Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love;
teach me your statutes!”
– Psalm 119:64

The earth is indeed full of the evidence of God’s steadfast love for all creatures made in His image! If we take off the blinders of our present lived experience and digital distraction it gets easier to see. We can see the beauty of God’s creation: mountains, oceans, lakes, trees, flowers, animals, people. We see the intricacy of how all life weaves together in the ecosystems of the world. We see the elegance of God’s laws of nature that make it possible to live, thrive, build, and explore. We see the countless ways everything works together “just right” to sustain life. God brings rain upon believer and unbeliever alike. He gives everyone the ability to learn, study, experiment, and invent. God’s steadfast love is present and active everywhere, praise Him for that!

When you catch a glimpse of that steadfast love in the world around you, does it make you reach for your Bible? It should. The psalmist sees God’s ever-present and unshakable love throughout creation and wants to know the Creator better! Seeing God’s love, he wants to know of God’s word. We too should long to know our Creator better as we wonder at His creation. When our breath is taken away by God’s handiwork, let us commit to not only praise God in the moment, but to dig deeper into His love letter to us, the Bible.

It’s through daily study of the Bible, not merely appreciation of nature, that we learn so much more about God. Yes, creation can reveal some things about our wondrous God, but there’s much it can’t. The Bible is God’s more full revelation of Himself and it points us to His greatest revelation of Himself, which is Jesus Christ. Don’t stop with praising God for His creation. Praise Him, then study Him by reading your Bible every day.

“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” – Ephesians 4:1-3

As Christians, we’ll never actually be worthy of the amazing grace God has shown us in forgiving our sins, adopting us as His children, and granting us eternal life. That’s what makes it grace — we’re never able to earn it or deserve it.

However, we’re called to live every moment of every day in a way that reflects that grace and that is, to the best of our Spirit-filled ability, worthy of all God has done for us in Jesus Christ. That doesn’t necessarily look the way you might imagine it. A life worthy of your calling in Christ doesn’t necessarily look like a life of glorious triumphs and visible victories for Jesus. It doesn’t necessarily look like larger-than-life accomplishments, earthly fame, or numerous followers.

Daily life that’s worthy of your suffering, humble, crucified Savior looks like Him. Your habit and pattern of life, love, and interaction with a broken and hurting world needs to look like humility. It should look like deflecting praise and attention to Jesus, not yourself. It should look like gentleness. Not weakness or yielding to falsehood, but gentleness in all things, including important struggles for the Lord. It should look like patience with the failings and weaknesses of others, just as Jesus is patient with your failings and weaknesses. It should look like laboring with and supporting other believers who are hard to work with, support, or love because Jesus does that with you. It should look like a desperate desire to keep the church unified rather than dividing it to accomplish your goals and priorities.

Such a way of life is hard, very hard because of our cultural upbringing. It goes against our nature, but that’s the point. As Christians we should never be operating in our nature. We’re called to operate in the nature of Christ Who lives in us! Commit and re-commit to live every moment of your life in a manner worthy of your glorious calling!

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” – Ephesians 3:20

If you believe in Jesus, if He’s your Lord, then you have access to far greater power than you can begin to imagine! Unfortunately, as humans we tend to think far too little of God. That doesn’t just refer to our tendency to just remember God and His power when faced with a problem we can’t handle. More significantly, this means that when we do think about God, we tend to imagine Him as a more powerful version of us. That is far, far, far too small!

God is infinitely greater, wiser, and more capable than we are. He is able to do more than we can ask or imagine. He operates in ways we can’t begin to understand. This makes it all the more extraordinary if we stop to contemplate His Spirit at work within each believer in Jesus! That infinite power resides within us! God is able to do far more and far greater than we think when we come to Him in prayer.

We need to stop asking God for specific solutions and start asking for His solution. We think too little of God when we go to Him in prayer from a self-centered, “I’ve got this all figured out” perspective. It isn’t wrong to ask for things we want, but it often thinks too little of God’s power. The all-good, all-wise, all-powerful, ever-present God of the Universe doesn’t just hear our prayers and fill us with His Spirit to serve as some sort of ATM in the sky or cosmic Santa Claus giving us whatever we want. That is thinking far, far too little of God!

God’s power is available for us to glorify Him. To honor Him. To transform us radically as we make disciples of Jesus. When we learn to pray in His will, for His Kingdom, for His purposes, then our understanding of God and His infinite power at work within us begins to expand. Praying in God’s will rather than merely for our momentary desires opens us up to witness the breathtaking, unlimited power of God in our lives and in our world. Christian, think far more and greater about God!

matT516:$

“When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ… This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” – Ephesians 3:4,6

The Apostle Paul writes often of this mystery, but his point isn’t that it’s still a mystery. Rather, he’s stating that what was once hidden from view is now quite clear. The no-longer-mysterious mystery is this: everyone is invited into God’s family through faith in Jesus Christ!

The invitation to accept Christ and join God’s family is extended to people of every people group, race, ethnicity, nationality, and language. As they trust in Him, Jesus Christ welcomes in believers from every socio-economic class, religious background, and cultural tradition. Revelation paints a picture of what our glorious mosaic of worship together looks like in Heaven!

In Christ, divisions of ethnicity and religious heritage have been overcome. There are no second-class citizens of heaven! It’s not that Christians don’t have a past or should deny their heritage. They certainly don’t need to do that. The good news is that what unites us in Jesus Christ is greater than what the world would use to define and divide us. Everyone who is in Christ is a member of the same body. We enjoy the same promises of Christ. We’re equally adopted and loved by God. We are one family, heirs to the glorious, eternal inheritance that awaits us in God’s presence.

“Make me understand the way of your precepts,
and I will meditate on your wondrous works.”
– Psalm 119:27

The more we read God’s Word, the Bible, for ourselves, the better we understand it. The more we invest in learning to understand the Bible, the better we appreciate its elegance, truth, and perfection. The more we understand God’s Word, the easier it is to worship and praise God for in it we see His beauty, wisdom, kindness, mercy, grace, justice, holiness, righteousness, power, and goodness unfold from beginning to end across all of time.

The more we meditate on God, praise God, and worship God, the more we want to understand the elegance and beauty of God’s Word. There’s a beautiful, beneficial spiral of spiritual growth between our reading and studying of the Bible and our love, devotion, and worship of God. Our personal reading and study of the Bible fuels our worship and our worship fuels our hunger for God’s Word.

It can be hard work to begin reading the Bible for yourself. It can feel intimidating. Read it anyway. Find a daily reading plan and start reading part of the Bible every single day. If you’re a Christian, you already have the most important thing you need to understand the Bible – the Holy Spirit. The more you read and study, the easier it will become to read and understand. The more times you read the Bible, the more it will make sense. As you read and study, your awe and love for God will grow. As your awe and love for God grows, you will more eagerly read and study. Don’t delay – read the Bible today!