Pray with Liane Jagger, Mozambique
I am wanting to acquire some language. My prayer is that I will find an effective process and begin to implement it successfully.

And the ransomed of the LORD shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
(Isaiah 51:11 ESV)

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. (Romans 13:12)

This is a word of hope to suffering Christians. It’s a word of hope to Christians who hate their own sin and long to be done with sinning. It’s a word of hope to Christians who long for the last enemy death to be overcome and thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14).

How is it a word of hope for all these?

“The night” stands for this age of darkness and all its sin and misery and death. And what does Paul say about it? “The night is far gone.” The age of sin and misery and death is almost spent.

You might say that 2,000 years after Paul seems like a long dawn. From one standpoint it is. And we cry, How long, O Lord, how long will you let it go on? But the biblical way to think is different.

The key way it is different is that the day has dawned in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the end of this fallen age. He defeated sin and pain and death and Satan. The decisive battle is over. The kingdom has come. Eternal life has come.

And when dawn happens — as it did in the coming of Jesus — no one should doubt the coming of day. Not even if the dawn draws out 2,000 years. It is certain. The day has arrived. Nothing can stop the rising sun.

Pray with Mark Kroes, Hamilton office
Thank God with us for his gracious provision.  We depend utterly upon Him for everything we need for life and righteousness.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
(Revelation 21:1-4 ESV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed. (Romans 1:16–17)

We need righteousness to be acceptable to God. But we don’t have it. What we have is sin.

So God has what we need and don’t deserve — righteousness; and we have what God hates and rejects — sin. What is God’s answer to this situation?

His answer is Jesus Christ, the Son of God who died in our place. God lays our sins on Christ and punishes them in him. And in Christ’s obedient death, God fulfills and vindicates his righteousness and imputes (credits) it to us. Our sin on Christ, his righteousness on us.

We can hardly stress too much that Christ is God’s answer. It is all owing to Christ.

You can’t love Christ too much. You can’t think about him too much or thank him too much or depend upon him too much. All our justification, all our righteousness, is in Christ.

This is the gospel — the good news that our sins are laid on Christ and his righteousness is laid on us, and that this great exchange happens for us not by works but by faith alone.

Here is the good news that lifts burdens and gives joy and makes strong.

Pray with R., Professional Overseas
A school where B. has been teaching part-time has asked her to assume responsibility for a class of two year olds, five mornings a week, through the end of July.  This will mean juggling and adding to an already busy schedule, so pray for good health, energy, wisdom and creativity.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
(John 16:12-13 ESV)

After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark 14:26)

Can you hear Jesus singing?

Was he a bass or a tenor? Was there a down-home twang to his voice? Or was there an unwavering crystal pitch?

Did he close his eyes and sing to his Father? Or did he look into his disciples’ eyes and smile at their deep camaraderie?

Did he usually start the song?

O, I can hardly wait to hear Jesus sing! I think the planets would be jolted out of orbit if he lifted his native voice in our universe. But we have a kingdom that cannot be shaken; so, Lord, come on and sing.

It could not be otherwise but that Christianity be a singing faith. The founder sang. He learned to sing from his Father. Surely they have been singing together from all eternity.

The Bible says the aim of song is “to raise the sound of joy” (1 Chronicles 15:16). No one in the universe has more joy than God. He is infinitely joyful. He has rejoiced from eternity in the panorama of his own perfections reflected perfectly in the deity of his Son.

God’s joy is unimaginably powerful. He is God. When he speaks galaxies come into being. And when he sings for joy more energy is released than exists in all the matter and motion of the universe.

If he appointed song for us to release our heart’s delight in him, is this not because he also knows the joy of releasing his own heart’s delight in himself in song? We are a singing people because we are the children of a singing God.

Your sins are forgiven. (Luke 7:48)

A woman comes to Jesus in a Pharisee’s house weeping and washing his feet. No doubt she felt shame as the eyes of Simon communicated to everyone present that this woman was a sinner and that Jesus had no business letting her touch him.

Indeed she was a sinner. There was a place for true shame. But not for too long.

Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:48). And when the guests murmured about this, he helped her faith again by saying, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:50).

How did Jesus help her battle the crippling effects of shame? He gave her a promise: “Your sins have been forgiven! Your faith has saved you. Your future will be one of peace.” He declared that past pardon would now yield future peace.

So the issue for her was faith in God’s future grace rooted in the authority of Jesus’s forgiving work and freeing word. That is the way every one of us must battle the effects of a well-placed shame that threatens to linger too long and cripple us.

We must battle unbelief by taking hold of the promises of future grace and peace that come through the forgiveness of our shameful acts.

• “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared” (Psalm 130:4).
• “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:6–7).
• “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
• “To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43).

It doesn’t matter whether the act of God’s forgiveness is entirely past, or if there is new forgiveness in the future — in both cases the issue is the liberating power of God’s forgiveness for our future — freedom from shame. Forgiveness is full of future grace.

When we live by faith in future grace, we are freed from the lingering, paralyzing effects of well-placed shame.