“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.”

Matthew 5:27–29

Jesus reminds you about the seventh commandment: do not commit adultery. But he takes it one step further. What leads you to commit adultery is the lustful intent in your heart. In Scripture, the term heart is used to describe the core of who you are (Prov. 4:23; 27:19; Luke 6:45). Lust, coveting, and greed are heart problems. You don’t need to touch a woman to commit sin. You merely need to look at her lustfully. This says something about your heart, doesn’t it? You’ve got a sick heart. 

Jesus goes on: If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Obviously our Lord uses exaggeration for effect. The point is not to actually harm yourself but to understand how serious sexual sin is. Christ uses graphic imagery to say, be radical when you deal with your sexual sin.

Pause and think. How radical are you as you fight sin? Consider the options. Maybe you don’t do anything about it, because you don’t want to give up the sin. Maybe you’ve felt a tinge of guilt, and even more shame, but you keep coming back for more. Maybe you’ve told a friend about the images or videos you have looked at, but you haven’t gotten rid of your access. So long as you allow yourself access to pornography—so long as you don’t prevent this black bile from seeping into your heart—you’re doing great harm to your life.

Christ said to be radical. Measure your last few months against Jesus’s words. Have you taken drastic measures to fight the sin, or have you made excuses, delayed making adjustments, or continued to hide the sin rather than confess it? Have you tolerated the sin, coddled it, maybe even welcomed it—and, in so doing, continued to give it a chance to hurt your life? 

What is better: to lose an eye but walk toward heaven, or to run toward hell? Christ warns you. His mention of hell should scare you. If you choose to indulge the sin, to ignore God’s commands, to disobey and shake your fist at God, then your rebellion and foolishness will lead to death.

Fighting sin is serious business. Remember, you are at war. Don’t tolerate the sin anymore. Cut off any access points to pornography today.

— Deepak Reju, author, Pornography

The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.

Deuteronomy 32:4

In very difficult times, we learn what we really believe. When we are hurting, we must fall back on who God is and cling to his Word. He is “good and do[es] good” (Ps. 119:68). He is perfect in all his ways (see Ps. 18:30). He has not failed us, nor is he indifferent to our pain or the plight of our children (see Isa. 61:1–3; 63:9). He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise (see Ps. 139:1–24; Jer. 10:12; 32:27). And “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Our verse for today is a good summation of these truths.

You may be learning that your children are some of the most difficult of God’s gifts to place fully in his hands. To agree with God’s timing or decision concerning the salvation of our children is a matter of raw faith and the ultimate test of our trust and submission. Heartfelt questions posed to God are not always wrong. But be careful how you question God during this time. “Why, God?” can be either a painful cry for understanding and faith or an angry judgment of God’s work in your circumstances. The latter will get you nowhere, nor does God deserve it.

Difficult parenting years are a special time for us to learn to trust the Lord more. Real trust means we are willing to accept calamity as well as good through the filtering hand of God. Think of Job, who suddenly lost everything dear to him. His astounding reaction to this extreme trial was to worship God rather than judge him: “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (Job 1:20–22).

Habakkuk the prophet expressed this same attitude when he said, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (Hab. 3:17–19).

Later, Job did waver in his trust. And you may waver too. But you must—and God will help you—return to trust as Job did (see Job 42:1–6). It is the kind of love and trust an all-wise and good God deserves.

— Stuart W. Scott, author, Wayward Children

It is apparent to us: God is God . . . and we are not! This is one of our most basic beliefs. God is our Creator; we are God’s creatures.

Thus, the divine goodness to us—when we are aware of it—must be greater than we are and greater than we can imagine. After all, divine goodness comes from God!

The psalmist loved this when he proclaimed, “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! . . . For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light” (Ps. 36:7, 9).

Martin Luther picked up the “fountain” image as he vigorously proclaimed God’s goodness in prayer: “Because he is God, he also claims from us the honor of giving far more abundantly and liberally than anyone can comprehend—like an eternal, inexhaustible fountain, which, the more it gushes forth and overflows, the more it continues to give. He desires nothing more than that we ask many and great things of him. And, on the contrary, he is angered if we do not ask and demand with confidence.”

We need a vigorous life of prayer! We receive steadfast love from God as the “eternal, inexhaustible fountain,” who gushes forth and is overflowing. God continues to give to us—and God gives much greater blessings than we can comprehend! God desires us to “ask many and great things.” We must confidently pray boldly!

— Donald McKim, author, Everyday Prayer with the Reformers 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 

2 Corinthians 1:3–4

Shame. Embarrassment. What discouraging words do you connect with the confusing relational tendencies you’ve noticed in yourself? I’ve met many men and women who describe their struggles with codependency and toxic relationships as humiliating, stupid, or childish. Many adults fight hidden, painful battles with basing their sense of well-being on a person and that person’s responses to them. They secretly feel like the kid sitting alone at lunch in middle school or the only one not on the invite list for the prom party.

Whatever words describe your experiences, you have a God who not only understands but is merciful, gentle, and eager to comfort your heart. His comfort may not seem like what you want most right now, but I guarantee it’s what you need.

Because of sin’s devastation, there are plenty of ways for our hearts to experience affliction. Emotional distress, fear, and loneliness are afflictions we sometimes face because of relationships. When we get honest about working on our sinful contributions to our relationships, it becomes obvious why we need a rescuing Savior, a counseling Spirit, and a merciful Father! We are a weak and needy people.

Recognizing our weakness and affliction, Paul starts his letter to the Corinthians with a reminder about who God is and what he provides. He is a Father of mercy—he is tenderly aware of what we face in a sinful world. He does not condemn or shame us for our struggles but instead invites us to draw near to him with our hurt. He is the God of not some but all comfort.

You see, we need to know that God is merciful and comforting when sinful, enslaving desires threaten to rule our hearts in response to pain and disappointment. He assures us of his presence in the midst of what we are feeling. When we are tempted to respond sinfully to difficult relationship situations, God’s comfort rescues and settles us. A verse speaks specifically to our heart; someone unexpectedly checks in with caring words; God enlivens faith within us, enabling us to believe that as difficult as our situation is, his love is a sure refuge for us.

Unhealthy relational patterns don’t form overnight, and they won’t be overcome in a day. Be patient with this process; you are in good hands that are full of comfort.

— Ellen Mary Dykas, author, Toxic Relationships

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sat reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did nature link
The human soul that through me ran,
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure,
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

— William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Brief snapshots of specific facets of nature— butterflies, daisies, rain, a robin in the backyard, and such—are a staple of nature-poem anthologies. Such snippets remain at an observational level and lack devotional potential. Substantial nature poems, however, add an element of interpretation to their observations of nature. Those that do so are known as descriptive- meditative poems. William Wordsworth’s classic poem about his solitary excursion into the woods on an early spring day highlights the dynamics of such meditative nature poems.

Classic nature poems typically begin by situating their speaker in a natural setting. The opening stanza of “Lines Written in Early Spring” places the speaker in a woods in springtime, where he first experiences the scene in terms of its sounds. But the experience is as much mental as it is sensory, as the first stanza already signals through its references to mood, thoughts, and mind.

Nature poets almost always convey a sense of the unity of nature, including the kinship of people with nature, and Wordsworth quickly sets about doing this. His opening stanza portrays the diverse sounds of nature as a musical harmony of blended notes. In a similar fashion, the second stanza links the speaker’s soul to the nature around him. Stanzas 3–5 elaborate on this motif of unity by using the imagery of periwinkle wreaths that trail, or interweave themselves, among primrose tufts and twigs that spread out…to catch the breezy air. Wordsworth also attributes human qualities to forces of nature in order to further connect them: flowers that breathe and birds that play and engage in deep thoughts. Then, having firmly established that these plants and birds enjoy themselves and experience pleasure, Wordsworth is ready to draw a religious conclusion from his immersion in springtime nature.

Although this religious message is concentrated within the last stanza, it is foreshadowed earlier in the poem. The speaker’s soul is activated in the second stanza, and he affirms his faith in the next one. Religious vocabulary ultimately explodes in the final stanza, as it references belief, heaven (which through the centuries has been a metonymy, or substitution, for the word God), and a holy plan. Furthermore, Wordsworth’s capitalization of Nature is meant to invoke God. The religious theme of the poem is twofold: good news about the perfection of Nature, and bad news about human sinfulness. The aphoristic phrase that Wordsworth twice uses to refer to the latter, what man has made of man, has become a permanent part of our storehouse of evocative sayings.

Wordsworth’s poem subtly outlines an action plan for us to undertake. That plan is for us (1) to renew our commitment to experiencing and emulating nature, and, having been appropriately chastised, (2) to repent of the damage that human sinfulness has brought into the world.

The theological underpinning of Wordsworth’s poem is that God created the natural order good but that, after the fall, the human race has done terrible things to itself (which is what the phrase what man [all humanity] has made of man means). A cryptic verse in Ecclesiastes asserts this in kernel form: “God made people good, but they have found all kinds of ways to be bad” (7:29 NCV).

— Leland Ryken, author, A Treasury of Nature