Verse of the Day 1/7

Through the Bible - Genesis 18-20, Matthew 7

 

Good morning,

Today's New Testament reading moves into Matthew 7 which is full of full of messages for all of us.  I read the following from John Piper's sermon on verses 7-12 and thought I'd share them with you to encourage and challenge you to keep asking, seeking, and knocking because you never know what God can do through the person who continues to do so.

Piper writes, " Both William Wilberforce in Britain two hundred years ago and Martin Luther King in America fifty years ago rooted their persistent, socially transforming, public love in the Bible. I don't mean that they understood and used the Bible in the same way. Wilberforce was an evangelical, doctrinally orthodox Anglican. King did not, as far as I know, make his doctrinal views explicit as a mature preacher, but his early papers lean toward a kind of liberalism that would not be called orthodox.

But my point is that without the Bible neither man would have been who he was, and neither would have done what he did—Wilberforce being the decisive human instrument under God in defeating the African slave trade in Britain, and King being the decisive human instrument under God in replacing Jim Crow racial discrimination with laws supporting equal rights for all Americans regardless of race. Their lives and their work and their achievement are inexplicable without their dependence on the Bible. Virtually every time King opened his mouth you could hear Bible. And Wilberforce built his whole personal and public life as a Member of Parliament on what he called the "peculiar doctrines" of the Bible. The Bible has a way of exerting its power in very different hands." 

 

Matt 7:7 "Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.   NLT

What was Wilburforce's secret?  Really, it was no secret, it was perseverence in faith and trust in God.  He knew what it was like to have his sins forgiven, to be released from the slavery of sin and have the freedom of Christ made available to him.  His battle in parliament was to this freedom, freedom in the world that they may be able to experience, live life freely and share freedom in Christ.

 

Is their a passion for a cause in your heart?  For our youth, for life, for orphans, for bringing water and food to those who struggle daily to find it?

May you, may we all have the perseverence of Wilburforce and Martin Luther King Jr. to keep asking, to keep seeking and to keep knocking for what God has laid upon our hearts for His glory. You may not know the plans He has for you, but He does.

 

Jer 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.   NKJV

Wilburforce and King learned to depend upon His Word.  Read the short passage below, may His Word encourage, challenge, and inspire you today, to persevere in it day by day for the cause of Christ.

For John Piper's complete sermon in written or audio form you can go to: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByScripture/14/1946_The_Spring_of_Persistent_Public_Love/

Blessings,
Mike

mikevw@bellsouth.net
mikesvotd.blogspot.com

Matt 7:7-13

Keep Asking, Seeking, Knocking
(Luke 11:9-13)

7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  9 Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?  11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!  12 Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. NKJV