Category Archives: god

Monday Morning Meditation: God’s Character (end of Psalm 25 series)

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Here is today’s passage in the Psalm 25 series (v. 19-22):

See how my enemies have increased
and how fiercely they hate me!
Guard my life and rescue me;
let me not be put to shame,
for I take refuge in you.
May integrity and uprightness protect me,
because my hope is in you.
Redeem Israel, O God,
from all their troubles!

I decided to group all these verses together rather than split them up, so this will be the final installment of the Psalm 25 series.

What have been some of the themes of the Psalm so far? Let’s take a look at the blog post titles.

Safe with the Lord
Dealing with Shame
All Day Long (HOPE!)
How Does God See Me?
Need Help? Ask For It
Embrace Grace Again
Friendship with God
Off the Snare and On the Lord (your eyes)
Turn to Me

God’s character is revealed throughout this psalm, as well as the promises that are available to us because of who He is.

Safety. Help. Hope. Protection. Friendship. Grace. Hope. Focus. Perspective. Unashamed. Help. More hope.

In today’s passage, we find David surrounded by enemies. He continues to put his hope in the Lord, trusting in God’s character as well as his friendship with the Lord and his own obedience.

Yesterday in church, we sang “Whom Shall I Fear (God of Angel Armies).” So many of the themes of this Psalm are highlighted in the lyrics, but I will simply highlight the chorus.

I know Who goes before me
I know Who stands behind
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
The One who reigns forever
He is a Friend of mine
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side

Enemies will rise up. We will grow weak at times from battle. As the song says, “though troubles linger still,” God was won the battle. He is a friend who is also Protector and Savior.

Hope in Him – all day long.

Monday Morning Meditation: Off the Snare and On the Lord (Psalm 25 Series)

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Here is today’s passage in the Psalm 25 series (v. 15):

My eyes are ever on the Lord,
for only he will release my feet from the snare.

In times of trials or problems, what do you tend to look at? On what do you focus?

This is easy for me to answer. I tend to focus on my problems. In the past, this was my typical pattern:

First, I would stare at the trap or potential trap.

Second, I would try to think up a solution I could do myself.

Third, I may begin to think about how the God of the impossible could probably help me out with this situation.

Fourth, I generally end up talking myself out of God being able to really do anything because isn’t this problem just too big for God?

When I say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

But this is what we do all the time.

Today at church, my pastor said, “What is impossible for God?”

And all of us good Christians answered, “Nothing.”

If only we acted as if we truly believed this.

We say it, but we don’t live and act as if we believe it.

We limit God.

As I read this passage a few months ago, I realized how often I fix my eyes on the snare. I analyze it. I imagine all possible outcomes and how I can avoid it or fix it. I lament at the difficulty of the situation.

And often I end up expending so much emotional energy evaluating the snare that I practically fall into it.

“My eyes are ever on the Lord….”

What would happen if we instead fixed our eyes on the One who is able to release us from the snare?

God does not tell us to evaluate the snare. God calls us to look on Him. I’ve included some past blog posts at the end to encourage you in looking to God.

Pray this with me:
Lord God, forgive me for trying to fix things all the time, as if that is within my power. You call me friend, and yet I am slow to ask for help. Your Word says, “You have not because you ask not,” and so, I ask. Help, Lord. May my eyes ever be on You, the Rescuer, and not on the snare. I pray this in the mighty, powerful name of Jesus. Amen.

Several blog posts that might be helpful:
Seeing with God’s Eyes
Look Beyond Your Mountains
Watch for God

Monday Morning Meditation: Friendship with God (Psalm 25 Series)

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Here is today’s passage in the Psalm 25 series (v. 12-14):

Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord?
He will instruct him in the way chosen for him.
He will spend his days in prosperity,
and his descendants will inherit the land.
The Lord confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them.

What is fear of the Lord? We addressed this a bit in the Psalm 34 series. One commentator on Psalm 25 says fear of the Lord is “an attitude of reverence and awe toward God, which is transformed into an appropriate manner of living.” This goes hand in hand with the ESV’s translation of verse 14:

The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him,
and he makes known to them his covenant.

To those who approach God with an attitude of reference and awe, He extends His friendship, his “secret counsel,” as a footnote says “friendship” can also be translated. According to the Hebrew, that word can also be translated “confidential talk.”

What an encouragement to get close to the Lord!

Lord Jesus, empower us to draw close to You today. Help to revere You by living lives of awe and obedience. Teach us in the way we should go, as the psalmist prayed earlier in Psalm 25, “for You are God my Savior and my hope is in You all day long.” Thank You, Lord.

Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50. Vol. 19 of Word Biblical Commentary Accordance/Thomas Nelson electronic ed. (Waco: Word Books, 1983) 221.

Monday Morning Meditation: Need Help? Ask For It (Psalm 25 Series)

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Friends, we are back to Psalm 25.

Today, we look at verses 8-10:

Good and upright is the LORD;
Therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.
All the ways of the LORD are loving and faithful
For those who keep the demands of his covenant.

This passage directly reflects the message I heard at church today. Our pastor discussed the importance of living a life wholly devoted to God. As he shared of the importance of turning from our sin, I thought, I wonder if he is going to share the “how” part. Once we make a decision to turn from a sinful habit or tendency, what next?

I of course thought of Learning to Walk in Freedom. He pointed to these verses in James 4 for help in the “how.”

As I read these verses from Psalm 25 again in preparing this blog post, I thought, The Bible is full of “how”!

Look back on the Psalm 25 series so far.

Do you need direction? Are you weighed down by the foolishness of some of your decisions?
Are you struggling to see a way out of a trial or life-controlling issue?

< Need guidance from the Lord? Ask. This may seem really obvious. Of course I should ask for help when I need it! But my most-read post here of all time is “You Have Not Because You Ask Not.” Evidently, I’m not the only one who struggles with asking for help when I need God to come through.

Remember that God is good.

He wants to instruct you, enable you and lead you.

God’s ways are loving and faithful.

The NASB says, “All the paths of the LORD are lovingkindness and truth.”

“Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” James 4:10 (NIV)

Freedom Friday: Watch For God

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Have you ever noticed that sometimes, God gets our attention in the strangest ways?

So often, we beg for God’s guidance in a situation.

We ask for a sign. We generally have an idea of what that sign might look like.

Yet, all around us, God is speaking to us. He has His hand on our situation, guiding us, directing us, but we’re so busy looking for a particular sign that we miss Him completely.

I was at a Spin class yesterday morning, and I noticed the man in front of me had the word “God” on his wristband. I strained my eyes to see if I could decipher exactly what it said.

The message of the bracelet?

Watch for God.

Image from ebay.com

Before Spin, I had been reading 1 Corinthians 2 (finally done with Jeremiah!). I prayed on my run over to the gym: for myself, for others, for God to be revealed in my life and the lives of my family. You can read the whole chapter here. But a few verses caught my heart:

“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.” verse 10

God’s deepest desire is that we know who He created us to be. He longs to reveal His perfect will to us. Yet we often pray as if we somehow have to beg in order to get God to speak loudly and clearly enough for us to hear.

God spoke to me through that bracelet. He said, Watch for me. I am working, always and everywhere. Open your eyes. I am calling you to hope (Eph 1:18).

The passage continues:

“No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own 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.” verses 11-12

God has freely given us so much.
His Son (Jn 3:16-17).
His life (Jn 3:16-17).
His Spirit (Acts 1:8).
His joy (Gal 5:22).
His peace (Jn 14:27).
His mind (2 Cor 2:16).

Today, I encourage you. Watch for God. He calls you “beloved.” He calls you “mine.” He says, “You are my favorite!”

God is working around you, in you and through you. Watch for Him.

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13

Monday Morning Meditation: All Day Long (Psalm 25 Series)

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We’re continuing the Psalm 25 series, my psalm for the year, with the 3rd installment.

Verses 4-5:

Show me your ways, O Lord,
Teach me your paths;
Guide me in your truth and teach me
For you are God my Savior,
and my hope is in you all day long.

I memorized these verses several weeks ago and have found myself endlessly repeating them. Sometimes, I simply say, “All day long, Lord, all day long.”

I shared in my initial post that this psalm has sustained me through many challenging events. In September, we found out the cancer was now in the liver, that my father may only live 3-6 months, 6-12 if the chemo worked. We set a date to move, no matter what, whether the condo sold or not. That date was still 2 months away. I was struggling with hope.

I read Psalm 25 as I walked to the train the day after finding out the cancer had spread. It became my routine, as I grasped on to every word of that psalm as a deer pants for streams of water.

I still do.

We have since moved. My father lived less than 2 months, and in addition to career changes and location upheaval, I wrestle daily with what life should look like at age 37 with my father not here for me to call on the phone with questions, but present with the Lord. I’ve wondered if what I feel is grief, or am I slipping back into the depression that dominated my life for over 2 decades.

The questions that have come in this time have not been easy. Answers are coming slowly, through prayer, through clinging, through resting, through trusting.

Show me Your ways, O Lord….

Not mine, God. Yours.

Teach me Your paths
Guide me in Your truth and teach me

Let Your truth shine forth into my darkness, into the questions. Let truth be what I cling to.

For You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all. day. long.

You are Lord. I am not. Therefore, my hope is in You and You alone.

Morning coming slowly in our new town


Joy comes in the morning, friends.

And in the mourning, too.

It is coming slowly. Like drips of living water.

I’m catching glimmers of hope and allowing God to teach me.

My hope is in Him, all day long.

Monday Morning Meditation: Safe with the Lord (Psalm 25 series)

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Today, I’m beginning a series on Psalm 25.

This is a psalm of David. It’s interesting to note that this psalm is an acrostic poem, the verses of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet (as seen in the footnote).

The psalm begins:

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul;
in you I trust, O my God.

As I read this passage for likely the 100th time, I stopped there, wondering, What does “soul” mean?

The Hebrew word Nephesh can mean “soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion, that which breathes, the inner being of man, seat of the appetites, emotions and passions, activity of mind, activity of the will, activity of the character,” among other things.

The Hebrew word Batach, translated “trust,” can also mean “to be secure, to feel safe.”
It seems as if the psalmist is in essence crying out to God, Lord, I take to You my passions, the place where all my appetites sit, my life, my very breath – I carry it to You. These things are all safe with You. I am safe with You, Lord. All that I am and desire and hope for – I take to You and trust You with these things.
 
Stop for a minute. Pause and take a breath.
Do you believe your emotions are safe with the Lord?
Your deepest dreams, desires, and passions can rest in His hands?
Your thoughts, your appetites, your very breath can be lifted up to Him?
As you journey through this week, pause and remember these 1 1/2 verses. When challenges come, emotions that feel overwhelming, remember you can lift them to the Lord. They don’t scare Him. He can be trusted with them.

Freedom Friday: Avoiding Moral Failure

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This is a topic that has been brewing in my mind for a while. This is due in part to things I’ve been reading in the Bible (Isaiah, Acts & James right now, with a little of Hezekiah’s story mixed in), assignments I’ve been working on for grad school (a big essay on plagiarism), and partly because of life events I see occurring around me.

I also just needed to write this for me. It’s a timely reminder that we don’t just “fall into” sin. We will sin. Otherwise, we’d be perfect like Jesus 🙂 But there is a difference in the way various sins impact your faith and your life. I may lose my temper with my spouse today, and that may break trust a little momentarily (especially if it’s a pattern of mine), but if I were to have an affair, that changes our relationship in a different way.  All sin may be equal in the eyes of God (in the sense that there aren’t particular sins that are more difficult for Him to forgive or required Him to hang from the cross longer), but some sins are inherently different because of the way they impact our lives.

There are things we can do to actively avoid finding ourselves in major situations of compromise. Here are some suggestions.

1. Be watchful over your thoughts
Your thoughts matter. Proverbs 23:7 says “For as he thinks within himself, so he is.”

In the article 5 Lies that Lead to an Affair, author Julie Ferwerda shares her experiences about how she ended up choosing to have an affair. She writes, “Few people fall into adultery overnight. As with other ‘big’ sins, having an affair is usually the result of a series of small compromises in our thoughts, choices, and behaviors.” And the place it began for her was in her thoughts.

It begins with a thought, a temptation. Temptation isn’t sin, as I’ve written before. It’s our choice to nurture that temptation that can become sin, rather than choosing to lay it before the Lord.

One of the Freedom Steps is Think Like a Free Person. I share there how God commands us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. The battle of freedom is a battle that begins in our minds.  “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV1984)

Be watchful over your thoughts.

2. Be honest with your intentions
James says that we have “evil desires at war within you” James 4:1 (NLT). Believers are not immune from this. James writes earlier in his letter, “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” James 1:14-15 (NIV1984)We need to dig deep inside of ourselves and pray that God would help us be honest about our intentions in every challenging situation.Toward the end of 1999, I had been a Christian less than a year when I met a girl who had been raised in a Christian home but whose family had walked away from God. I couldn’t fathom how anyone could do that, and I desperately wanted to help her. I do believe that initially, my intentions were pure; however, my resolve for purity quickly faded, and we entered into a physical relationship.

Jeremiah writes (17:9 NLT), “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”

I wanted this woman to know Jesus, but I was still deeply broken beyond my own understanding. This is why I wrote Who’s Got Your Back? The disciples went out two by two for a reason. This is why we need community, to lay ourselves as honestly as we can before others, and trust the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth (John 16:13), including truth about ourselves.

Be honest with your intentions.

3. Be upfront about your actions
I don’t like the phrase we often use in Christianity to describe our sinful actions. We say we “had a fall” or we “stumbled.” To me, those phrases do not take responsibility for the choices and compromises that led to that “fall.” It’s not as if we are walking down a path and all of a sudden, sin jumps out and grabs us! No. That’s in direct contradiction to the end of 1 Corinthians 10:13 (NLT): “When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”

In the relationship mentioned above, I didn’t simply “fall” into it. I made a series of questionable choices (not all of them sinful) that ultimately led to grave sin. This is why we need to, once again, stay connected to believers, honestly sharing about our choices and actions, and even the things we are thinking of doing.

Be upfront about your actions.

4. Be desperate for the Lord
God is able. Really. He is able. He is strong enough, He is big enough, He is loving enough. He is enough. Say it with me: He is enough.
So often we live our lives, making our plans, living as we wish (and not even in a sinful way, necessarily), inviting God in occasionally. We simply forget to include God in every decision, every thought, every actions.

We need to cling to God as if our lives depended on it – because they do. “Apart from me, you can do nothing,” Jesus said (John 15:5).

Later in James 4:4b-5 (NLT), James writes, for emphasis, “I say it again, that if your aim is to enjoy this world, you can’t be a friend of God. What do you think the Scriptures mean when they say that the Holy Spirit, whom God has placed within us, jealously longs for us to be faithful? He gives us more and more strength to stand against such evil desires.”

Sin is crouching at our doors, always (Gen. 4:7). Through God’s strength and power, we can subdue it and be its master.

“Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be dismayed. Therefore, I have set my face like a stone, determined to do his will. And I know that I will triumph.” Isaiah 50:7

Satan deceives; that’s his nature. Sin is always crouching at the door, desirous of us. Yet we can receive God’s help, determine to do His will, and know we will triumph.

Lord, help us.

Freedom Friday: His Goodness

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Folks, I have a Freedom Friday post brewing for you.

But we’ve had to leave town suddenly to be with a loved one who is facing the end of life.

And my kids had food dye for the 1st time in a while, and my 2 year-old is literally bouncing off the walls, screaming, “It’s fun time!” over and over, swinging from the long curtains in this extended stay suite, and riding down the table leg as if it’s a fire pole.

I’m not kidding.

I just pray for you that you’d know how good God is. So often I doubt His goodness, and yet He is faithful to His promises.

I finished the marathon.  Barely.

For the kids at Happy Horizons Children’s Ranch.

And I’m learning to let go of someone I love so dearly and feel I desperately need.  Jesus is waiting for him.

I am so thankful and so heartbroken.  And yet, God is faithful.  He’s amazing.

Be back soon. I promise 🙂

Monday Morning Meditation: Called to Praise (Psalm 71 series)

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We are continuing the series on Psalm 71. I encourage you to read the whole psalm here.

It’s certainly worth looking back over the themes of this psalm thus far before considering today’s verses.

Prayer Requests Intertwined with Truth
God’s Protection from the EnemyGod is Our Hope
What Am I Living For?
Never Alone

David, the writer of this psalm, combines the hope he has in God and the truth he knows about God with the reality he is facing. He is getting older, and it feels as if his enemies are surrounding him. Will God continue to come through?

Verses 14-16:

But I will keep on hoping for you to help me;
I will praise you more and more.
I will tell everyone about your righteousness.
All day long I will proclaim your saving power,
for I am overwhelmed by how much you have done for me.
I will praise your mighty deeds, O Sovereign LORD.
I will tell everyone that you alone are just and good.

“I will praise you more and more.”

I don’t know if that’s my natural inclination when trials come. I’m fairly certain my natural inclination is to complain and run around telling everyone how bad off I am. In a post back in February, I shared that when God calls for silence, we can pray, fast, wait, listen, obey and rejoice.

We are called to praise.

Despite the obstacles he was facing, David found multiple reasons to praise God and to declare to others all that God is.

David declared he is overwhelmed by all God has done for him. Usually, when I face challenges, the only thing I’m overwhelmed by is the obstacles I’m staring at.

“Look beyond the tombstone – see the Living God.”

As I was writing this today, this lyric came through my headphones from the song Glorious by Paul Baloche. Even though I know he’s singing of Jesus’s tomb, my mind immediately went to Lazarus, given the opportunity to believe that God has placed before me and my family in this season. We were just reading the story yesterday.

“Take away the stone,” he said.

“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

Jesus calls us, as He did Martha, to look beyond the tombstone. He calls us to praise, more and more. Even before the answer comes, even before we see that victory is on its way, we can be overwhelmed by the reality of all that God is and all that He’s done. We can proclaim His saving power and call others to praise with us.