I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or my understanding of them, please post them.
When David sees that he has settled into his palace and is no longer threatened by enemies, he desires to build a Temple to God. God tells David, through the prophet Nathan, that He will establish David’s descendants on the throne, but that David is not to build a Temple. God further tells David that his son will build God a Temple. When David hears this promise from God, he prays a prayer of thanks and praise to God. Now that David knows that he will not be building a temple to God, he sets out to conquer all of the surrounding peoples and expand his kingdom.
In David’s prayer of thanks he says, “How great you are, O Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you. We have never even heard of another God like you!” I would echo that, there is no other god like our God. There are those who look at other religions and say that all religions teach the same things, but this is not true. I will not go into it now, but I have looked at other religions and they teach something different than Christianity. Christianity teaches that each person is to be valued and that we should go out and teach them about God so that they may choose to become one of the people of God.
Jesus tells His disciples that those who love Him will obey His commands. He also tells them that the Father will send them the Holy Spirit to teach them what they need to know and remind them of what Jesus said to them. Jesus tells His disciples that the world cannot receive the Holy Spirit because it is not looking for Him and does not recognize Him. This is an important point. In order for someone to become saved they must be looking for God. Jesus gives the disciples, and us, his peace and tells us not to be troubled or afraid. As we love God more, we will strive harder to obey His commands. AS we strive harder to obey His commands, we will come to love Him more. And in all of this, He will send His Holy Spirit to live in us to help us understand what His commands are and to strengthen us in following them.
I started this Bible study blog because I have long felt a need to improve my daily devotions. Actually, I have felt a need for a daily devotion. I had tried daily Bible reading, but when I just read the Bible after a few days, it stopped actually meaning anything. Some time back I had realized that when I read a passage and wrote something about it that others would see the passage carried much more meaning for me. So, I finally started this blog. Now that I have started this blog and am getting something out of my scripture reading, I am feeling led to memorize more scripture and improve my prayer life. In particular, the various stanzas of this psalm that I am reading each day right now push me to start memorizing scripture again.
Over the last few days I have been especially touched by the last verse in each stanza of the daily reading that is coming from this psalm. However today, I find that the first verse of today’s first stanza and the last verse of the second stanza are the one’s that I wish to be my prayer today.
I will keep them to the end.”
“I honor and love your commands.
I meditate on your decrees.”
The second of those is one that I do not do enough of, but I am going to try and do so going forward. The psalm I have been working through over the last several days has reminded me of how much blessing there is from memorizing scripture, a blessing that I now crave.
When we fear the Lord we learn wisdom in part because we realize how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things and how far we fall short of God’s desire for us. As we accept this realization we have no choice but to be humble because we know that no matter how successful we are, we are nothing compared to God, or even to what He intended us to be. Those who lack humility are not honored because they view all praise as their just due and all criticism as unjust. In addition, those with no humility at all attempt things that are beyond their ability to accomplish and reject assistance, leading them to fail. And since they lack humility, they blame their failure on others and thus do not learn from their failure. Those who are humble recognize their need for help to do anything of worth and thus are generally successful.