I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 143-150.

    Often times we pray that God will teach us His will. That is a good thing to pray, but in today’s psalms there is an even better prayer: teach me to DO your will. There is a wide chasm between merely knowing God’s will and doing God’s will. I know that unless God’s Spirit actively maneuvers me to do God’s will, I will fail to do so. So, I pray that God will teach me to do His will. Teaching involves both positive and negative reinforcement. None of us desire negative reinforcement, but when we fail to face negative consequences for doing wrong we will continue to do so. As part of communicating God’s saving grace we must communicate both the negative consequences of failing to do His will and the positive consequences of following it. We, as human beings, have a tendency to focus on the importance of only one. God never forgets that, as teaching tools, positive reinforcement without negative reinforcement and negative reinforcement without positive reinforcement has limited impact.

    One part of God’s will is for each generation to tell the next the story of God’s love. We have many stories of God’s power and love which we need to tell the next generation. However, these stories are all part of one story and we must make sure to both tell the multiple stories and how they fit together into one story. The message of good news which God has given us to convey can only be transmitted by inviting people into the community of faith and telling them the stories. Part of the story we have to tell is that God is good to everyone. Despite God’s wonderful majesty and our transient nature, God cares for each and everyone of us. Do not think that God is overwhelmed by the huge number of human beings. You will not, cannot, get lost in the crowd to God. He knows each individual star as unique from the rest and He knows each individual human being as unique from the rest. No one is just a number to God and we should seek to know and treat each individual we meet with similar caring and love.