We Will All Die a Mortals Death

Verses: Psalms 82: 1 - 8

Song inspired by the chapter:  Song has been uploaded from YouTube.com and is not my original.

My thoughts about the verses:

Don’t we all know people that think they are better than others?  They walk with their heads held high thinking that they deserve great things.  They pass judgment on others because they feel that they are living right in the eyes of God.  They feel as if nothing that they do is outside the commands of the law.

In reality, what they are missing is that they are also sinners.  They try to win favor in God’s eyes by attempting to live in the guidelines of law.  They judge others because they believe that the other person is doing something that they feel is an abomination of God.

Are we all not guilty of this in some way or another?  Don’t we judge others based on our own interpretation of the Bible?  See what we missed in the process of the above example is that we were judging these people.  It sounds crazy to make us think of someone else so that we can look at our own flaws.

God wants us to know that we have all sinned against each other.  We have all come short of achieving a perfect life.  We all have shortcomings and need to look at what God is saying in this psalm.  We will all die a mortal death.

Ironically, the people that are judged become the judges.  Each person in their own way chooses to look down on someone else’s life as not being perfect.  We feel that we are one step above the other person.  We feel that our errors are not as bad as others. 

We miss that we are not to judge. The only one that can judge us is our God who made us.  We have to change the way we interact with others.  We need to learn that we are all in the same boat.  None of us have lived without imperfections.

God gave us the Messiah to clean us from our imperfections.  God gave those that judge us the same Messiah.  God gave those that we judge the same Messiah.  It is through the Messiah that we are made perfect. 

Prayer:

We thank you God for sending the Messiah to love us.  We worship you Dear God for the love that you give us daily.  Help us not to judge others.  Help us to turn our lives over to you.  Help us be the people that show love to others.  In the name of the Holy One we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have you judged others?  Have you accepted Jesus into your life?  Do you realize the need for Jesus in your life today?

Why have we Turned Away from God

Verses: Psalms 81: 1 - 16

Song inspired by the chapter:  Song has been uploaded from YouTube.com and is not my original.

My thoughts about the verses:

Why have we turned away from God?  This may seem like one of the hardest questions to answer.  We can have all the grace and abundance we need by trusting God.  Yet, we choose to turn away from God.  We know what we can have yet we often do our own thing without concentrating on serving God.

One answer may be that we do not feel that we are worthy enough for God wants to give us.  We have been so marginalized in society that we cine to the conclusion that we are not worthy of grace.  We feel like we deserve the scraps of the field instead of the abundant harvest.

We may also believe that we as Christians should show sacrifice.  Meaning simply that by not accepting the abundance that God has to offer we are showing the world that we are humble.  Yet, in reality this is our ego stepping in and trying to play God.  We decide what will show humbleness instead of just being humble. 

We may feel that God has more important matters than our own stability.  Think about how many times we pray for someone else and think that they are worse off than we are.  We conclude that they need the grace and peace of God.  Whereas we believe that because we are not in their situation we are doing well on our own.  Is this not yet another act of choosing our way without turning ourselves over to God for help?

People have this tendency to justify their actions.  We feel that we are doing what God wants without asking God if this is true.  Instead of relying on God for our needs we scrape by with the little things because we don’t want to bother our God.  Isn’t it ironic how much we choose to do without including God.  Had you ever thought about that before?

I know that we all go through daily struggles and we all have times that seem like they are impossible to overcome.  In those moments we turn to God and ask why you have let this happen.  We feel in those moments that God has left us.  What we don’t recall is that we got in that situation by truing to handle stuff on our own.

God wants us all to receive the abundance of grace.  Yet, it is our choice if we accept that gift freely.  Do we justify that what is going on in our life shows how much we trust God?  Do we feel that we are not worthy enough for God to care about just us?

The one that sent the beloved Son will help you.  Yet, it is now up to you to turn over your struggles to the Most High.  God wants us to turn it over to the one who made us.  Yet, do we truly do this?  I know for me I can say that there are times that I thought I could do it on my own.  Yet, I find that when I ask God for help the problem resolves quickly.  When I try to do it on my own I often find that I am never really where I need to be in my life. 

Prayer:

We thank you God for loving us.  We praise you for wanting our life to be filled with abundance.  Help us turn over our problems to you.  Help us never to turn away from you.  In the name of the Messiah we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have we accepted the abundance that comes from loving our God?  Have you turned away from God?  Is it time to turn back to God and let God be in charge of your life?  What is needed for you today to understand that the Messiah loves you just the way you are?  That you are worthy enough for the abundance that God wants to give you? 

The Church is the Vine and God is the Harvester

Verses: Psalms 80: 1 - 19

Song inspired by the chapter:  Song has been uploaded from YouTube.com and is not my original.

My thoughts about the verses:

This Psalm is much like the parables that Jesus told.  There is a lesson that we can learn about the way the Jewish Community survived this time in their history.  We need to remember that the God we serve today is the same God of Old.  The one thing that we have that they did not have at the time this psalm was written.  We have the fulfillment of the promised Messiah.

The psalmist starts by saying that God brought the church out of Egypt.  Once out of the land the vine was planted in the promise land.  There it grew a very strong and deep root.  The church was healthy and was in communing with God and grew in strength and dedication to God. The vine became so strong that it was able to spread throughout the whole land.  The Church in this part of its history worshipped and served their God with all of its heart and soul.  It flourished because God was its center.

The Psalmist then asks why the church was under attack.  How could it be that a vine that was strong was allowed to be torn down by others?  How the Harvester could allowed the walls to be destroyed so that others could come and eat of the spoils of the vine.  Specifically how could the church be left for others to destroy it?

Yet, what they were missing is that they had forgotten what they had been through.  They had forgotten to keep God in the center of their life.  They were more interested in growing in power for the good of the Church.  They had lost their focus of growing in love for the glory of God.

It is then at this moment that they ask God to come and rebuild the wall.  The vine needs the help of the Harvester.  The Harvester is the only one that can protect the vine from the wilds of the environment.  Therefor the Church needs God in its center for it to survive.  Left at its own wills the members of the Church will turn away and forget their focal point.  Yet, with God’s guidance they will always keep focused on the one that can save them.

The Harvester can save us from ourselves.  We need to praise God and allow God to use the Church to witness the love of the Creator.  We need to turn back to the Harvester so that we will be safe from all the struggles in the world.

Prayer:

Dear God we thank you for all you have done.  We thank you for being the Savior of your Church.  Help us to stay focused on you.  Help us to put away our desires for power.  Help us tell others the story of love and salvation.  In the name of the Harvester we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Are you keeping God in the center of your life?  Are you struggling because of odds that seem too hard to overcome?  Are you willing to turn all things over to God?  Have you tried to grow in strength for you own good?  Are you working to help the harvester plant more seeds in fertile soil so that people can come to know the Messiah?

Salvation from Destruction Demands Devotion

Verses: Psalms 79: 1 - 13

Song inspired by the chapter:  Song has been uploaded from YouTube.com and is not my original.

My thoughts about the verses:

You can only imagine the feeling of devastation that was occurring during this time in history.  The Jewish temple had been destroyed.  The Jewish people was again were conquered by another country. 

They had thought that they had lived through the hardest part of their life.  Now here there be knocked down to their knees.  They were devastated.  Yet, they would not live that way forever.

The community prayed for God to send them help.  To help them overcome the struggles that they were dealing with.  They were praying that this would soon pass and they would be able to once again be able to stand on their own feet.  They were praying for their salvation.

God heard their pleas and sent the salvation that they needed.  They had made promises to God if help was given they would praise God.  They would turn from their evil ways and train the young the right way to go.  The Psalmist felt they had learned from the errors of their way.

How many times have we been in one of these same situations?  We feel that we are going along and have finally gotten on our own feet.  Then all of a sudden we are knocked to our knees.  A situation rises that destroys all that we have tried to build up. 

We plead to God to help us.  To help us overcome this situation.  We know that God can save us and we want that one more miracle.  Promising to praise God once we are saved.  In part, of our plea we even thank God for the past and acknowledge that we know God will help us now. 

Our devastation has led us to ask for prayers.  Our answered prayers lead us to praise.  Our praise leads us to teach others.  This cycle happens over and over in our life. 

Yet, it is because we know that God has helped us that we are confident that God will help us.  We ask for the help because of that past experience.  We praise God for we know that we will be helped.  Lastly, we teach others so that they can learn what they need to do in their life.

Prayer:

We praise you God for all you have done in our life.  We thank you for helping us when we feel all is a loss.  We ask you to be with us as we deal with struggles in our life.  Help us offer our struggles up to you in prayers.  Help us to ask remember to always praise you for what you have and will do in our life.  Use us as an example of your saving grace to give hope to others.  In your Saving Name we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have you ever felt like you can’t handle anything else?  Have you turned your worries over to God?  Do you have the hope that God will get you through today’s problems?  Are you willing to tell others about the things that God has done for you?

Teach Each Generation About Their Ancestors

Verses: Psalms 78: 1 - 72

Song inspired by the chapter:  Song has been uploaded from YouTube.com and is not my original.

My thoughts about the verses:

One of the saddest things that happen is when people lose their information about their ancestors.  In olden days people knew the stories of their family.  They learned about the good and bad things that happened.  The fact is knowing about your family history was just as important as other things you could learn.

My family always talked about being Native Americans.  We knew some information from different ancestors.  Yet, there was a break in the family link.  The family had been separated by less than 100 miles their whole life.  Yet, those hundred miles meant that the family would be divided for over three generations. 

When I started attending college I had an opportunity to get money to help with my degree if I could prove my Native American Status.  The first step was to find where my great-grandfather came from.  In a matter, of a few weeks my grandfather met his first cousins.  It was amazing to find out that we had a whole family history we didn’t know about.

Through that process I found out information that took my family back all the way to the 1500’s.  Not only did I prove our Native American Heritage we also discovered that part of the family was from Prussia.  It still amazes me how many of my great great…grandfathers served as ministers or other church leaders in Prussia.   We learned that my family had fought during the American Revolution War.  It was amazing to see how much we had done as a family.

A history that has now been regained and is being passed down to new generations.  I am lucky that I was able to reconnect.  So many others cannot reconnect what has been lost.  For those there are multiple reasons that they do not know their history.  Yet, it is never too late to share what you do know to the ones to come. 

You never know what will happen.  You might even find out that someone that you have given fish to for fifty years is your first cousin.  That is what happened to my grandfather.  He had been visiting another cousin on his Moms side of his family.  He would always give the nice lady across the way the catfish he caught.  At 75 years old he learned that she was his first cousin. 

Isn’t this what is happening in these scriptures.  The Jewish ancestry is being passed from one generation to the next.  The fact is that they didn’t hide the fact that there were some bad things that happened.  They actually taught that to help future generations not make the same mistake.

They also taught about the things that God had done for them.  How they had been victorious over enemies.  How they survived exile from one promise land to the next.  They learned that the life wasn’t always a bed of roses.  Yet, if you trust God you will be able to overcome. 

Learning your ancestry helps you appreciate all of the things that have happened and how people have survived.  For us this Psalm shows us how we as Christians made it to today.  If the Jewish culture had died during one of the exiles would we ever have our Messiah?  So we need to thank God for helping the people then and now.

Prayer:

We praise you God for all you have done.  We thank you for teaching us about our past so we can learn how to act in the future.  Help us to always keep you in the center of our life.  Help us praise you for all the things that you have and will do in our life.  In the name of the Almighty we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Do you know your family history?  Do you see how you can learn things from the past?  Do you understand the connection from the Jewish community and the Christian Community of today?  Are you willing to thank God for all the things that have and will happen in your life?  Are you ready to share the past with the future so that they can learn not to make the same mistakes?  Are you ready to share the victories so that future generations will accept the favor that God has shown for your family and community?

Reflect on the Things God has done and Behold the things God is doing

Verses: Psalms 77: 1 - 20

Song inspired by the chapter:  Song has been uploaded from YouTube.com and is not my original.

My thoughts about the verses:

Have you ever found yourself in that place where you think that God is not near?  Those moments in which you allow the struggles of the world become the focal point of your life.  Those times when you thought that God has abandoned you because the struggles seem impossible to overcome.

Then all of a sudden you remember the things that have happened in the past.  The times that Jesus has gotten you through hard struggles.  The moments in which God made sure you made it to the other side.  The times that you felt close to God because you saw the work of God in your life.

We have all been there at one time or another.  We all live in moments in which we think I will not make it through my current struggle.  It seems so big that nothing can help you overcome it.  Then you find an answer.  God reveals the love that you needed and you are able to get to the other side.

It is like that over and over in our life.  We praise God for the things that have happen.  Yet, at the same time we fear that this is too hard for even God to fix.  We worry that our battle will be lost.  We praise God for the past yet, cannot turn over the future.

God wants us to look at our past and be reminded that God has gotten us through what we thought was impossible.  We need to look at our lives and know that God is always there helping us.  We need to remember the past to help us overcome the things of today.

If you remember the multitude of things god has done in your life you are able to let go of the struggles of today.  By remembering the times of struggle you are able to see that nothing is impossible for God.  We will overcome what is happening in our current situation because will help us.

Imagine what would happen in your life if you remembered the good things that God has done when you are struggling.  Would not the weight be lifted from your shoulders?  We have all gone through struggles in the past that we thought we would not make it through.  Yet, miraculously God got us to where we are now.  Nothing is impossible for God to fix. 

The next time you are struggling remember your past.  Let go of the fear that what you are facing today is impossible to overcome.  Allow God to do the work that needs to be done in your life.  Let go of your worries and offer praises up to God for getting you to where you are today.  You will soon find that the problems come smaller in your minds eyes because you allow God to become first.

Prayer:

We praise you God for all the things you have done in our life.  We praise you for getting us through struggles that we thought were impossible to overcome.  Help us today God put you fist in our life.  Help us overcome the struggles we face daily so that we may be in stronger communion with you.  In the name of the Most High we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Are you stressed with current situations?  Do they seem impossible to overcome?  Have you given your struggles over to God?  Look back on your life and remember what God has gotten you through.  Now isn’t God able to get you through todays struggle?