Revelation Daily Devotional - Day 14

Day 14

Revelation 8:1-5

[Rev. 8:1] ¶ Now when the Lamb opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. [Rev. 8:2] Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. [Rev. 8:3] Another angel holding a golden censer came and was stationed at the altar. A large amount of incense was given to him to offer up, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar that is before the throne. [Rev. 8:4] The smoke coming from the incense, along with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand. [Rev. 8:5] Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it on the earth, and there were crashes of thunder, roaring, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

In the midst of the upheaval enveloping the believers of the first century where John reveals that these dire circumstances are actually comprising the judgment of Christ on His opponents, there is something glorious being revealed simultaneously in heaven. As the geo-political climate takes a turn against Christians on earth, their prayers ascend to heaven and fill heaven with an enchanting aroma that bears resemblance to holy incense used in Temple worship.

Little do we realise how effective our prayers are. Billy Graham is reported to have said that heaven is filled with answers to prayer that no-one asked for. While the saints, those who were faithfully following Christ, prayed for God to intervene and bring them relief, God was preparing to answer. Like many answers to prayer, things would seem to get worse before they would get better - but what John sees is that it is the apparent increase in the cause for prayer that God was actually using to bring about His purposes. How often we experience disappointment and setback and reckon it to be God ignoring us when in fact it is God answering us. C.S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Suffering is a divine test of trust. Chuck Swindoll has said, “Trust in God delights in His ‘No’ to our requests.” 

These first century Christians were enduring tremendous hardship. This Revelation was a promised blessing to them. Surely this vision of their impassioned pleas filling heaven with the smoke of holy incense could have only encouraged them to pray more fervently. Would we pray more if we received a similar revelation of the effect of our prayers?

Andrew Corbett

www.andrewcorbett.net

Revelation Daily Devotional - Day 8

Day 8

Revelation 3:1-6

[Rev. 3:1] ¶ “To the angel of the church in Sardis write the following: ¶ “This is the solemn pronouncement of the one who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a reputation that you are alive, but in reality you are dead. [Rev. 3:2] Wake up then, and strengthen what remains that was about to die, because I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. [Rev. 3:3] Therefore, remember what you received and heard, and obey it, and repent. If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will never know at what hour I will come against you. [Rev. 3:4] But you have a few individuals in Sardis who have not stained their clothes, and they will walk with me dressed in white, because they are worthy. [Rev. 3:5] The one who conquers will be dressed like them in white clothing, and I will never erase his name from the book of life, but will declare his name before my Father and before his angels. [Rev. 3:6] The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’

Becoming a Christian commences with a momentous change called conversion. This is only possible because the Holy Spirit has gripped the soul of a person. The Spirit empowers a person to turn from their slavery to sin to a joyful surrender to Christ. This is called repentance. Yet it doesn’t end there. The Holy Spirit walks beside a believer and draws them back to the upward path of following Christ whenever they stray off it. This is also called repentance. 

But I am disturbed by this call of Christ to the Sardisians to repent. They had not gone into gross sin like the Thyatirans, rather they had strayed while maintaining the appearance of continuing to walk on the upward path of life. But even if this straying from the path of life was into blatant sin, and still appeared to most to be upright Christianity, to the eyes of Christ who addresses the Sardisians with the statement (that either comforts or confronts) “I have seen…” - their sin of spiritual laxity and pretense was a cause of soiling their garments of conversion.

Some in the church at Sardis had not fallen asleep spiritually or strayed from Christ’s upward path of life. Just because all around you abandons right living does not mean that you must as well. But it does make it harder for you. This is why Christ strongly commends those “few” Sardisians who had overcome this.

Do you need to repent? How would you like to Jesus to see you and your works for Him at this point in your life? The idea of Christ watching over us is either comforting or confronting. There is coming a day, however, when we will discover that Christ actually has been watching us. If this is confronting more than it is comforting, then perhaps we need to repent. And the same Holy Spirit who enabled you to repent in the first place, is still available to believers today to enable you to get back onto the path of life.

Andrew Corbett