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E-Devotionals

The following E-Devotionals were sent to our members by email on a bi-weekly basis beginning in July 2009.   Written by CLS member Charley Cole (with an occasional alternate author) these E-Devotionals are for your encouragement and edification.  If you would like to receive these by email, please email us so sign up and ensure that your computer's browser allows emails via Constant Contact from memmin@clsnet.org.  The most recent devotionals are at the top.  For earlier devotionals, just scroll down.  To see devotionals from 2009, click here.

 

 
CLS Bi-weekly Devotional
Vol 2., No. 5
March 2010
 
 
A Quiet Heart
 
 
For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest ye shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:15)
 

            We lawyers are a talkative bunch.  In our interactions with others, the urge to lend a thought to the conversation, to share an analogy or observation, or to propose a suggestion for a fix, is almost irresistible.  And there is nothing wrong with speaking up for the good of others around us, whether in church or in our practices.  Our training and experience often equip us to provide needed insights, leadership and know-how. 

 

            But on a more personal level, let us ask ourselves whether we have also learned to be quiet inwardly before God.  Let the peace of God rule [be referee] in your heart (Col.3:15).  In the midst of an active, competitive practice, let us learn to allow the divine referee to rule in our hearts.  The role of a referee is often to throw a flag.  Inwardly, the Holy Spirit throws a flag when we have lost our peace, when we have ceased to rest in the Lord. 

 

            Does a situation or a person cause you to lose your peace?  Perhaps your peace is lost just thinking about a pending event.  Waste no time in self-recrimination ("I know I shouldn't let this cause me anxiety").  The Lord understands: He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust (Ps. 103:14).  Only consider that the Lord stands ready to provide the poise and the confidence we need.    The trial or event that you are thinking of is an opportunity to trust Him more and better, even in the midst of the fray.  His promise holds sure: Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee; because he trusteth in Thee. (Isaiah 26:3).  Staying our mind on Him is not a quick fix, but an area of learning and growth.  Read the biography of any prominent Christian whose life you admire - you will find that he or she learned through deep trials and costly struggles to trust in the Lord and to rest in His provision.  This did not lead to passivity and ineffectiveness, but to a life of power and usefulness. 

 

            It is good to keep in mind that the victory is not ours but His.  He will provide the wherewithal to trust Him, if only we ask, and He is sufficient for any infirmity we have.  F. B. Meyer answered the question "How do I overcome?" this way: 

 

There is only one way by which the Tempter can be met.  He laughs at our good resolutions and ridicules the pledges with which we fortify ourselves.   There is only One whom he fears; One who in the hour of greatest weakness conquered him; and who has been raised far above all principality and power, that He may succor and deliver all frail and tempted souls.  He conquered the prince of this world in the days of His flesh; and He is prepared to do as much again, in each one of us, if only we will truly surrender ourselves to His gracious and mighty indwelling. 

Lord, teach me to live in Your presence with a quiet heart.  It is not so much the power and poise of a quiet heart that I seek, but Yourself.  Give me eyes to see Your hand in the events of today, and the grace to leave outcomes with You.  I ask this not only for myself, but for the encouragement of the believers around me.  In quietness and confidence will be our strength.

 

CLS Bi-weekly Devotional
Vol 2., No. 4
February 2010
 
 
The Spirit of the Gospel
 
 
Then he called for a light, ran in, and fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.  And he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:29-30)
 

            How should we look at people?  As they are or as they may become?  How does God see the men and women around us?  Do we tend to divide our acquaintances into "likely prospects" and "hard cases"?  Consider the following story of the conversion of a rough man in a brutal environment. 

 

The scene is the jail at Philippi.  Paul and Silas had been ministering in the region, but wherever they went they were followed by a certain slave girl who was possessed with a spirit of divination.  We are told that her masters made a good living from her fortune-telling.  But now she fastened her attention upon Paul and Silas.  She would cry out as they attempted to speak "These men are the servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation!"  After several of these outbursts Paul became "greatly annoyed."  He stopped speaking, turned around and commanded the spirit to leave the girl, and it is recorded that the spirit of divination "came out that very hour."  Incensed at this interference with their livelihood, the masters of the slave girl incited the people and the magistrates to take Paul and Silas, beat them with rods and dump them into the local prison. 

 

At midnight, Paul and Silas were singing hymns to God when a great earthquake shook the prison.  It opened doors and loosed the prisoners' chains.  The keeper of the prison assessed the situation, realized that he could not prevent the escape of the prisoners.  He knew what his superiors did to men such as him who failed in their job performance, and decided that taking his own life would be preferable to the painful death he would suffer at their hands.  But as he drew his sword, Paul called to him with a loud voice: "Do yourself no harm, for we are all here."  We know how the story ends.  The jailer beseeched Paul and Silas to show him the way of salvation and, after they did, he prayed to receive Christ.  Paul and Silas were taken to the jailer's home and their wounds were dressed.  The jailer and his family were baptized and afterward they shared a meal with Paul and Silas.

 

So, how did Paul and Silas see the jailer?  They could no doubt see that he was a coarse, hard man, a man accustomed to brutality and torture, a man who gave no mercy and expected none.  But Paul and Silas saw something else.  The Holy Spirit had gifted them with what Watchman Nee called the spirit of the Gospel - the compassion that comes from sensing the perishing condition of sinners. They saw what Richard Wurmbrand saw in a communist concentration camp in Romania in the late 1940s.

 

Wurmbrand's story reads like the book of Acts.  It is recounted in his book Tortured for Christ,and in abbreviated form in Jesus Freaks - Stories of Those Who Stood for Jesus.  As the communists came to power in Romania in 1945, they sought to co-opt the churches by holding a great congress for the religious leaders - some 4,000 Christian leaders attended.  The agenda of the communists was to force the church into submission to the new regime. The assembly began by electing Josef Stalin as honorary president.  Then, at the main convocation, bishops and pastors rose one after another and declared loyalty to the state, assuring those present that Christianity and communism were fundamentally the same and could co-exist.  Wurmbrand and his wife Sabina became more and more upset.

 

  Finally, Sabina looked at her pastor husband and said: "Richard, stand up and wash this shame from the face of Christ." He knew what was at stake: "If I speak, you will lose your husband." Sabina's reply: "I do not wish to have a coward for a husband."   Wurmbrand took the stage and to everyone's surprise, began to preach. "Delegates," he began, "it is not our duty to praise earthly powers that come and go, but to glorify God the creator and Christ the Savior who died for us on the cross."  Many of the delegates who had been afraid to oppose the communists until then, began to praise God loudly and pandemonium broke out in the assembly.  Wurmbrand's microphone was cut off and the assembly was shut down for the day.  Richard Wurmbrand was a marked man thereafter.  Eventually he spent fourteen years in prison, where he was subjected to the most cruel sorts of torture.  His wife, Sabina, likewise went to a prison camp for three years. 

 

But like Paul and Silas, Wurmbrand was not a typical prisoner.  He and his fellow Christian brothers, in the midst of unimaginable cruelties, began to experience a miracle:

  

And then the miracle happened.  When it was at the worst, when we were tortured as never before, we began to love those who tortured us.  Just as a flower, when you bruise it under your foot, rewards you with its perfume, the more we were mocked and tortured, the more we pitied and loved our torturers. 

 

            After his release from the prison camp in 1956, Wurmbrand told his story to the world.  Often he was asked with some incredulousness:  "How can you love someone who is torturing you?"  His reply:

 

By looking at men...not as they are, but as they will be... I could also see in our persecutors a Saul of Tarsus - a future Apostle Paul.  Many officers of the secret police to whom we witnessed became Christians, and were happy to later suffer in prison for having found our Christ.  Although we were whipped, as Paul was, in our jailers we saw the potential of the jailer in Philippi, who became a convert.  We dreamed that soon they would ask, "What must I do to be saved?"

 

            How do we look at the people who we deal with day to day?  Are we surrounded by unlikely candidates for the Gospel?  Perhaps we need new eyes.  Let the story of Richard Wurmbrand inspire us to see that "something else" in people - to see our clients and colleagues, even our adversaries, as they may become in Christ.

Heavenly Father, today I ask you to give me the spirit of the Gospel -- eyes to see individuals as You see them.  May I experience the miracle of love for the unlovely and undeserving.  Be with your men and women around the world who have chosen to risk all for Your sake and for the Gospel.  May it be that I would have a part with them in what You are doing.

 

 

CLS Bi-weekly Devotional
Vol 2., No. 3
February 2010
 
 
Praying Always. . . in the Spirit
 
 

 

Praying always will all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perserverance and supplication for all saints. (Ephesians 6:18)
Pray without ceasing. (I Thess. 5:17)
 

          
     True prayer is an orientation of life, as well as asking and receiving.  It is worship as well as the making of petitions and supplications.  In a manner of speaking, we are always praying, because we are always inwardly turned to, and in communion with, what we believe is our true source of life at the moment. It is a choice between God and self. The Pharisee prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I am not as other men... (Luke 18:11).   

 

     The habitual orientation to God to which the Scriptures point is not a work of the flesh.  We are told to pray always ... in the Spirit.  The commands of the New Testament (love as Christ loved, rejoice always, yield your members, to name just a few) are not legal tests of our devotion to God, but promises of what God stands ready to do for us.  The believer in Christ is not called to an endless list of duties, but to a previously unknown freedom to perform and do that which will someday bring eternal reward, and in this life joy unspeakable and full of glory. (I Pet. 1:8)

 

     Concerning the admonitions to pray without ceasing and to pray always, it is good to be intentional and to take practical steps to bring every thought captive to the knowledge of Christ (II Cor. 10:5).But we need always remember that it is the work of the Holy Spirit of Christ to teach us to pray, Who ceaselessly makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (Rom. 8:26).  Even our prayers are properly the subject of prayer: "Lord, teach me to pray."  The same Lord who promised I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28), will undertake by His Holy Spirit to make us pray-ers.  Let us be bold to claim the promise that we may live our lives conscious of the presence of God.  

 

Moment by moment I'm kept in His love;

Moment by moment I've life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
Lord, Teach me to pray, not just when I think I need something, but always.  Lead me into the blessedness of constant communion with You.  I do not want to write a brief, discuss a case with opposing counsel or even relax with my family without You.  I thank You that even in this matter of prayer, You are willing to provide all that I need.
 

 

CLS Bi-weekly Devotional
Vol 2., No. 2
January 2010
 
 
As 2010 Begins. . . (Cont'd.)
 
 
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose hope the Lord is. (Jer. 17:7)

It is in defeat that we often have the greatest opportunity to give glory to God.  When the chips are down, the world watches with special interest to see if our faith is real, if it has substance.


Such was the case on Thursday night, January 8 in Pasadena. The 2009 -10 BCS Championship college football game had concluded and it was late.  The Longhorns of Texas had been defeated by the Alabama Crimson Tide and Colt McCoy, the starting quarterback of the University of Texas, approached the television cameras on the sidelines.  After the 2008 season, in which he had been an All-American and runner-up for the prestigious Heisman Trophy, McCoy had decided against entering the pro draft and instead returned to Texas to complete his senior year, determined to lead his team to a national championship.  But in what seemed a cruel irony, McCoy, within sight of his goal, had been forced to leave the game in the first quarter.  A hit received on an otherwise routine tackle left his throwing arm numb and McCoy spent the rest of the game receiving treatment and encouraging his teammates from the sidelines.  Despite the heroic efforts of the untried freshman quarterback who replaced him, McCoy and his team failed to reach the goal they had worked so hard to attain.


As McCoy came alongside the post-game interviewer, the concern and disappointment among his many supporters was palpable.  The dream of a national championship had vanished, and his yet unevaluated injury left a question mark hanging over his future prospects as a football player.

 However, there was no question mark hanging over McCoy's Christian faith.  Asked to tell the television audience what it was like to watch his team play for the national title from the sidelines, McCoy gave the following memorable answer:

 

"I'd have given ... I'd have given everything I had to be out there with my team.. . . . But I always give God the glory. I never question why things happen the way they do.  God is in control of my life.   And I know, if nothing else, I stand on the Rock."


            It is easy for us to praise God when life is going our way - when the jury finds for our client or our daughter is named high school valedictorian.  But when setbacks come, let us not disdain to take a page from Colt McCoy's playbook.  Our misfortune may afford us the opportunity of demonstrating costly faith to a watching world.

Lord, as another year begins, You are my Audience of One.   Teach me to see an opportunity in every event, whether it seems "good" or "bad."  I want to be one who trusts You in all the times of life, especially when praising You costs something.  Like Colt McCoy, I know that if nothing else, I stand on the Rock.  

 

 
CLS Bi-weekly Devotional
Vol 2., No. 1
January 2010
 
 
As 2010 Begins...
 
 

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.  (Jeremiah 17:7)

            Only a few who read these words will recognize the name Hunter Lawrence.   In certain parts of the country his name is now well known, but before the 2009-10 Big Twelve championship game, he was just the field goal kicker for the University of Texas football team.  On that December night, he was called upon to kick a field goal on which his team's entire season, and hopes of a national championship, hung.  There was exactly one second left on the game clock - a second added back by referees who at first had thought that time had run out on the Texas team.  Lawrence's team was behind by 2 points.  A 46 yard field goal loomed. 

 

            Predictably, as Lawrence and his holder readied themselves for the snap, the opposing coach called for a time out.  Calling for a time out under such circumstances is a time-honored practice sometimes referred to as "icing" the kicker - give the kicker too much time to think about what is riding on the kick - time, perhaps, to choke under the psychological pressure of the moment. 

 

            Less predictably, Lawrence's holder, Jordan Shipley, settled Lawrence down by reminding him of the Bible verse that had been the team's motto for the week, Jeremiah 17:7,   Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.  Timeout over, Shipley received the snap and placed the ball for Lawrence, who proceeded to drive it through the uprights half a football field away.  Longhorns by 1 point, right to play in the national championship game secured.  Lawrence was carried off the field on the shoulders of his teammates.  Later, he credited his friend Jordan Shipley with providing the word in season that made all the difference. 

 

            Lawyers can identify with the pressure Lawrence was under.  Thorough preparation and years of experience do not make one immune to the heavy, sometimes lonely, responsibilities of representing a client when the stakes are high.  Like kickers, some lawyers live for such moments; others would prefer to avoid them.  Regardless, a lawyer knows that his or her mettle will be tested, and only one side will win.  And one cannot expect a do-over.

 

            As 2010 begins, almost all of us face challenges that, if we are honest, we find daunting.  Perhaps the challenge for you is professional.  Or it may be relational or health related.  Perhaps the very thought of this challenge makes you a bit jittery.  If so, receive this verse as your word in season: Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

 

            Grace and peace in the coming year from your brothers and sisters at the Christian Legal Society.

 
Lord, from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.  My heart is at rest because You, not the things of this life, are my Hope.  Use the events of the coming year to teach me to trust You more fully than ever I have in the past.  Thank You for bringing me to this very place.