10/16/2011 8:19:11 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: Ester’s petition
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Ester 8:3-6
Message of the verses: “3 ¶ Then Esther spoke again to the king, fell at his feet, wept and implored him to avert the evil scheme of Haman the Agagite and his plot which he had devised against the Jews. 4 The king extended the golden scepter to Esther. So Esther arose and stood before the king. 5 Then she said, "If it pleases the king and if I have found favor before him and the matter seems proper to the king and I am pleasing in his sight, let it be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces. 6 "For how can I endure to see the calamity which will befall my people, and how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?’”
There are some mornings when I come in to my office to do my devotions that just seem to be more alive than other mornings, and this is one of those mornings. There are sometimes when I read Warren Wiersbe’s commentary and I am truly inspired and wish to just copy all that he has written about the subject of that morning, and this is one of those mornings. I must say that I enjoy reading the Scriptures, but when I take the time to study the Scriptures they become alive to me and open up new things that I cannot get from just reading them, and today is one of those days. Today’s devotion has different things in it that can be seen in these three short verses. First we see a woman who has just been given more riches than most people will earn in a life time, and yet she is not concerned about those riches, but concerned about her people. Ester is interceding for Israel like others in the past have interceded for them and others in the future will intercede for them. When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt and went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments the people began to worship an idol because Moses took so long on the Mountain. God was angry with them and wanted to destroy all of them, but Moses interceded for them. He was even willing to have his name blotted out of the book of life. Many years later when Paul was penning his letter to the Romans he wrote: “1 ¶ I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” There were others as we have seen in the lives of Nehemiah and Ezra, and Daniel was also doing the same thing.
What can we as believers learn from this? Allow me to go all the way back to the creation of the earth that is found at the beginning of the Bible. God created all that we see in six days and the last thing that He created was man as can be found when reading Genesis chapter one. God would state after certain parts of His creation that it was good, and yet after man was created He stated it was very good. Why do you suppose that God waited until last to create man? Well God took all of that time creating His creation in preparation for the creation of man whom was made in God’s image. Now let us think about the end of the Scriptures when we find at the end of Revelations that God will un-create all that He created and it will all be gone in a flash. (See 2Peter 3:9) All will be gone with the exception of man for man was created in the image of God. Just think about this for a minute, and take a look at what Peter wrote about this: “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness.” (2Peter 3:11) Ester understood this for she did not care about her gift from the king but only cared about the souls of her people and went to the throne to intercede for them with tears and pleadings to the king. “It was her interceding at the throne that saved the people of Israel from slaughter.”
As believers we owe it all to a Jewish Carpenter who left the His heavenly home to become a man in order to take our punishment on Him at the cross so that we can one day go with Him to that home in heaven and serve Him throughout all of eternity. We surely can learn from the example of Ester.
In his book “How to Obtain Fullness of Power in Christian Life and Service” R. A. Torrey wrote “The Devil is perfectly willing that the church should multiply its organizations and its deftly-contrived machinery for the conquest of the world for Christ, if it will only give up praying.”
The most important thing that God created is people, and the most important thing that believers can do is to pray that the Lord will bring you into contact with those He is going to save, and this takes prayer and action. James says that we have not because we ask not, and he also wrote that we should show our works that come out of our true faith.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: When we began this study of Ester we saw little evidence of the spirituality of both Mordecai and Ester, but now we see people who have sacrificed much for the people of God. Dr. Wiersbe writes “attorney Jacob Stam prayed ‘Lord, the only thing most of us know about sacrifice is how to spell the word.” This is probably a true statement in my life.
I can learn a lot from the lives of Mordecai and Ester, and this section contains great examples for me to follow.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Have a heart for the lost.
2. Pray that the Lord will lead me to those who are His that I may tell them the Good News.
3. Continue to learn contentment.
10/16/2011 9:12:39 AM
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