Daily Bread

Friday, November 08, 2013

Let's Draw Near to the Most Holy Apartment

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

In order to understand the sanctuary service, two New Testament books about it must have their say: Hebrews and Revelation. The theme of Hebrews is "perfection of character," to become like Jesus. It's not "perfectionism," the heresy of flesh-perfection; no. But it is the clear message of overcoming self and temptation "even as [Christ] overcame." It will produce real flesh and blood people, sinners by nature, who appreciate how Christ "condemned sin" in "the likeness of [our] flesh" (see Rom. 8:3).

Romans does not mention the sanctuary; but the idea of learning to say "No!" to temptation is there (Rom. 8:3, 4, etc.; it's also in Titus 2:12, see NIV). Hebrews says, let's leave our baby-talk, get out of the cradle roll, and "leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection" (6:1). Christ as High Priest is "able to save perfectly those who come unto God by Him" (7:25). And the new covenant completely supersedes the old (8:6-13).

The "conscience" of those who believe in Jesus is to be "purged," a deep work never before fully accomplished until the grand Day of Atonement (9:14, 22, 23, 26). Let's draw near to the Most Holy Apartment, "our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience" (10:22). All who have died in the past must wait until "God [provides] some better thing for us" (11:40), which is that "the God of peace ... [will] make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you" (13:20, 21).

And Revelation completes the picture of what happens when the door into the Most Holy Apartment is flung open (11:19). A great work is done by heavenly agencies never previously accomplished: a "body" of people learn to "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth," stand on Mount Zion singing "a new song" that no one else in history could learn--a people "in [whose] mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God" (14:3-5). Thus Christ can complete His work as High Priest and return as "King of kings and Lord of lords." Let's cooperate with Him!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 28, 2001.

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Thursday, November 07, 2013

The Lesson Our Fallen Humanity Doesn't Like

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

If we "let this mind be in [us], which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5), we will learn self-denial. But that's the lesson our fallen humanity doesn't like; we always want our way, not surrender it and crucify self.

To crucify self can happen only as we are "crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). When that "grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness" (see Titus 2:11-13), it's Christ that is doing it; there is no "university" on earth that can teach us to do that.

It was at Gethsemane that Jesus as the divine/human Son of God came to the most wrenching temptation to love self. No one in the vast universe of God ever faced such a trial. In His human nature, Jesus did not want to go to that cross, not because He dreaded the pain and shame involved, but He recoiled against the second death that He knew was in the cross. "O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt" (Matt. 26:39).

He had fallen, weeping and broken, and now He sweat blood as He chose to "resist unto blood, striving against sin" (Heb. 12:4). It would have been enormous sin if He had rejected the cross that the Father would lay upon Him. Christ must win His primeval battle with self, or the universe is lost in the great controversy.

Now, says Paul, I have learned from Him--"I [too] am crucified with Christ." I kneel with Him in Gethsemane. Paul says, self in human nature is so strong that it was like sweating blood for Christ to say "No!" to self; but I, Paul, say "let this mind be in me, which was also in [Him]."

Paul goes on to say, "nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." To respond any less than that, says Paul, would be to "frustrate the grace of God," and that I now refuse to do, he adds (Gal. 2:20, 21).

Let "Elijah" "turn ... heart[s]" on this Day of Atonement (cf. Mal. 4:5, 6).

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 15, 2008.

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

The Secret to Answered Prayer

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

The Lord encourages each of us to pray to Him alone; Jesus gave us permission to address His Father as "our Father which art in heaven." We are to pray in the name of His only begotten Son: "If ye shall ask any thing in My name, I will do it" (John 14:14). Big promise!

But sometimes it seems that He doesn't hear us or answer. We beg Him to tell us why. John may help us: "This is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us" (1 John 5:14). "His will" is love for our souls; it's possible we are asking for something that in the end would harm us, because we don't know better (or it might harm some one else, which we don't know). Then John explains further: "And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him" (vs. 15). The "if" is important. Some dear people spend a lifetime understanding. You can fast forward your understanding if you will choose to believe (a) that He loves you as an individual, (b) that He does hear you, and (c) that He will grant you whatever is best for you, to be realized when you need it.

But there is a secret to answered prayer we must not forget. "If TWO of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 18:19). Praying by yourself may not be good enough! You'd be surprised how rare it is to find two individuals (even in a church) who are totally in heart unity. Not that one must be a clone of the other, no; but the Holy Spirit just has trouble "convicting" two people alike; one seems always to be breaking away from heart unity in some way. If only "two" could fulfill that promise "in Christ," they could turn the world upside down--let alone their little church (or their little committee).

The prayer of Christ's heart still is for His disciples "that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me" (John 17:21). With His church fragmented, it may seem that even Christ after 2000 years can't get His prayers answered when He prays by Himself! But don't give up your faith: Christ's prayer MUST be answered, or He must lose the great controversy with Satan! Pray with Him, on His side, that His people may be brought into that true, blessed one-ness "in Him."

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 9, 2004.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Hidden "Sheep" Who "Know His Voice"

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

There's a fascinating link between the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of John that intrigues many people. The former tells of God's final "Voice from heaven" that will sound in the heart of a vast number around the world to "come out of Babylon, My people." They will respond in that last hour, symbolized as "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues," who hear the Voice because in some way they already "follow the Lamb [the crucified Christ] wherever He goes" (18:4; 7:9; 14:4). They are already responsive in their confusion to each nuance of divine leading they can sense. They love truth.

The link with John's Gospel is in 10:1-16 where Jesus lets us in on His secret: He has people everywhere who are His hidden "sheep" who "know His voice" and respond whenever He can find a human agent to proclaim the truth so clearly that honest people recognize that "Voice." To borrow Luther's rude phrase, these who proclaim the gospel don't "taste of the dish" (would you serve your guests from a dish that still has the remnants of its former cooking sticking to it?). When our preaching is marred by "self," we repulse rather than attract these "sheep."

The presence of self-love seen in the agent constitutes the "messenger," "a thief and a robber" "climbing up some other way" into Christ's "sheepfold." His true sheep run as fast as they can the other way (they "flee from a stranger"). And possibly the church wonders why they are not winning more souls, and why their efforts to "lighten the earth with glory" seem so stymied.

The picture in the Bible is clear: God has faithful people buried in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, yes, maybe all the "isms" of the world, including (it must be!) atheism who are not heart-satisfied where they are; they hunger for something they haven't yet found. When truth and that truth-seeker meet, nothing in earth or heaven will keep them apart forever after.

The challenge to God's "remnant church" of these last days is: clear away the self-confusion that muffles the sound of that "Voice from heaven." What's on God's agenda for His church is thrilling.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 21, 2004.

Monday, November 04, 2013

Chosen to Be Saved

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

"Our beloved brother Paul" (that's what Peter calls him!, 2 Peter 3:15) tells us to "let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5). The surrender of our "mind" to the Holy Spirit is our highest privilege in this life here and now. "Mind" means purpose for living; the choices we make that constitute our character what it is. And our character comprises our choices we make in living. Therefore doing good is primarily choosing to do good.

You may think that your feet are locked into the path that leads to ruin; that you are a victim of pre-choices that have inevitably been made for you already; that you are in a huge rut formed of iron, out of which escape seems impossible; that you are pre-programmed to evil; that you have lost the God-given power of choice.

But if you still possess the choice to take a breath and you don't have the choice not to take a breath, that means you still have the power of choice to think and to do what is right, by the grace of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ, the divine Son of God, is your Saviour, and all of Satan's evil angels are powerless to take Him from you. That means that even if the wrong choices you have made in the past seem locked in for you, that if you can still choose to take a breath you still have retained that precious freedom of choice that the Lord has given you as your eternal possession. (Have you noticed how impossible it is to choose to stop breathing? There's a lesson in the goodness of the Lord Jesus!)

He has chosen for you to have eternal salvation--that's a pre-choice He has already made for you. We know this is true for we read in 1 Timothy 2:3, 4 that He "will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." Therefore it is sure that He has made a choice already for you to be saved!

And it follows that the only way that you can be lost is for you to negate His will, to deny it, to interpose your own perverse will with the purpose of canceling His good will for you. You don't want to do that! As surely as it is your own natural will to keep on breathing, so sure is it that the Lord's purpose for you is to inherit eternal life in Christ's salvation. Yes, the Samaritans were right! He is the "Saviour of the world" (John 4:42).

Now, don't crucify Him all over again! That's how serious are the choices before us today! I don't need to remind you that in the final day of judgment (which all of us must face), finding ourselves in that position is the most awful thing possible for any human being!

Thank the Lord Jesus, He has pre-programmed you to eternal salvation; now don't contradict His choice for you!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 15, 2009.

Saturday, November 02, 2013

Who Are the "We," "Us," and "Our" in Ephesians 1?

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

There's a "we," "us," and "our" in Ephesians 1 that has been "blessed ... with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," who are "predestined ... to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, ... to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made [them] accepted in the Beloved" (vss. 3-6).

Who are those people in these first person plural pronouns? Only one possible answer: the entire human race. Christ is "the Savior of the world" (John 4:42; 1 Tim. 4:10).

But how can you know that you personally are "adopted"? You, individually, have a first-class personal validation of this "adoption" in the longing sigh of your lonely heart that cries out, "Abba, Father!" (See Rom. 8:15.) But you also have another personal validation of this "adoption": the same text hints at it--"we suffer with Him," meaning that "we may also be glorified together."

Hebrews 12 spells out more vividly this other personal assurance of your adoption into the family of God: "The exhortation ... speaks to you as to sons: 'My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.' If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten?" (vss. 5-7).

Do you know disappointments, setbacks, disasters, crushing and humiliating heart-rejection? Your first thought is, "God has forsaken me!" But stay a little longer on your knees and you will sense the tie of personal kinship now being forged with Christ. He will never let Himself be "glorified" unless and until He shares the glory "together" with you, as Romans 8 said!

There's every reason for you to be assured that you've been "adopted." Now live like the adopted son or daughter that you are; honor your Father.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 26, 2006.

Friday, November 01, 2013

A Vivid Lesson From Isaiah

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

There's a precious story in the Bible that may have been missed (or maybe you've known it all your life). It's in the Good News version of Isaiah:

"The LORD said to me, 'No matter how shepherds yell and shout, they can't scare away a lion from an animal that it has killed [for food]; in the same way, there is nothing that can keep Me, the Lord Almighty, from protecting Mount Zion'" (31:4).

You don't have to live in Africa to know this: when a hungry lion has run and run and finally caught its prey and sits down to enjoy his hard-earned meal, nothing can entice him away from it. You don't you dare try to wrest it from him! You'll see a lion ferocious at his worst.

So, says the LORD Almighty (your personal Friend and Savior), will He protect you fiercely from anyone who might try to harm you! (We all have often needed that encouragement.)

But there's a second story here:

"Just as a bird hovers over its nest to protect its young, so I, the LORD Almighty, will protect Jerusalem and defend it'" (vs. 5). Substitute your name for "Mount Zion" and for "Jerusalem," and you have the New Covenant message the Lord wants you to grasp.

He is like a super-angry hungry lion and like a quiet mother bird--both. (He created them both so they could teach us a lesson about His character.)

The people in Isaiah's day couldn't forget that vivid lesson! Neither can we.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 6, 2006.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Can Anything Good Be Said for Halloween?

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Can anything good be said for Halloween?

Not really, except to confess the honest truth that it is purest paganism that has wormed its way into the supposedly Christian faith of many millions.

So the question resolves itself into a simpler one: can anything good be said for paganism itself? The Bible offers the repeated comment that paganism imported into the supposedly Christian church is "Babylon" from which the sincere follower of Jesus Christ is sternly commanded forthwith to "come out!" (Rev. 14:8; 18:1-4).

But let's use sanctified common sense in the process: just to come down hard on Halloween alone and neglect the real significance of paganism entrenched in professed Christian thought is to repeat the whole sad apostasy from its beginning.

The story takes us to Daniel, the one book of the Old Testament that Jesus earnestly urges us to "read" and "understand" (Matt. 24:15). In chapters 8:11-13; 11:31, and 12:11, 12, paganism figures as impacting itself on the captive people of God taken to a 70-year exile in ancient Babylon. There is evidence in Daniel that the Israelites in captivity in literal Babylon had an idiom for what endlessly surrounded them: "the continual in transgression."

The literal Hebrew is: ha tamid be pesha, the word tamid being translated as "daily," and ha as the article, "the." It occurs those five times in Daniel, and nowhere else in Scripture in that way.

The Hebrew verb in 8:11-13 is rum, which does not mean primarily "take away" but "lift up," "exalt." The Catholic and Protestant Christians who lived through the end of the 1260 years of papal oppression in 1798 A.D. recognized "the daily" as paganism which became exalted in the early apostasy of much professed Christianity. The result has been described as "baptized paganism." The classic volume, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, describes the process as "paganism incorporated" into Christianity (p. 50).

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 31, 2007.

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Note: For interested readers, "Dial Daily Bread" has a paper on the subject, "Have We Followed Cunningly Devised Fables?" The 20-page PDF file can be obtained by sending an e-mail to dailybread@1888message.org. Ask for "Fables.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The Highest Equation in the Universe!

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

When Paul says "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ" (2 Cor. 5:10), he does not denigrate what the apostle John says about judgment and agape. John says:

(a) "Everyone who loves [with agape] is born of God and knows God" (1 John 4:7). The obvious implication: if we haven't learned how to love with agape, we don't know God. That's what he says next:

(b) "He who does not love [with agape] does not know God, for God is agape" (vs. 8). The highest equation in the universe!

(c) "In this the love [agape] of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son ..." (vs. 9). We learn agape only by long beholding the sacrifice of Christ to the point that we don't "know anything … except Christ and Him crucified" (cf. 1 Cor. 2:2). The heartis won. Now the Lord Jesus wants an entire world church enlightened by His agape, and so won by heart.

(d) "In this is agape, not that we loved God [with agape], but that He loved us [with agape] ..." (vs. 10). His church does not take the initiative; the Bridegroom does that, and she does the responding to Him.

(e) "Agape has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world" (vs. 17). "Keeping the [ten] commandments" is preparation for the final judgment; but the one supreme question we will be asked as we stand before the Lord Jesus in final judgment will be, "Have you learned how to love (with agape)?"

(f) Paul agrees: "Love [agape] does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love [agape] is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom. 13:10).

All these many long years, the Bridegroom-to-be has longed for His beloved to grow up out of childhood unto "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). We cannot duplicate the sacrifice of Christ on His cross, but we can learn to appreciate it. If any bridegroom has that from his bride, he will have a happy marriage.

Growing up should be great fun; kids love it, even before their time. A world church may appear to be very lethargic; but don't make a superficial judgment. The Bridegroom is not finished yet. Keep your heart alert to what He may do.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 11, 2007.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Probing Ministry of the Holy Spirit

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Does it seem reasonable to assume that those whose "sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment" have already gone through what the lost will face when their sins "follow after" (1 Tim. 5:24)? This is an experience of consciousness; it's not like an IRS audit that happens while you're sound asleep. The Holy Spirit does nothing behind your back. You don't need to be afraid of Him.

The lost come up in the second resurrection (Rev. 20) and the truth of their sins confronts them consciously in the final judgment as they stand before the Great White Throne. But those who now permit the Holy Spirit to probe beneath the surface of their character and respond "Yes!" to His deeper convictions of sin, are happy ones ahead of time. They have welcomed the final judgment now. They pray the prayer of the devout lady who long ago would pray, "Lord, show me the worst of my case!" Now "there is no fear in [their] love [agape], for perfect agape casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18). This appears to be so simple and clear biblically that a child can grasp it.

Could this be what Daniel spoke of when he said that in the final Day of Atonement, "then shall the sanctuary be cleansed"? It makes sense--the heavenly sanctuary itself cannot be "cleansed" until first the hearts of God's people on earth are "cleansed."

And we know there's no way under heaven that they can cleanse their own hearts without that probing ministry of that Holy Spirit, for "who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret ... [faults, sins]" (Psalm 19:12). And if by the grace of God we can get as far as to pray that verse 12, then verse 13 is articulated in our prayer: "Keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me." (Peterson The Message renders it, "Otherwise how will we ... know when we play the fool? Clean the slate, God, ... keep me from stupid sins.")

Oh, what "most precious" Good News is in this cosmic Day of Atonement! The great High Priest in His Most Holy Place is awake 24 hours, 7 days a week--working, working, sending His Holy Spirit to convict, convict, and convict again!

Yes, He's doing it! The one sitting beside you in church may be letting the work be done, and you are childishly unaware that anything is going on. Some may say nothing's going on that hasn't been happening for thousands of years; well, think a little. "Watch!" (Luke 21:36).

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 9, 2003.

Monday, October 28, 2013

What Keeps This Wicked World From Being Destroyed?

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Why doesn't God destroy our wicked world now? There is an answer in the sanctuary service of Israel:

Two lambs were offered "daily" on the altar of burnt offering, morning and evening, in behalf of everyone within the boundaries of Israel. "Strangers" and Gentiles were included as the beneficiaries. No repentance was required, no confession; no questions were asked; the lambs were "offered continually," whether anybody believed or not (Ex. 29:38-42). All you had to do was to be a human being, and you were under the umbrella of God's abounding grace.

This was the gospel by "moonlight" (Rev. 12:1). As we come to the "sunlight" of the New Testament, the meaning is made clear: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). "God has encircled the world with an atmosphere of grace as real as the air [we breathe]" (Steps to Christ, p. 68). The daily service of the two lambs was a ministry for the whole world. When Jesus came to John asking for baptism, John refused. Jesus had to give him a Bible study there in the water, convincing John that He was the antitypical Lamb of the daily service. "Then he suffered Him" (Matt. 3:15).

The next day John introduced Him, saying, "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). Not "maybe," "perhaps," or "He would like to be," or "He takes away the sin of a few." Why this universal sacrifice of atonement? "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2).

The "incense" offered on the altar of incense daily or continually was also a type of a universal ministry of intercession. Only the blood of Jesus continually ministered keeps this wicked world from being destroyed (Rev. 8:3-5; when He ceases to minister His blood, then will come the time of trouble).

Thank God He still ministers today in the Most Holy Apartment! You and I can respond today! And that's Good News!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: January 19, 1998.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Dial Daily Bread: The Sabbath Is Free--Just for the Believing

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Have you learned to appreciate, to enjoy, to welcome, the holy Sabbath day each week? If so, you have also begun to appreciate the Lord Jesus Christ, because His presence is in the holy Sabbath. And that's Good News!

To love the Sabbath, not only because it is a day of physical rest from the week's hard work and stress, but because--well, let's look at a beautiful hymn that crystallizes the joy of the Sabbath: "O day of rest and gladness, O day of joy and light." Yes, one day in the hectic week of cares, of pure joy!

"O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright." Here we have a metaphor,--the Sabbath is like soothing ointment for a wound.

"Thou art a port protected from storms that round us rise." Have you ever been in a wild storm at sea with the ship tossing dangerously, and then felt the unutterable joy of gliding into a quiet harbor? "Thou art ... a garden intersected with streams of paradise," says the poet Christopher Wordsworth, further.

And then, "Thou art a cooling fountain in life's dry, dreary sand; [and] from thee, like Pisgah's mountain, we view our promised land." That's a reference to the lofty top of what is also spoken of in the Bible as Mt. Nebo, where the Lord led Moses to view the glories of the Promised Land before he went to sleep in the arms of God. From Mt. Pisgah today you can see far south to the Dead Sea as far as En-geddi, to the north as far as the snow-covered peak of Mt. Hermon, and to the west to encompass what was in Moses' day the land the Lord gave to Israel.

And so, on each holy Sabbath day it is our privilege to catch a glimpse of brighter scenes to come, another poet says, to feel the thrill deep in our souls of a joyous eternal life "in Christ" our Life-giver. Don't miss out on this joy; it's free, just for the believing. "Remember" it all through the week!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 21, 1998.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Can We Make the Good News Too Good?

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

The Lord Jesus commanded us to "go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to every creature" (Mark 16:16). But can we make it too good? God Himself is a Specialist in devising what is Good News; in fact, it is He who invented it. And it is He who made it Good, like it is.

But can we take a cue from Him and devise a version that is more good (that is, better good news) than He has invented for us? If so, are we in danger of giving people a false hope so that they will someday end up at the Pearly Gates and find they can't get in?

John 3:16 says that the prerequisite for eternal life is to "believe," that is to have or to exercise faith. God has given us no right to tack anything else on. Therefore we must learn what is faith. It's "heart-work" as one writer often says (cf. Rom. 10:10). Thus it's the end of arrogance, pride, and love of self.

The miracle can happen only as we l-o-o-k at Christ on His cross like the Israelites looked at the serpent of brass on Moses' pole. It's to contemplate Him, sense what it cost Him to save this hell-bent world and how He actually went to hell for us rather than see us be lost; it's not a "work" that you do, no list of prerequisites. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whoever believes in Him should not perish" (John 3:14, 15). There it is simple and clear: (1) He is "lifted up," (2) you see Him, (3) you "believe."

"Henceforth" you are "constrained" by the love revealed there (agape) to live not for your own selfish pleasure, not for your lust, but for Him. People use a long word for that--sanctification; but it's simply living for Him as a bride lives for her bridegroom--a new center of reference for one's life.

Jesus says that to resist the "constraint" of that love is "hard," the most difficult life we can live (cf. Acts 26:14; 2 Cor. 5:14-21). He also says that to let that constraint move you to such a life is the easiest life you can live "henceforth" (cf. Matt. 11:28-30).

No need for us to invent a version of "good news" more good than that one! The ticket for entrance into the Pearly Gates is the capacity to enjoy the life that is there forever.

"Come"!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: January 13, 2007.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

A Perfectly Worded Prayer for Wisdom

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Would you like to pray a prayer that you know for SURE will be answered? (That is, of course, if you don't resist and reject the answer God has promised to give you.) Here's the one He has promised to answer with a YES: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all people liberally, and does not upbraid; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5).

Note what's involved: (1) You must realize that you "lack wisdom" (that immediately knocks some people out; they are satisfied with what they think they have). (2) Praying for wisdom is the right thing to do. (3) In response, God gives every human that gift, with no stipulation other than "asking in faith." In other words, you don't bring any merit with your prayer; unworthy people are invited. (4) Don't be afraid that God will "upbraid" you, crush you with humiliation and fault-finding. He wants to build you up, not tear you down.

Psalm 25 is a perfectly worded prayer for wisdom (James may have had it in mind). No less than seven times David asks for it: "Teach me Your paths" (vs. 4). "Teach me" (vs. 5). You "teach sinners" (that's Good News, isn't it?; vs. 8). You "guide the meek in judgment" (vs. 9). "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth" (vs. 10), even through disappointments. If someone reverences the Lord, He will "teach [him] in the way that He shall choose" (vs. 12). He teaches you "the secret of the Lord" (vs. 14).

Jesus agrees. If you ask the dear Lord to give you a piece of bread, He does not put a stone on your plate (Matt. 7:7-11). He doesn't tease you, ridicule you. (But you can be sure that Satan will tempt you to think that God has double-crossed you.)

Then why do so many people who ask God to "teach" them and ask Him for "bread," end up in disagreement as to what God's wisdom is? Often they oppose each other.

It's a call to humility, to pray again, to re-study God's word. Psalm 25 leads to Psalm 40 where you "wait patiently for the Lord" until He "sets [your] feet upon a rock, and establishes [your] goings." Hang on, by faith.

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 28, 2001.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Your First Wakeful Thought

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

If you have known this, you have been blessed with happiness. If this is new for you, then your day is "made"--now and forever: "Blessed is the man [or woman] who listens to Me, watching daily at My gates, waiting at My doorposts. For whoever finds Me finds life, and obtains favor from the Lord" (Prov. 8:34, 35).

The word "blessed" means "happy." From your first moment of consciousness when you awake in the morning, your thought becomes a prayer: "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation" (Psalm 51:11, 12).

Your first wakeful thought is not a desire for a cup of coffee; but you are hungry for some word from the Lord, you are thirsty to "listen" to the Holy Spirit. And we are talking about "blessedness," which is true happiness for here and now. Not a "pie-in-the-sky" kind that leaves you miserable.

There is a prayer that is 100 percent sure to be answered, and it does not depend on some so-called worthiness on our part. The most unworthy sinner in the world can pray this prayer and know that God hears it and treasures it: "God be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13).

It's true--the Lord loves sinners; they are dear to Him because Christ came very close to them, in fact, He was "made to be sin, who knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21). His enemies complained, saying, "This Man receiveth sinners" (Luke 15:2). Jesus was happy that they said this!

His job is forgiving sinners and cleansing their hearts and preparing them to be at home and to be happy in His eternal kingdom. Let Him do it for you!

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 17, 2008.