For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
The first two proverbs fit together. Those who will not listen to advice will usually get angry with those who try to warn them about the weakness in their plan. However, the thing to do with these proverbs is to use them as a mirror for ourselves. Do I listen to others when I make plans? Do I incorporate what they say into my plans? Do I get angry when people insult me?
As I read and thought about this, I realized a place where I struggle dealing with this. When people suggest I attempt to solve a problem using something I already tried, I have a tendency to feel insulted and get angry. The wise person stays calm in such a situation. I am working on recognizing that people often give such advice knowing that I probably know to try it, but may have forgotten. Let us all work on staying calm when we think someone is insulting us.
I like this psalm, but I struggled with finding something to say about it. Until I looked at verses 9 and 10 again. God has stood up and judged those who do evil. He has and will continue to rescue the oppressed on this earth. Those who defy God enhance His glory and He uses their defiance as a weapon to gain His victory. Those who defy God are serving Him just as much as those who submit to His will (the difference being that those who choose to do His will are rewarded, while those who attempt to resist it suffer).
Jesus taught us how to pray. That teaching was a two part lesson (there I am with the two parts again). First He gives us a model prayer:
Father, may your name be kept holy.
God has adopted us as His children and we should look to Him as a loving, caring father. In addition, Jesus instructs us to pray that our actions show that God’s name is worthy of complete devotion. And that we pray that everyone learn to be completely devoted to God’s name. It is here that we pray for our wants. We should strive to want those things which will allow us to show that God’s name is worthy of complete devotion.
May your Kingdom come.
Our prayers should include the desire that the entire earth and everyone on it knowingly submit to God’s sovereignty (I need to do a blog entry sometime one my understanding of the Kingdom of God…not because I am so insightful, but because I need to work through comprehensively what I believe about the Kingdom of God). It is here that we pray for others, part of the coming of God’s Kingdom is others coming to Him and having their needs met.
Give us each day the food we need,
Here Jesus explains what sort of things for which it is appropriate for us to ask. We are to ask God to supply our needs, not our wants
and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
We need to recognize that we are sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. And we need to recognize that God has even more right to hold our sins against us as we do to hold others accountable for the harm they have done us. God is only willing to forgive us if we are willing to forgive others. Actually, we are only able to accept God’s forgiveness if we are able to forgive those who have sinned against us (or who we perceive to have sinned against us).
And don’t let us yield to temptation.
And finally we pray that God give us the strength to resist temptation while guiding us to actions which will keep us far from it.
Having given us an example of what our prayers should look like Jesus explains the importance of patience and persistance. Note that this prayer is short and does not spend any time telling God what He has promised us, nor does it repeat itself(I understand that sometimes when we pray we repeat ourselves in order to put our thoughts in order. That is different from saying the same thing a different way on purpose. We do not need to repeat ourselves for clarity, God understand what we mean). If we remember that part of the point of prayer is to listen to God and to allow Him to show us the changes He is making in us, the emphasis on patience and persistence becomes clear.
It takes time for us to accept the changes which God is making in us, as well as time for those changes to take hold. We will not be prepared to receive what we are asking God for if we are not patient. Further, we will not undergo the transformation God has in mind for us if we are not persistent. There is one more point about the importance of persistence and patience in praying for things from God. As we persistently and patiently pray for things, God will reveal to us how our true desires will be better fulfilled with something else (maybe different in a large way from what we started out praying for, or perhaps only different in a minor way). Let us learn to pray following the model Jesus gave us, and let us learn to be persistent in our prayers.
The lesson from the first fruits offering is that we should give of our resources to God’s service before we pay our bills or use them to meet our needs. I will not condemn those who have so little that they have come to the conclusion they have none to spare for God’s ministry. I have been in that situation. I think I was wrong and that God would have provided for my needs, more importantly, I suspect that on at least one occasion I was in that situation because I had chosen to spend money on wants that should have gone to needs. Beyond that, we should put aside some of our resources to meet the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves.
The Israelites are God’s chosen people and if they follow His commands to them, He will set them above all other nations. However, any people who serve God and strive to follow His commands will find themselves prospering.