Deuteronomy 23-26; Luke 11

When I finished talking, she asked me, “But what does God say about you?” I knew the intellectual response. But when I held his words in my hand, why did it feel like the weight of circumstance felt heavier? When God knows my history, my thoughts, my heart, my dreams, why couldn’t his word weigh more?

“But the Lord your God refused to listen to Balaam. He turned the intended curse into a blessing because the Lord your God loves you.” (Deuteronomy 23:5, NLT)

When I know where I came from and who I should have been, I can see the Lord’s saving hand in my life. This remembrance shows me his great love and mercy. He is so kind. And I am so grateful.

“Always remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God redeemed you from slavery.” (Deuteronomy 24:18, NLT)

Why couldn’t his word weigh more?

¹⁶ “Today the Lord your God has commanded you to obey all these decrees and regulations. So be careful to obey them wholeheartedly. ¹⁷ You have declared today that the Lord is your God. And you have promised to walk in his ways, and to obey his decrees, commands, and regulations, and to do everything he tells you. ¹⁸ The Lord has declared today that you are his people, his own special treasure, just as he promised, and that you must obey all his commands. ¹⁹ And if you do, he will set you high above all the other nations he has made. Then you will receive praise, honor, and renown. You will be a nation that is holy to the Lord your God, just as he promised.” (Deuteronomy 26:16-19, NLT)

Because I wasn’t focused on it. I focused on opinions of people whose minds were already made up. I focused on perception that took in only fragments instead of the whole. I gave weight to those whose hearts weren’t for me, were riddled with pockets of darkness. And when my focus was there, no wonder the weight was heavy.

³⁴ “Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when it is unhealthy, your body is filled with darkness. ³⁵ Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness. ³⁶ If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.” (Luke 11:34-36, NLT)

The Lord reminds me to be persistent in prayer. Keep on asking, seeking, knocking. I know this prayer by heart, but I write it out in a new translation. I write it out by hand.

² Jesus said, “This is how you should pray:

“Father, may your name be kept holy.
    May your Kingdom come soon.
³ Give us each day the food we need,
⁴ and forgive us our sins,
    as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation.” (Luke 11:2-4, NLT)

Keep on.

Courtney (66books365)

Advertisement

Deut 6; Psalms 89; Isaiah 34; Rev 4

“Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God alone.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.  And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.  Repeat them again and again to your children.  Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.  Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”  Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NLT

How am I modeling God’s love in my home?  What am I putting above him? Sometimes I can get bogged down with the mundane of day to day life that I forget to give him praise, I forget to thank him…I forget that he is the one in control and not me.  Worry can creep in and I try to handle things on my own.  I think that he knew that I would need visual reminders.  Hanging bible verses on my bathroom mirror, at the sink, on the fridge.  Playing worship music.  Filling my mind with His word.

“Search the book of the Lord, and see what he will do.  Not one of these birds and animals will be missing, and none will lack a mate, for the Lord has promised this.  His Spirit will make it all come true.  He has surveyed and divided the land and deeded it over to those creatures.  They will possess it forever, from generation to generation.” Isaiah 34:16&17 NLT

“O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies!  Where is there anyone as mighty as you, O Lord? You are entirely faithful.  You rule the oceans.  You subdue their storm-tossed waves.  You crushed the great sea monster.  You scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.  The heavens are yours, and the earth is yours; everything in the world is yours-you created it all.” Psalm 89:8-9

When I stand in front of the ocean. I am reminded of my smallness.  And God’s power and might. His unfailing, unchanging, constant love.

Thank you Father for your faithfulness.  For your forgiveness.  For loving me when I don’t deserve it. Thank you for your goodness.  I put my hope in your word.  Amen.

Amy(amyctanner)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Father, Help me to live a life pleasing to You.  Help me to be in your word every day.  Forgive me for when I don’t thank you for all that you have done for me.  Thank you for your forgiveness.  Thank you for your faithfulness.  Amen.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty-the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come.”  “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power.  For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.”  Revelation 4:9-11 NLT

Amy(amyctanner)

Leviticus 4; Psalms 1,2; Proverbs 19; Colossians 2

This morning we begin a new month. We have finished three months of reading the Bible this year. Have things changed in your personal spiritual life? The world sure has changed. Our laser focused vision during these days is to keep our eyes on the God of this universe and let Him guide us.

Our reading for today gives us a pleasant result when we do. Psalm 1 is included below:

1 How happy is the one who does not
walk in the advice of the wicked
or stand in the pathway with sinners
or sit in the company of mockers!
2 Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction,
and he meditates on it day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams
that bears its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

4 The wicked are not like this;
instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to ruin. (Psalm 1 [CSB])

It’s an interesting progression that the person who stays happy keeps away from. First of all they do not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway of sinners or sit in the company of the mockers. See the progression — walk, stand, sit. I’ve thought of this many times. When we walk with or keep company with those that would pull us away from God it’s easier then to spend time with them (stand) and then finally to be involved with what they do (sit). How harmless it starts and how devastating it ends. If we spend our time walking, standing and sitting in God’s Word and His people we will be like a tree planted by a stream and our roots will grow deep in God.

Where are we spending our time these days? Are we watching too much television news? Is that making us anxious and distracted, or are we finding more time in this enforced slowdown to our lives spending time in God’s Word and in communication with His people? Don’t get me wrong, we need to be well informed on current events, but even that can be too much and become a distraction.

Let’s stay in God’s Word and let’s stay together during these days.

Father God we love You and Your Word. Help us to focus on you in these days of distress and be shining lights that draw others to You and Your Word. Amen.

Job 6-8; 1 John 1

Perhaps in today’s terms, he’d be authentic, vulnerable, transparent.

If my misery could be weighed
    and my troubles be put on the scales,
³ they would outweigh all the sands of the sea.
    That is why I spoke impulsively. (Job 6:2-3, NLT, in response to Eliphaz)

But his unlovely grappling with the tragedies in his life brought him criticism and condemnation instead of comfort or understanding–from his very own friends.

One should be kind to a fainting friend,
    but you accuse me without any fear of the Almighty.
¹⁵ My brothers, you have proved as unreliable as a seasonal brook
    that overflows its banks in the spring
¹⁶     when it is swollen with ice and melting snow.
¹⁷ But when the hot weather arrives, the water disappears.
    The brook vanishes in the heat. (Job 6:14-17, NLT)

Job wades through turmoil. His successful, stable life and faith are scrambled by unimaginable tragedy. Whether his friends’ words were intended to help or harm, they certainly provided no comfort (think memes). He is in a pit, and whether they knew it or not, their words sparked a new burden.

I can replay his experience by rereading a passage, but in real time, real life, one often does not have the luxury to hit pause to contemplate life’s facets. In real time, replay takes place in memory and dreams, either bringing resolution or torment.

³ I, too, have been assigned months of futility,
    long and weary nights of misery.
⁴ Lying in bed, I think, ‘When will it be morning?’ (Job 7:3-4, NLT)

I think on loss, disappointment, grief, anger, hurt. I think of relationships where I’ve shared things in vulnerability and authenticity (really heartache), places I thought were ones of safety, but ultimately were not. And in that pit, the weight of loss, disappointment, grief, anger and hurt are the kindling that embitters sins of resentment, unforgiveness, grudge.

It was a recurring message in books I’d read last year: No one is coming to save you.

I realized I expected friends I considered near to rally around and help me out of the pit. But the truth is, they never said they would or could. No wonder I felt alone when I was grasping the vapor belief/hope that they should.

⁵ This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. ⁶ So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. ⁷ But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

⁸ If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. ⁹ But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts. (1 John 1:5-10, NLT)

God is light, and I’m grateful for the intimacy I have with him through prayer and His Word. He is my safe place. He meets me in the ugly, scrambled spaces and speaks with clarity and gentleness–oh that I can hide his word in my heart so that I would not sin against him. Feelings let me know something is wrong–but left untended, they can become agitated and enflamed to sin. Do not be deceived. Offense and expectation have no cap on captives. Freeing others from unexpressed expectations freed me from sins of bitterness, resentment and anger. It also gave me newly found freedom to delight and invest my heart and time in more fruitful pursuits.

Courtney (66books365)

Proverbs 1-4; Matthew 6

Matthew 6 is the middle chapter in Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount. There is almost too much to take in when reading through these three chapters. D Martyn Lloyd Jones, the British theologian, wrote a book on these three chapters. The book is over an inch thick. Just think about what is found in that book that we can’t even take the time here to contemplate.

So what do we take away from this reading today? And that doesn’t even take into account Proverbs 1-4. In fact while reading these passages this week, they sound eerily similar. Two passages of God’s Word separated by many years, yet many good admonitions in living a godly life in the here and now.

What is your daily routine? What’s the first thing you do when you get up in the morning? Do you check email first? Do you read the news? Or do you spend time in God’s Word and prayer? I was watching a video blog by a person I follow in the business world and I believe he is far from a Christ-follower. He let’s nothing from the outside into his mind till he has done his yoga and meditation in the morning. Yet many of us who are Christ-followers are reading our emails, watching/reading the news and then by the time we get around to reading the Bible and prayer we are so distracted we cannot hear what God has for us. Here in Matthew 6 we are told not to worry about tomorrow or one could say anything before spending time with our Lord.

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.34“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:25-34 [ESV])

I have found that if the first thing I do in the morning is to spend time with God, almost everything else takes care of itself. Worrying and being anxious before your time with God limits His access to your life and mind. It’s like a haze or fog you have already put in front of you. Then you strain to see what He is trying to teach you about Himself and His plans for your life.

Father God thank you for the life-giving power of your Word and presence. Give us the discipline and power to focus on You and You alone at the beginning of each day. We pray this in the wonderful and strong name of Jesus, Amen.