Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief.
TO PONDER
Psalm 31 was written by David. Although we know a lot of details of David’s life and the number of times his life was in danger, we don’t know if this psalm relates to any particular episode in David’s life. The psalm can be divided into three parts. At the beginning, David confidently asks for God’s help in dealing with the issues he is facing. He doesn’t beg or plead with God, and he doesn’t argue that he deserves anything from God. His requests to God for help are based on God’s character – God’s goodness, God’s love, God’s faithfulness.
In the middle of the psalm (including our referenced verse), we learn of the anguish and suffering that David is experiencing. David feels weak, helpless, alone and in fear for his life.
Then David boldly declares his trust in God and commits himself into God’s care, confident that God would look after him and bring him safely through this time of trial. David ends in praise to God for His love and faithfulness.
We often struggle with why God allows bad things to happen in this world, especially to people who have committed their lives to following Jesus, the Son of God. In trying to understand, I like to think of a sail cloth shelter over a children’s playground. In strong wind, that sail cloth needs to be anchored well to solid foundations in the ground or it will be blown away. Similarly, we need some strong anchors to cling to when we are buffeted by adversities in life. The first anchor is the promise of God’s love for us, unconditionally. No matter how we think we have failed to live the life we think God expects of us, He still loves us deeply. And this brings us to the second anchor. Everything that God allows to happen in our lives He is using to draw us into a closer relationship with Him.
Sometimes the events in our lives are used by God to help us understand that we actually cannot cope by our own abilities, that we don’t have all the answers, or the direction we are trying to go in life is not the direction that God knows is good for us. What God is looking for in us is our trust in is love and purpose for us and to willing follow where He wants to take us. And that includes the amazing relationship He wants to have with us as we get involved in His family business.
It's really, really hard when we are struggling to cope with what is happening to us, racking our brains for ideas of how to escape from the mess we are enveloped in, to stop struggling and hand it all over to God, thank Him for His love and listen to His encouragement and guidance for the way forward. One obvious way to help is grab your bible, turn to the psalms and read how the psalmists over and over again, struggled with life but found that encouragement and comfort that God wants to give us.
Prayer: Loving Heavenly Father, thank You that I am precious to You and Your love to me is unconditional. Thank You that no matter what is happening in my life, You are beside me, to guide me, teach me and grow me into living as Your beloved child, a precious member of Your family. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier LifeWay, Epping
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
TO PONDER:
Why isn’t God obvious? What doesn’t God just prove himself and just appear to me or do an amazing miracle to prove his existence?
These are some of the things that have been said to me in the past and I get them, kind of.
In 1 Corinthians 1:22-23 Paul says that some people ask God to prove himself with signs (miracles) and others want God to intellectually convince them into believing in him, Paul then gives his argument to those people, “Christ was crucified”!
See if God was obvious, if he “proved” himself beyond doubt, if he appeared in front of you in his fullness, his complete “glory”, we would follow God for the wrong reasons.
In today’s verses Paul is writing to the Colossian church, a new church made up of both types of the above people and he says to them that the unobvious/invisible God was made visible through Jesus, through God coming to earth, as one of us.
The creator of everything, the reason for everything joined creation as one of his own creations to show us the creator.
To discover God we need to look towards Jesus to see an image of the invisible, and then follow him.
PRAYER:
Almighty Creator God, I thank you for your obviousness, for allowing me to seek you, to answer your loving call to follow, to discover more of you everyday. Amen.
Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
TO PONDER:
I remember as a small child laying in the sun on a summer day, staring into the sky, identifying various objects created by the shape of the clouds and suddenly becoming overwhelmed by the immensity of the sky as I wondered how I didn’t fall off into space. I had to go inside to escape the thoughts.
Today’s verse is probably my favourite verse, or at least in the top five verses I obsess over.
In staring into creation we can see God’s divine nature, we can experience God.
Creation was an act of God’s grace, an incredible, overwhelming, extravagant, act of his love and grace. God didn’t need the earth, God didn’t need the cosmos, and God definitely didn’t need mankind to meet a deep deficiency. The beauty of the incomprehensible trinity is that God was never lonely, never needy, always love.
Ephesians 1:3-6 tells us that before there was a before, before time existed, before creation, He had already chosen us to share in his unreasonable hospitality, his unfathomable love, his uncountable blessings.
The fine-tuning phenomenon of the cosmos points to a creator, the universe was specifically designed to support life to an infinite degree, if one of the constants of the universe was even slightly askew life, especially conscious life would not exist but God’s divine nature is extravagantly displayed within the beauty of creation.
The colours, the grandeur, the music of nature all were a display of God’s loving amazing grace.
PRAYER:
Creator God, I thank you for the act of your amazing grace displayed in your creation, creation which was finely tuned for me, finely tuned so I could share in all of your blessing. Amen.
Today's devotion is written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
TO PONDER:
I am pretty confident that most people have heard of the term “Confirmation Bias” but maybe I am wrong, that could just be my confirmation bias peaking through…
Well, what about “False Consensus Effect,” or “Social Proximity Effect,” or “Information Filtering,” or what about “Group Identity”? All of these terms give an explanation into how most of us arrive at our belief structures.
So basically, we tend to believe what the people we hang out with believe. I know, you have come to your beliefs through deep thought, study, exploration, and struggle through doubts. But most people don’t really “believe” what they believe, they borrow others belief structure.
Today’s verse says we have to believe God exists and we have to earnestly seek him. The Greek words used here translated to “faith” and “believe” are the noun “pistis” and the verb of the same word “pisteuō” which carry more than just intellectual, or passive “belief,” the word signifies confidence, trust, reliance on, adherence to someone or something with the implication of actions towards that trust.
All of the above is to build into the crux, the essence of the required (strong word for a Lutheran) belief needed; to “earnestly seek,” not a passive acceptance, not a borrowed thought from a friend but an active trust, an earnest reliance in God, a belief structure that has personal cost, refined through struggle, inspired by grace.
PRAYER:
Almighty God, I repent for my lack of faith, for my passive belief, for not trusting you with my all. I thank you for your grace shown in my weakness, when my faith is passive and weak your love for me holds strong drawing me deeper into your loving embrace. Amen.
Today’s devotion is written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside
From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. (NLT)
TO PONDER:
A few years ago I wanted to “challenge my faith”, so I set out to read some of the most popular books written by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two of “The Four Horsemen of New Atheism”, and spoiler alert, I was VERY disappointed.
“God is not Great” by Christopher Hitchens left me even more sure of my faith. And then I moved onto “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins and literally threw my hands in the air with, what I considered to be, a very shallow set of beliefs (or lack of belief).
Today’s verses are from Paul’s debate in the Areopagus with some of the leaders of the city of Athens where he challenges their many religions and introduces them to “the Unknown God”, the God who “gives life and breath to everything”.
He argues that their many beliefs/religions are a response to this Unknown God’s immediacy to themselves and the rest of humanity.
Paul then nails his thesis of God’s proximity to the door with the statement of God’s proof, raising Jesus from the dead.
The shallow faith of the man-made gods in Athens and “New Atheism” are further proof of the existent of the “Unknown God”, the God in human flesh spoken of by Paul. The shallowness of those faiths can’t explain the meaning and purpose of life which can only be filled by the Unknown God being known in Jesus and is the only one who can explain why.
PRAYER:
Almighty God, I thank you for never being far from me and your proof of Jesus who was born, lived amongst us, died on the cross to restore your relationship with humanity, and was resurrected as proof our eternity with you. Amen.
The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. (NLT)
TO PONDER:
Recently, if you got up in the middle of the night, we got to experience the moon turning red as it was eclipsed by the earth. I was one of the sleepless ones who got to experience the shadow of the earth moving across the brightness of the moons surface (and have the photos to prove it).
While I understand the science behind the phenomenon of a “Blood-Moon” and was not filled with a foreboding as the glow of the full moon, slowly masked in shadow until it was covered in blood, I still stood in awe and amazement (enough to risk waking my sleeping wife to share in the experience).
In Sunday’s post I talked about the fine-tuning phenomenon of the cosmos and how that, in my opinion, points to a designer, a creator.
And the Blood-Moon of September 7th proclaimed God’s glory, displaying his craftsmanship, especially if you know the science behind a blood red moon.
PRAYER:
Heavenly Father, As I stare upon your craftsmanship, as I wonder in your creation I am in awe of who you are realising all of these amazing phenomena are tiny a glimpses into your glory. Amen.
Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. (MSG)
TO PONDER:
Have you ever asked a question related to the hiddenness of God, wondered why God was not obvious, or even cried out in desperation “Where are you God?”
Well today’s verse doesn’t help with those questions, in fact the verse can, in a sense, rub salt into the times where God’s hiddenness is tangible, biting, hopeless.
Jesus himself cried out in despair towards that same hiddenness of the Father when he uttered “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?) while he hung dying on the cross.
And that can be the point of this verse, God himself became “flesh and blood,” leaving eternity to walk amongst us, experiencing the full gamut of human emotion, from joy to betrayal, from feasting to hunger, from love to heartache, from deep communion with the Father to experiencing the seemingly hiddenness of the one who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Jesus, God in the flesh became our neighbour to walk beside us in those times of hiddenness, in those times when we cry out “Jesus where are you?” His generous love is there with us.
God himself, took the impossible step to restore relationship with Deity and humanity in the struggle of hiddenness when He walked in the garden crying out to humanity “where are you?” (Genesis 3:9).
PRAYER:
Almighty God, I thank you for moving into the neighborhood, becoming flesh and blood to restore the relationship between you and me. Amen.
Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside.
For in him [Jesus Christ] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
TO PONDER
Scripture is also full of passages like this. Verses that tell us we were created by God and for God, that we belong to him, that we are his people, his children, and he is our God.
I know it seems obvious, but I also know that I need reminding of this on almost a daily basis, so the constant reminders, while sometimes irritating, are also kind of necessary.
Have a look at the world today, and you will likely see people busy living life as if their life is theirs to do with as they wish. That, after all is what our Western, hyper-individual, culture and world view seems to be promoting. Phrases like, "You do you" or "Live your best life" reinforce the idea that the purpose of life is for you to do what you want, for you to be happy all the time.
Many theologians and philosophers have speculated that service and worship is a natural human state, that we are naturally wired to worship and serve something. The only choice we actually have then is what we choose to worship and serve. Many people seem to be choosing to worship at the alter of self and it's not having a great result. I remember even within my own fairly short lifetime when people who were self absorbed or overly self focussed were not looked on with much favour or good will in their communities. These days they are the kings and queens of social media empires and all the world adores them.
Well, while that might have changed, the ultimate reality has not, we still have been made by God and for God. If you have to worship something, why not the God of all creation who created you for relationship with himself.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, thank you that all things in heaven and on earth are ultimately yours to command and control. Please help me to trust you more deeply and to walk in your ways. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
TO PONDER
This verse reminds me of the one we heard on Sunday from 1 Peter 2:4-10. It said, "as you come to Him, Jesus Christ, the living stone..."
All this talk of identity and purpose all begins only when we are 'in Christ'. The image of the vine, or a fruit tree of any kind, is a helpful picture for us.
The purpose of any fruit bearing plant is to produce fruit. But we all know that a branch, broken or cut from the tree or vine is not going to be producing anything unless someone does some fancy horticulture and grafts the branch back into the life of the tree or vine.
Likewise, our life's purpose is to produce fruit for the Kingdom of God. If we remain 'in Christ' connected to the vine then he bears that fruit in us, all we need to do is remain in him. The moment our connection to Jesus gets tenuous, so does our fruit production. Suddenly it's not just something that God works in us through his Son, it becomes something we have to work at ourselves and it becomes an effort and a burden and ultimately it doesn't work anyway because we have been cut off from the source of all the fruit bearing energy.
If you are going to put your effort or energy into anything, don't make it bearing fruit. Make it remaining in Jesus...the rest will take care of itself.
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, please help me to remember that the most important thing I can do is stay connected to you and to remember that my life is in you. The fruit of my life is not my wealth or the inheritance I leave behind me, but rather the other people who have come to know you because they have seen you alive in me and recognised that my life was found in you. Help that reality to be increasingly obvious in my life. Amen
Today's devotion written by Mathew von Stanke, LifeWay Newcastle