Pray for President Obama today as he attends meetings with key advisors at the White House before departing for Tempe, AZ to speak at commencement ceremonies at Arizona State University. He will then travel to Albuquerque, NM where he will spend the night. Pray for God's guidance, wisdom and protection at each part of his trip...
16-17 Going through the motions doesn't please you,
a flawless performance is nothing to you.
I learned God-worship
when my pride was shattered.
Heart-shattered lives ready for love
don't for a moment escape God's notice.
18-19 Make Zion the place you delight in,
repair Jerusalem's broken-down walls.
Then you'll get real worship from us,
acts of worship small and large,
Including all the bulls
they can heave onto your altar!
"Diligent as he was, therefore, in the practice of sacrifice, resting his whole dependence upon the satisfaction of Christ, who atoned for the sins of the world, he could yet honestly declare that he brought nothing to God in the shape of compensation, and that he trusted entirely to a gratuitous reconciliation.
"David now declares that he needed to bring nothing whatever to God but a contrite and humbled heart. The man of broken spirit is one who has been emptied of all vain-glorious confidence, and brought to acknowledge that he is nothing. Where the spirit has been broken and the heart has become contrite, through a felt sense of the anger of the Lord, a man is brought to genuine fear and self-loathing, with a deep conviction that of himself he can do or deserve nothing, and must be indebted unconditionally for salvation to Divine mercy."
(Commentary from Heart Aflame: Daily Readings from Calvin on the Psalms)
I'm also including Eugene Peterson's commentary from this Psalm (translator of The Message).
Alongside the basic fact that God made us good (Psalm 8) is the equally basic fact that we have gone bad, something like the way good fruit goes bad. For our experience of sin consists not in doing bad but in being bad. It's a fundamental condition of our existence, not a temporary lapse into error. Confessing our sin isn't resolving not to sin anymore, it's discovering what God has resolved to do with us as sinners. And what he has resolved to do is tune us in to the foot-tapping songs of forgiveness and set our once-broken bones to dancing.
Amen!
"God's Hyper-Plentiful Grace"
1 Timothy 1:12-14
12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
Paul does not "whitewash" his life before meeting Jesus. He is never afraid to highlight the contrast between his life before and after Jesus. What better way to magnify the Lord than to "show how God in His good pleasure took the worst of sinners, one who thought he was doing a divine work even as he waged war against the Almighty's plan, and made him the chief advocate of the message he once sought to snuff out."
"Such is the nature of God's hyper-plentiful grace." That's another way to translate the Greek word which is rendered "overflowed" in the verses above.
Week 4/Wednesday "Two Standards"
Matthew 22:40
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
Wow. The reading in this book for today is so amazing, I have to quote the whole thing. Sorry. But it's worth it.
Have you thought about what it means to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37, NIV)?Here are a few obvious aspects: You seek fellowship with Him and long to gaze upon His beauty (Psalm 27:4). You rejoice in meditating on His Word and rise early to pray (Psalm 119:97; Mark 1:35). You always delight to do His will (Psalm 40:8). A regard for His glory governs and motivates everything you do (1 Corinthians 10:31)--eating and drinking, working and playing, buying and selling, reading and speaking, even driving. You're never discouraged or frustrated by adverse circumstances because you're confident God is working all things together for your good (Romans 8:28). You're always content because you know He'll never leave you or forsake you (Hebrews 13:5).
Or look at what Jesus called the "second" commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39, NIV). Among other things, this would mean that you never show selfishness, irritability, peevishness, or indifference in your dealings with others. You take a genuine interest in their welfare and seek to promote their interests, honor, and well-being. You never regard them with prideful superiority or talk about their failings. You never resent any wrongs they do to you, but instead are always ready to forgive. You always treat them as you would have them treat you.
Do you begin to grasp some of the implications of what it means to obey these two commandments? Most of us don't even think about them in the course of a day, let alone aspire to obey them. Instead we content ourselves with avoiding major outward sins and performing accepted Christian duties.
Excuse me while I go curl up in a ball in the corner and whimper like a baby.
Seriously, is anyone else just kind of sitting there in a speechless haze right now? I feel like I've just been sucker-punched and the wind has been knocked out of me.
But in all honesty, Mr. Bridges has nailed it. I believe he exactly right. And I've never deceived myself into thinking that I was ever loving God with all of my heart, soul and mind. I know how pretty much impossible that is, as long as we wear skin. But to see it written out like that, and to see such a graphic description of how it would look if we loved others as ourselves? Oh, dear.
I am a miserable failure.
But the good news is that so are most of you, too!
And that's why, like Paul in the reading from Tabletalk, we can revel in the "hyper-plentiful" grace of God!
At any rate, the bar has just been raised for me. And I can't ignore what I now know to be true. The standard has been set in front of me. "Two standards," in fact. (Funny, when I saw that title, I was thinking of "double standards.") There they are, and instantly, they become goals for the rest of my life. I have to find a way to keep those in front of me. Maybe in a box on my forehead?
Just kidding...
But I know, also, thanks to Paul and others like him, that my relationship with you is not based on whether or not I am meeting those standards. Perhaps the quality of that relationship would increase as I do meet them.
I pray for the grace and strength it will take for me to live by those two commandments. And I'm convinced that this goes hand in hand with yesterday's discussion about taking up my cross (still looking for it...). God, you have shown me how I need to be living. Now help me do it.
I praise you loudly for your "hyper-plentiful" grace. Even a word like "hyper-plentiful" is insufficient to describe the magnitude of the grace that you have lavished on me!
Oh, how it all goes together, Lord. How you can take three seemingly unrelated readings and draw them together like a tapestry! All three of my readings today...beautiful, God! So beautiful! I thank you for bringing them to me in that order today. Your timing and wisdom are amazing to me.
The motto of South Haltom Community Church (which I came up with...) is a very brief description of the two commands that Jesus said were the most important. "Love God--Love People." Would that it were that simple. And the order has to be right, or it just won't work.
Love God--Love People.
Grace and peace, friends!