pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

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Abide

Reading: Psalm 22: 25-31

Verse 29: “All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him”.

Today’s passage from Psalm 22 has both a present and a future sense to it. Overall the Psalm is about worshipping and abiding in God’s presence. Verse 26 reads, “they who seek the Lord will praise Him”. What we find when we seek God does lead us to praise God. The psalmist also writes of a future time. Verse 30 reads, “future generations will be told about the Lord”. The continued telling of and living out of our faith will help future generations to know God and to have faith in Him.

In order for us to tell of and to live out our faith we have to have a relationship that abides daily in Christ. To do so, we must practice our spiritual disciplines. This begins with daily time with God. Each day we need to spend time in the Word and in prayer. Finding a time and space each day to abide in God keeps Him always at the center of our life. When God is whom we abide in, God is who flows out of our life through our words and actions. Both how we live our life and the stories of faith that we share help our families and the “future generations” to know of and to have a personal relationship with the Lord.

Worship and thanksgiving are also means to abide in the Lord. When we gather to praise and pray and hear the Word proclaimed we are renewed and strengthened for our personal faith journey. Corporate worship is an essential faith discipline that connects us not only to God but also to each other. A personal part of our worship is our thanksgiving. Taking time to name and give specific thanks for the work of God in our lives helps us to stay in love with God. This essential helps us to abide even deeper in God and His love.

When we abide daily in faith, then we are assured of His presence each day in our lives and we also live with an assurance about our eternity. Both are blessings of nourishing our relationship with God daily. Verse 29 reminds us, “All who go down to the dust will kneel before Him”. The word ‘all’ is pretty inclusive. So this week may we live our faith out loud so that all we meet will experience the light and love of Jesus Christ in their lives too. May Christ brightly shine in us so that others may invite Him to abide in them as well.


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Hearers and Tellers

Reading: Psalm 78: 1-4

Verse 1: “O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth”.

Today the psalmist urges us to listen and to remember.  It begins with listening.  We cannot just hear words but must really listen to the words and their meaning.  This allows us to internalize and understand the words and how they apply to our lives and to our faith.  Once done listening, we also must remember.  The words cannot come in one ear and go out the other.  To remember means to hold onto the words and the affect they have on our life and on our faith.

The psalmist is urging the people Israel to hold onto the teaching and to hold onto the “trustworthy deeds of the Lord”.  In remembering “what our fathers have told us” we begin to build up a collective memory of what God has done for His people.  In doing so, we build up a reservoir of strength to draw upon when we find ourselves in a time of trial or suffering.  All those memories of God at work in the past give us a reassurance that we can trust God to be present in our current need.

But is is not all about taking in and holding on.  We must also be a part of the telling.  The psalmist reminds us that “we will not hide them from our children”.  We must tell our children and the generations after them of the mighty works of God as well.  We must pour into our children and into the future generations so that they too will “hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth”.

We each are a part of the coming and the going out of the faith.  At times we must listen and absorb the stories of the faith – both those in the Bible and those experienced in life.  At other times it must be our voices who pass along the Word and the stories that help others to find and grow in their faith.  Each day may we be hearers as well as tellers, bringing the glory to God in all we do and say as we live out our lives of faith.