January 26, 2024
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)
In one of the most important chapters of the Bible Isaiah shared what we might call his “philosophy of ministry.” Isaiah, who is called “The Prince of the Prophets,” declared that he preached the Word of God because there is as much difference between the way God thinks and acts and the way we think and act, as the heavens are high above the earth. Isaiah believed the Word of God can bring about an alignment between the thoughts and ways of God and our thoughts and ways.
As an application to Isaiah’s profound declaration, Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, asked the question, “If our steps are ordered by the Lord, how can we always expect to understand the way we are going?” (Proverbs 20:24)
It is so important that we have this profound truth declared by Isaiah engraved in our minds: God does not think and act as we do! This is especially true when we are baffled by events and circumstances that overwhelm us and obsess us with “Why” questions.
A devout Christian surgeon I know says, “The word we use most in this life is ‘Why.’ And the word we’re going to use most in the next dimension is ‘Oh!’” That’s because when we have eternal perspective on this life we are now living, in time we will say “Oh” when we see why God’s thoughts and ways are higher and better than the way we think and act.
Dick Woodward, 25 January 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 23, 2024
“All our steps are ordered by the Lord; how then can we understand our own ways?” (Proverbs 20:24)
Solomon poses a wise question in Proverbs 20:24: “If we are going the way God wants us to go, how can we expect to always understand the way we are going?” I believe it is obvious that God is making you an original in an original way. There isn’t anybody like you and there isn’t supposed to be.
My thoughts turn to six powerful Bible verses: the last four verses of Romans 11 and the first two verses of Romans 12. They tie in with Isaiah 55 and the reality we often do not know what God is doing. The profound truth focused is that God is the source of, the power behind, and His glory is the purpose for everything He is doing.
The application in Romans 12 is that you should worship by surrendering your body as a living sacrifice (not a dead one.) Ask God to transform your mind so you think as He does. Then, having met these prerequisites, prove one day at a time that His will for you is good and moves toward spiritual maturity. (This passage is especially good in the Phillips.*)
God is shaping you to be a champion for Christ in dimensions that are far beyond anything you could imagine or even think to imagine! Whatever spiritual help it takes you must master this problem or it will master you. Every time God wants to do a great work like what He is doing in your life, the evil one is there trying to defeat it.
Put on the whole armor of God to defeat what the evil one is trying to do.
Dick Woodward (email, 20 January 2007)
(*J.B. Phillips translation of The New Testament in Modern English)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 19, 2024
“I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will add to your days fifteen years.” (Isaiah 38:5)
Early in my ministry as a pastor I made a discovery about prayer. I came to the conclusion that we are praying even when we do not close our eyes, fold our hands, and bow our heads. I discovered that prayer is the sincere desire of our souls no matter how we express it.
The sigh of a believer can be a prayer. When we come to the end of our resources and throw ourselves across a bed and sigh, or cry – that is also a prayer.
God sent the Prophet Isaiah to tell a sick King Hezekiah that he was going to die. Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and cried. When God saw the tears of King Hezekiah, God sent Isaiah back to him with the message: “I have heard your prayer. I have seen your tears.” And God added 15 years to King Hezekiah’s life.
When we express the sincere desires of our souls, which are often too deep for words, in tears and sighs of despair – that is prayer God hears and answers. God has as much interaction with people in the waiting rooms of hospitals as God has in the sanctuaries of our churches.
Realizing your tears and sighs of despair are prayers, will you offer them to God as the prayers of your heart? God will hear you.
Dick Woodward, 18 January 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 16, 2024
Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal…” (I Kings 19:18)
The prophet Elijah reached the zenith of his career on Mt. Carmel when he challenged the people of God to stop being spiritual schizophrenics. When they committed themselves to serving the living God, they experienced a great revival. (I Kings 18) The next day we read Elijah “went a day’s journey into the wilderness and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die.” (I Kings 19:12)
Elijah was one of the greatest prophets who ever lived. The drastic change we see in him is due to many things, but one factor is that he neglected what I call Temple Maintenance. The Apostle Paul said our bodies are the temple of God. (I Corinthians 3:16-17) Therefore, anything we do to maintain our bodies is temple maintenance. Neglecting our temple maintenance can have serious consequences on our health and ministry.
Observe in that dramatic victory for Elijah on Mount Carmel all the physical stress and effort he put out. He dug a deep ditch around that altar and filled it with water. Have you ever dug a deep ditch? …At the end of that long day, he ran in front of a chariot for 17 miles. Elijah must have been exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
The physical dimension of our lives directly affects our mental, emotional and even spiritual perspectives. Elijah obviously allowed his physical stresses to affect him. We know all his blubbering about being the only true servant of the Lord was neurotic when God made him know there were 7,000 faithful servants like him, who had not bowed their knees to Baal.
Take an example from one of the greatest prophets — don’t forget your temple maintenance!
Dick Woodward, Marketplace Disciples
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 12, 2024
“…have a reputation for gentleness…” (Philippians 4:5)
When the Apostle Paul writes of gentleness, he does not mean milquetoast weakness. The Greek word for gentleness used here actually means meekness. Meekness is not weakness. Biblical meekness is closer in meaning to tameness. When a powerful stallion finally takes the bit and yields to the control of bridle and rider, it is not weak. That powerful animal can be described as “strength under control.” That is what biblical meekness means.
Gentleness is also listed as one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Another way of describing this concept is acceptance and unconditional surrender. The well-known serenity prayer then becomes an expression of this condition for God’s peace: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
In Romans 8:28, Paul is not suggesting that everything that happens to those who love God is good. There may be nothing good at all about many things that happen to us. His claim simply is that God can fit everything into a pattern of good, if we love God and are called according to God’s purposes.
Paul teaches us by example that we must accept the will of God until we are so meek we experience gentleness. He says, “I am ready for anything through the strength of the One Who lives within me.” (Philippians 4:13)
Paul learned that it is safe to surrender unconditionally to our loving God. Therefore, gentleness and meekness prescribe acceptance to the will of God – one circumstance at a time.
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Peace
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 9, 2024
“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances may be.” (Philippians 4:11)
Paul includes patience as part of his prescription for peace. Throughout the history of the church, patience has been considered a great virtue by spiritual heavyweights like Augustine, Thomas à Kempis and Francis of Assisi. Why is patience such an important virtue? For starters, patience is one of the nine fruit of the Holy Spirit profiled in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. (Galatians 5:22-23)
Throughout the Bible we are continuously exhorted to “wait on the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14) In our relationship with God we might call patience faith-waiting. Nothing will test and grow our faith like waiting on the Lord. When we are praying for something and receiving no answer, God may be teaching us that there are times when faith waits.
In our relationships with people, patience can be called love-waiting. I had no idea how selfish I was until I got married. I had no idea how impatient I was until I became a father waiting for teenage children to grow up. I find the Lord wants to grow two dimensions of patience in us: vertical patience, by teaching us to have a faith that waits on God, and horizontal patience, by teaching us that in relationships, love waits. Love is the primary virtue through which the Holy Spirit wants to express the life of God through us.
While impatience is a peace thief, vertical and horizontal patience are supernatural fruit of the Holy Spirit that give us the grace to accept the things we cannot control. Patience is the virtue God plants and grows in our lives while teaching us to wait on God and trust God to do what only God can do about the things we cannot control.
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Peace
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 5, 2024
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly…” (James 4:3)
At the heart of a counseling session, a woman once said, “Don’t confuse me with Scriptures, Pastor. My mind is made up!” Seeking God’s will for our lives is often out of reach because we have our agendas in place when we come before God. If our minds are set like concrete before we converse with God, we are actually asking God to bless our will, our agenda and the way we have decided to go.
James tells us that when we pray, we ask and do not receive because our asking is flawed by our self-willed agendas. To seek and know the will of God we must be completely open to whatever the will of God may be. Our prayer and commitment must be in the spirit of the familiar metaphor:
“You are the Sculptor and I am the clay. Mold me and make me according to Your will. I am ready to accept Your will as passively as clay in the hands of a Sculptor.”
There are two reasons to be open and unbiased as you seek to know God’s will. The first we learn from Isaiah 55: the ways and thoughts of God are as different from our ways and thoughts as the heavens are high above the earth. Another is that we become a totally new creation when we are born again.
It is tragically possible to miss the will of God for your life because you do not have the faith to believe that God can make you a new creation in Christ: a new creation with extraordinary potential.
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Guidance
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 2, 2024
“Teach us to make the most of our time, so that we may grow in wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)
According to Moses, we should realize that life is like a game of Monopoly. We all begin with the same amount of currency. When we begin a new year, we are given 24 hours a day, 168 hours a week and 8,760 hours a year. I often hear the remark: “I haven’t got time for that!” This implies that we are not given the same amount of time. It would be more accurate to say: “I don’t value that activity enough to spend some of my time in that way.”
The dictionaries tell us a value is “that quality of any certain thing by which it is determined by us to be more or less important, useful, profitable and therefore desirable.” We all have a set of values. We spend our time on the things we consider important, useful, profitable and desirable.
When we ask God to teach us how to spend our time God will challenge us to consider the values of Jesus Christ. One of the many reasons Christ became flesh and lived among us for 33 years was to show us how to live. He did that by presenting us with a set of values. As we read the four Gospels and follow Jesus every time He models and teaches a value, that spiritual discipline will revolutionize the way we spend our time.
I challenge you to ask God, “How should I spend my time?” I also challenge you to let the values of Christ revolutionize the way you spend your time in this New Year.
Dick Woodward, 03 January 2014
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Posted by Dick Woodward
December 29, 2023
“Where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Genesis 16:8)
The last days of the year are a good time for reflection and making resolutions. Have you ever had a year that was so bad you could not live with the idea of another year of the same? Are you there now? If you are, you could be ready to hear the question that God likes to ask from time to time: “Where have you come from, and where are you going?”
This is the consummate question of direction. It implies if we do not have a crisis that changes things, we are going to end up with more of the same.
Sometimes we are what needs to change. Jeremiah actually mocks us for trying to change ourselves: “Why do you gad about so much to change your ways? …Can the Ethiopian change the color of his skin or the leopard its spots?” (Jeremiah 2:36)
There is a big difference between trying to change ourselves and being changed by God. Unless we are changed by God and God changes what only God can change, we are trapped in a cycle of going where we have come from.
With great spiritual discernment David asked God to create in him a new heart. God answered that prayer for him. (Psalm 51:10) God can also do that for us today. We are not doomed to that cycle of going where we have come from. We can be changed. God can change the things that must change in us so next year we will not end up back where we have come from.
Confess that you can’t change yourself or your circumstances, but believe God can as you enter the New Year… then watch at God work.
Dick Woodward, 30 December 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
December 27, 2023
“Then He brought us out that He might bring us in…” (Deuteronomy 6:23)
Are you ready for a new thing? God often wants to do a new thing in our lives but He has three challenges.
Often when God wants to bring us out of the old and into a new place He cannot get us out of the old because we are insecure and want to hold on to the old place. God then has to blast us out of the old. That’s why a call of God is often made up of a pull from the front and a boot from the rear.
God’s second challenge is that He has to pull us through the transition between the old place and the new. Transitions can last for years and they can be very painful, but God promises He can pull us through the worst of them.
God’s third challenge is to get us right so He can settle us into the new place. We should no more resist that work of God than a baby should resist being born and coming out into life.
Don’t give God a hard time when God wants to do a new thing in your life. If we trust God’s character we should cooperate with God when God wants to make changes and do new things in us and for us. A rut is a grave with both ends knocked out. Our loving Heavenly Father does not want to see His children in the living death of a rut.
Instead of giving God a hard time, make it easy for Him as He brings you out of the old place and leads you into the new places He has for you in the New Year.
Dick Woodward, 28 December 2012
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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