For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Parents discipline your children. Otherwise you risk them facing an early death as a result of foolish behavior. If that happens, you will be responsible.
Sooner or later, a person who does not control their temper will have to face the consequences of allowing their anger to control their actions. As long as someone bails them out, they will continue to repeat the same mistake.
I hope this psalm strikes home with my readers. It tells us what sort of characteristics we need to have if we want to enter into God’s presence, and I pray that you want to enter into God’s presence. Here is the list (although the psalm is pretty clear):
- Lead a blameless life
- Do what is right
- Sincerely speak the truth
- Refuse to gossip
- Refuse to harm their neighbors (and remember who Jesus says is our neighbor)
- Refuse to speak evil of their friends (I suspect that Jesus would tell us something similar about who are friends are)
- Despise flagrant sinners
- Honor those who fear the Lord
- Keep their promises, even when it hurts
- Lend money to the poor without interest
- Cannot be bribed to lie about the innocent>/li>
That is quite a list. I am not sure I can claim to successfully meet all of those, but I am seeking to do so. I wish for the Holy Spirit to transform me into someone who lives up to that standard (and it is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that I would be able to do so).
Most people would not be willing to die for someone else, although a few would be willing to die for a good person, or someone they loved (husband, wife, parent, child, sibling). Jesus, however, died for us when we were sinners, enemies of God. Jesus did this in order to demonstrate that the enmity between God and us was on our side, not God’s. God was willing to pay any price to restore a relationship with us. As a result of Adam’s sin, sin was given entry into our lives and ruled over us. Through Christ, God demonstrated that He was willing to break sin’s power over us and bring us back into friendship with Him. Sin, which entered the world through Adam, brought death into the world. God’s grace, which was brought into the world through Jesus, replaces that death with life for those who are willing to believe.
In his advice to his son Solomon, King David told Solomon something all of us need to remember. If we seek God, we will find Him. This is true of each and every person, no matter where on earth they live, who their parents are, or what they have been taught about God. If they truly seek God, they will find Him. God will direct them. He will send people, events, and things into their lives which will show them the way to Him. However, David accompanies this with a warning. If we reject the guidance which God gives us, if we learn something about God and then reject that knowledge, if we forsake what God has taught us, God will in turn reject us.