“You have trusted in your wickedness and have said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me.'” Isaiah 47:10

Driving down the highway, I found myself sitting at a red-light right behind a pest control truck. I was thinking of something else in my head when that process got interrupted by the slogan on the truck. As the light turned green, my head was spinning with questions.

The slogan was 100% conceivably true. It said, “Mosquitoes bite – we can stop them!” But as my mind wandered, I couldn’t stop the mental images running through my mind. A mosquito tied to a little chair as a bug guy cuts off its stinger! A bug guy following a customer with a swatter and smashing a mosquito as it lands, was another! As more crazy ideas came to mind, I couldn’t see how a company could make any profit from such a claim… unless!

When it comes to sales, fear can be used as a big motivator. A mother seeing her little baby with mosquito bites might be motivated to hire a company to prevent a repeat of that scenario. But the ‘can’ claim alone is no guarantee! Every time I swat a mosquito, I stop the bite! Placing a bug on a red block and smashing it with a blue one can make the same claim. But while true, it is far from a practical guarantee.

God used the Babylonian empire to punish the Israelites as they turned from faith in Him to other gods. They had been warned! But arrogance provided a false sense of security, as Babylon demolished Israel, SHE started to feel high and mighty and began to do the ‘look at me’ strut! Then God’s warning shifted to HER evil hearts and history repeated itself. Babylon fell!

The dangers of thinking,”nothing bad has happened yet,” “I haven’t gotten caught before,“ or “it really doesn’t matter,” can lure my mind into a false sense of security. The Bible warns, “While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape (1 Thessalonians 5:3). History and God’s Word give many examples over thousands of years of the dangers of believing the an unbelievable lie.

I am and do what I believe to be true! I need to be careful! Because sometimes I can even con myself into believing the unbelievable. How about you?

“And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.” Titus 3:14 ESV

With grandkids and visitors, my bride brought up a discussion about having something better for them to sleep on than a blow up mattress. When our kids grew up and left, she got one bedroom for a sewing room, I got the other. A regular bed was ruled out because it would take up too much room. A Murphy Bed was thrown out as an idea… and POOF!!! We now have one!

I say “POOF” in to be funny because is WASN’T like magic. But her desire DID became my agenda. Researching ‘Murphy Bed’ online gave me quite a shock because… they are not cheap! Being frugal, I found a way to get a new one for a fraction of the cost. But “I” had to BUILD the bed myself! Soon, I came home to a 7’ tall 80 pound box at my front door. And that was just the hardware…a 20 page ‘how to’ manual included!

After computing the needs, purchasing the wood at the lumber yard, then researching and ordering a mattress, it was time to get started. With 5 sheets of plywood at $50 a sheet, I couldn’t afford even 1 mistake. So I stuck to the basics, as my wife gave me the only piece of carpentry advice she knows…“measure twice, cut once.”

My daughter also likes to build stuff. She came over and we turned it into a fun project. Any difficulties were easily overcome as I remembered another old saying… “2 heads are better than 1… even if 1 is a cabbage head!” Having been a carpenter, owning all the necessary tools AND my having daughter’s learned experience as well made it an enjoyable project.

There are tools, materials and basics to building an effective Christian life. Starting with the need for Jesus Christ, reading and applying His Word, and looking to serve Him produces a life that becomes both good and fruitful. He supplies us with ‘everything we need for life and Godliness’ ( 2 Peter 1:3). Which is the point!

The point of the Murphy bed is for sleep. The point of Jesus Christ is to live and display fruitful lives by doing good works with Him. And it is no secret! We either are DOING Titus 3:14…or we are not. When I walk into the room, I can immediately SEE that Murphy bed. I must remind myself that as I walk through life, my Master always expects others to see HIM working… in and through ME!   

“He went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.” 2 Chronicles 15:2

It was Friday… or ‘date night’ as I like to call it. Every Friday night I take my wife out for dinner and a movie, or something just the 2 of us can enjoy together. It is a sacred time because it is important to keep the main thing the main thing. Next to Jesus, my wife is the main person in my life. Sitting at dinner, there came ‘a disturbance in the force!’

It was a simple request. Every 2 weeks the men in our church get together on a Saturday morning for breakfast. The text was from a returning winter resident who wanted to know ‘is there breakfast tomorrow?’ My normal procedure is to send out a group text as a reminder. I find attendance is better that way. I hadn’t sent this gentlemen a text because he wasn’t on my general list. So the question hung… ‘do I answer him now, or wait?’

The Bible verse today does NOT set isolated and alone. It is repeated through the Bible MANY times and in various ways. It is a basic principle of God that centers around the one little word ‘IF!’ The old cartoon chipmunks ‘Chip and Dale’ would begin to argue after one would say, ‘after you.’ The other would reply, “no no, I insist,” as the banter continued. It has been my hard-learned experience that God NEVER banters! And He DOES insist!

We all know God has a ‘Top 10’ list of demands. Requiring my love and having NO other Gods before Him is His #1! Christians should know that we CAN’T keep the commands of God on our own. They are there to show us our failure as humans…that we NEED God to save and live through us id we are even to attempt the basics. It is a RELATIONSHIP. Even today, that relationship requires that HE be placed at the top of MY personal list… in everything!

I can attest to the fact that God is patient. It took me years of hard learning and pain to finally get it. NOT because God was punishing me for putting Him second. But because there is a guarantee that if He is NOT first, MY life will CERTAINLY not go well. Not because He sets out to punish me, but because sin and death are already at my doorstep busting at the door. I NEED Him to be my First Responder!

I quickly and gladly answered the text because that was what MY number 1 expected of me. And because God is my number 2’s number 1, she completely understood. So what is YOUR Number One?

This week I have been using other devotionals to point out God’s Words for today. He uses LOTS of people to speak, but sometimes hearing it from only me alone can make ME sound like a screeching violin.  The world is heating up and the Church is headed for trouble.  Our own personal responsibility and call to Jesus Christ is either being heeded and followed, or set aside and ignored.  Christ IS coming.  And when He does we WILL ALL give account.  Are you ready?

From ‘Experiencing Life Today’ with Jill Briscoe

Achan son of Carmi, one of Zerah’s descendants, brought disaster on Israel by taking plunder that had been set apart for the LORD. — 1 Chronicles 2:7

When we’ve brought trouble on ourselves through our own bad choices, there may seem to be no way out. While some may try to hide or ignore their sin, it is far better to confess to God and ask him to show us a door of hope in our valley of trouble.

Achan’s epitaph in the chronicles of the Jewish nation is that he “brought disaster on Israel” by violating the ban on taking devoted things from Jericho (1 Chronicles 2:7). God required that his people destroy some cities without taking any plunder for themselves. But one man disobeyed.

It all began with Achan’s “greed need.” He saw, he coveted, and he took (Joshua 7:21). Achan tried to bury the consequences of his actions, but his sin found him out. His wrongdoing affected himself, his family, and Israel, and resulted in death in the valley of Achor, the valley of trouble—for “Achor” means trouble.

We can be sure that whatever disobedience we try to hide has been discovered by God. It will only be a matter of time until our sin affects others. Yet God is a God of forgiveness and reconciliation. He promised: “I will…transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope” (Hosea 2:15). When we admit and deal with our hidden sin, God will open a door of hope right in the middle of our valley of trouble. Then the choice is ours to walk through that gateway into the blessing of his love and forgiveness.

For further study: 1 Chronicles 2:7; Joshua 7:1-21

We are ALL called by God to put and serve Him first… and above all things.  Anything that gets in the way of that is sin and disobedience.  God WILL hold us accountable for our own disobedience to His call.  Are YOU doing what God called YOU to do?  Are YOU headed for blessing…or the woodshed?  We all KNOW where we stand.  The time to change course and put Him first is BEFORE He begins to move.  He is calling!  

What an amazing God.  The question came up, “can God look upon sin?”  Using another’s devotional, here is another way to look at it. 

The human body is a machine which winds its own springs. — Julien Offroy de la Mettrie

Modern technology has uncovered a phenomenal biological world inside the human body. Its complexity far exceeds anything that anyone ever imagined… and in many ways, we haven’t even begun to explore it.

Dr. Lang, a friend of mine who was once Head of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, showed me just how incredible the human body is with these statistics:

There are 74 trillion cells in the human body. The white blood cells in the lymph tissue can form 10,000-100,000 different antibodies. They fight against foreign tissue and can make these anti-bodies at a rate of 2,000 per second. A single white blood cell can kill as many as a hundred bacteria. Over the course of a lifetime, the heart will pump an average of 52,560,000 gallons of blood. That’s enough to fill a New York skyscraper! I could go on, but you get the point:

Your body is incredible.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (Genesis 1:26)

When God sculpted humanity in His image, an amazing amount of detail went into the works, resulting in an amazing, intricate masterpiece. He created life the way He did to glorify Himself, but He took another step further with humanity in His love: He designed us to represent Himself!

But best of all, God designed us to be inhabited by His Spirit, a personal relationship shared by no other living thing in existence. All of these things work together to create a complex, beautiful creature that cannot be replicated.

Father, I rejoice that You shaped me and You designed me to be in a relationship with You. Help me to remember how special I am; that because You made me, I am special, unique, and beautiful in Your eyes. Amen.

         Taken from Pete’s 365-day devotional book Experiencing LIFE Today by Pete Briscoe

Ezekiel 44 examples the Levitical priests who do not do their jobs.  Their punishment?  They STILL have to serve at the outer alter and sacrifice the animals…(vs10-13).  But the Priests who serve God FAITHFULLY get to draw CLOSE to GOD (vs 15-16).  You and I were created for intimate relationship with God.  Like that fancy rock above was created, no doubt, to display God’s wonder… YOU were created to be CLOSE to God’s Heart.  GOD Himself is to you YOUR inheritance!  Your PURPOSE is to DRAW NEAR to Him!  Do you?

Ann Voskamp wrote, “Nothing is more necessary then finding God and falling in love and growing deeper into Him.  Love decides,  Love decides everything. What you are in love with decides what you live for. What you are in love with decides what you get out of bed for. 

What does God do with His created things that do not choose to love and draw closer to Him?  The answer is.. not much!  The next question is obvious… Is that ok with YOU?

This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it… Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good! His faithful love endures forever. — Psalm 118:24,29

When the Green Bay Packers defeated the New England Patriots in  Super Bowl 31 in New Orleans, the streets of the French Quarter were soon filled with joyous fans celebrating the victory. It was striking, therefore, at the end of the game to see Reggie White, the All-Pro defensive end of the Packers, and a number of other players kneeling in the stadium and giving thanks to the Lord. Not everybody appreciated this show of devotion; some people wondered aloud if God would have been thanked if the Packers had lost. But there is a marked contrast between those who celebrate victory with partying and those who celebrate with thanksgiving.

Psalm 118 records the celebration of a military victory. The triumphant leader has brought his troops to the Temple, and the priest calls the people of Israel to give thanks to the Lord (Ps. 118:1-3). Then the leader addresses the people: “In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and rescued me” (118:5). As a result of this experience, he exclaims, “It is better to trust the Lord than put confidence in people… [or] princes” (118:8-9). The “strong right arm of the Lord,” says the leader of the triumphant army, “has done glorious things… [and] is raised in triumph” (118:15-16).

The leader asks permission to enter the Temple (118:19), and as the gates are opened, he says, “those gates lead to the presence of the Lord, and the godly enter there” (118:20). Upon this, the choirs burst into song, praising the Lord for the wonders he has done in snatching the leader from the jaws of defeat and giving him the victory. “This is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous to see,” they sing (118:23). This day of celebration “is the day the Lord has made.” So they proclaim, “we will rejoice and be glad in it” (118:24). The victorious leader asks for a blessing from the priests, who respond, “We bless you from the house of the Lord” (118:26). The psalm ends with the leader honoring the Lord by encouraging the people to “give thanks to the Lord” (118:29).

Most men will never win a battle or even play in a Super Bowl, but all men can win smaller victories in life. What they do then speaks volumes about the kind of men they are. If they go out to get drunk, they lack perspective—as well as balance! If they take a knee and thank the Lord, they stand tall. For further study: Psalm 118

With tomorrow being the the First day of Lent, That makes TODAY…Fat Tuesday!  To the host of people looking at religion as demanding and hard, they will look forward to a ‘last night’ of revelry before getting their life’s actions ‘in line.’  So often you hear me saying that Christ wants to set us free and provide us with ‘Abundant Life.’  But freedom is not free.  It requires desire and effort.  I like this devotional.  It is simple and to the point.. and it doesn’t come from ME.  I pray you will be encouraged by its message.  

How to Experience Perpetual, Personal Revival

On a recent visit to New York City, I paused at the 9/11 Memorial, which is at the end of Fulton Street. Then I began walking down Fulton Street itself, which runs crosswise across lower Manhattan. I was looking for a monument, memorial, or historical plaque to indicate how that street changed American history long before the events of September 11, 2001. I didn’t find a monument there, and the thousands of people going back and forth on the sidewalks don’t have a clue. But I do know the story.

In the middle of the 1800s, a tailor named Jeremiah Lanphier moved to Manhattan and established a clothing business. He was a Christian and a sidewalk evangelist in the Wall Street district. On Wednesday, September 23, 1857, he invited people to drop by for prayer at a room on Fulton Street during their lunch hour. Six people showed up. The next week, twenty came. The next week, forty.

Soon churches all across New York overflowed with daily prayer meetings. Fire departments and police stations opened their facilities for prayer, and local businesses set aside rooms for employees to pray. The movement swept over the eastern seaboard and pushed westward into the nation. Citywide awakenings struck Cincinnati, Louisville, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and innumerable smaller cities and towns.

From the United States, the revival spread to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. For two years, approximately 50,000 people a week came to Christ. Within a year of the start of the Fulton Street Prayer Meetings, over a million converts joined America’s churches, and thousands of existing church members were born again or revived in their faith.

The world needs another such awakening, and I pray every day for revival to sweep our country. Our problems are not primarily political, but spiritual; and the answers we need are not primarily political. We need another national and global revival.

Whether God unleashes a great geographical revival or not, I’m convinced you and I can enjoy perpetual, personal revival. Psalm 23:3 says, He refreshes my soul. Jesus said,
  Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from with them. — John 7:38
When we experience personal, perpetual revival, our faith is revived, our love is stronger, our faces are more joyful, our enthusiasm is more contagious, and our individual ministries are empowered.

How, then, can we experience revival when everyone else is simply struggling for survival?

1. Pull all the ingredients of your life into the circle of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This takes a determined decision, which is renewable daily. You can do this instantly, or you may want a bit of time to ponder its implications. God isn’t likely to bless what isn’t yielded to Him. Every morning I pray something like this, “Lord, I want You to be in control of every aspect of my life. My time. My habits. My money. My relationships. May they be under Your authority today.” Christians used to call this “full surrender.” The word “surrender” isn’t currently in vogue, but the spiritual concept has never been more needed. If some area of your life has slipped out of the circle of Christ’s Lordship, confess it as sin and, with His help, rein it back in.

2. Never miss a day without a personal closed-door appointment with God, allowing Him to speak to you through His Word and responding to Him in prayer. In a marriage, it’s hard to keep the romance alive if a couple never communicates. In our relationship with God, it’s hard to keep the revival burning if there’s no regular communication. I’m not sure why Christians have so much trouble maintaining their habits of personal devotional time, but Jesus told us to go into a private room, close the door, and meet with the Father (Matthew 6:6). Though everyone’s schedule is different, for the last 48 years I’ve been doing this every morning after breakfast. I open my Bible to where I left off the day before, underline and mark verses that speak to me, and talk to the Lord as if He were actually in the room — which He is!

3. Ask God to fill you with His Holy Spirit, for Ephesians 5:18-19 says,
  be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
4. As you leave the secret room and go into your day, consciously remember the reality of God’s presence. He goes with you. A great missionary of yesteryear, George Brown of India, was known for his constant awareness of God’s nearness. When a friend asked him about it, he said, “Yes, God is nearer to me, consciously, than anyone in this room.” Train yourself to remember God is with you, near you, around you, within you—and that you have constant access to Him through Jesus Christ.

5. Let this show up on your face. Ecclesiastes 8:1 says,
  A person’s wisdom brightens their faces and changes its hard appearance.
I realize we can’t always smile. Troubles and grief intrude, and we face moments requiring serious thought. But biblical joy isn’t an undependable electric circuit in a developing nation. The Bible says,
  Rejoice in the Lord always. — Philippians 4:4
Even when we can’t control our emotions, we can chose our attitudes, trust God with our burdens, turn problems into prayers, and, as Charles Wesley said, “laugh at life’s impossibilities.”

None of this is easy, perfect, or quick for most of us. It’s a series of life patterns. But how vital for times like these! If our world is ever going to experience a series of global revivals, it’s got to begin in you and me.

We’ve got to find our way to Fulton Street.

Written for Devotionals Daily by Robert J. Morgan, author of 100 Bible Verses That Made America.

Got this from Randy yesterday and he thought you might like this one.  It does cause to pause…

Why can’t we love pleasure and God at the same time? Paul seems to assume that we can’t. And it’s a text that confuses a podcast listener named Gabriel, who writes in to ask: “Hello, Pastor John. My question is about that phrase in 2 Timothy 3:4, ‘lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.’ Does this establish a dichotomy between seeking pleasure and seeking God? If so, why is it impossible to do both? Why can’t we love pleasure and God at the same time?”

It is about time that we get this question. I mean, we are Christian Hedonists, and there’s a text just crying out for attention. So, let’s put the text in front of us. Here’s what 2 Timothy 3:1–5 says:

In the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

Now, Gabriel is certainly right to flag this text as something that needs special attention, especially from a Christian Hedonist like me: “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” Is this, then, not an indictment of Christian Hedonism, which says that we should pursue our fullest and lasting pleasure in God no matter what it costs? That’s what I believe and have devoted my life to arguing for and trying to live. Gabriel wants to know, Can’t we pursue pleasure and God — can’t we love pleasure and God — at the same time? To which Paul seems to say, “No, you can’t.”

What You Really Crave

So, what we have to do with a text like this is not turn away from the text and start making up our own views about pleasure and about God, but stay with the text and let Paul tell us how he’s using his words — namely, the word pleasure and the word God in particular. Paul is clearly treating them as competitors for our affections, for our love — loving pleasure rather than loving God. He’s treating God as an object of our love, and he’s treating pleasure as an object of our love.

And when you think of them that way, pleasure is clearly being perceived as an idol, an alternative to loving God. That’s the way Paul is setting it up. Paul is not asking the question, if looked at another way, whether God might be our pleasure. He’s not asking that. He’s not talking about that. If God is our pleasure, then pleasure can’t be in competition with God, but pleasure is virtually the same as our love for God.

So, Paul is using the word pleasure as an object of delight, not an act of delight. Mark that. That’s so important to get our categories clear. He’s treating the word pleasure, he’s treating the reality of pleasure, as an object of our delighting, not the act of our delighting. If pleasure is an object of delight — something we delight in — then it competes with God, and we have to choose God above pleasure. But if pleasure is viewed not as the object of delight, but the act of delighting, then God can be the object of that delighting. He can be our delight, be our pleasure, and in that sense, pleasure and God would not be in competition at all.

But that’s not the way Paul is thinking here. Paul is thinking here of pleasure as a physical or psychological sensation that we crave more than we crave God. And in this sense, pleasure has to become an idol, and we must choose between pleasure and God.

God, or His Benefits?

Let me tell two stories that illustrate what I think Paul is getting at. Here’s the first story. I remember over twenty years ago interviewing Sam Crabtree as an executive pastor candidate for Bethlehem, and he’s been at Bethlehem ever since. In the interview, he said something that made me love and admire him and his insight. We hired him. I love Sam. He’s still wise.

He said he worries about some churches that, in their worship services, seem to be loving loving God more than loving God. Let me say it again because it struck me, and that’s why I remember it all these years later: he was concerned that, in some worship services, people seem to be loving loving God more than loving God.

So, a person might say he’s taking pleasure in God in worship, and that would be good. But he might slip over into taking more pleasure in the pleasure of taking pleasure in God than in really taking pleasure in God. And we all know this danger, right? We can slip into loving the emotional music, or slip into the emotional fellowship, or slip into the various physical and psychological sensations that attend a focus with God, while God himself slowly disappears.

The beauty of his character and the beauty of his ways just drop out of our consciousness. That would be a religious form of the kind of thing Paul is concerned about here, loving pleasure rather than loving God.

‘I Choose You’

Now here’s the second story. It’s an even more pointed illustration, I think. Soon after Noël and I were married, I read a book about sex in marriage, and it made this amazing statement that I had not thought of before, but ever since have considered it just stock, beautiful, glorious, obvious wisdom. It said, “One kiss after sexual climax is worth a thousand kisses before sexual climax.”

Now, why would that be? It’s because all the kisses of foreplay are ambiguous. They might be owing to strong affections for your spouse as a cherished person, or you might have gotten so caught up in the love of pleasure, the sensations, that the kisses have no connection with the preciousness of the person, and are only expressions of sexual abandon and sexual sensation.

But after sexual climax, when there are no overpowering physical sensations carrying you, but only the preciousness of the relationship, then a tender, eye-to-eye, heartfelt kiss says, “You are more precious to me than all those sensations. And if I had to choose, I would choose you, you, Noël. Not mainly the sexual sensations that you give me, but you, are my cherished treasure.”

Highest Pleasure in God Himself

Now, that is, I think, what Paul is getting at in relation to God. Remember, it says — this is amazing — in 2 Timothy 3:5, that these people have an “appearance of godliness,” while they are loving pleasure more than loving God. But in fact, they are being sustained not by the power of godliness, not by the power of the beauty of God’s person and the preciousness of his fellowship; they’re being sustained by the secondary pleasures of being part of the Christian community.

So, the answer to Gabriel’s question is this: You can’t love pleasure and love God when pleasure is conceived of as an alternative object of your affections, luring you away from a superior delight in God. But you can pursue pleasure and pursue God at the same time if God himself is your pleasure.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Why I Love the Apostle Paul: 30 Reasons.

This was too good to not forward.  I remember a song line from Barbara Mandrell years ago… ‘He grew the tree, He knew would be, used to make the Old Rugged Cross.   Happy Valentines Day.  May I recommend you go and make it a great day for the ones you love? 

“Oh, the things we do to give gifts to those we love.

But we don’t mind, do we? We would do it all again. Fact is, we do it all again. Every Christmas, every birthday, every so often we find ourselves in foreign territory. Grownups are in toy stores. Dads are in teen stores. Wives are in the hunting department, and husbands are in the purse department.

Not only do we enter unusual places, we do unusual things. We assemble bicycles at midnight. We hide the new tires with mag wheels under the stairs. One fellow I heard about rented a movie theater so he and his wife could see their wedding pictures on their anniversary.

And we’d do it all again. Having pressed the grapes of service, we drink life’s sweetest wine — the wine of giving. We are at our best when we are giving. In fact, we are most like God when we are giving.

Have you ever wondered why God gives so much? We could exist on far less. He could have left the world flat and gray; we wouldn’t have known the difference. But He didn’t.

He splashed orange in the sunrise and cast the sky in blue. And if you love to see geese as they gather, chances are you’ll see that too.

Did He have to make the squirrel’s tail furry? Was He obliged to make the birds sing? And the funny way that chickens scurry or the majesty of thunder when it rings?

Why give a flower fragrance? Why give food its taste? Could it be He loves to see that look upon your face?

If we give gifts to show our love, how much more would He? If we — speckled with foibles and greed — love to give gifts, how much more does God, pure and perfect God, enjoy giving gifts to us? Jesus asked,

If you hardhearted, sinful men know how to give good gifts to your children, won’t your Father in heaven even more certainly give good gifts to those who ask him for them? — Matthew 7:11 TLB

God’s gifts shed light on God’s heart, God’s good and generous heart. Jesus’ brother James tells us:

Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of Heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. — James 1:17 MSG

Every gift reveals God’s love… but no gift reveals His love more than the gifts of the Cross.

They came, not wrapped in paper, but in passion. Not placed around a tree, but a Cross. And not covered with ribbons, but sprinkled with blood.

The gifts of the Cross.

Much has been said about the gift of the Cross itself, but what of the other gifts? What of the nails, the crown of thorns? The garments taken by the soldiers? The garments given for the burial? Have you taken time to open these gifts?

He didn’t have to give them, you know. The only act, the only required act for our salvation was the shedding of blood, yet He did much more. So much more. Search the scene of the cross, and what do you find?

A wine-soaked sponge. A sign. Two crosses beside Christ. Divine gifts intended to stir that moment, that split second when your face will brighten, your eyes will widen, and God will hear you whisper, “You did this for me?”

The diadem of pain
which sliced your gentle face,
three spikes piercing flesh and wood
to hold you in your place.
The need for blood I understand.
Your sacrifice I embrace.
But the bitter sponge, the cutting spear,
the spit upon your face?
Did it have to be a Cross?
Did not a kinder death exist
than six hours hanging between life and death,
all spurred by a betrayer’s kiss?
“Oh, Father,” you pose,
heart-stilled at what could be,
“I’m sorry to ask, but I long to know,
did You do this for me?”

Dare we pray such a prayer? Dare we think such thoughts? Could it be that the hill of the Cross is rich with God’s gifts? Let’s examine them, shall we? Let’s unwrap these gifts of grace as if — or perhaps, indeed — for the first time. And as you touch them — as you feel the timber of the Cross and trace the braid of the crown and finger the point of the spike — pause and listen. Perchance you will hear Him whisper:

“I did it just for you.”