Admiring and Applauding God - R. Bruce Stevens

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Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.

      —Acts 4:29

      • Peter and John prayed this prayer to God after their release from arrest for preaching about Jesus. They were ordered to no longer preach in the name of Jesus.

      • Threats by powerful people tempt us to be fearful. Realizing this, the disciples asked God to give them boldness, knowing they could not conjure boldness up within themselves.

      • Parents at times wish for the ability to give boldness to their children as they try some new sport or venture. It is a hard, if not impossible task to give someone boldness.

      • Praise God, the One who can and does give boldness to timid and fearful people. When we need it, we can ask him for it, and through the wonderful agency of his indwelling Holy Spirit, we are “enabled” to be bold.

      Bread

      Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”

      —John 6:35

      • Bread comes in a variety of shapes and textures and is comprised of various grains, rice, or potato. It is a basic food staple in many cultures and has been called “the staff of life.”

      • If we want to live, we need to eat. What is true physically is also true spiritually. We need the Lord, the bread of life, to sustain us spiritually. He is “the bread that endures to eternal life” (John 6:27).

      • Praise God for giving us Jesus, the staff of life.

      Brother

      Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.

      —Mark 3:35

      • While Jesus’s birth family stood outside the house, Jesus made this amazing statement to those inside. Anyone who does God’s will is considered a member of Jesus’s own family. This is a staggering truth. Why would Jesus want us as members of his family? Yet he does.

      • That means that all Christians are our siblings. Regardless of the size of our birth families, our spiritual family dwarfs them all.

      • Praise God for including us in his family. How privileged we are!

      Burden-bearer

      Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens.

      —Ps 68:19

      • In the movie The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Frodo the hobbit is called upon to carry a great burden—a destructive ring of power—to Mount Doom on a quest to destroy it before it falls into the hands of the evil Sauron. As he draws nearer to Mount Doom, Frodo finds his burden too great to bear. Seeing Frodo labor under the weight of the ring, his friend, Samwise Gamgee, carries Frodo’s pack—and eventually Frodo himself, when his friend is no longer able to walk.

      • The strong carry the burdens of the weak, whether by helping with a fellow hiker’s pack or carrying a weary child.

      • Praise God, who is our Burden-bearer. When we become weary and come to the end of our physical, emotional, or spiritual strength, we can look to God to bear our burdens.

      • Reflect on Jesus, who bore our burden of sin on his shoulders on the cross.

      Caller

      But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach to the Gentiles, I did not consult any man.

      —Gal 1:15–16

      • Can you recall the moment when you came under strong conviction of your need for a Savior? The testimony of many is that they found themselves compelled from within to respond to the gospel message.

      • God invites, calls, and even “commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30b). Beyond this general call, there is another call from God that is more specific.

      • Praise God for the amazing and yet mysterious way that he draws lost people to himself. Those who were spiritually blind, disinterested, and lost now see, become keenly interested, and are found! How sweet the sound of this amazing grace that saved such lost sinners as we.

      Carrier

      You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

      — Exod 19:4

      Like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions.

      —Deut 32:11

      • Throughout North America, the bald eagle is making a comeback. It is an increasingly common sight to see an eagle in majestic flight.

      • God compares himself to a great eagle and us to baby eaglets. Just as an eagle can swoop under an eaglet that founders in flight, so the Lord swoops down to catch us when we are either unable to fly or lack the confidence to do so. We all fall at times and need the strong wings of God to swoop under us to lift us up and keep us from harm.

      • Praise the God who catches and carries us when we stumble or fall.

      • Praise the Lord Jesus, who was willing to fall to his own great hurt on the cross so that we would be lifted up to safety.

      Celebrator

      But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.

      —Luke 15:32

      • Families celebrate people, events, and milestones—things like birthdays, new jobs, births, graduations, last student loan payments, etc.

      • We have a God who celebrates. As the father in the story of the lost brothers (better known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son), God declares that “we had to celebrate and be glad.” Just as our homes ring with the joy and laughter of celebrations, so does God’s in heaven when even one sinner repents and comes home.

      • Jesus said, “there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent” (Luke 15:9).

      • Reflect on our celebrating God and his rejoicing over us when we come to faith.

      Changeless

      But you remain the same, and your years will never end.

      —Ps 102:27

      • It is hard to think of anything in this world that does not change. It is the nature of things to do so. Well, not all things.

      • God is both timeless and changeless. He is Mr. Dependable in a world of fickleness and forgetfulness. As he was when we first knew him, so is he now and will be forever.

      • Reflect on the reliability and dependability of God and his words in the Bible in contrast to the world around us.

      • Praise God, the timeless and changeless one to whom we can anchor our lives.

      • Reflect on the Lord Jesus, the very same Jesus who walked this earth, and consider how thrilling it will be to see him face-to-face in heaven.

      Chastener

      The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death.

      —Ps 118:18

      • God delivered the psalmist into and out of the hands of an enemy, and in so doing, helped him learn the lesson of humility.

      • God’s love causes him to chasten us—to not only correct us when we go astray, but

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