every little bit of light God gives you. Walking in the light will show that you really mean business—that it is not just a passing yearning.

Whenever you discover something that you hadn’t seen before, an awareness of sin or a higher level of obedience, take it. There may be that which offends you, but remember that God often tests us by letting us be offended.

God wants to see how much you want Him. So sometimes, if I may put it this way, He puts His “worst” foot forward; He lets you see the most “unattractive” aspect of His nature, or what He knows you may regard that way, to see whether you will still love Him just as He is.

Excerpted from Grace (Charisma House, 2006).

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. —Galatians 5:22-23

Do you have an enemy? If your reply is, “No,” then do you realize how much of the Bible is irrelevant to you? After all, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Christians certainly know what it is to have enemies. When they accept Jesus as their Savior, they gain a new enemy: the devil. Not only that, but also they often find that the friends they had before become hostile toward them, and their loved ones often become their bitterest foes. Indeed, Paul said, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12).

John knew what it was like to face persecution. He had many enemies, who, after failing in their attempt to boil him in oil, had banished him to Patmos and left him there to die. But John had expected oppression, and he told us not to be surprised if the world hates us, too (1 John 3:13).

One of the wonderful things about becoming a Christian is that, like John, you can see what is behind the persecution you meet, and you do not take it personally but understand that it is God with whom others are angry; it is Christ they hate. John realized this and knew that he needed to be in God’s presence, so he did not indulge in self-pity; he was “in the Spirit.” It is possible to be so filled with the Spirit that you do not regard others as enemies, but you have a love for them.

When we have the Holy Spirit, we grow the fruit of that Spirit, the fruit of love. When we become Christians, God shares Himself with us and we begin to radiate His beauty. This is not because we are better than others: we remain human and are often tempted to do wrong. The difference is that God has promised to be with us, so we can overcome these problems.

Excerpted from A Vision of Jesus (Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 1999).

David led the troops in their campaigns. In everything he did he had great success, because the Lord was with him. When Saul saw how successful he was, he was afraid of him. —1 Samuel 18:13-15

There is the loneliness of success. When you are successful, you will find that some people will desert you. They liked you when you weren’t successful; they thought you were nice. You start succeeding, you get high marks, you obtain a good job, you have a higher income (it’s envy, of course; that is all it is)—they can’t cope with that. But you wouldn’t be any different if it was reversed (you have to understand that), but you need to know that success means loneliness.

On the other hand, if you are successful, whereas some will desert you, others will cling to you. But what are their motives? It is not necessarily you they are interested in.

When you are successful or well known, you will find you can be very lonely. For when there is an anointing upon you, you will succeed in some sense. There may be those who are envious of you and believe that eventually you are going to fall. King Saul was so jealous of David that he would have done anything to get rid of him. King Saul had a great plan. He said, “I tell you what; how would you like to marry my daughter? But I think you should do something to earn it.”

David said, “Oh, I am not worthy to be the king’s son-in-law.”

“Oh, well,” said King Saul. “I’ll tell you what I want you to do. All I would ask you to do is to bring back one hundred foreskins of the Philistines, that’s all!”

The only reason King Saul suggested this was that he thought David would be killed in doing it; that was King Saul’s sole motive. But David came back with two hundred foreskins.

When there is an anointing upon you, you will succeed at a certain level, but don’t expect your enemies to clap their hands. They will hate you all the more.

Excerpted from The Thorn in the Flesh (Charisma House, 2004).

Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. —Joshua 1:8

The psalmist prays, “O Lord, grant us success” (Ps. 118:25), but have you ever explicitly prayed for this? Do you think you are ready for it? If your answer is a quick yes, then I would caution you to be careful.

Every Thursday I would spend two hours with Dr. Lloyd-Jones, sitting at his feet, discussing the sermon for the following Sunday. He once made this throwaway comment, and I immediately got my pen and wrote it down. It was the most powerful word I ever heard him say, yet it’s in none of his books: “The worst thing that can happen to a man is to succeed before he is ready.” It was a word of wisdom to me at the time.

If you do want success, do you think you are really ready for it?

What kind of success are we talking about? It may well be prosperity. God does indeed give financial prosperity to some, though Christians who have wealth tend to come in for a certain amount of criticism that may spoil their enjoyment of it. However, once in a while, God will raise up a Joseph of Arimathea or a Lydia. (See Matthew 27:57-60; Acts 16:14-15.)

God may want you to have influence with people, but how marvelous it would be if you could be trusted with a ministry of prayer. Some are more successful in prayer than others. Why? Because they want to be successful in prayer. I challenge you to make that your goal.

The worst thing that can happen to a person is to succeed before he’s ready. But if you succeed because God says you’re ready, there won’t be that “after” of regret. If you succeed in prayer, you will have known success greater than any other. Maybe books won’t be written about you, but when you stand before God and Jesus Himself looks at you and says, “Well done!” it will be the greatest feeling, and it will last forever.

Excerpted from When God Shows Up (Renew Books, 1998).

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. —1 Corinthians 1:26-27

Our God is a God who calls people. This fact is essential to His dealings with us. After they had sinned, Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. … the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?'” (Gen. 3:8-9). Could it be that God is seeking you? The sound of His voice is disquieting, and you may think, Oh, no, it couldn’t be that He’s calling me.

Let me define what I mean by God’s call: I mean God getting our attention to make His own wish known. For example, He calls at conversion. Everyone who is a Christian is a Christian because he or she has been converted, and the reason of the conversion is that the person heard the call of God.

Allow me to ask you this question: When you get to the very center of God’s will, is it perhaps at great cost? Could it be that there is a call to a spirituality at a deeper level than you have known? What if, in your midlife, when things are going well, God puts His finger on your lifestyle, the way you have been spending your time, your money—all the comfort you have taken for granted—and says, “I have something else in mind.” The pain can be great, but the reward will be greater.

The “calling of God” is getting our attention to make His wish known. Are you ready for this? If not, get ready, for it is only a matter of time—God will call you.

Excerpted from When God Shows Up (Renew Books, 1998).

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. —1 John 4:16

Are you ready for God to love you? It’s easy to say, “I certainly am,” but are you really ready to accept and affirm His love?

You cannot rely very long on your love for God, but you can rely on His love for you. He wants you to. Just think how much it would thrill Him if you really believed He loves you. If you could only grasp this life-changing truth—that God really does love you—what a wonderful feeling it would be.

Why are you so reluctant to believe that God loves you? Here are five possibilities:

1. You may have an overly scrupulous conscience, to use the Puritan phrase, and worry about every little thing that may be wrong in your life.

2. You may still be living under the Old Covenant, under the Law.

3. You may have a faulty theology.

4. There could be a psychological problem. I know people who can’t call God “Father” because of the relationship they had with their own fathers.

5. When you are aware of how much you have failed God (and we have all sinned and let Him down), you can’t believe that He still loves you. He wants to love you as you are, and you should not respond to His love by “performing” for Him. (See Isaiah 29:13.)

If you can identify with one or all of these criteria, at the end of the day you can still claim the promise that God loves you. But I sympathize. I find it difficult to believe God loves me. Yet I have come to see that it really is true: God loves me. God loves you. God really does love us.

Excerpted from When God Shows Up (Renew Books, 1998).

The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. —Job 1:12

Everything is going well. You’re feeling on top of the world, sailing leisurely along with the wind at your back, comfortable, secure, and happy. Then everything changes. All of a sudden, without notice, something awful happens, and nothing is ever the same again.

Why do catastrophes like this happen? I would have to say, because God allows them to happen. It may not seem right, it may not seem fair, but when something goes wrong, it reminds us that this life is not all there is.

I can’t be sure of all the reasons God allows a great disruption to change everything. However, it certainly means preparation for heaven above and preparation for usefulness here below. When you go through tribulation, it means that God is not finished with you yet. It could be that there’s something wonderful around the corner.

God has a way of disrupting our lives. It could be through conversion. It could be by calling us to give up what we have. It could be through financial difficulties. It could be that someone very close to you will be ill and you will have to care for that person, or somebody around you will have a nervous breakdown and you will be affected by it.

Can I ask you this question? What kind of faith would you have if a great disruption came and your life was never the same again? Would you panic? Would you say, “God, how could You let this happen to me?” Or is it possible that you would be like Job, who refused to question God or to charge Him with foolishness, saying, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15)?

Excerpted from When God Shows Up (Renew Books, 1998).

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe … —Hebrews 11:6

“Seeing is believing,” says the world. But to God it is the other way around: believing is to see. But in heaven everybody will see everything clearly, and there will be no faith.

At the moment of the Second Coming nobody will need faith. “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen” (Rev. 1:7). The reason for the weeping is that the possibility of true faith is removed; all will “believe,” but such “believing” cannot be truly graced the title “faith.”

Since there will be no faith in heaven, we have the opportunity now to do what we can’t do there: to please God by faith. Faith pleases God. We might ask, will we not please God in heaven? The answer is yes, but it won’t be pleasing Him by faith! This is something we can only do now. We can never get these days back.

I want to please God now—in a way I cannot please Him then. I want to be thankful now. I can bring a measure of glory and pleasure to God now that I will be unable to do then. How? By trusting Him more and more and by thanking Him more and more.

What ought we to do now? We can always pray for more faith. Trust God now and thank Him in a way you will be glad you did when you are in heaven. We won’t be trusting God in heaven; we will be seeing Him. Therefore we won’t need faith. We must trust Him now and thank Him now.

Excerpted from Just Say Thanks! (Charisma House, 2005).

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard.” —Luke 1:11-13

Zechariah wasn’t ready. Are you ready for God? Are you waiting for God to answer prayer? Are there prayers that you have long since taken off your prayer-request list because you were sure God wasn’t going to answer them? There are two important principles here.

Any prayer prayed in the will of God will be answered. How do we know this? Because the Bible says so: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14).

The trouble is that big “if” —if we know His will. You can pray in the will of God and not know it. Zechariah and Elizabeth prayed in the will of God. They didn’t know it. Because God didn’t jump to answer their prayer the first time, they just assumed it wasn’t God’s will. Think back on your own prayer requests, maybe for the last year, maybe going back before then. Think of one prayer that hasn’t been heard, as far as you know, that you have long since given up praying. What’s the principle to apply? That any prayer prayed in the will of God will be answered. So what’s the problem?

It turns out—how sad it is—that Zechariah wasn’t ready. He wanted to argue with the angel. Do you know why he wanted to argue? Because he wasn’t right spiritually, which shows that a person can be involved in the work of ministry even if his heart isn’t right. When our hearts aren’t right, we want to argue with God.

Are we ready for answered prayer? Zechariah’s story should give us encouragement to go back and start praying again. It’s a wonderful, wonderful thing to be ready when God appears. When we’re not ready, what should have been our finest hour will, instead, be under a cloud.

Excerpted from When God Shows Up (Renew Books, 1998).

They told him, “Joseph is still alive! In fact, he is ruler of all Egypt.” Jacob was stunned; he did not believe them. —Genesis 45:26

The news to Jacob was unexpected. God loves to do things like that. Sometimes He plans and prepares for a long time. He waited thousands of years before He finally sent His Son into the world. Yet sometimes God likes to do something so suddenly that no one is quite prepared for it. For Jacob, the news that Joseph was alive was stunning. He fainted (according to the King James Version).

The news about Joseph surpassed anything Jacob had ever expected. If you were to ask Jacob what was his wildest dream, he would not have named what his sons told him. He had already concluded that Joseph was dead—that he was out of the picture. I wonder if you have already reached conclusions about which you are so certain that you are unable to conceive any alternative situation.

The wonderful thing was the news that Joseph was alive, but then to learn that he was the lord of all Egypt was almost inconceivable. God loves to do that. He loves to do that which surpasses anything that we ever thought of. When the queen of Sheba came to Solomon, she said, “I had heard of your fame, I had heard of your wisdom, I had heard of your riches. Having seen it, even the half had not been told to me.” (See 1 Kings 10:7.)

The apostle Paul said that when we pray, God does that which goes beyond what we ask for or even think about. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). God has a plan for every single one of us. When we see what He has in mind, it will surpass anything we thought possible. He wants to give us the desires of our hearts beyond anything we thought possible.

Excerpted from All’s Well That Ends Well (Authentic Media, 2005).