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Is It Right for You to Be Angry? (David Wilkerson)
Carrying around resentment against God is one of the most dangerous things a Christian can do. Yet I am shocked by the number of believers who are peeved at the Lord. They may not admit it, but deep inside, they hold some kind of grudge against him. Why? Because they believe he is not interested in their lives or problems. Because he has not answered a particular prayer or acted in a certain way on their behalf, they are convinced he does not care.
Jonah received a call from God to go to Ninevah and preach the message of judgment: the city would be destroyed in forty days. After faithfully delivering the message, Jonah waited for God to begin the destruction. But forty days passed and nothing happened. Why? Because Ninevah repented and God changed his mind about destroying them.
This angered Jonah and he cried out against God, “You’ve betrayed me! You’ve changed everything without telling me and I look like a false prophet!” Jonah was disappointed because things hadn’t gone as planned. God had changed course and Jonah’s pride was hurt.
God understands our cries of pain and confusion. But a peeved spirit can grow into rage and God will ask us, as he asked Jonah, “Is it right for you be angry?” (Jonah 4:9).
Jonah actually defended his right to be annoyed with God. “I have every right to be angry, even to the day I die” (same verse).
Many Christians are like Jonah — they feel they have a right to be mad at God. “I pray and read my Bible; I obey God’s Word and live right. So why do I still have so many problems?”
Beloved, I encourage you to allow God’s Spirit to heal you of all bitterness, rage, resentment — before it destroys you. You may see only ruin in your life but God sees restoration! He has good things in mind for you because “He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
David Wilkerson
(1931-2011)
Strength That Never Fails (Derek Prince)
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)
You see, there’s a difference between the internal and the external. The external is fading, it’s temporary; but there’s something inside us that’s eternal, that’s from God, that’s linked to God, that doesn’t fade, that doesn’t wither.
Paul says, “Our outward man perishes, but our inward man is renewed day by day.” Whenever I read those words I always think of my first wife, Lydia. Towards the end of her life she suffered from a weak heart and yet she was an amazingly strong and active woman and continued so almost to the last week of her life. And when she felt her heart, her physical heart, failing, that’s what she would say: “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” She’d learned that lesson that we don’t let the external and the physical dictate to us, that there’s an inner source of life and strength which is not subject to the weakness and fluctuations of our human body.
Eventually God called her home in tremendous victory after almost fifty years of active Christian service and she left behind her a testimony of tremendous victory. But she’d learned that secret: the outward may perish but the inward is eternal. The inward is linked to God, the inward remains a source of strength when there’s little strength left in the outward.
Derek Prince
(1915-2003)
An Undivided Heart (Derek Prince)
Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart. (Psalm 86:11–12)
The psalmist there focuses on one thing that is necessary if we are to walk God’s way successfully.
First of all, he cries out, “Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth.” We cannot walk in God’s way unless God in His mercy teaches us that way. And then he says, “Give me an undivided heart.” And a little later he says, “I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart.”
Notice the emphasis on the heart: “an undivided heart,” “with all my heart.” That’s so important that we don’t have a divided heart, that our heart is totally yielded to God, that it’s focused on God. We have no second loyalties; we have no options. All our springs are in God; all our expectations are from God.
I’ve discovered in the Christian life, the further you go in God the fewer the options. The way becomes narrower and narrower and ultimately those who come to the end of the course are those who find their total satisfaction in God. It’s not God plus something; it’s God alone. That’s an undivided heart – when we don’t look anywhere but in God for our life, our satisfaction, our peace.
Derek Prince
(1915-2003)
At Home in Eternity (Derek Prince)
Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:2, 4)
That’s the difference between time and eternity, the mountains were born, the earth and the world were brought forth, that’s a past tense. But when the psalmist turns to God he says, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Not, “You were God,” but “You are God.” With God there is never a past tense, never a future tense. God doesn’t indwell time; He indwells eternity. Eternity is not just a very long period of time; it’s a different mode of being. It’s something from another world. It’s higher than time. With God it’s always, you are. His name is, “I AM.” And from the serenity and the heights of eternity He beholds time.
The psalmist says that “a thousand years with God are just like a day that’s gone by or a watch in the night.” The night, in biblical times, was divided into four watches of three hours each, so a thousand years with God is just like three hours that have passed in our experience. That’s what it is to be related to God. It’s to have a relationship that extends out of time into eternity, that’s not subject to the changes and fluctuations of time, that’s anchored in the very being of God Himself.
Derek Prince
(1915-2003)
