For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
No matter if we are rich or poor, God is our Creator. None of us can claim to have made ourselves, we are what God made us to be. If we are rich, let us use our riches to help those who are not. If we are poor, let us remember that the rich are no less God’s creatures than we.
It is not cowardice, but wisdom, to take steps to mitigate risks. Only fools ignore the dangers and continue without altering their path. They will suffer the consequences.
Those who fear the Lord are humble because they recognize that God is the source of all that is good.
Without God’s help our sins will overwhelm us. We need God’s grace and power to turn aside from our sins. However, those who seek God will rejoice and be glad as His power allows them to overcome sin and live righteously. If we yield to God’s power, those who wish to see us fail will be shamed.
We will experience troubles and difficulties as we seek to follow God’s will. If we suffer for following Christ, suffering some of the same pain which He experienced, we will also experience the comfort and joy which He experienced. The troubles we experience, and the comfort God provides us from those troubles, allow us to comfort others who experience troubles. There will be times when the difficulties we face are greater than we can bear. When that happens we must turn our lives and troubles over to God, becoming fully dependent on Him. God will deliver us from troubles which are beyond our ability to cope, showing us that the tasks He sets before us can only be accomplished through His power, not by our own human strength.
Job’s friends became so caught up in convincing him that his suffering was a result of his sins that they forgot that the purpose of their visit was to bring him comfort. This is all too often a human failing. We become more interested in winning the argument than accomplishing the purpose that led us to make our original point. Let us keep our eye on the prize and remember that God will offer comfort in times of trouble to anyone who turns to Him. Let us do likewise.