Daily Devotional "A Belief That Matters" Archives

Daily Devotional “Tempering Zeal With Sensitivity”

Be different!

May 24, 2023

The twelve apostles included “James the son of Zebedee” (Matthew. 10:2).

Zeal without sensitivity can destroy your life and ministry.

There’s the story of a Norwegian pastor whose motto was “All or nothing!”

His life and preaching were stern, strong, powerful, uncompromising, and utterly insensitive.

Reportedly the people in his church didn’t care much for him because he didn’t care much for them.

In his zeal and ambition to advance the kingdom and uphold God’s standard, he neglected everything else—including his own family.

One day his little daughter became so ill the doctor warned him that if he didn’t move her out of the cold Norwegian air to a warmer climate, she would die.

He refused, telling the doctor, “All or nothing!” Soon his little girl died.

His wife was so grief-stricken she would sit for hours holding her daughter’s garments close to her heart, trying somehow to ease her pain.

When the pastor saw what his wife was doing, he gave away the clothes to a poor woman in the street.

All that remained was a little bonnet, which his wife had hidden so she would have some reminder of her precious daughter.

When the pastor found it, he gave that away too, lecturing his wife on giving “all or nothing.”

Within a few months, she too died—of grief.

Now that’s an extreme example of insensitive zeal, yet there are many pastors, evangelists, and other Christian workers who are so zealous for the Lord and so task- oriented, they don’t see the pain their own families and congregations are suffering.

James could have been like that if he hadn’t yielded his life to Christ.

He began as a zealous and insensitive disciple but God refined his character and used him in a marvelous way.

Examine your own ministries and motives.

Are you sensitive to your family and the people you serve with?

Zeal can be a wonderful quality but it must be tempered with love and sensitivity.

Prayer

If you have been insensitive to those around you, confess that to them and ask the Lord to give you a greater sensitivity from now on.

Further Reading

Eli the priest was negligent and insensitive to his family. Read 1 Samuel 3:1—4:18.

•What did the Lord tell Samuel concerning Eli?

•What was the outcome of Israel’s battles with the Philistines?

•How did Eli and his sons die?

Daily Devotional “Tempering Zeal With Sensitivity” | Daily Devotional “Tempering Zeal With Sensitivity” | Daily Devotional “Tempering Zeal With Sensitivity” | Daily Devotional “Tempering Zeal With Sensitivity”

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Daily Devotional “A Belief That Matters”

Be different!

April 29, 2023

“How do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15:12).

Without the truth of bodily resurrection, the Christian faith would not make sense.

Even though Paul and the other apostles made the resurrection of Christ and His followers from the dead a central part of the gospel message, some new Gentile converts (the Corinthians especially) had difficulty accepting the idea of bodily resurrection.

That struggle resulted mainly from the effects of Greek dualism, which viewed the spiritual as inherently good and the physical as inherently bad.

Under that belief, a physical resurrection was considered quite repulsive.

The only way for the doubting Gentiles to accommodate their dualism was to say that Jesus was divine but not truly human.

Therefore, He only appeared to die, and His appearances between the crucifixion and ascension were manifestations that merely seemed to be bodily.

But Paul knew that was bad doctrine. He wrote to the Romans, “Concerning His Son . . . born of the seed of David according to the flesh . . . declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans. 1:3-4).

To deny the actual, bodily resurrection of Christ creates some very significant doctrinal problems.

Without His resurrection, the gospel is an empty message that doesn’t make sense.

Without the Resurrection, Jesus could not have conquered sin and death, and thus we could not have followed in that victory either.

Without physical resurrection, a life of faith centered on the Lord Jesus is worthless.

A dead savior cannot provide any kind of life. If the dead do not rise bodily, Christ did not rise, and neither will we.

If all that were true, we could not do much more than conclude with Isaiah’s Servant, “I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity” (49:4).

But the glorious reality is that we can affirm with Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and . . . .without my flesh [after death] I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).

Prayer

Thank God that the truth of the Resurrection makes our theology credible and the gospel powerful.