Psalm 111

MEDITATION:  “Praise the LORD!  I will thank the LORD with all my heart as I meet with his godly people.  How amazing are the deeds of the LORD!  All who delight in him should ponder them.  Everything he does reveals his glory and majesty.  His righteousness never fails.  He causes us to remember his wonderful works.  How gracious and merciful is our LORD!  He gives food to those who fear him; he always remembers his covenant.  He has shown his great power to his people by giving them the lands of other nations.  All he does is just and good, and all his commandments are trustworthy.  They are forever true, to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.  He has paid a full ransom for his people.  He has guaranteed his covenant with them forever.  What a holy, awe-inspiring name he has!  Fear of the LORD is the foundation of true wisdom.  All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.  Praise him forever.”  (NLT)

REVELATION:  Praise the LORD and give Him thanks for who He is and what He does.  Everything that the LORD does reveals His character.

APPLICATION:  Everyday of our lives, God shows Himself to us and we are called to praise His name and give Him thanks, both privately and in public.  This text says that if we “delight in” the Lord, we should take time to think about the amazing things that He does.  What has God done for you and what is He currently doing for which you ought to give Him praise?  What have you learned about God’s character/about who He is by looking at what He has done/is doing for which you ought to give Him praise?  The text gives us examples of God’s character traits for which we should praise and thank Him daily.  The psalmist describes God as righteous, gracious (giving us the good things that we don’t deserve), merciful (withholding the punishment that we do deserve), compassionate, faithful, trustworthy, just, good, holy, and awe-inspiring.

Believe it or not, we have more to thank God for than we have to complain to Him about not having.  What has God done for us?  For what do we have to praise and thank Him?    He wakes us up each day.  He gives us the activity of our limbs.  He gives us sight to see the beautiful colors of the autumn trees.  He gives us the ability to hear our loved ones’ voices.  He provides something for us to eat each day.  He provides a place to lay our heads, even if it isn’t our own.  He provides clothes, even if they are “hand-me-downs”.  He gives us the ability to wash our faces, bathe our bodies, and dress ourselves.  He keeps us in our right mind (even after all that we’ve been through and put ourselves through).  He gives us the ability to work, along with employment opportunities so that we can provide for our families.  He protects us from dangers seen and unseen as we travel the highways and byways each day.  He gives us strength to make it through difficult situations.  He gives us joy in times of sorrow.  He gives us hope for tomorrow no matter what we go through because He will never go back on His Word.  He gives us His unconditional love.  We have so much for which to be thankful and praise Him!

Verse 9 says, “He has paid a full ransom for his people.  He has guaranteed his covenant with them forever…”.  When I read this, I thought about the comparison between what Jesus did for us on Calvary and the warranties/service plans that we purchase on our vehicles and other things.  Man’s contracts always come with fine print and loop holes that will void the coverage if we miss an appointment, miss a payment, make a late payment, have our vehicles serviced elsewhere, etc…, in addition to the expensive price that we pay just to have the coverage.  Calvary’s plan didn’t cost us anything.  Jesus paid for it in full; it doesn’t have an expiration date; and the LORD sent us the Holy Spirit as our guarantee that our eternal life contract with Him will never be voided.  All we have to do is believe it and receive it.

Thank God for loving us that much!  Thank Him and praise His holy name!  Praise Him when you’re all alone; praise Him when you’re around people.  Be intentional about thanking God throughout each day for the day’s blessings.  Begin keeping a “Today, I am thankful for…” list.  Before you go to bed each night, take time to reflect upon and jot down what God did for you over the course of the day.  With a mind and heart full of thanksgiving towards God on a daily basis, there won’t be any room for the enemy of our souls to plant seeds of doubt.  Praise the LORD forever!

1 Corinthians 10:23-24, 31-11:1

MEDITATION:  “You say, ‘I am allowed to do anything’ – but not everything is good for you.  You say, ‘I am allowed to do anything’ – but not everything is beneficial.  Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others…So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.  Don’t give offense to Jews or Gentiles of the church of God.  I, too, try to please everyone in everything I do.  I don’t just do what is best for me; I do what is best for others so that many may be saved.  And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.”  (NLT)

(The Context of the Scripture)  In Ch. 9, Paul talks about how he gave up his rights/that to which he was entitled for the sake of other people.  In Ch. 10, Paul talks about how God provided for Israel in the wilderness (v. 1-5), the lesson to be learned from the wrath of God due to their disobedience/idolatry (v. 6-11), when Christians should/should not eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols (v. 12-30), and gives two basic principles that are to guide Christians when faced with such issues:  (1) Do everything for the glory of God.  (2)  Do not give offense to anyone; including the church of God.

REVELATION:

(1)  With freedom comes responsibility.

(2)  Do EVERYTHING for God’s glory.

(3)  Don’t cause others to sin.

APPLICATION:  With freedom comes responsibility (v. 23-24).  In accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are free from the rules and regulations of the Old Testament law because Jesus fulfilled the law and makes us clean for the rest of our lives.  We are no longer bound by a list of “Do’s” and “Dont’s”, even when it comes to food.  The Bible teaches us that “whom the Son has set free is free indeed”.  Our freedom from religious rules, however, does not free us from the responsibility of doing what we know to be right in the sight of God.  Not everything that we can do is in our best interest to do; not everything that we can do is in the best interest of others.  As blood-bought believers in Christ, we have a responsibility to set the right example for others by the way we live.  How we live lets others know that we belong to Christ.  Jesus, himself, said that if we love Him, we’ll keep His commandments. In choosing Jesus, we choose to live under His authority and that means dying to the way we want to live and do things.   Questions for self-reflection:  How responsible have you been with the freedom that you have in Christ?  Have you exercised your freedom in a way that was harmful (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually) to others?  Are there areas in your life in which your actions have not shown that you belong to Christ?  What do you plan to do about it?

Do everything for the glory of God.  Bishop Noel Jones and The City of Refuge Sanctuary Choir has a song called “It’s Not About Us.”  Like Paul, the song reminds us that everything we do in this life is about Jesus.  Among the lyrics are “I present my body as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto Christ.  Everything I am and Everything I’ll be, I lay it all at His feet.  It’s not about us; it’s about Jesus…”  That is essentially what Paul is telling us:  It’s not about us; it’s about Jesus.  Everything that we do should bring honor to God.  As Christians, we are to have one motive behind everything that we do in our home, on our jobs, in church, in school, in the communities in which we live, in our relationships, in our interactions with strangers, in our organizational affiliations, in our public lives, and in our private lives.  No one should ever have to wonder what our motive/angle is because it should be evident.  Our singular motive is to do everything for the glory of God.  Let us move forward determined to honor God in everything we do, including our chores and those things that we perceive as routine and mundane; dry and boring; inconvenient and an interruption.  From now on, look at the chore as a chance to shine for God; the task as a testament of the ability that God has given you; the mundane as a mission from the Most High; the dry as your destiny in the making; the routine as a reason to give Him glory; the boring as a blessing from God; and the inconvenient interruption as an invitation to show the love of God to others.  In 2 Thessalonians 1:12, Paul tells us that when the Jesus Christ is honored because of the way we live, we will be honored along with him and that it is made possible because of the grace of God and our Lord Jesus Christ.  Wow!!!  When we honor Him, He will honor us.  That’s something to shout about!!!

Don’t cause others to sin.  “Don’t give offense to Jews or Gentiles or the church of God.” (v. 32)  In this context, “Don’t give offense…” comes from the Greek aproskopos, which means not causing to stumble, not leading others into sin.  While we are called to live in peace with others; seek to please others; and put others before ourselves, there is a limit to which we go along in order to get along and Paul makes that clear in v. 32-33.  Not giving offense isn’t so much about offending others by our actions as it is about us joining in with them or condoning their sinful behavior, thereby causing them to offend God.  Have you ever been among people with “unwholesome talk” coming out of their mouths and you joined in with them?  Have you ever been around someone who is getting high or drunk and you decided to take a hit or a drink, too?  Are you having sex outside of the bond of marriage?  If you are doing so, not only are you offending God, but you are also causing the other person to offend God.  The same holds true when we encourage anyone to do anything that is against the Word and Will of God.  Paul urges us not to do anything that will cause people to reject the Gospel.  We have to be mindful about our influence and our example.  We also have to be mindful that Satan’s goal is to corrupt our witness.  Once people view us as hypocritical, they won’t receive from us and the less effective our witness for Christ will be.

“I, too, try to please everyone in everything I do.” (v. 33)  Our mission is the same as Paul’s:  honoring God and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that others may be saved.  Pleasing people is not about catering to their wishes at the expense of our mission.    Jesus Christ is the example that we, like Paul, are to follow.  Even though he spent time with sinners and connected with them on their level/in the place where they were, He did not sin to establish that connection.  He was about His Father’s business and we are to be about the same.  When we said, “Yes” to Jesus, He freed us from the bondage of sin and we became His agents.  Our assignment is to love and lead others to Him by the way that we live so that they, too, may be set free.

Proverbs 16:3-4

MEDITATION:  Proverbs 16:3-4 (NLT):  “Commit your actions to the LORD, and your plans will succeed.  The LORD has made everything for his own purposes, even the wicked for the day of disaster.”  (NKJV):  “Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established.  The LORD has made all for Himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom.”  (NIV):  “Commit to the LORD whatever you do and your plans will succeed.  The LORD works out everything to its proper end – even the wicked for the day of disaster.”  (LEB):  “Commit your work to Yahweh, and your plans will be established.  All Yahweh has made is for His purpose, and even the wicked for the day of trouble.”

REVELATION:

(1)  There is a divine order to success.

(2)  Committing requires submission and trust.

(3)  God created us for Himself and His purpose for us.

APPLICATION:  Have you ever become frustrated because you haven’t been able to accomplish or attain the level of success that you want or wondered why nothing you do appears to be working out the way you planned?  Burger King branded the slogan “Have it your way” in 1974 and returned to it in 2004.  The franchise’s initial purpose was to distinguish Burger King from its competitor, McDonald’s.  The draw: customers can have their Whopper fixed their way, only ordering the fixin’s they want.  Over the years, our culture has adopted “Have it your way” and translated it to “Have it [my] way” and made it applicable to every area of our lives:  finances, relationships, health, work, religion, education, etc…  The problem with this way of thinking and living is that life is not Burger King and we cannot Have it [our] way.

The practical words of wisdom in Proverbs 16:3-4 offer us insight as to why, perhaps, our plans haven’t worked/aren’t working/won’t work the way we want them to.  They tell us what to do in order to experience success in every area of our lives and why it will work.

(1) There is a divine order to achieving success.  God established the order and it existed before we did.  We, first, have to commit our actions (the things that we do) to God; then, our plans will succeed. In this context, commit means “to put or place”.  In order for our plans to succeed, we have to put/place the things we do (including how we do them) in God’s hands. We have to give our actions to God. We relinquish our will and our way when we commit our actions to God, which leads to the second revelation of these verses.

(2) Committing requires that we submit to and trust God with whatever it is that we give Him.  Psalm 37:5 says, “Commit everything you do to the LORD. Trust Him and He will help you.” (NLT) “Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass.” (NKJV) “Commit to Yahweh your way; trust also on Him and He will act.” (LEB)  “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in Him and He will do this:” (NIV)  When we submit to God, we place ourselves under His authority and control.  The act of submission says that we will do what He says in the way that He says to do it when He says to do it.  The act of trusting God says that we have confidence in God’s ability to handle whatever it is that we have put/placed in His hands.  We are confident that God will help us, that God will bring to pass what we give Him, and that God will act and everything will work out to our favor and in our best interest.

(3) God created us for Himself and His purpose.  Too often, we want God to co-sign on our plans and our will; but, we didn’t make ourselves nor did God make us for us.  v. 4 tells us that God made everything (and everyone) for Himself; He made everything (and everyone) for His own purposes.  None of us is here by accident.  God knew us before we were formed in our mothers’ wombs and He purposed our existence.  Our purpose existed before we did.  In other words, we were created to fulfill God’s purpose for us.  God had a plan for our lives and it’s His plan for us that will succeed.  That’s why we can find hope in the promise that God made to the Babylonian exiles in Jeremiah 29:11 when He said, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (NIV)  When our plans are God’s plans, our plans will succeed.

God’s obligation is to His Word, not to our will.  God cannot lie.  His Word will not return to Him void; it will accomplish all that He sent it to accomplish.  God’s word is Truth; God’s word is seed; God’s word is what will produce fruit (success, abundance, prosperity) in our lives.  God’s plan will never fail and neither will ours if our plan is God’s plan.  When we accept and submit ALL of ourselves and ALL that concerns us to our Creator, understanding His role and ours in our relationship with Him, committing our actions to Him won’t be an issue.  Submitting to and trusting in Him and His ways of bringing His word to pass won’t be an issue either because we will be confident that our plans will succeed. 

Luke 22:31-34

MEDITATION:  Luke 22:31-34 (RSV):  “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have You [all], that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.  And he said to him, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.’  He said, ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me.'”

REVELATION:

(1) In the Greek,  “demanded” means to inquire, seek; to ask for information.  Satan has to ask permission from God in order to test our faith.  Ultimate authority rests with God.

(2)  Sift, in the biblical sense, refers to an inward agitation that tries one’s faith to the verge of overflowing.  The sieve represents our life situations; the substance on the inside of the sieve is our faith going into the situation; the sifting blades represent the trials, tribulations, and temptations aimed to draw us into sin and away from God.  Both God and Satan have a vested interest in our sifting.

(3)  As believers, victory is guaranteed.  (“Satan [has] demanded to have you [all]…but I have prayed for you…and when you have turned again”)  The conjunction “but” sets up a contrast to the discouraging news that Peter received in v. 31 and v.34.  Jesus acknowledged the reality of our humanity.

(4)  Our being sifted is not just about us.  (“…strengthen your brethren.”)

APPLICATION:  We can survive the storms of life with our faith intact if we put our faith and trust in Christ.

(1)  Be careful not to give Satan credit for what God has allowed.  Contrary to how things may seem, Satan is not in control; he is subject to God and has to operate within the parameters that God gives him.

(2)  As stated earlier, both God and Satan have a vested interest in our sifting.  Satan desires to steal our joy; destroy our families, finances, and our relationships; and ultimately kill us.  God desires to refine our character and draw us closer to Him.  It’s easy to panic, worry, and feel depressed and hopeless when the pain and pressure of the sifting process become too much for us to bear.  Satan hopes that we will throw in the towel and abort the plan that God has for our lives.  As difficult as it may be, we can’t afford to focus on the hardships that we face.  Rather, we have to focus on what God is doing IN us while we’re being sifted.  If we hold on to our faith and trust the Word of God, we will be able to survive the sifting blades of life and move closer to the purpose for which God created us.

(3)  It is both comforting and encouraging to know that even before all hell breaks loose in our lives, Jesus has already gone to the Father on our behalf, interceding for us so that our faith may not fail in the midst of our tests and trials.  There will be times in our lives when we may fall or make poor decisions while the sifting blades of life are agitating us.  Satan wants us to dwell on and get stuck on the fact that we messed up/missed the mark/fell short and he will constantly throw that in our faces.  The real truth is that we serve a merciful and forgiving God who understands our humanity and, through Jesus, reinstates us into right relationship with Him.  That’s what enables us to be victorious no matter what we go through.

(4)  Be careful not to get caught up in “woe is me” and have a pity party.  Being sifted can push you to the brink of giving up on your dreams, your children, your marriage, your God, and even your life.  That’s why it is especially important that we keep our sieve experiences in perspective.  Pain is pain and it hurts no matter who you are; yet, our struggles and hurts are never just about us.  Unless we have a sieve experience from time-to-time, we will be unable to relate to the reality of the pain/struggle of those around us; nor will we be able to offer them the comfort, healing, and deliverance that we found in Jesus Christ.  God uses all of our experiences for our good and He intends that we will come out of it not only intact, but also stronger and with a deeper understanding of who He is in our lives and who we are in Him.  Jesus endured the ultimate sieve experience and came out with all power in His hands so that the ain’ts can become saints, so that you and I can live victoriously and have a right to the Tree of Life.

Remember, if you abide in Him and He in you, you will never go through the sieve alone.  Jesus is with you will carry you through to victory!!!

1 Corinthians 2:10-16

MEDITATION:  1 Corinthians 2:10-16 (NLT):  “But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit.  For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets.  No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit.  And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us…But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s spirit.  It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.  Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things, but they themselves cannot be evaluated by others.  For, ‘Who can know the LORD’s thoughts?  Who knows enough to teach him?’  But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.”

REVELATION:  People who “aren’t spiritual” refers to those who are unbelievers/those who live life according to their natural senses.  They cannot see beyond their senses of sight, taste, hearing, touch, and smell.  It is impossible for them to receive and understand the things of God because they are not led by the Holy Spirit.  Revelation/understanding God’s Word and the things of God comes from the Holy Spirit.  Being led by the Holy Spirits enables us to see more than what is in front of us, hear what is not said, touch what has not manifested itself in the natural.  We are able to see, hear, and feel God in every situation/circumstance.  We step out in faith, knowing that God has already provided everything we need and has released it in the spirit.  We have a level of discernment that transforms our thinking (“…the mind of Christ”), our speaking, and our actions.

APPLICATION:  It’s easy to become discouraged, angry, frustrated, etc… when those around us just don’t seem to understand our decision to live our lives according to God’s Word and His will for us.  Feeling the need to defend our choices and/or keep these people in our lives, we sometimes end up in arguments or worse – turning back from what we know God has told us to do in order to hold on to people whom we want to keep in our lives.  This passage releases us from the distraction, frustration, and discouragement caused by these situations.  There is no point in getting frustrated, discouraged, or defeated because the people in our lives just don’t get it.  God’s Word clearly tells us that they can’t “get it” if they aren’t led by His Spirit.  Instead of arguing with them, we need to pray for them and keep it moving.  Keep following the leading of the Holy Spirit.  Keeping walking in love (even if we have to love them from a distance).  We might be called crazy and foolish; we will be misunderstood.  Be willing to be misunderstood by man in order that God will get the glory out of our lives.