Month: July 2025

Posted in Romans

God’s Heart for Israel – Part One

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery-so that you will not be wise in your own estimation-that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved…from the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers; for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Romans 11:25; 28-29

The Larson’s had a prosperous farm in the early 1920’s and were thrilled with their first born son, Bobby. Seven years after Bobby’s birth they welcomed four more children, one after another, and then the depression hit. Bobby was not able to go to high school because he had to help his Dad on the farm to make ends meet. Because of his sacrifice, the other kids were all able to stay in school and prospered greatly. When World War II came, Bobby had to go off to war and when he came back, something had changed in him.

He had a bad attitude and became violent at times. His Dad warned him again and again that to be in this house there were rules that had to be followed, but Bobby persisted in his rebellion. It finally came to a head one day when Bobby, in the midst of one of his tantrums, hit his mom in the face and made her bleed. His Dad then told him to leave. Bobby left angry and promised to never return.

Years went past and the four younger siblings developed different attitudes toward Bobby. One felt that Dad and Mom were still angry and holding a grudge against Bobby; one felt that Dad and Mom had completely forgotten Bobby in the joy of the children that remained; and one, although aware that Dad and Mom were still sending money anonymously to Bobby, felt that it didn’t involve him.

The last child knew that losing Bobby had broken Dad and Mom’s heart and that they would never feel the family was whole until Bobby returned. He would find Dad and Mom praying for Bobby with tears, and would often join them in prayer as well as do whatever he could to reach out to him even though Bobby still claimed he wanted nothing to do with the family.

Israel was God’s first chosen family. He hasn’t forgotten them anymore than Bobby’s parents had forgotten Bobby. Pray for Israel.

Posted in Hebrews, Matthew

Watch!

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.” Matthew 24:42-43 

The word watch means to “keep awake” and be “spiritually alert.” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary) It is the main instruction Jesus gives to His people about the end times. So how does one watch?

First, I think it is important to realize how easy it is to fall asleep spiritually. The flesh or carnal nature is weak and when it’s in control of our lives we go to sleep. It can be hard to recognize you’re asleep because you can still be busy doing stuff, maybe even religious duties. But when we put our identity in doing instead of in the Lord Himself, we start falling asleep spiritually.

Jesus said we have to “keep watching,” so we have to ask ourselves regularly: Have I fallen asleep? Do I find myself compromising in situations that I wouldn’t have in the past? Have I stopped reading the Bible and praying on my own? Do I think most about this world or the one to come? Am I more concerned about what people think or about what God thinks? These are important questions because they warn us when we’re getting sleepy.

If you’re fairly certain you’ve fallen asleep then tell yourself it’s time to wake up. Sound the alarm and don’t hit the snooze button or turn it off until you are all the way out of bed. Take time to repent and ask the Holy Spirit to fill you again. Consider fasting a meal or a day to grab a hold of eternal life in a determined fashion. I’m struck by this verse in Hebrews, “There is a Sabbath rest for the people of God… so make every effort to enter that rest.” (Hebrews 4:9-11)  It really is a paradox – we are fully awake only when we’re resting in Christ’s finished work. Once we’re awake we need to “keep watching.”

Posted in Galatians, Matthew

Keeping the Bats Out 

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’: and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.” Matthew 12:43-45

We had a bat problem in our house in Montevideo, MN. There’s nothing creepier than a bat slithering into your house and flying around in your bedroom.   I remember being awakened one night, and then commanded by my wife to “do something” while she left the room and made sure the door was shut. She snuck a broom back into the room a few minutes later, so I wouldn’t be completely defenseless.

The bat was dealt with that night, but the next morning came with a more difficult problem to solve: how did the bat get in? We ended up hiring a company who came out to bat proof our house. A few days later I was sleeping peacefully when I thought I heard something swooshing around the room. My first thought was a bat but I comforted myself that we had already solved that problem. Surely it’s only a dream.

I wasn’t dreaming. The morning after fighting with the second bat, I called the bat proof company and they assured me that they would come back out and that I didn’t need to be alarmed because this sort of thing happens all the time. He told me something like this: “When bats get evicted from a house they circle that home for up to three days trying to find a way back in. We will find the new way they snuck in and plug it and continue to do so until they find a different home.”

If you’re a believer, the enemy can’t possess you, but if you believe a lie he can bring oppression. When you and I grab hold of the word of God in any area he loses his hold temporarily, but he doesn’t give up easily. He will circle and persecute and test the truth we started believing because he wants his place of influence back.

When we actively believe the truth we plug up any holes that would allow the enemy’s influence back into our lives. Paul told us to “stand firm in our freedom and not be enslaved again to any yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1) So stand firm in the truth and don’t let the bats back in!

Posted in John, Matthew

Shutting the Door

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“When you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:6

Think about the words “shut your door.” Are we too available to this world and to the people of this world? Are we so connected that we struggle to shut the door on human contact to make ourselves fully available for fellowship with God? Bob Sorge says: “God’s not disappointed in you when you fail to spend time with Him alone; He’s disappointed for you.” He has so much to give us in the secret place. We lose our fear of man, we hear His whispers, He changes our desires, He adjusts our perspectives, He removes our weights, and of course, He hears our prayers.

Sometimes people do get alone with God and find their time disappointing because they don’t feel they really make a connection. Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23) If you are a believer the Holy Spirit lives in your spirit and that is where God wants to meet you. Sometimes we close the physical door but we have trouble closing the door of our souls (mind, will, and emotions) so that we can really commune with God in our spirits.

Our emotions, anxieties, and continual thinking can keep us from true communion. Shut the door! Ask the Holy Spirit to help you and become comfortable with the fact that God lives in you. The challenge is to live from our spirits, so that the presence of God and the word of God dominate our souls instead of our carnal nature. When we take time to shut the door to have alone time with God it gets much easier to shut the door of our souls during the day when we need to drink from the Spirit.

The cool thing about disconnecting from this world and its relationships is how much more we will have to bring to them when we reconnect.

Posted in Genesis

The Main Character

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“So Joseph’s master took him and put him into jail. But the Lord was with Joseph.” Genesis 39:20-21

“The Horse Whisperer” is a movie about a guy who can train horses that have been wild, spooked, or abused in their past. His method does not require violence or yelling, but only the power of a gentle whisper. Over time, the horses begin to trust his gentle ways so they will do what he asks until they are eventually fully trained for any one to ride.

Robert Redford is not only the director of the movie, he’s the main character. In the story of Joseph, God isn’t just the One who sovereignly directs events in Joseph’s life from above, He is with Joseph in the prison. God, the Divine director, has cast Himself as the main character, not just in Joseph’s life, but in ours as well.

The problem with human beings is that we often want to be the star of our own story. God is fine as long as He is helping us look good, but we still want to be the center. Through the gospel the Father has cast His own Son, Jesus, as the star of the human race. You and I can’t reinvent the story, but we are invited to join it.

Jesus is the “sinner” whisperer. Darkness has broken us, abused us, and spooked us, yet He has continued to love us. He draws us to the Father with great gentleness and whispers to our spirits in His still small voice. Our healing doesn’t come all at once, but He is patient. The more grace changes us the less people see of our brokenness and the more they see that the Healer has touched us. The Father wants to make Jesus the main character of their story as well.

Posted in 1Peter, Matthew

God’s Timing

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God and in due time He will exalt you.” 1Peter 5:6

Timing is very important to God. We want everything right now. I remember when our daughter Christina was only about three years old holding up her cup toward me saying, “Daddy, get me some milk.” Wanting to teach her good manners I replied, “What do you say, Sweetheart?” I’ll never forget that cherubic face that seemed to be a contradiction to her demanding tone as she uttered only one word: “NOW!”

It is the pride in us that demands God and people to do what we want them to do, now. God is gracious and loves us more than we can imagine, yet He wants more for us than we often want for ourselves. We think about our short term circumstances while He thinks about our long term character. Our Father wants to break off our pride, so that we can take on the beauty of His Son who is “meek and lowly of heart.” (Matthew 11:29)

One way He does this is timing. In our text the words, “due time,” are a translation of the Greek word, “kairos.” “Chronos” is the Greek word that measures epochs and periods of time, but “kairos” is a specific point of time; “an opportune time,” “at the proper time,” or as the NIV translates, “in due time.”  They all mean the same thing: “In God’s timing.” Ours is to humble ourselves knowing that God’s hand is mighty and able to do whatever we have asked, if we will only wait for Him instead of trying to manipulate things ourselves.

The next verse gives us instruction on how to humble ourselves: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” We are to rest in His love and know that He is going to be active in taking care of what we have trusted to Him while we wait expectantly.

Posted in Psalms

Eden Restored

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.” Psalm 18:19

Eden means delight.  We were created to be the delight of God and to find our delight in Him.  Delight means, “to be greatly pleased in.”

Why did David believe that God delighted in him?  I think it was because he refused to hide anything from God.  We see his prayer life in Psalms and nothing is hidden.  His joys, his sins, his pains, his loneliness, his anger and frustration; whatever David was going through, he was going through with God.

Delight was lost in Eden when Adam and Eve hid from God because of shame.  And then even the word delight is almost entirely lost in Scripture until David, who believed he was a delight to God, and who invited all of us to “delight” ourselves in the Lord. (Psalm 37:4)

I see a picture of how God can delight in us when I observe my wife with our grandsons.  They make huge messes and make constant demands, yet how does she treat them after they treated her in this way?  Pure delight, and there’s seemingly nothing they can do to change this.  She can’t stop smiling when she holds them, changes them, feeds them, and reads to them.  Everything new they do requires a picture, so she now has a thousand pictures and videos on her phone.

This is how God feels about us when we don’t live hiding from Him.  He can handle the mess we make and do all the work required to take care of us.  Our ways may please or displease Him from time to time, but make no mistake about this:  we are His delight!

Posted in Luke, Psalms

The Lost Sheep

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” Luke 15:4

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10) and won’t take “no” for an answer.  When He invites people to follow Him and they choose to go further into darkness instead, He just keeps looking for them like the shepherd looks for his lost sheep, “until he finds it.”

If Jesus doesn’t give up on people then we can’t either.  If people don’t want to be found right now, pray for them, knowing that the time is soon coming when they will need Him.  We are to give this world a taste of His goodness and unconditional love.  God reveals Himself as “an ever present help in the time of trouble,” (Psalm 46:1) so let’s join Him in being present to people when their lives are hard.

If it’s difficult for you to envision God saving someone you know, remember that He saved you.  He kept looking, kept knocking, kept seeking until you finally gave your life to Him.  Remember those who were used by God to help you come to Him, and purpose to be that to someone else.

When I think back on how I came to the Lord, I am amazed.  There was so much darkness around me, yet the Divine pull was stronger.  He used so many different people and books to secure me.  It’s funny because my gratefulness to God doesn’t reduce my gratefulness to those He used to help me.  It really was God, and it really was the people He worked and loved through.

Posted in Matthew, Romans

Our Mutual Debt

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.  So, as much as I am able, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also.” Romans 1:14-15

How can Paul owe people he has never met?  There are two ways to owe a debt (Timothy Keller’s commentary on Romans): one is when someone lends you money and you owe them until it is repaid; the other is where someone gives you something to give to someone else.  Until you have given them what was entrusted to you for them, you are in their debt.  This is how Paul, and we, are in debt to all those who have not heard the gospel.  Think of when UPS is given a package for someone else.  They could be said to be in debt until the package is delivered and signed for.

To all those God has graciously saved, He has given a charge: “Go into all the world and make disciples of everyone.” (Matthew 28:19-20)  “Go” is to be understood as plural because He is speaking to the redeemed community.  Go together, and take the gospel that has saved you, and give it to everyone in the world for My sake.

I don’t like being in debt; but if I have a debt, I certainly want to know about it.  In Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s dead business partner, Jacob Marley, appears to Scrooge as a ghost with a chain he must carry around as a punishment for how he lived on earth.  Scrooge feels the chain is unfair.

“You were a good man, Jacob.  A man of business.”

At this Marly screams his response, “Business!  Mankind was my business!”

Marley had a debt while on earth even if he didn’t own it.  We don’t get to bury our heads in the sand and say to ourselves, “that’s not my problem.”  If you are a real Christian, it is your problem.  We have a mutual debt to reach the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Let’s own it together and then pray to the Lord of the harvest, “Send us to fulfill whatever assignment you have for us to fulfill.” (Matthew 9:38)

Posted in Philippians, Psalms

The Key to Great Peace

Posted on by Tom Flaherty

“The meek inherit the land and enjoy great peace.” Psalm 37:11

The proud seek to be in control and are continually trying to get what they want. If they can’t get it now, they live in grasping anxiety that blames and complains about everyone in their way.

The meek of heart yield to the One who really is in control. They trust they will inherit everything God has promised in God’s timing, and find great peace in the assurance that God will have His way eventually, even if it seems darkness is winning right now.

A few verses before our text, David writes: “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” (Psalm 37:7) This may sound like the meek are called to do “nothing” while evil is growing around them, but this is not the case. Here is our part when we those around us are making destructive choices:

  1. Patiently wait on God. We don’t pretend evil isn’t happening; we take that evil to God in prayer.
  2. Don’t fret because of the evil. We don’t just pray, we actually believe God hears us and that He will reverse the evil that seems to be succeeding in the short run.
  3. Walk in peace now. We don’t have to wait for everything to work out because our peace isn’t in our circumstances, it’s in our God.

The New Testament scripture that puts all this together for us is Philippians 4:6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”