For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Strength and power applied without wisdom and knowledge will fail. Seek advice before entering into the contest. You will not prevail unless you weigh the advice from many advisers.

    Let us follow the psalmist’s example. When we are overwhelmed by the troubles of this life and are sinking fast, let us continue to cry out to God. Even when I am about to drown in my troubles I will not lose faith in God. Even then I will remain faithful trusting Him to rescue me.

    Paul warns us against living our lives by the standards of those who have closed their minds to God and hardened their hearts against Him. They live their lives for lustful pleasure and give themselves over to all sorts of impurities. Let us put off our old selves with their deceitful desires, desires which promise more pleasure than they deliver. Instead, let us be made new in our minds and our attitudes so that we may become like Christ. Every time I hear or say what I just wrote above the question comes to me, “But how do I do that?”
    Fortunately, Paul offers an answer to that question as well. If we follow his answer with discipline it will allow us to be transformed. Step one, resolve to avoid falsehood as an easy out and only speak truth to our neighbors (remembering what Jesus told us about who are neighbor is). Step two, control our anger, do not allow our anger to cause us to sin. No matter how justified our anger, it does not justify doing that which is wrong. One part of that is letting our anger go and move on. We need to let our anger go at the end of the day, if not sooner. The longer we hold onto our anger, no matter how justified, the more likely we are to sin because of its influence on our thinking. Holding onto our anger gives the devil a foothold to influence our actions, let us not yield him any advantages.
    Step three, if we have been living by stealing from others (and I think he means that in the most expansive meaning of “stealing”), let us stop doing so and start doing something useful so that we have excess to give to those in need. Step four, stop using foul and abusive language. Instead let us choose our words carefully so that they are helpful and encourage everyone who hears them to improve themselves.
    The final step is twofold. Let go of bitterness and anger (which really goes back to step two), and all other evil behavior. Instead, let us be kind and tenderhearted, forgiving those who have sinned against us. Christ forgave us for our sins, we cannot be like Him unless we are willing to forgive those we believe have sinned against us. We cannot claim to have forgiven someone if we remain bitter and angry about what they have done.

    God has declared that when the time is right, He will make His salvation known to us. He will lift people up and draw them to Him from far away lands. I read this as both a promise to the Church and to the people of Israel. In this passage, Isaiah predicts the coming of Christ as God’s servant, but he also predicts the return of the people of Israel to the land God promised Abraham’s descendants. When I read this part:

See, I will give a signal to the godless nations.
They will carry your little sons back to you in their arms;
they will bring your daughters on their shoulders.

It made me think of when the modern state of Israel was created following WWII. Countries from all over the world helped Jews go to the newly established state of Israel.
    At the end of the passage there is this:

Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys his servant?
If you are walking in darkness,
without a ray of light,
trust in the Lord
and rely on your God.

Even if we cannot see the way in front of us, we can rely on God and He will direct us. It is better to be in darkness and trust in God than to make our own false light and rely on ourselves.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    It takes wisdom to build a place to call home. It is by carefully following our knowledge of God’s will that we fill it with the things we will treasure long into the future.

    Our God is awesome in His power. He will display His power and cause all nations to bring tributes of praise to Him. People and nations may rebel against God, but He will smash His enemies and force them to submit to His will. God will save those people who submit to His will and make them His own. He give them power and strength to carry out His will.

    Paul calls on us to work towards unity in Christ, being bound together in peace. He does make it clear that this will not always be possible. I have noticed that when controversy stirs and divides the Church it is often those who are causing the division who cry the loudest about maintaining unity. What they forget is that there is only one body and one Spirit, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father over us all. If we fail to be true to the will of that one God, we cannot have unity.
    Paul goes on to tell us that Christ gave the Church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work in order to build up the body of Christ. Those five categories of people are to continue their work (and God will continue to provide us with more of them) until we all come to unity in faith and knowledge of Christ. And here Paul makes the comment that should be devastating for those who cry unity while causing division. We will achieve such unity when we are no longer tossed and blown by every new teaching that comes along. True unity will arrive when the people of the Church are not fooled by lies cleverly crafted to sound like truth. Instead we will speak the truth in love and thus grow to truly become the adult body of Christ. The truth is that while God will forgive our sins and loves us despite our sins, those sins bring harm to us and our fellow man. It is not love to tell people that sin is not sin and that it is OK to continue to practice such behaviors which bring harm to themselves.

    Isaiah predicted that people from all over the world would seek to serve and follow God, recognizing that He, and He alone, is God. Those who make idols and those who encourage others to worship them will be disgraced. God’s instructions to us are not hidden, He does not speak in obscurity. We do not need to listen to some Grand Master to whom God has revealed His secrets. God has made spread knowledge of Him far and wide. He is there to be found by those who seek Him. There is no path to salvation but through Him, for there is no other God.
    The day will come when all of humanity will acknowledge that God is sovereign and Lord. We can wait until we have no choice. I will choose to submit to Him now. There is nothing that compares to Him. I look at the wonders He has done in the past and the things He has promised to do in the future and it leaves me in awe of His greatness. God is prepared to set things right, not in the far future, but now. God is offering us salvation, not because we have done something worthy of salvation, far from it. God will rescue us in order to bring glory to His name, not because we deserve it. Will we be grateful for the grace He has shown us by doing His will? Or will we turn from Him once more?

For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Do not think that the wicked have things better than you, do not wish that you had their life. Do not seek out their company or attempt to become their companions. The wicked are plotting violence against even their companions and they say things for the purpose of causing trouble.

    God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows. He places the lonely among those who will be family to them. He sets prisoners free and gives them joy. We read this and think how marvelous the things which God does by His miraculous power, and we are not wrong. God does do these things by miraculous power. However, there is a reason that Christ founded the Church. So that we can do these things. We are called to be a father to the fatherless and to defend widows. It is we who God has called to be family to the lonely and to show the prisoners how to be free. Let us praise God for what He has done and serve Him as He calls us to do.

    As I read this passage I am reminded of something that I, and too many others, forget most of the time. I seek to serve God, but that is not really to my credit. I do not deserve to be allowed to serve God. It is to God’s credit that He is not only willing to have me serve Him, but calls me to do so. If I was in God’s position, I find it hard to imagine that I would allow someone like me to work for me, let alone go out of my way to ask them to do so. Yet, that is what God has done. If I were to exhaust myself every day doing God’s will every waking moment, that in itself is more reward than I deserve. When I think of the tasks which God has asked me to do for Him, I fall to my knees and thank Him.
    As I think of this and read the rest of what Paul wrote here, it just amazes me. God’s power is at work in me, undeserving as I am, to accomplish more than I can ask for (and I can ask for a lot). Not only will God’s power do more through me than I can ask for, it will do more than I can imagine (and I have a very vivid imagination). What a great God we serve, who not only allows us to serve Him, but calls us to do so. And beyond even that, He is able to bring glory to His name through us. That in itself exceeds my ability to imagine. How can my actions, as selfish and flawed as I am, bring glory to God? Yet, He promises that they will.

    Isaiah tells us that God has chosen to blot out our sins and hold them against us no longer, not because we have done something to deserve such forgiveness, but solely because He chooses to do so. All we have to do to know that such is the case is review our own lives. How can anything we have done offset the evil we have done? Despite our problems and our weaknesses, He has called us to declare before the world that we are His, and glory to God, some are willing to do so.
    Isaiah goes on to talk about the foolishness of idols. How foolish it is for someone to take a tree, burn part of it for fuel, yet carve part of it into something they worship as a god capable of providing for their needs. I have friends who are professing pagans. They know there is nothing to the gods they worship, yet they choose to worship them anyway. They admit that they do so because they cannot live in a world that is nothing but what can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, and/or tasted. Despite this, they refuse to worship the Creator.
    Finally, Isaiah speaks of why God calls up certain world leaders, leaders who do not acknowledge Him. God called Cyrus and raised him to power, easing his path to world domination for the sake of His people. Time and again through history, God has raised up leaders to accomplish His purposes, to bring relief from suffering to those whom He calls His own. Those leaders have not chosen to serve God, yet God has chosen them to serve Him.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here. Today marks the 14th year of my marriage to the my lovely wife. I thank God every day for bringing this woman into my life. Happy Anniversary, Darling!

    This is a clear and concise warning about the dangers of becoming enticed by alcohol. While moderate drinking can have benefits, drinking all the time will lead to health problems and social difficulties.

    This psalm will be my prayer for today. How much better would this world be if people everywhere were to pray this psalm, if God’s ways were known and followed throughout the earth? Yes, I will pray this psalm and hope that what it asks for comes to pass. May all the nations praise God and people everywhere fear Him.

    At one time we were all dead to sin. We all served the one whose spirit is at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. Ultimately, everything we did served death. We served our sinful desires and made ourselves objects of God’s anger. In this way, we were no better than anyone else. But God, in His rich mercy, loved us so much that He gave us life by raising Christ from the dead. We cannot take credit for this transformation from death to life because it was none of our doing. It was a free gift from God.
    We did not receive salvation as a reward for our good works, rather God gave us salvation in order to create a great masterpiece. He created a work of art out of the junk we had made of our lives. He transformed us into a new creation in Christ in order that we might do the good works He planned out for us long ago. Once we were divided into groups, and nations, a races, but God united us into one people, joining us together to be a temple where His Holy Name is worshiped. Let us seek to bring glory to God in all we do, encouraging others to praise His holy name.

    As I read the beginning of this where the Lord calls on the idols men worship to tell what they had done in the past, or predict what would happen in the future, or to just do something, I was reminded of all of the models which people have proposed over the last century or two. Models which they claimed everyone should use to guide their lives, some of those models were economic models, some were scientific models, but all claimed they could tell us what the future held and demanded our loyalty. All of those promises proved to be empty and meaningless. But God has told us what He will do and we have seen it come to pass.
    Isaiah then prophesies in the name of the Lord about the coming of the Christ, a prophecy fulfilled with Jesus coming. Further he tells us to look to the past and learn from what others have experienced. Let us look to the past and see how when people refuse to serve the Lord, death and destruction come upon them. Those that continue to heed His word are completely destroyed. But those who turn to Him and seek to follow His ways make their way through the times of trouble and oppression. God will deliver them out the other side. We have the examples of the way in which He treated His people Israel, predicting the troubles that would come from their sins, and predicting the ways in which He would redeem them once more.

For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have been doing this blog for over two years now. The discipline it has given me to read through the Bible every year since I began has been a wonderful experience for me. I want to encourage everyone to do so. I have come to understand the Bible so much more thoroughly as a result.

    Make your parents happy by staying away from promiscuous sexual partners. Getting involved with the promiscuous is a trap that it will be hard to escape. They constantly try to lure more people into their lifestyle.

    This psalm sums up what it feels like when God has answered our prayers. We want the entire earth to sing His praises. When we cry out to God in desperation and He delivers us we see how God has performed mighty deeds throughout history. The psalmist reminds us of one important fact, when we cry out to God for help, we need to be honest about our sins, the mistakes we have made. It is only after we confess our sins, admit our mistakes, that God will listen to our cries and come to our aid.

    God planned for us to accept His wonderful grace before He created the world. It was His plan from the beginning that we would be united with Christ and all things work out according to God’s plan. It was only after Jews had heard and trusted in Christ that we Gentiles were able to hear and receive God’s wonderful gift. When we believed in Christ, God identified us as His own by giving us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God’s guarantee of His promises. He made those promises and gave us the Spirit as guarantee in order that we would praise and glorify Him.
    I am always challenged when I read here that Paul prayed continuously for the members of the Church at Ephesus (and elsewhere where he speaks of praying for other believers). I read this and realize that I do not pray nearly as much as I ought. As I write this, it reminds me that for years I sought the discipline to read the Bible every day (or at least, most days). I finally found that discipline when I began this blog. I am confident that God’s Spirit will show me the way to similar discipline on prayer. Perhaps, I will start a prayer journal.
    Back to the passage: It is worth noting that Paul prayed that God would give the recipients of the letter ever greater wisdom and knowledge, so that they might get to know God better. Do we strive to have our hearts and minds flooded by God’s light so that we can obtain ever greater understanding of the hope He gives us through His power? Let us seek to have ever greater confidence in the overwhelming power which God will work through us to accomplish His purposes on this earth. It is that power which has made everything, in all ways, subservient to Christ, whose body we are.

    “Shout,” the prophet tells us. Do not be quiet. Do not be afraid. Shout and then shout louder. God is coming. The Sovereign Lord is coming in power. Let us not be afraid of offending people by telling them that He is coming. God cannot be compared to anything made by man. People create things which they worship, whether from metal, or wood, or paper. They set things up which they think will stand the test of time. Yet these things are merely part of Creation. God stands above and outside of Creation. The whole of this earth and the sum of its peoples are less than a grain of sand before Him. How can we compare anything we can imagine, much less bring into being, to God, the Creator of all that is?
    Professional athletes in the prime of their careers, soldiers who have conditioned themselves relentless will become tired. They will reach a state of exhaustion where they can do no more. The task is greater than they have the endurance to complete. However, those who trust in the Lord will find their strength refreshed. If you are facing troubles which are wearing you out, wait for the Lord in prayer and He will renew your strength. If you are seeking to do God’s will and find your strength waning, wait for the Lord in prayer and He will give you fresh strength. If you wait for Him, you will run the race He has set for you without growing weary, you will walk the path He has shown you without growing faint.
    Shout it out. Cry out at the top of your lungs. Challenge the people of this world to see what our God has done. Do not be afraid. Trust in God, wait for Him to act, do the things He instructs you to do, and you will never grow too weary to do the next thing He asks.