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January 22 - January 27, 2021
“Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything that he speaks to us. . . . What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we learn to answer God.”
So to know how to meditate on and delight in the Bible is the secret to a relationship with God and to life itself.
God is the only one who sustains you, whether an army is pursuing you or you are at home in your own bed. God sustains every breath you take.
He expects us to come to him for refuge from our grief, fear, and pain and not to dull those emotions with amusements and distractions that promise, but can never deliver, blessing.
we must also learn to see the more subtle ways God comforts us just when we were ready to give up, or brings the right friend or book or line of thinking into our lives just when we needed it. Recognize and tell of God’s daily, wonderful deeds, and you will have a note of grateful joy as the background music to your life.
How can we trust him now if we still see oppression reigning? Christians know he so loves the helpless (verse 12), grief-stricken (verse 14), and oppressed (verse 18) that he literally became one of them and “by oppression and judgment he was taken away” (Isaiah 53:3–8). So commit yourself to him.
Only love makes you interested in gazing on someone’s face. Pray until God and his love become more real to you.
God has a celebration meal with us not after we finally get out of the dark valley but in the middle of it, in the presence of our enemies. He wants us to rejoice in him in the midst of our troubles.
Jesus is the only shepherd who knows what it is like to be a sheep (John 10:11). He understands what we are going through and will be with us every step of the way, even through death itself, where “all other guides turn back”17 (Romans 8:39).
To know his presence, however, is to “ascend” a hill or mountain (verse 3), and doing so is always a struggle. You must repent, seeking a clear conscience (verse 4). You must know your idols and reject them (verse 4). And you must wrestle in prayer to seek God’s face, as did Jacob (verse 6), who said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26).
To glorify God is to obey him unconditionally.
Father, each of my neighbors is made in your image and precious in your sight; each of my brothers and sisters has Christ and his glory in them. How can I ever be cold, irritated, or disdainful toward anyone? Give me enough love to live my life every day as I should. Amen.
David’s supreme priority is “to gaze on the beauty of the Lord” (verse 4). “Gazing” is not a one-time glimpse but a steady, sustained focus. It is not petitionary prayer but praising, admiring, and enjoying God just for who he is. David finds God beautiful, not just useful for attaining goods. To sense God’s beauty in the heart is to have such pleasure in him that you rest content.
Do not underestimate, then, how much the power of God can do in your life through the Bible. The voice of the Lord can break down even our strongest defenses, defuse our despair, free us from guilt, and lead us to him.
Jesus’s grief and suffering produced joy for both him and us, and now, when we trust in him during dark times, our sorrow can also produce the joy of increased faith and spiritual reality.
Suffering often comes in such overwhelmingly complex compounds that the only solution is to simply call out to God himself to forgive, protect, and heal.
A sign that I have been saved by grace is that I care about the poor. Do I have that sign?
God rebukes his people for two things. The first is external religiosity without inward heart change. Verses 8–13 show people who think their worship offerings are somehow doing God a favor. This is moralism, the idea that with our ethical life and religious observance we can put God in our debt, so that he owes us things. On the contrary, grateful joy for our undeserved, free salvation should be motivating all we do (verses 14–15). Examine your heart. Do you feel God owes you a better life? Do you obey him because you feel you have to in order to get what you want, or out of loving wonder for
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to trust in God’s steadfast, gracious love (verse 8) and know him in prayer (verse 9) and be rooted in the community of believers (verse 9) is to be like an olive tree, one of the longest-living trees (verse 8). This is how to last.
The self-defeating nature of evil is depicted nowhere better than in Perelandra, the second book of C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy. The character possessed by the devil gloats over the death of the Son of God until Ransom, the Christian, asks him, essentially, “And how did that work out for you?” The demon throws back his head and howls, because he remembers that in killing Christ he defeated himself and ended death. Evil is not locked in a battle with good. . . . The good has already triumphed and evil everywhere recoils on itself.
Christians overcome their fears by looking not only at the written Word, the Bible, but also at the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.
When the nineteenth-century Anglican preacher Charles Simeon retired after fifty-four years of ministry, a friend discovered he still got up at 4:00 A.M. each day to pray and study Scripture. When it was suggested he take it easier, he retorted, “Shall I not now run with all my might when the winning post is in sight?”
When we say to God, “I’ll serve you only if X happens,” then it is X that we love, and God is just a necessary apparatus for obtaining it.
The first step out of the sinkhole of resentment and envy is worship. The psalmist enters the sanctuary, and in the presence of the true God his sight clears and he begins to get the long-term perspective (verses 16–17). He realizes that the rich without God are on their way to being eternally poor; the celebrities without God are on their way to being endlessly ignored (verses 18–19). Within the confines of a dream, you may be very intimidated by some powerful being, but as soon as you wake, you laugh at its impotence to harm your real life. All the world’s power and wealth are like a dream.
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“God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.”
Today our public discourse is filled with language about how technologies or policies or ideas will be “game changing” or will “change the world.” From our viewpoint it is the most brilliant, powerful, and wealthy who set the course of events. God, however, says it is he who “hold[s the] pillars firm” (verse 3), who literally holds the world together (Acts 17:28; Hebrews 1:3). All human talent (James 1:17) and wisdom (Romans 2:14–15) and success (Matthew 5:45) are only gifts from him. He is in control of everything that happens in history, and even the most powerful end up only fulfilling
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When we meditate, we work the truth down until it affects the heart. This is the key to handling difficulty. The psalmist is not just being a stoic and gritting his teeth till the storm passes. Nor is he simply venting his feelings. He redirects his thoughts and feelings toward the truth about God.
God is intensely concerned for the weak, the orphaned, the poor, and the powerless (verses 3–4). Christians will be moved to help the needy and the poor if their faith is genuine (James 2:14–17; 1 John 3:16–18). God is committed to justice because, remarkably, he identifies with the poor. To oppress the poor is to disdain him (Proverbs 14:31). Only in Jesus Christ do we learn just how far God would go to identify with the poor and oppressed. He became a poor human being who died on the cross, a victim of human injustice.
Christ gives us great resources for turning enemies into God’s friends. He died for us while we were yet God’s enemies (Romans 5:10), which motivates us to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:14–21).
Make constant, immediate fellowship with God a priority. Stop flitting around like a bird and learn to live a life near God (verse 3).
God’s care for all his creation should make believers the protectors, rather than the exploiters, of its goodness. Is the land “satisfied with the fruit of [our] work” on it? Or have we failed, through both ignorance and avarice, to properly steward the riches of the world he has given us? We may find it hard not to abuse nature for our profit unless we get the deep inner contentment that comes from the water only Jesus can give, that of eternal life (John 4:13–14).
It is not enough simply to care for creation and help people with economic and material needs. So Christians should love their neighbors by caring for both their bodies and the state of their souls.
Believing the Gospel does not only bring pardon for sin but also renovates us wholly—mind, will, and emotions (Romans 6:15–23).
The love of God is not earned; it’s a gift of grace. You connect to it not by your merits or the quality of your life but through dependent prayer. Everyone who cried to God was heard. Behold how he loves us.
Anything more important to you than the real God is an alternate god. Idols have no power (verses 5–7) to give you the love, forgiveness, and guidance you need. But paradoxically they do have power to make you like them (verse 8) and to keep you both spiritually blind and unable to see as well as spiritually lame and unable to change.
Father, your Son Jesus Christ gives me the meaning, value, and security I look for in other things. I ask that you help me to rejoice in him more fully than I do. Break my schemes of earthly joy so I may find my all in Thee.119 Amen.
The first mark of a thankful life is this: “I will call on him as long as I live” (verse 2). To call on God’s name means two things in the Bible—to trust in him and nothing else for your salvation (Romans 10:12–13) and to orient your whole life to prayer and worship (Genesis 12:8). Grateful people should also walk before God (verse 9). This means to live conscious of him at all time. It is to be both “wholly exposed [and accountable] but wholly befriended [and loved].”120 Love the Lord, for he listens.
knowing the Bible is no end in itself. We know it in order to seek him with all our heart—to know fellowship with God
If you trust God’s Word, “thoroughly testing” it in the crucible of your life over the years (verse 140), you will find it not only true (verse 142) but also delightful (verse 143). You will come to love it (verse 140).
Everything the Bible asserts is true. It must be followed, regardless of our emotional likes, cultural custom, or popular opinion.
Nothing the Bible says can go out of date. We do not need to modernize, correct, or supplement it. Certainly the Word is more than simply a book of true statements. It is the way to know God and his strengthening love
To learn and digest the Word of God requires a fight. We must fight our busy schedules, our distracted minds, our stubborn hearts, and the world’s opinion and disdain. But if we win, the result is pure gold.
Psalm 119 has given us many directions about what to do with the Scripture. We are to read, learn, and understand it—to meditate on, memorize, and follow it. We are to take time to do this morning and night without fail. But all this is in vain unless God seeks you as you read his Word (verse 176). The Word of God is alive and active, penetrating and healing like a surgeon’s knife (Hebrews 4:12–13). If you aren’t sure about the Bible’s trustworthiness—or if you have friends who are aren’t sure—just give yourselves to reading it. Even if you don’t believe a knife is sharp, if it is, it can
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Lord, I praise you that whatever you will is good—because you are good. And I praise you that this is no affront to my freedom but rather its grounding. I can’t, ultimately, mess up my life, because you are in charge, and because you love me. Amen.
Idols are usually good things turned into ultimate things because we look to them to give us the significance and security that can come only from God.
O all ye who pass by, behold and see; Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree; The tree of life to all, but only me: Was ever grief like mine? “Now heal thy self, Physician; now come down.” Alas! I did so, when I left my crown And father’s smile for you, to feel his frown: Was ever grief like mine? In healing not my self, there doth consist all that salvation, which ye now resist; Your safety in my sickness doth subsist: Was ever grief like mine?139
Inviting and listening to criticism is an irreplaceable component of wisdom (Proverbs 27:5, 6, 27; 28:23; 29:5).
The love of God is richer than we think. There is God’s universal love for all he has made (see verse 8). God also has a redeeming love for all those he saves. He is near in a different, heightened way to all those who “call on him in truth” and “fear him” (verses 18–19). Without this saving faith we will be lost eternally (verse 20). Finally, there is God’s yearning love for all who are broken and fallen. “The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down” (verse 14). It is a mistake to say he loves everyone uniformly or that there is anyone on earth he does not love. God’s
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If you get an emotional experience out of a worship service but aren’t willing to obey, you are using him without giving yourself to him. Christians are saved by faith, not by obeying the law, but the law shows us how to please, love, and resemble the one who saved us by grace.
Lord, ethical behavior without joy-filled worship or exuberant praise without whole-life obedience—both of these are counterfeit Christianities. I have veered in both directions in my life. Keep me on the straight path. I offer you my whole life, mind, will, and emotions. Amen.
