pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

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Fear the Lord

Reading: Psalm 111:10

Verse 10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.

To a degree we are all guided by fear. Fear helps us make many of our decisions. Sometimes fear is healthy. If I see a bear off in the distance when I am hiking, I will choose another path. If I fear high places, maybe I keep myself a little safer. If I fear failing my classes, I will make the choice to do my work and to study. In these cases, fear helps us avoid bad or harmful consequences. Fear can also do the opposite. Memories of my parents saying, “If your friend jumped off a bridge…”. Peer pressure is often driven by fears of rejection or being left out.

Verse ten reads, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. On the surface level, it seems odd to tie fearing God to gaining wisdom. The fear of God is not like a fear of spiders, where we avoid them at all costs. A fear of God is a healthy thing. Often in life we choose to face our fears because of our faith in God. For example, I can choose to do the right thing and possibly lose a friend or a client because I fear denying my faith when I cheat or lie or when I avoid speaking a difficult truth. I may choose to risk loving the other even though I fear being hurt or getting into a relationship that requires much energy and time. I do so because I fear what life would be like without love. Or I fear what will happen to that marginalized person if I remain silent more than I fear the consequences of speaking out against injustice or abuse. In each case, my fear of denying the nudges and whispers of God’s Spirit outweigh or override my personal fears.

The fear of God can help us correctly prioritize our lives. In our first fear is denying God, then our life will look robustly faithful. Our words and actions will be on the side of love and mercy and compassion and justice and forgiveness and the like. Understanding that God and the witness to our faith is our purpose in life is the beginning of wisdom. This day may we decide for God and His love. Amen.


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Praise the Lord

Reading: Psalm 111

Verse 2: “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them”.

Psalm 111 opens with these words: “Praise the Lord”. From there it tells us why we should do so. The psalmist describes the works of the Lord with words such as great, glorious, majestic, faithful, and just. It speaks of God being righteous, gracious, compassionate, steadfast, holy, and awesome. The Psalm concludes with these words: “To Him belongs eternal praise”. Indeed!

Verse two states, “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them”. When I do as the verse says and take some time to think about God’s work in the world, it does bring a sense of awe. As I imagine the Red Sea parting and Jesus calling Peter out to walk on the water, I am in awe. Yet God is also in the personal. God is in the day to day of our lives as well. Part of my time each morning with God is a little “Thank Journal” that I keep. Each morning I reflect on the day before and write down about a half dozen specific things that I am thankful for. I then lift my thanks and praise to God in a short time of prayer. It is a way to recognize God’s great works in my life.

In verses four and five the psalmist shares how the Lord is gracious and compassionate. First, God provides us our daily bread. Second, God remembers the covenant. In the first I am again reminded of God’s day to day care for us both physical and spiritual. God provides both our daily sustenance and the Spirit’s presence each day. Both remind us of how detailed God’s love is. It is personal and focused on each of us. In the second I am drawn to the big picture. Yes, the covenant is personal but to me it is the overarching story of God’s love for all of creation. To me the covenant reminds us that God loves us all no matter what. He loves us even when we are at our worst. It is a love that never wavers. It is a love that just goes on and on and on. God’s love never fails.

Praise the Lord! To Him belongs eternal praise! Amen!


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Essential to Life

Reading: John 6: 47-51

Verse 51: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”.

Jesus speaks words of hope today. Verse 47 reads, “he who believes has everlasting life”. What a promise! Next to speaking before a crowd, the fear of death is our greatest fear. It is the end. It is unknown. It is the loss of connection with those we love. Unless you believe in Jesus Christ. The gift of eternal life removes all these fears. It changes the outlook to joy and even anticipation.

In our passage today Jesus is sharing the path to eternal life. Believe in Jesus. Confess Him as Lord of life and gain eternal life. For the Jews, He contrasts this with their experience with the physical bread that God had sent down. Their ancestors are the manna that God sent in the desert and they were sustained physically, but in the end they died. By contrast, the bread that Jesus offers is spiritual nourishment. Take in this bread and you will not die, Jesus says.

Verse 51 sums it up: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world”. This is such a powerful verse. Jesus was sent by God. If we become one with Jesus, if we “eat of this bread”, we will be indwelled by His Spirit. This is a new relationship that not only sustains us in this life but leads to eternal life as well. This bread, His flesh, will indeed be given for the life of the world. We know that the wages of sin is death. Jesus took on the sins of the world on the cross and through His blood we find forgiveness of our sins. His blood washes us clean. Sin is no more and we are once again restored to life. Each time we take communion we remember this gift.

This idea of Jesus being the bread of life that came down from heaven may have been a stumbling block to the Jews, but it is our hope and promise. It is foundational to our faith. It is essential to our life. Thank you God for sending Jesus, the gift of the bread of life.


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Refuge and Strength

Reading: Psalm 34: 1-8

Verse 4: “I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears”.

In our verses from Psalm 34, it seems as if David trusted in God 100% of the time, always turning to God in all situations. Yet even though he was known as “a man after God’s own heart”, we know that David had his bouts with sin and had his seasons when he was distant from God. Most of our lives are the same – we pursue God and our relationship with God most of the time. But we also have moments or days or seasons when the world or life gets the best of us and our faith. To me, these verses are the ideal, the goal.

In times of trial we naturally seek the Lord. Whether it is an emotional or physical or spiritual trial, we turn to God for direction, relief, discernment, healing… Much of the time we can reflect and give voice to this statement from David: “I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears”. God is faithful. When we seek God, we usually find God. And like David, this leads us to thank and praise God.

The day to day is where we can struggle. When life is good, and especially when life is good and life is busy, we can slip away on God. When we feel no pressing need to make sure we honor our quiet time or to remain dedicated to our daily prayers, then it can become easy to just put them off until “later”. Suddenly a few days later we realize that we have not read our Bible or have not really prayed in a while. Often we notice then too that things are not really going so well.

For me this is the encouragement from today’s Word: “blessed is the man who takes refuge in the Lord”. When we choose to daily take refuge in the Lord, we begin to truly live out and into the first half of verse 8: “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. In all things and at all times – good and bad and in between – may we seek the Lord our God, our refuge and our strength. Amen.


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One

Reading: Ephesians 4: 1-6

Verses 4-6: “There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all”.

In a different season in my life I went backpacking once a year. The backpack was my existence for that week. The pack would carry the tent, my pad and sleeping bag, my food and cooking gear, the stove and fuel bottle, my clothes, my Bible and devotionals, my toiletries, a shovel and some toilet paper, and a water filter. Each of these was essential for my week trekking around the wilderness. If I discovered six miles into the journey that I had forgotten the fuel for the stove, I was in trouble. In a similar way, Paul describes today the essentials for our Christian journey. If we do not have all of these traits inside of us on our journey of faith, we are also in trouble.

Paul encourages us to be completely humble, to be patient, to bear with one another in love. He also encourages us to “keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace”. At times our journey is not always easy. To represent Christ well, it requires humility and patience and love and peace. In the good and especially in the bad these traits are essential because they help us through and they are the things that others notice. The peace in the suffering, the patience in the trial, the love for the unlovable or the unloved – these are some of the marks of the Christian. When we fail to love the other or when we demonstrate arrogance instead of humility, then we do harm to our Christian witness. We must carry all of these traits with us all of the time if we are to live out our faith well as we interact with the world.

Paul closes this section with a great reminder of what unites us as people of faith. He writes, “There is one body and one Spirit… one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all”. We are all one body of believers throughout the world. We are all connected to and through the head, Jesus Christ. It is through Him that we find humility, patience, love, and peace. May others see these traits in us today as we bear witness to our faith in Jesus Christ today.


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A Beautiful Vision

Reading: Ephesians 2: 11-22

Verse 19: “You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens… with Jesus Christ himself as the cheif cornerstone”.

There is an old saying about fences not making good neighbors. They separate and keep us apart. Fences are like barriers. Each one of us is a unique creation of God. As unique creations we have characteristics that can make us look and feel and seem different from one another. “Can” is an important word. How we see each other is dependent upon our perspective.

In Ephesians 2, Paul is writing about the family of God. As Christians, this should be our identity. Through Jesus Christ, God reconciled all people to Himself. In Jesus’ eyes there is no skin color, no ethnicity, no gender, no past, no… All are His brothers and sisters. All are part of the family. There are no “foreigners and aliens” but only “fellow citizens” in God’s family.

We are united by Jesus Christ as we are “brought near through the blood of Christ”. It is His blood that washes away our sin. It is only our sin that separates us from God and, therefore, from the family. Sin is the only barrier that God sees. Through Jesus Christ we are restored and renewed and are made acceptable in God’s sight. This, to me, is why Jesus is the “chief cornerstone” – upon Jesus we all stand.

When this is our understanding of how we, sinners all, are made new creations who stand blameless in the family of God, then our understanding of each other is no longer earthly but heavenly. Like our sins, in Christ all the things that could separate us and could create barriers are also washed away. From this perspective, we are all simply children of God, united by the one Spirit. When we see each other this way, we see as Jesus sees. It is a beautiful vision for our world. May we each help this to become a bit more of a reality today. Amen.


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Shepherd Kings

Reading: 2 Samuel 5: 1-5 and 9-10

Verse Two: “The Lord said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler'”.

In many ways David is an early example of how a faithful believer should live their life. No, David is not perfect, but he does provide a very good example. The best example will always be Jesus, but in today’s passage we find a man who was closely attuned to God. From David we can learn much as individuals and as leaders.

Long before he was king, Samuel came and anointed David to one day be king. David was just a shepherd then. From that moment of anointing, we remember, “the Spirit of the Lord came upon David” (1 Samuel 16:13). As we read through the rest of 1st Samuel and into 2nd Samuel, we see over and over how God was with David as David trusted and leaned into God, remaining ever faithful to God. The leaders of Israel saw this too. They gathered at Hebron to make David king over all of Israel. The people said, “The Lord said to you, ‘You will shepherd my people Israel, and you will become their ruler'”. They want David to shepherd the nation. He will do so for forty years.

Often we relate the job of shepherd to the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. While there is some truth to this, we cannot miss the parallels between a shepherd and a leader as God intends one to lead. In Ezekiel 34 we get this job description for a shepherd: feed the sheep, heal the sheep, protect the sheep, strengthen the sheep, recover the lost sheep, guide the sheep, keep the flock together. This list sounds a lot like Jesus. This is also how David was a shepherd king for Israel. One of the main reasons that David is considered Israel’s greatest king ever is because under his leadership Israel prospered and lived in security and peace. Life was good for the sheep under David’s care.

How awesome would it be if all leaders led this way? What would life be like if peace and safety and security extended to all people? Today may we pray for our current leaders and for our future leaders – local, state, national, and world – to model their leadership after the shepherd king. Pray for our leaders. Amen.


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Day by Day

Reading: 2 Corinthians 4:13 to 5:1

Verse Fourteen: “We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us”.

Our passage today begins with Paul quoting from Psalm 116 – a great Psalm that praises God’s presence with and care for us. This Psalm is just one of many, many examples of God’s faithfulness to humanity. It is with confidence that Paul writes, “We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us”. We too trust and live into God’s presence in our lives and into the love and compassion that find witness to in the scriptures and that we experience with our own lives.

The promise of eternal life that we read of in verse seventeen is a wonderful promise. At times, it brings us comfort and strength. At times, this promise brings great hope. While all of this is true and the promise remains for a who have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, we live now in the present. Paul goes on to write of the grace that is causing joy to overflow. This is what we experience from the promise in our day to day lives. We receive strength in the trial, comfort in the pain, course for the journey, redemption after the stumbles, forgiveness to share with others. All of these and more are the ways we experience God’s living presence with us in the daily walk of life. Paul speaks of this, writing, “Therefore we do not lose heart”. God is always with us. We do not lose heart.

The last section in today’s passage does remind us of our mortality. Paul concedes that “outwardly we are wasting away” and we are. But we also know the second half of the sentence to be true: “yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day”. Each and every day God is with us, renewing us. Therefore we fix our eyes on the unseen, on Jesus. He is the eternal. He is our hope. He is our salvation. His living Spirit is with us all the time. Jesus is our all in all. Thanks be to God for His love revealed to us in and through the life of Jesus, the model of faith that we follow. Each day may He renew our body, mind, and spirit so that we can faithfully walk in God’s abiding presence. Amen.


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Saved

Reading: John 3: 16-17

Verse Seventeen: “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him”.

Not to condemn but to save. Not to seal our fate but to show us the way, the truth, and the life. Not to stand far above us in judgment but to live within us as friend. Not to be unknown but to be fully known. “For God so loved the world…”. He took on flesh, lived among us, was crucified and rose so that His Spirit could continue to live on in each of us.

God’s purpose in Jesus is to make His love known more completely. As we journey through life, our faith changes and grows. We become more and more who God created us to be in Jesus Christ. In doing so, God takes all of us – who we are and what we have experienced – and molds and remolds us day by day, reshaping us into who He wants us to be. Through God’s great transforming power we are made into a new creation so that we can be change agents in other people’s lives. God created us to use us for the transformation of others and of the world.

How will that look today and tomorrow and the next day? How will God take each of us and use us to build the kingdom here on earth? How will God use us to share the good news of salvation and hope that is offered through a relationship with God’s Son, Jesus Christ? All of this is done through us and through our story. The change that God has wrought in us is the change that He can work in others. If we share our story with others, it opens the door for God to go to work in their lives as well.

Not to condemn but to save. Not to hate but to love. Not to separate but to draw together. May we be Jesus’ light and love in the world today and every day, helping others to be saved. Amen.


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Walk the Path in Trust

Reading: Romans 8: 12-14

Verse Fourteen: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons [and daughters] of God”.

Paul writes of the choice we have in life: follow the sinful nature and die or follow the Spirit of God and live. It sounds simple. It sounds black and white. It sounds like either/or. In reality, it is difficult, it is grey, it is both/and. This battle of good and evil is a perpetual battle. But take hope, Jesus has overcome the world.

If you were to find the straighest, longest road in your town or city and were to attempt to drive right down the middle, you would ultimately fail. You see the path before you and you may begin exactly in the middle, but soon enough you steer a little to the left and a bit later a little to the right. You might even cross over the line on the side and hit those little vrrp-vrrp strips that remind you that you are drifting.

Such is our walk of faith. We can see the path set out before us by Jesus. We can see that the way is hard and narrow. Our intent is to fully walk right down the middle – right in Jesus’ footsteps. But at times we find His stride outpaces ours or that His footprints are just too big for us in that moment. Other times we are looking around and our focus drifts to other things. We look back to the narrow way and it is over there. Whether we fall behind or can’t quite bring ourselves to what the Spirit is calling us to or whether we get off track, when we look back to the path there is Jesus, holding out His hand, beckoning us back.

If you are seeking the path, Jesus calls out, saying, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden”. If you are trying to walk the path, but the road is hard, take hope. You do not walk alone, trust in the Holy Spirit. From experience, it does get easier but it never becomess easy. But with God all things are possible. Trust in the Lord, seek to walk in His ways, and allow the Holy Spirit to lead. You will come to walk in God’s love and grace and peace. May it be so today. Amen.