Back to the Psalms!

In this first month of a new year, we are returning to the Book of Psalms for our devotional readings. We are picking up where we left off: Psalm 37. This week, we will read through Psalm 40.

I found the first six verses of Psalm 36 to be amazingly timely - both as guidance for a new year and as meaningful for the current situations in our world and nation. David is identified as the writer of this Psalm, so that gives us some understanding of the circumstances out of which he composed this poem. Here was a man who was long pursued by those who sought him harm. He begins his song: "Do not fret," or "Do not worry," or "Don't be anxious." If any man in Scripture had cause to be anxious and worried, it was David, yet his faith in God's providence and plan shines through!

In contrast to worry - we might say the opposite of worry - David inspires his listeners to trust in the Lord. And this trust immediately eventuates into action - trust in the Lord and do good. When we are surrounded by difficult circumstances and difficult people, it is easy to set our hearts on evil and on wickedness. They seek to hurt us; we seek to hurt them. But David cautions us here. Indulging in our desire to do evil is to embrace the way of worry. The path of trust is filled with us doing good for the Lord's sake. Rather than worry this new year, look to do good!

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Many have misunderstood this verse to reveal some way of manipulating God into getting what we want. But this is not a playbook on how to manipulate the Almighty. On the contrary, this is road-map to peace and fulfillment. As we delight in the Lord, our hearts will be transformed. We will be changed as we follow God and love Him and seek after Him daily. And as our hearts are changed, they are drawn into alignment with God's heart so that eventually, we are desiring what God desires. Why, then, wouldn't God give us what we want? It is also what He wants! And since He only wants what is best for us, we can be assured that our heart's desire is for our own
good and the good of others. It will be in accordance with Truth and Beauty and Goodness.

So, commit your way to the Lord! That's a great challenge at the beginning of a day, the beginning of a week, and the beginning of a new year. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust Him. And do good. It will keep you from worry and it will lead you to peace.

A Prayer for You

Our reading this week is Ephesians 3 to 6, and there were actually two sections that really spoke to me this morning. I hope they speak to you as well.

The first begins in verse 16 of chapter 3. Paul tells the Ephesians that he is praying for them. And more than that, he tells them what he is praying for them. He is praying

that [God] would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

My initial feeling at reading this was conviction. I was convicted for the smallness of my own prayers for others. I mean, honestly, when was the last time you prayed a prayer like this for someone else? Are we not much more inclined to pray quick prayers for help or healing or strength for the day or peace for the grieving? Band-aids for the deeply wounded and broken, but seldom reaching for an understanding of the God's deep plans or the heights of God's love. When was the last time we actually disciplined ourselves to pray for our families and our friends and our church members and our neighbors that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith and that they would be filled up with the fullness of God? The fullness of God!

Yet this is precisely what the Apostle Paul prays for his friends in the community of Ephesus.

So I was challenged to pray this very prayer with Paul for those I know this morning - and I hope that you will join me in that prayer.

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Then moments after I prayed this prayer of Paul's, I read the opening verses of chapter 5 where Paul says:

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

 The imagery here is so powerful - as a fragrant aroma! And the command is so clear - be imitators of God [by] walking in love. No wonder Paul prayed such a prayer in chapter 3! We need the strength of the Spirit in our inner selves. We need Christ to dwell within us. We need to be rooted and grounded in his love so that we can accomplish the task set before us - the task of being a fragrant aroma! A powerful, memorable, and meaningful presence in the lives of others!

So I was moved to pray again - to pray for those of you who read this, and to pray for those I know in my own community - to pray the prayer of Paul in Ephesians. May the love of Christ fill your life until it overflows from you! Amen.

Watch Out!

Our reading this week covers parts of two books - the last two chapters of Galatians and the first two chapters of Ephesians. It is a conclusion and an ending - just not in the usual order, and this may illuminate some ideas that we often overlook due to familiarity. So I invite you to read prayerfully and read attentively this week, and let us see what God may say to us.

It did not take me long in reading these four chapters this morning for one of the verses to jump out at me. Perhaps it is is because I had skimmed the news headlines this morning, but Galatians 5:15 sparkled blindingly at me:

But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

The Holman Christian Standard translation renders "take care" as "watch out"!

Here is something that requires a warning sign - our unloving treatment of one another. How easily we fall in with the crowd. How quickly we move to condemn, to bite, to tear down, to belittle, to dehumanize. Social media is a multiplier of this tendency, but it is not the cause. The real reason we are such a bickering, hateful, uncaring society is because our hearts are corrupt and we have not heeded the command of God. Social media has just given us all a larger platform from which to reveal the mess in our hearts.

Watch out!

Of interest to me is that the judgment for breaking God's command about love is not God's direct intervention. Instead, it is God allowing the natural consequences for our unloving actions to have have their full effect. We bite and devour, thus breaking God's law, and we discover that we ourselves are being devoured.

The better option - God's option - is that we refrain from biting and devouring one another and walk according to God's Spirit. Paul contrasts these two options in verse 19 to 23. Reading verses 19 to 21, do you not think of our own society? And reading verses 22 to 23, we see God's plan.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Gal. 5:25)

What a challenge for us today - and everyday! Walk by the Spirit! Love our neighbors as ourselves! Let the fruit of God's Spirit - love, joy, peace, and all the rest - fill our lives!

Deep Roots

On this first week of December, I am beginning to read through Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians. This is not the usual Christmas or Advent reading, I know, but I feel it provides a good balance to those familiar Christmas stories. God's plan is bigger than Bethlehem. Paul's writings help keep me grounded in the bigger plan that God is accomplishing through the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

So in Galatians 1 to 4 this week, I was struck by Galatians 2:1 this morning. Paul is giving the testimony of how he came to know Jesus as the Messiah. If we remember the stories from the Book of Acts, it is easy to assume that Paul became a missionary church-planter almost immediately after his conversion. But in Galatians 2, he describes how this was not so. After his conversion, he withdrew into the desert of Arabia and then went back to Damascus (where he had encountered the Risen Christ). This was an interval of nearly 3 years. No doubt, he was having to do a complete reevaluation of his theology in light of his encounter with Jesus. After three years, he went to Jerusalem and met with Peter and James, and then he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. He lived and worked there for more than ten years before returning to Jerusalem.

Piecing his story together from Acts and his other writings we can assume that about a year prior to his return to Jerusalem, Paul had been recruited by Barnabas to come to Antioch and minister there. In Antioch, the church commissioned Paul and Barnabas to spread the gospel throughout the Roman Empire. Thus Paul and Barnabas embarked on what has become known as their First Missionary Journey.

Consider the timing of this. This is not an immediate work after Paul's conversion. There are three years of reconsideration. Then there is an additional decade or so of life, work, and local church ministry.

Only then does God call Paul to engage in that activity for which he will become best known.

It takes time for God to develop within us the qualities and characteristics that he desires. It takes time for God to nurture and cultivate us until we are capable of withstanding the storms of life or bearing much fruit. God gives us deep roots.

Are we allowing God to do a preparatory and maturing work in us? Are we seeking to be faithful in the little things, the local things, the interior, spiritual, growing-in-knowledge-and-wisdom kind of things?

Father prepare our hearts, our minds, and our spirits throughout this season to receive and respond to your grace and your leadership! Amen

An Answer to Anxiety

Our reading this week is Proverbs 9 to 12. It was in chapter 12 that a verse jumped out at me from this morning's reading. Proverbs 12:25 -

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs it down,But a good word makes it glad.

With our recent elections behind us, I am finding some reduction of anxiety and worry among the people I speak to throughout the week, but I am still finding a lot of anxious people. As the holiday season approaches, new stresses will weigh on people's hearts. There is the stress of hosting holiday parties, the stress of visiting family, the stress of cooking a perfect turkey, the stress of buying gifts for the kids, the stress attending all the social events of the season, the stress of attending the kids' Christmas performances, and the stress of closing out a business year while juggling all these other responsibilities. People are anxious. Their hearts are burdened.

Maybe this describes you. Maybe it describes someone you know.

The writer of Proverbs 12 seems to know people carrying similar stresses and anxieties. And the writer has also observed a remedy -- a good word.

It is amazing what a word of encouragement and affirmation can do. You can alter someone's whole day with a good work spoken at the right time.

Can you think of someone who needs a good word today?

Can you be the one to deliver it?

Isaiah 52:7 says:

How lovely on the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings good news,
Who announces peace
And brings good news of happiness,
Who announces salvation,
And says to Zion, 'Your God reigns!'

Maybe today you need to receive such a word. Jesus is speaking such words, and his words are life to our bodies and souls. That's why we call the message of Jesus "Gospel." Gospel means "good news." It is a good word to our anxious hearts. It is hope in the midst of despair. It is life when the circumstances of life are killing us.

Hear the good word of Jesus today. He loves you. He has a purpose for you. He will not abandon you. In him, there is forgiveness and freedom. In him, your past does not have to define you or weigh you down. In him is the good word of eternal and abundant life!

The Cords of Sin

The "cords of his sin." (Proverbs 5:22b)

I found this phrase interesting and instructive this morning. One of the regular and recurring challenges of Christian ministry is providing help and wisdom to people who have been broken and crushed by life. Many is the time that I sit and listen to stories of dire need and wonder at the chain of decisions that has brought them to this point. And all too often these decisions are like a chain, weighing them down, keeping them bound and enslaved to destructive habits and lifestyles. "Cords of sin' is a poetic, descriptive phrase for them and their situations.

And if I am honest, I am hardly better. I often find myself entangled with and fighting the cords of sin. My selfishness gets in the way. My impatience with not having it all my own way rises to the surface. My mind and my attention wander from the good that God has given to me at this moment, in this place, on this day. If I am not careful, I can trip and fall over these treacherous cords.

But as I read Proverbs this morning, I was reminded of good news. Gospel.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, (Luke 4:12)

Jesus quoted Isaiah during his sermon at Nazareth.

He breaks the power of canceled sin
And sets the prisoner free,

said John Wesley in the hymn, O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.

And what about the Preacher of Hebrew's great words:

let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of God this morning. (Hebrews 12:1 - 2)

If you find yourself tangled in the cords of sin, weighted down by a past that seeks to enslave and belittle you, know today that you are loved and that Christ has set you free. Receive his grace, and let new life begin!

Turn Your Foot from Evil

We begin this morning a month long reading in the Book of Proverbs. Chapters 1 to 4 are our focus this week. And chapter 4 ends with these words:

Turn your foot from evil.

In many ways, this is the aim of the entire collection of Proverbs - to challenge and equip a person to turn their feet from evil paths. Wisdom is the key. Wisdom enables and instructs a person to recognize evil and to choose good. This is why Solomon can write of wisdom:

Prize her, and she will exalt you;
She will honor you if you embrace her.
She will place on your head a garland of grace;
She will present you with a crown of beauty.
Proverbs 4:8 - 9

And where does wisdom begin? It begins with "the fear of the Lord." (1:7) To recognize the truth about God's greatness, God's power, and God's majesty is a good place to start reckoning about one's own life and the path's we have chosen. It is also a good place to start one's day!

And what is the first application of this truth about God that Solomon identifies? He warns us away from violence and violent men.

My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent.
If they say, "Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood,
let us ambush the innocent without cause. . .
. . . My son, do not walk in the way with them.
Keep your feet from their path,
For their feet run to evil
And they hasten to shed blood.
Proverbs 1:10 - 16

Despite all of our civilizing efforts and our talk of human rights, we still live in a very violent world. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the attempted cover-up by the Saudi state, and the thinking and talking about it in our own country reveals a disturbing inclination toward violence and its justification. As does the recent shooting of rock-throwing protesters in Nigeria by the Nigerian army. Equally troubling - and maybe more so - is the justification of those shootings by quoting our American President's words! And it seems to much to mention the recent shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue, or the shootings at the yoga studio, or the explosive devices sent to those of a different political persuasion. We are surrounded by violence - and we are surrounded by those who would justify it. There are many who would "hasten to shed blood."

But this is not wisdom. Nor is this the path to good. On the contrary, Solomon identifies such bloodthirsty and callous people as "sinners," and he calls their methods "evil."

Today, I pray that God's church would be a place of peace and that we would be known as peacemakers. God, keep our feet from evil! Turn our feet from the paths of violence and lead us in the way of life!