Author: Bryan Richardson

Bryan Richardson is the Associate Pastor for Counseling and Pastoral Ministries at FBCSA.

Indestructible

Re: Verse reading–2 Timothy 4:1-8; 16-18 (day three)
“The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.”
Paul at last knew: He was already living the eternal kind of life. He was already beyond ultimate harm. Hostile forces would still attempt to cut short his freedom, his influence, his very life, but those forces posed no threat to him. Even though he would eventually (tradition tells us) undergo beheading, he knew what Jesus promised: “Whoever obeys my word will never see death.”  So Paul knew that he would not know any darkness or isolation or fear or abandonment, not even for one second, at the moment of execution. He knew. And we can know, too. The promise of Jesus is plain: For all who count on him, the eternal, indestructible kind of life begins now.

Depraved

Re: Verse reading–2 Timothy 1:6-14; 2:1-15 (day three)
“He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace.”  John Ortberg writes:
Somebody once asked Dallas Willard if he believed in total depravity.
“I believe in sufficient depravity,” he responded immediately.
What’s that?
“I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’”
Depravity is the denial of our finiteness.  We claim to be self-validating, unaccountable to anyone.  We say, “I am who I am”—a crude counterfeit of the great I AM.  Ask yourself: Would you want to be at the mercy of a god like you?  Be honest.  Then get to know Christ.  You’ll see the God you’re really at the mercy of.

Lesson

Re: Verse reading–1 Timothy 4 (day three)
“Everything God created is good.”
 Jesus rested in the knowledge that his Father had created heaven and earth, and he walked in this world fearlessly because of what he knew.  From Jesus, Paul learned that same assurance: “Nothing can separate us…”  If fear dwells in us, we can’t extinguish it by changing jobs, changing friends, or changing circumstances, because fear is portable, and we take it with us everywhere we go.  The only remedy for fear is to learn peace from the same God who taught it to Paul.  We begin learning by praying with Paul: If God be for us, who can be against us?  Over time, just as it did with Paul, peace will vanquish fear in us.

Primary

Re: Verse reading–1 Timothy 3:1-13 (day three)
“For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?”
If we teach forgiveness and thanksgiving and honesty and love in our church meetings, but we do not seek to use those words to shape the most basic fellowship we know—the home—we have turned our backs on the primary domain of human spiritual formation.  Perhaps we could replace the question, “What will the people at church think?” with “What will the people at home think?”

Calibrate

Re: Verse reading – 1 Timothy 1:1-19 (day three)
“The goal of this command is love.”
Paul calibrated these instructions to the baseline of love–not power, not social influence, not even more “acceptable” standards such as doctrinal purity.  Paul echoes here what he revealed to the Corinthians: The most noble aspirations and accomplishments, unless they spring from love, will evaporate without a trace.  If the church will ever speak with power and influence, if it will ever gain a hearing for correct doctrine, it will do so only by leading its people to become the kinds of persons who love–who “will the good for the other,” which is the definition of love.  For Paul, love wasn’t a good way to get the job of church growth done; love was the job.  Are you becoming the kind of person who wills the good for the other above all else?

 

Hear

Re: Verse reading—Ephesians 5:21-6:9 (day three)
“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” 
“Household codes” were a common feature of ancient writings on society.  Paul simply re-frames the code in a Christian context, grounding it in Christ’s person.  So he wasn’t writing provocatively.  Any controversy comes from the ink spilled and breath spent attempting to excuse Paul, or to re-interpret him for modern ears, or to save him from himself, or to give up on him altogether.  But in our rush to defend our hard-won enlightenment, we fail to do what is necessary: Sit quietly and listen to the word of God as penned by Paul.  The harshness of the words as they fall on our ears has more to do with our resistance to the shaping power of the Bible than it does with any sophistication we think we have gained by living in these times.

Wake

Re: Verse reading–Ephesians 4:17-5:20 (day three)
“Wake up, sleeper.”  Sleep is good for a body.  But we also use sleep and dreaming as a metaphor for a state of unpreparedness or oblivion: “asleep at the wheel”; “snooze you lose”; “pipe dreams”.  We can’t carry the weight of the world, so we try to sleep it off.  We can’t accomplish our deepest longings, so we just dream about them.  We cannot know what is real, what is true, what is a treasure, what matters, what lasts, what lives, until we wake up.  And we will not wake up until we pay attention to Jesus Christ as the one and only person who can teach us how to live his kind of life.

Grow

Re: Verse reading–Ephesians 4:1-16 (day three)
“Then we will no longer be infants.”  Our destiny is to live with one another as fully capable human beings in a good universe sustained by the living God.  If we refuse to live with one another now, though, we will not progress beyond infancy of character.  The Bible talks of a future of reigning with God, but without maturity, that will never happen.  And without one another, maturity will not take hold.  All of the characteristics of a godly life are characteristics that take shape only in community: We can’t love in isolation; we can’t exercise patience without someone to wait on; we can’t live humbly alone; we can’t bear another’s burden when no one is around.  It is no wonder that the second-greatest command after the love of God is the love of neighbor as oneself.  Our future depends on it.

Apology

Re: Verse reading–Ephesians 3 (Day Three) 
“Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”  The church will reveal God’s wisdom to the entire universe only as it loves.  Here’s Francis Schaeffer: “The final apologetic which Jesus gives is the observable love of true Christians for true Christians.”  And what is love?  It is to will the good for another.  How do we learn to do that?  We get to know Jesus, observing how he did that, and letting his life become ours.  Will we love?  It’s the only way the gospel will make its way into the hearts of men.