Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. —Daniel 5:29, KJV

God had a message that He wanted to give to everybody just before the end, and He wanted to do it His way. So here was the handwriting on the wall.

What do the words mean? Everybody knew what they meant. They knew the words were, “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.” The word mene simply means numbered; it was in Aramaic, and everybody knew the word. Tekel means weighed. Upharsin means shared. They knew what the words meant, and yet they didn’t know, because Belshazzar knew in his heart of hearts there had to be a hidden meaning.

Daniel was needed again, and yet they didn’t send for him at first. I suppose the last person Belshazzar wanted to send for was Daniel. He wanted to defy his father’s God, the God of Israel.

It may be that you are waiting to be noticed and to be used, and they are sending for everybody else but you. Don’t worry about those who are sent for first.

Daniel had been refined over the years; he had been put to one side, and he wondered, “Will God ever need me again?” Daniel was waiting for this moment, and though there is no doubt he had been refined by the Holy Spirit as God chiseled away that which was unlike Jesus would be, Daniel was still in preparation.

You still need preparation. You never outgrow the need of preparation, but you may ask the question, “How will they know about me if I don’t pull some strings?” Well, they came looking for Daniel, and they’ll come looking for you. How will they know about you? It may be that the president will send for you, or an advisor to the president, but they will find you. God has a way of bringing right to the top those who are ready for it. The worst thing that can happen to you is to succeed before you are ready, and only God knows when you are ready.

Excerpted from The God of the Bible (Authentic Media, 2002).

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. —Daniel 3:16-17, KJV

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were being trained for authentic leadership, although they may not have known it at the time. There are two kinds of leadership: authentic leadership and passive leadership. What is needed is authentic leadership, and this is determined by how we react to temptation and testing. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were now to undergo a real trial. Here were three men that decided to stand up and be counted.

These three men were characterized by a prior commitment—they had decided long before what they would do. Courage like this is planned in advance.

These three men didn’t need to look at each other and wink or nudge; no, they looked straight at the king and said, “We don’t have to answer you, and we don’t have to defend ourselves; we can tell you right now.”

Real strength is not in seeing how close you get to temptation without yielding; it is avoiding temptation altogether. When there is that kind of commitment, and temptation comes, you don’t have to pray about it.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego lived by what I can only call the impulse of the Spirit. Their peers listened for music and they fell down. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego listened to the impulse of the Spirit and they stood up. Unimpressed, the king had them bound and thrown into the burning fiery furnace.

Whenever you are in the fire, you know where to find Jesus. He is in the fire, and if you want to be changed from glory to glory, you may want the shortcut. I wouldn’t blame you for that. Just remember this, though: if you are ever given a trial, what can only be called a fiery trial, see it as God issuing to you an invitation on a silver platter to be changed from glory to glory. In the fire you will find Jesus there; you will find Him to be real, and you will be amazed and say, “Look who’s here.”

Excerpted from The God of the Bible (Authentic Media, 2002).

Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him.” —John 1:32

The Bible does not say that the Spirit came down from heaven as a pigeon. There would probably have been nothing unusual about a pigeon descending on an individual—or even remaining. There are some differences (at least in temperament) between pigeons and doves. A pigeon—at least the pigeons of Trafalgar Square—would adjust to nearly any situation, but almost certainly a turtledove would not.

I often wonder how often many of us have confused a pigeon for a dove at a spiritual level. We may hastily assume that the Dove has come, but a more objective examination might just show that it was a pigeon! Such possibility has given me a new phrase—”pigeon religion.”

I fear that so much today purports to be the presence of the Spirit—but in reality it is nothing more than pigeon religion.

It is my view that the genuine presence of the Holy Spirit is not as common as we may want to believe. It is also my fear that many of us have run slipshod over this matter and have forgotten that the Holy Spirit is a very, very sensitive person. I know that I have been very guilty in this area. I have done some things—and not done others—that I later realized have grieved the Spirit.

We all claim to want God’s blessings on us—and even take strong public stands for the truth! But often there seems missing a real conscientiousness with regard to grieving the Spirit by attitudes and words. It is as if we think our official positions or titles exempt us from having to watch what we say. The sober truth is, God will not bend the rules for any of us, whatever our  positions may be.

Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. —Romans 8:28

This is one of those verses that you need more and more the older you get. It is the verse that, in fact, refers not to the future but to the past. If I may use a couple of big words here—it is not a priori; it is a posteriori. A priori is looking forward. A posteriori is looking backward. Romans 8:28 is the promise of a posteriori; it is after the fact. It is not a priori because if you could say, “Well, everything’s going to work out all right, it doesn’t matter what I do,” then you would abuse this promise. But Paul knows that as members of the family, we all have a sense of shame over something in our past. We all have skeletons in our closets, and he can say because you’re a family member and you’re a joint-heir with Christ, anything that happens to you has to turn out for good. All things work together for good—all things.

Having established your position in the family, Paul is saying that God knows the past; He knows what’s bothering you. All things work together for good. You could almost call it the family scandal! How do you know that? Well, because it says it works together for good—it shows it wasn’t good. If it had been good, he wouldn’t need to say it, but it works together for good because it was bad. It doesn’t mean that everything that happens is good. Things that can happen can be bad, but because you’re in the family you have a promise: it will work together for good.

How do we know? We’ve found it out, for one thing. Look back; look across the years and remember the closed door that broke your heart and you lived long enough to thank God a thousand times it was closed. Learn the joy of God’s providence, knowing that with every disappointment—give it time—you’ll be thankful for it. He will sanctify to you your deepest distress. This is something that God does.

Excerpted from The God of the Bible (Authentic Media, 2002).

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. —Philippians 1:6

Is it possible for you to discover that God hasn’t finished with you? Perhaps you feel you have no real future. Perhaps you can look back on that time when everybody said, “Oh, what a future!” But that’s all over now; you feel there is nothing to live for, you’ve made real mistakes, and there is no way that God could use you now.

Jacob had come to the place where he anticipated nothing but sorrow. He was now an old man. He had made many mistakes, almost every mistake possible. He felt there was nothing to live for, and he anticipated the worst. The irony was that Jacob’s best days were yet to come, because he had yet to do what God had raised him up to do: to give the patriarchal blessing to those twelve sons.

Are you like that? You feel you are finished. You know the greatest feeling in the world is to feel needed, to feel useful, and the greatest honor in the world is to be used by God. I can think of nothing more wonderful than knowing that God is using me. Perhaps you have known better days when God did use you in a particular situation, and you would give anything in the world just to know that it could happen again.

I can promise you on the authority of God’s Word that if you come to the cross and get right with God, your happiest days, your greatest days, lie ahead. I guarantee it.

One has to be willing to live in grateful dependence from now on. If God is going to use you again, you have to make the break. You have no chance of going back. No way! You are going forward. Jacob’s greatest days were now ahead. He had something to live for. God hadn’t finished with him, and He hasn’t finished with you.

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

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” —Romans 1:17

It is one thing for us to believe it once and be electrified and be thrilled, to have our world turned upside down, but quite another to keep believing it. The devil will come alongside and tell you that it can’t be true, and he appeals to our natural reasoning. He appeals to what we know to be true about ourselves, that we are sinners. If he can, he will bring us right back to our bondage.

It was Martin Luther who rediscovered the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. Luther was a very conscientious person. He had a sensitive conscience and was known to go to confession not only every day but sometimes two or three times a day, because after spending an hour confessing his sins, he would come back an hour or two later remembering there was a sin he didn’t confess.

But during these days he was also reading Romans, as well as Galatians and certain of the Psalms. Here he had a breakthrough, largely from Romans 1:17. When Luther saw that what Paul was saying was that faith alone pleases God, and it satisfies, to use Luther’s term, “the passive justice of God,” his world was changed. He, in fact, woke up the world by his own world being turned upside down. He did not know that he would turn the world upside down by simply trying to save his own soul. The interesting thing is that Paul too rediscovered this teaching. Paul realized that Abraham saw it long before, and David saw it.

The principal thing that we are to see is that we are justified by the combination of two things: what Jesus did  for us and our own faith in Him. Or, to put it another way: His faith and our faith. These two things must come together.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. —Romans 1:26

You thought that you were outwitting God. You thought that here He is trying to reach you, while you just say, “I’ll show Him. I’ll just enjoy living in sin.”

What Paul is saying here is that God has already begun to punish you. It is a judgment of God that you remain in sin. When you think that you’re getting away with it, that’s the worst thing of all that can happen. The worst sign of God’s judgment is that you’re able to sin and get away with it.

Nor does God give us a bold sign, telling us, “Here’s what I am going to do.” He just gives up. He doesn’t push us; He doesn’t hammer us. In effect, Paul is saying this: Is it sin that you want? Sin you will get. That’s the first way God punishes sin.

The second way is by exposure at the final judgment. Say you decide to live in sin; you’re thinking, at first, that something’s going to happen as a kind of warning from God, like thunder and lightening, but when it doesn’t come you think, I don’t feel a thing; I’m able to go on and do this. When a person does what is not right, he may say, “I don’t feel any different; I feel fine.” But how does God punish—by exposure at the final judgment. God “will give to each person according to what he has done” (Rom. 2:6).

A third way is that God’s Son, Jesus, took our punishment on the cross. Eternally speaking, there are two ways whereby God punishes sin: the fires of hell and the blood of Jesus. He who knew no sin was made sin.

Let this be what lingers in your mind. It’s not a question of whether your sin will be punished; it is the question of how. May God grant you to see why the Bible talks about “fleeing from the wrath to come.” (See Matthew 3:7; Luke 3:7.)

We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. —James 3:2

Enjoying a measure of success in controlling the tongue on occasion does not mean you are perfect! I can assure you that you have not “arrived”—even if you go three days without an unguarded comment—or that the problem of controlling the tongue is now behind you. Tongue control is only a temporary grace—given one day at a time, and hour by hour when you are having a good day.

Never being at fault in what one says, then, means perfection. James is obviously not expecting that of any Christian. So the tongue is something you must live with, work with, get victory over—little by little—every day. But one day at a time! It is terrific when you have a good day. It is very encouraging. But if you had a good day, I lovingly caution you: wait until tomorrow!

I know what it is sometimes to preach well, to come down from the pulpit with an inner confidence and say to myself, “Well, at last I have learned how to preach.” But when I feel like that for very long, here is what happens—nearly every time: I do so poorly the next time I am in the pulpit that I leave saying, “If that is the best I can do, I should get out of the ministry.” So if you have a good day with tongue control, thank God for it, but don’t be deluded that you have mastered the art of tongue control; you just might be a miserable failure the next day.

The truth is, however, we can improve. We do get better at it. The reward is worth the effort, I promise you.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. —1 John 1:9

It is one thing to have this breakthrough regarding others—totally forgiving them and destroying the record of their wrongs; it is quite another to experience the greater breakthrough—total forgiveness of ourselves.

So many Christians say, “I can forgive others, but how can I ever forget what I have done? I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.”

We may wake up each day with the awareness of past mistakes and failures—and fervently wish that we could turn the clock back and start all over. We may have feelings of guilt—or pseudo-guilt, if our sins have been placed under the blood of Christ. But the enemy, the devil, loves to move in and take advantage of our thoughts. That is why forgiving ourselves is as important as forgiving an enemy.

Forgiving yourself may bring about the breakthrough you have been looking for. It could set you free in ways you have never before experienced. This is because we have been afraid to forgive ourselves. We cling to fear as if it were a thing of value. The truth is, this kind of fear is no friend, but rather a fierce enemy. The very breath of Satan is behind the fear of forgiving ourselves.

If we feel guilty, blame ourselves, and find that we cannot function normally—even though we have confessed our sins to God—it indicates that we haven’t yet totally forgiven ourselves. It means that we are still hanging on to guilt that God has washed away; we are refusing to enjoy what God has freely given us. First John 1:9 either is true or it isn’t. If we have confessed our sins, we must take this promise with both hands and forgive ourselves—which is precisely what God wants us to do.

Excerpted from Total Forgiveness (Charisma House, 2002).

And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness. … To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood … —Revelation 1:5

Have you ever driven down the highway and heard the wail of a siren behind and seen that flashing blue light in the rearview mirror? What a relief when the patrol car overtook you and sped away! It was not you the police were after.

It is almost impossible not to feel guilty about some things. Moreover, sometimes guilt can motivate us to do strange things when it comes to our relationships with others. For example, we may feel guilty because we dislike a person, and to compensate we try to be extra friendly.

But true guilt can be experienced beyond doubt through regeneration. We may try to make unconverted people feel true guilt, but we never quite succeed in making them aware they have sinned against God: it is the Holy Spirit who does that. When the Holy Spirit convicts people of sin, they see they have offended God, and they come to the place where David was when he prayed, “Against you, you only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4). Only a regenerate person can talk like that.

How, then, should we handle true guilt? I believe we have three options:

1. The “fatal” solution

Some people repress their guilt. God created us in His own image, and we ignore our conscience at our peril.

2. The temporary solution

I can change my life, and then I will have no reason to feel guilty. It’s so easy to make a promise, but you will break it eventually. This solution will only work for a time.

3. The biblical solution

The Bible offers a permanent solution to the problem of guilt. We need to look at Revelation 1:5 for the answer. All our guilt was placed on Jesus when He took our place on the cross. And when we accept what He did for us and turn in repentance to Him, God looks at us, and His verdict is, “Not guilty!”