We are His hands and feet and heart.  As you go through your day, I pray that YOUR eyes, feet and heart are submitted to Jesus.  Then go do what He asks.

Lord, Spare Our Land – How Revival Begins in America

Article by Greg Morse Staff writer, desiringGod.org

As I walked into the coffee shop, I thought I had wandered into a painting. Vibrant blues, and greens, and yellows, and oranges were displayed all over the store. Tie-dye shirts on every employee, banners strewn overhead. Why the celebration? Before I had time to ask, I saw the back of one of the rainbow-colored shirts: “PRIDE.”

The rainbow, the sign of God’s covenant to Noah, promising never again to drown the world of sinful men with a flood, the drawn bow pointed up at the heavens, now used as a mascot for sexual deviance. Though our nation champions Sodom’s sins, we have not learned from Sodom’s censure (2 Peter 2:6). We receive advertisements for sins that bar millions from the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9–10), as we order our morning coffee.

Of course, homosexual sin is just one of the many abominations to which our nation lends colorful support. Heterosexual sins of fornication, adultery, and pornography saturate our television shows, movies, and the magazines lining our checkout lines. Half-naked women whisper from billboards driving to work. Shower scenes come unbidden in commercials and pop-up ads. The indoctrination of transgenderism confuses and abuses many children.

While our societies are flooded with proud corruption, Christians sometimes wonder what can be done.

We need to confront the darkness surrounding us, but along with cultural engagement — above cultural engagement even — stands the need for us to define and cultivate the purity of the church. In this we can learn a hidden secret from the intercession of Abraham for Sodom and Gomorrah: Fire fell on Sodom not only because of the thousands of brazenly wicked people, but because there were not even ten righteous among them.

When God Counts to Ten

The story is well-known in the church. God discloses his decision to destroy the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to Abraham because God plans to make him into a mighty nation that would bless other nations. He would command his household and the next generation to walk in righteousness and justice — a righteousness these two wicked cities had not known (Genesis 18:18–19).

After hearing of the judgment that would fall upon Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham asks the Lord, Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? (Genesis 18:23–24)

God agrees not to destroy the cities if there were fifty.

Behold, I have undertaken to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking. Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five? (Genesis 18:27–28)

God agrees not to destroy the cities if there were 45.

With reverence, Abraham moves from 45 to 40 to 30 to 20 to just 10. God receives the mediation: “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it” (Genesis 18:32). He was willing to spare an entire, unholy city from destruction for the sake of just ten people.

Spared for the Sake of One

But ten were not found.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. (Genesis 19:27–28)

Abraham climbs the mount expectantly. Had God spared the city? He looked and saw it ablaze.

Indeed, we know of only one definitively: Lot, the nephew for whom Abraham had pled. Had Lot perished in the fire of the wicked? Had Abraham’s intercession been for nothing?

No, Genesis tells us in great detail how God saved Lot. Angels went to the city and commanded him to flee with those of his house. And even when he lingered, they physically grabbed him and his family by the hand and “brought him out” for “the compassion of the Lord was upon him” (Genesis 19:16 NASB). His story is a lasting example, reminding us that even while unholy cities go down in flames and sin, “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials” (2 Peter 2:9).

For Lot’s sake, a small town was also spared. Zoar (i.e. “little”) is the place where Lot is permitted to flee for refuge from God’s wrath. Abraham’s intercession had not failed; the righteous was not swept away with the wicked, as the text makes clear:

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived. (Genesis 19:29)

Cities fell for lack of ten who followed the Lord, but the righteous man was spared, along with his little town, because of the intercession of a faithful mediator.

Where God Begins

Revival of a nation, should God be pleased to grant it, begins in the church.

As we take thoughts captive to obey Christ, we must not forget to obey him ourselves. How easy it becomes to hate other men’s sins more than our own; a nation’s drift more than the church’s. For the past two thousand years, it has been the “time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Peter 4:17). And if God sees fit to begin at the household of God, so should we. Is this not the focus of all our New Testament letters?

Our gaze should turn first within, on the vitality of Christ’s church, and this can and will be a blessing for a nation. Our God has, in history, spared nations — or at least Zoars — for the sake of his righteous few.

What Might God Do Now?

Isn’t it amazing that God orchestrates his world, including the rise and fall of nations, with such a consideration for his people?

The Christian church, even when abused or ignored, is the backbone of any land. God rules the world in consideration of their good (even when their “good” includes refining fires of persecution, 1 Peter 1:6–7). His curses and blessings, his ways and his mysterious acts of providence, all serve his own glory and the eternal benefit of his people — neither impeding the other.

Yet we can feel so small, so insignificant, so powerless. Perhaps we believe ourselves a dutiful afterthought of a God busily lording the world. We can look at the celebrities, the wealthy, the elite, and think that they hold all the influence.

But while great men in expensive suits make great speeches about important decisions, the Monarch of mankind bends his ear to little children. He who holds the hearts of kings in his hand (Proverbs 21:1) considers how all decisions will affect them.

Should we not rightfully believe that the command center of this world, the place where real influence is wrought, is in the secret place of faithful Christian living? Even evil Queen Mary knew this when she confessed, “I fear John Knox’s prayers more than all the assembled armies of Europe.”

If God spared the lives of many for a few, if the heroic efforts of individual men, through faith, “conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Hebrews 11:33–34) — what might a praying, loving, waiting, expecting church do in a nation like ours?

Greg Morse is a staff writer for desiringGod.org and graduate of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He and his wife, Abigail, live in St. Paul with their son and daughter.

Ahhhhhh… after so many of us going through SO many difficulties…from death, sickness, surgeries, money issues and threats from Covid and other unknowns, I find myself tired.  I need a breather!  But please note I DID NOT say I was DISCOURAGED!  Oh NO NO NO NO NO!  Even Jesus took breaks to commune with His Father and get re-centered.  But difficulties have served, over the years, to make me stronger and even MORE defiant against the things that are against God.    I do not doubt Him.  Even though I do not have a map of where He is going.  In fact, I feel sorry for those who do not put their faith in His Love.  I can even laugh at circumstances, some of which “I” have created myself, that would point to my own demise.   Oh no!  Romans 8:28 is a sword!  Not a Kleenex!  A tank!!!  Not a pill.  God WILL PREVAIL!  Even when I don’t know how!  

Article by David Mathis Executive Editor, desiringGod.org

Making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple. (John 2:15)

He made a whip. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild. It was “a whip of cords,” John reports. Whether any human or animal actually caught it on the backside, we don’t know. We might reasonably doubt he drew any blood. After all, he came to Jerusalem to spill his own blood, not to take it from others. Either way, we do know the whip was effective. “He drove them all out of the temple.”

True, this was an unusual event, but it was not unique — he would do it again at the outset of his Passion Week (Matthew 21:12–13). Jesus didn’t go around wielding whips on a regular basis. He didn’t keep a whip or weapon on his belt. But he also wasn’t afraid to pick one up from time to time. So we dare not reduce the God-man to someone too docile to do anything but play nice and keep thin peace.

He was tender. Oh, the compassion of Christ — a virtue attributed only to Christ, and no other, in the Gospels. His tenderness led him to heal lepers (Luke 17:13–14), to restore sight to the blind (Luke 18:38–42), to help a grieving widow (Luke 7:13) and the distressed father of a demonized son (Mark 9:22). He had compassion on the crowds (Mark 6:34). Even as God in the flesh, without any sin of his own, his life was not driven by righteous anger but sustained by joy. He was known for his compassion.

His wonderful, welcoming tenderness, however, need not rule out his holy strength and grit. In fact, it must not. If he had no spine, it wouldn’t be nearly so precious to know his heart.

His Piercing Tongue

His tenderness, which we love and so desperately need, is all the more striking because of his toughness toward sin and unbelief. His compassion for the afflicted would be undermined if not flanked by righteous anger toward their afflicters. He emphatically did not demonstrate compassion for wicked kings, conniving priests, and self-righteous Pharisees — which makes his tenderness all the more precious as he turns to his trusting sheep.

“It is often the offensive side of Jesus that we need most,” writes John Piper.

Especially offensive to the modern, western sentiment is the tough, blunt, fierce form of Jesus’s love. People with thin skin would have often felt hurt by Jesus’s piercing tongue. People who identify love only with soft and tender words and ways would have been repeatedly outraged by the stinging, almost violent, language of the Lord. (Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 93)

“Christ’s tenderness is all the more striking because of his toughness toward sin and unbelief.”

In Christ, we see that compassion incarnate will, at times, take up the veritable whip of strong words to sting imperiled addressees. Memorable, of course, is Jesus’s pronouncement of sevenfold woe on the Pharisees (Matthew 23:1–36). To their faces, he said they were “like whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27), “like unmarked graves” (Luke 11:44). Jesus found himself in the midst of a “faithless generation” (Mark 9:19), “an evil and adulterous generation” (Matthew 16:4), and he wasn’t afraid to say it. He assumed his hearers were fallen, even evil, and named it (Matthew 7:11).

And he informed his recalcitrant opponents to whom they truly belonged: “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44).

Hard Words to Friends

We should not mistake “the tough, blunt, fierce form of Jesus’s love” as a severity reserved for his foes, though. Even Peter, first among equals, felt the verbal lash — and it was a grace to him.

Looking back, what a horror for Peter, to think he took Jesus aside and tried to redirect him from obedience to the point of death, even death on a cross (Matthew 16:22). But Jesus rescued himself, and Peter, from the all-too-powerful temptation, with the shocking and appropriate, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23). In hindsight, Peter would see it as love. So too, all his disciples have our moments when, like Peter, we need to be stunned wide awake to all that’s at stake in this life.

In John 6, Jesus’s offensive language turns away the crowds — not foes, mind you, but those who were, to this point, following him (even if presumptuously). Here Jesus is not seeker-friendly. “You are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (John 6:26). He challenged the carnality of their “faith” with confounding language designed to drive away those with no spiritual apprehension.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. (John 6:53–54)

Even his own disciples had to confess, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60). And he did not relent even then, this time speaking of another disciple, not Peter: “One of you is a devil” (John 6:70).

Hard Words to Families

Genuine, deep, lasting peace is his goal, and Jesus knows hard words are often vital to that goal. When Satan and sin have taken root, we dare not pretend there is peace when there is not.

First, Jesus comes as Truth into a world of lies, and division ensues. “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! . . . Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (Luke 12:49, 51). Even our most basic of bonds, even the most intimate of earthly peace, will be broken to reveal the wickedness of sin and worth of God.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. . . . Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26, 33)

You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death. You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. (Luke 21:16–17)

I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Matthew 10:35–36)

“We need the whole Jesus, the real Jesus. Both gentle and lowly, and honest and courageous.”

Who else can demand such allegiance? Even short-term peace in our own homes, and extended families, will be challenged by the uncomfortable, tough side of Christ. And on the far side, he promises to make up for every loss — and they are genuinely painful losses. “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time . . . and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29–30).

Hard Words to Churches

Jesus’s strong words, even for his own people, appear again in his seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2–3. Along with his words of praise to the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2:3), he cuts to the chase: “I have this against you . . .” (Revelation 2:4; cf. 2:20). He warns, “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).

So too to the church at Pergamum: “I have a few things against you” (Revelation 2:14). And he speaks to the church at Thyatira of “that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols” (Revelation 2:20). And to the church at Sardis: “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead” (Revelation 3:1). And of course to Laodicea: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16). In the mouth of Christ, this is love — tough words, for love’s sake: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline” (Revelation 3:19).

Again Piper writes, What we meet in the biting language of Christ is a form of love that corresponds with the real world of corruption and the dullness of our hearts and the magnitude of what is at stake in our choices. If there were no great evils and no deaf hearts and no eternal consequences, perhaps the only fitting forms of love would be a soft touch and tender words. But such a world does not kill the Son of God and hate his disciples. There is no such world. (94)

Coming Omnipotent Wrath

In the end, hard words, and a whip in the temple, will not prove to be the height of Christ’s severity. One day his wrath will fall, not with words, but in fire. And no one spoke about hell like Jesus, or more often than he did. The angels will separate the evil from the righteous, he says, and “throw them into the fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:50). Better to cut off a hand, or gouge out an eye, than to go to “the unquenchable fire . . . where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:43, 48) — to “the outer darkness” where “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30). Apart from Christ, humans will not only coast and choose hell; they will be thrown there, into “eternal punishment” — “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:30, 41, 46).

Revelation 6 gives us a stunning glimpse of the coming final judgment. A sixth seal is opened. The earth quakes, the sun goes dark, the moon turns to blood. Stars fall, and the sky is rolled back like a scroll. The earth’s kings and “the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful . . . hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains” (Revelation 6:15). So terrified are they at “the wrath of the Lamb” that they call to the mountains and rocks to fall on them: “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:16–17). They would rather be crushed to death than to face the omnipotent wrath of gentle Jesus, tender and tough.

Tough Serves Tender

The tough side of Christ, the words and acts hardest on modern stomachs, is not instead of his tenderness, but in service of his mercy. He doesn’t rescue us to rough us up; he roughs us up to rescue us. He shows wrath and makes his power known “in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:22–23). In the coming ages, having seen his toughness and strength, we will see, and enjoy, “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us” (Ephesians 2:7). His toughness serves his tenderness; his power serves his mercy.

The glory of Christ and his Father, at its apex, is the glory not of wrath and power, but of mercy and grace. We need this Jesus, the whole Jesus, the real Jesus. Both gentle and lowly, and honest and courageous. We need ears to hear the love and compassion of Christ even in his most piercing words and uncomfortable acts.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org and pastor at Cities Church in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is a husband, father of four, and author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus Through the Spiritual Disciplines.

This has been an issue with Believers forever.  With Disney proclaiming it in cartoon form, “Just Follow your Heart,”  it is easy to get confused and make the wrong decisions.  This article is WELL worth your reading.

Article by Jon Bloom Staff writer, desiringGod.org

“Why shouldn’t I follow my heart? If I am a Christian — if God has caused me to be ‘born again’ and has given me ‘a new heart’ — isn’t my new heart trustworthy?”

Readers have raised some version of this objection when I’ve exhorted Christians, “Don’t follow your heart.” And the objection is warranted. After all, the Bible clearly teaches that in this era of the new covenant, God writes his law on our new hearts so that we willingly follow him (Jeremiah 31:31–34; Hebrews 8:8–12). This would seem to not merely imply, but even mandate, that Christians should follow their hearts.

But the Bible’s description of what a regenerated person actually experiences in this age reveals a more spiritually and psychologically complex picture — one that I believe gives Christians biblical warrant to cultivate a healthy suspicion of what they recognize as their hearts’ desires. So, while we may, and hopefully will, reach a point in our lives as Christians where it’s right, at times, to follow our hearts, allow me to make a brief case that the phrase actually undermines Christians as they labor and struggle to discern their various desires, and that Scripture itself discourages us from thinking this way.

War Within

How might we summarize the complex picture the Bible paints of the born-again experience in this already-not-yet age?

The New Testament explains that when the Spirit brings us from spiritual death to spiritual life (John 5:24; Romans 6:13), we enter a strange new reality. Our regenerated new self emerges, “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” And yet our “old self, which belongs to [our] former manner of life,” is still “corrupt through deceitful desires” (Ephesians 4:22–24). We are “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6) while still inhabiting the “flesh,” our “body of death” in which “nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18, 24).

“The hearts of regenerated people are not yet fully free from the influence of their flesh.”

When Christians are born again, we enter into a lifelong internal war where “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17). Stepping back and viewing these desires objectively, “the works of the flesh” that result from fleshly desires “are evident,” and so is “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:19–23). But Christians often struggle — on the ground, in real time — to discern the desires of the Spirit from the desires of the flesh.

This is why the New Testament Epistles are full of exhortations and corrections addressed to Christians. James tells his readers (and us at relevant times) that their “passions are at war within” them (James 4:1). Peter warns his readers (and us), “Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance” (1 Peter 1:14). Paul describes this internal experience of warring passions as “wretched” (Romans 7:24). And he admonishes the Colossian Christians (and us) with strong language: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5).

Why did these apostles feel the need to speak this way to regenerated people? Because the hearts of these regenerated people were not yet fully free from the influence of their flesh, their old selves.

Follow the Spirit

Much of the Christian life is a war to die to remaining sin and live by the Spirit. John Piper calls it “the main battle of the Christian life”:

The main battle is to see our hearts renovated, recalibrated, so that we don’t want to do those sinful external behaviors, and don’t just need willpower not to do them, but the root has been severed and we have different desires. In other words, the goal of change — of sanctification, of the Christian life — is to be so changed that we can and ought to follow our desires.

That’s exactly right. And when we have been so changed through progressive sanctification, so renovated that our hearts (and therefore our desires, dispositions, motives, emotions, and passions) are, as Piper says, “calibrated to Christ,” then we should follow our hearts.

However, at any given time within our churches, small groups, friendships, and families, different Christians are at different places for different reasons in this heart-renovation process. Some hearts are more sanctified, and therefore more reliable to follow, than others. I think that’s why we don’t hear the apostles generally counsel us to follow our hearts in our fight of faith against remaining sin, but rather to follow the Holy Spirit.

Let Not Sin Reign

Paul is the one who delves most deeply into this issue: “I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). He devotes most of Romans 6–8 to explaining the nature of the strange new-self/old-self, Spirit/flesh reality of the Christian life, including Romans 8:13: “If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Paul lays the theological foundation of our understanding by explaining “that our old self was crucified with [Christ] in order that [our] body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6). Our new selves were “raised with Christ” (Colossians 3:1) so that “we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Therefore, we “must consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). In light of this, Paul admonishes us,

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:12–14)

And how do we do this? By learning to “set [our] minds on the things of the Spirit” and not on “the things of the flesh” (Romans 8:5) — by learning to follow the Spirit, to “walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16), because “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

Follow the Treasure

One of the reasons I find “follow your heart” generally unhelpful as counsel for Christians is that many of us, from the time we were young, have absorbed this as a pop-cultural creed that says if we just look deep into our hearts, we’ll be shown our deepest truth, and discover the way we should go. Given the significant amount our sinful flesh still influences our hearts, it’s not hard to see how this phrase can easily increase confusion when applying it to the Christian life.

“Some hearts are more sanctified, and therefore more reliable to follow, than others.”

I also don’t believe the Bible encourages that idea since, when it comes to engaging our hearts, far and away what we hear in it is counsel to “direct our hearts,” not to follow them. We see that clearly in Paul’s instructions above. God made our hearts to follow, not to lead. And what do our hearts follow? Jesus gives the clearest answer: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). In time, our heart always pursues (follows) our treasure.

When we are born again, the eyes of our hearts are enlightened (Ephesians 1:18) and, through faith, we begin to see the Treasure: God himself in Christ. And since our heart learns to pursue the object that stirs its greatest affections, its treasure, I suggest we not counsel each other to “follow your heart,” but instead to “follow the Treasure.” Looking into our hearts for direction can be spiritually hazardous. It is usually more helpful for us to direct our hearts to what is most valuable and delightful. Which is why I believe David counsels us, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as teacher and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife have five children and make their home in the Twin Cities.