“If our heart condemns us, God
is greater than our heart, and knows all things” (1 John 3:20)
Do you have special Scriptures in your heart? Those
are the ones God provides to give you deep comfort, especially in the
“difficult” times of life. You don’t always have to understand the verses
completely in order to find the peace they provide. They are for you to
receive and be blessed because the Lord has touched you with His Word.
I have several of them, and possibly you do, too. One
of mine for many years has been Ephesians 5:14, which first jumped out
at me decades ago from the New American Standard Bible. In that version
it reads: “Awake, sleeper, and arise from the
dead, and Christ will shine on you.” The verse touched me through
the decades, warming me deeply. I did not particularly think about what
it might mean. I just received it as something from Him. Perhaps He
simply
wanted me to wake up. I did not know. It was just a beautiful verse.
At some point I observed that Ephesians 5:14, written
by the Apostle Paul in about 60 AD, was a quote from 700 years before.
Isaiah 60:1 reads - “Arise, shine; for your light
has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.”
Periodically, through the years, I would glance at those verses, feel
touched by them, and wonder how they applied.
At some point I discovered that the author, the
prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, used the Hebrew word “Yehovah” for “Lord”
in Isaiah 60:1, which is also translated: YHWH or Yahweh, or in the King
James - Jehovah. I thought perhaps that is why the Lord wanted me to
have this Scripture as my “own” verse. He wanted me to compare Isaiah
60:1 with Ephesians 5:14 and see that Jesus Christ is not only our Lord
and Savior, but He is also the Jehovah God of Israel! However, there was
to be even more.
Friday Study Ministries, the First Church on the Net,
has statistical reporting that gives us wonderful information about the
one hundred thousand-plus people who come to us every month. They tell
us more than just how many people visit. We can see if they bookmarked
us as a “favorite.” We can know how long they stayed on the site. It
tells us which of the many pages they visited. We can tell
whether they preferred our audio or text or podcasts. It reveals, if
they came through a web search, what search engine they used. If they
came through a link from another site, it shows who those other sites
are. If they came from a search, we can see the search phrases used to
find us. And there’s more, but for today, it tells us the countries, the
NATIONS these 100,000-plus people come from.
In 2009, just under 63,000 came from Russia. Almost
1,000 were from Saudi Arabia. Over 15,000 came from the Philippines,
over 3,500 came from Malaysia, 1,000 were from Libya, over 2,300 from
Japan, over 9,000 from Ireland, 6,500 from India, 26,000 each from Great
Britain and Canada. Over 6,300 from Sweden, over 5,000 from Singapore,
over 3,100 from China, 900 from Israel, 2,000 from Kenya, 3,000 each
from the Netherlands and New Zealand; 1,400 from Nigeria. In the past
ten years, we’ve had over six million visitors.
During the fifteen or so years I was away from the
Lord as a young man, running from His call to ministry, I never
expected to be accepted as a “Christian” again. And then, after the Lord
dramatically brought me back, I thought it would be automatic that the
call to ministry would be renewed! But it was not. In my heart was the
gift of teaching, which became the calling of my life, but for 25-years,
it was expressed in only tiny ways, and when I asked the Lord about it,
He would always breathe into my heart the word, “Wait!”
And then He would give me reassuring verses like the one mentioned
earlier.
A Scripture I kept encountering was Joel 2:25 – “I
will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.”
I knew that the Lord was implanting these and other verses into my heart
to strengthen me for ministry, but as the years and the decades wore on,
ministry didn’t seem to happen. I took time in those years to complete
my education, but even though He led me, the coursework did not seem to
go anywhere.
As in the Scripture for today’s sermon, I felt
condemned in heart. Surely I must have displeased the Lord terribly and
had become unusable. But note today’s Scripture: “If
our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all
things” (1 John 3:20). The Lord is omniscient, which means that
He “knows all things,” and He was telling
me that I would be in His service. But I gave up; deciding I was
simply too old and had failed.
A week ago, in the Scripture reading my wife and I
share each day, we opened our Bibles to Ephesians 5 and read Verse 14
together: “Arise, shine; for your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” I mentioned to her
that the verse was personal to me, but I did not know why. And then we
turned to Isaiah 60:1, but instead of merely stopping at “Arise,
shine; for your light has come! And the glory of(Yahweh)
is risen upon you,” I kept reading in the
English Standard Version, a recent present from my daughter. The
lettering on the cover had amused and delighted me, for the words
“Pastor Ron Beckham” were embossed on it. After ten years of full-time
ministry, I am still surprised to see the word “Pastor” connected to me.
We continued reading in Verses 2 & 3 – “For
behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen upon you.
And NATIONS shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of
your rising…” I have been blessed with many
translations of Scripture, but had never really noticed the word “nations”
in Isaiah 60:3, for the word is often translated “Gentiles”
instead of “nations.” But suddenly the word
“nations” leaped out. The millions of
people who have come to our studies and sermons in the past ten years
have been from
almost 200 “nations!”
“The Lord will rise upon you…
and nations will come to your light.” Note that whatever ministry
we might be given, it’s the LORD’s light in us that draws the people.
Like the moon in relation to the sun, we reflect the light of the Son of
God. When I noticed, really noticed the word “nations”
I could not continue reading because I wept! He
KNEW from eternity past that “nations”
would come to us and He had prepared me all those years. The Lord knows
everything. He's “omniscient” which means He knows the future,
He knows the past. He has always known the outcome of our lives.
Scott Walker said in a recent “Daily
Guideposts” article, “God guides us down
the paths of life in mysterious and wonderful ways. We can’t know now
how the events of this day might shape our tomorrow. But God does. From
birth to death, God weaves the grand tapestry of our life… His design
works itself out with faith and great expectation.”
I had condemned myself for running from Him, and you
may also feel condemned. But He knows your heart. It is God who brings
the “nations” and He wakes us in the Name
of Christ Jesus. Give your failures to Him, and don’t worry about your
limitations. He “is greater than our heart, and
knows all things” (1 John 3:20). You are not condemned and He
loves you.
Lord, I see that You know – everything. I confess
my sins, my unbelief, and give my life to You. You are my God and in You
I am forgiven. I trust in You now and forever. Praise God, I am not
condemned! Thank You for Your great love for me. In Jesus Name. Amen.
