Category: Bible Studies

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Contentment

Bread SliceWe all do it! We read the Bible, sometimes so fast that when we are finished, we couldn’t tell someone what we just read. Growing up in a pastor’s home, in church, and in Christian school, I did a lot of that. It was never personal. I don’t really remember being taught to study the Bible for personal spiritual growth or to understand my God more, I only remember being taught to read it because it was the right thing to do…well that didn’t help me at all…nor did it help the 90% of my “Christian” School classmates that are either sitting in a chair in some church somewhere not using their gifts and talents for Christ, or they are off the Christian journey all together.

All of that to say, I was reading through Proverbs 30 yesterday and ran across this prayer from Agur. I have read Proverbs 30 before, but I never paid much attention to what it was saying: The entire prayer is great, but two areas stuck out to me, one I will blog about later after I have time to think about it, but here is the quote from verse 8b-9

“..Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God’s holy name.”

Talk about Contentment! “Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.” This is a hard prayer to pray. Especially when it is so much easier to pray “God give me more!” “God bless me more!” Agur was content to have his needs met. When I read this, I said ‘Wow!’ because it jumped out at me, but I have to be honest, this is hard to grasp. At first I didn’t even highlight the verse because I didn’t want to be responsible to live it. It may just be because I live in America and the one with the most money and the biggest toys win. Honestly, God has provided for all of my needs, but I wonder if I lived in a third world country where poverty is the daily expectancy, would I be content with ‘just enough?‘ Ouch, this one is tough…

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Thought for the Day

I have been thinking about this verse a lot lately, not because of it being the Easter season and the natural reflection on Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. I have been thinking about it before this past week. It puts Christ’s love for us into perfect perspective:

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8

I cannot count the times that I thought highly of myself, or I thought that I had accomplished something great. Yet, Christ had equality with God, he had divine privileges, and he counted it as worthless, because he valued loving us more! Verse 5 is the hard part, “You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.” That’s the verse that lets me know that I am not all that I think that I am at times!

Would I give up divine privileges for someone who would eventually murder me? Would I give up my position in a comfortable, perfect Heaven, and my equality with the Creator of the Universe? I wouldn’t, but Christ did. How can I even come close to that attitude? It’s possible through Christ, or we would not be told to do it, but that is a huge mountain to climb. I know one thing, it will humble us to realize we cannot accomplish such an attitude on our own, but it is through Christ that we can. How then can we think highly of anything that we do?

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Quotes of the Day

I am reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. Interesting book, I understand that it is a book based on his life, etc. However, Donald Miller shares his opinion or as the tag line on the book calls it, “Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality.” throughout the book, I am not sure that I can embrace all of his opinions or thoughts, yet I am impressed with a majority of what I have read. The book is an easy read, it is interesting, there are some funny parts, and it is challenging, a great recipe for a book to keep my attention. Today, I read chapter 10, titled “Belief.” Here are a couple of quotes that stood out to me…you may have heard them before or even been introduced to the main thoughts, but it serves as a great reminder!

“What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.””Dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something is the hard thing. Living for something extends beyond fashion, glory, or recognition. We live for what we believe.”

And just in case my regular readers are wondering. I did not start this book without finishing the two others that I had already started…Hey I’m on a roll.
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What Are You Looking At?

I was reading through Jeremiah again today, as I am studying that book right now. The entire first section of the book is dealing with Israel and Judah’s turning away from God towards false gods, stone and wood…they choose to worship the created over the creator. To put it lightly, God is furious with them, and He uses all kinds of analogies to describe Israel and Judah in their sin.

This verse stood out to me today: Jeremiah 5:21-23

Listen, you foolish and senseless people, with eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear. Have you no respect for me? Why don’t you tremble in my presence? I, the Lord, define the ocean’s sandy shoreline as an everlasting boundary that the waters cannot cross. The waves may toss and roar, but they can never pass the boundaries I set. But my people have stubborn and rebellious hearts. They have turned away and abandoned me.

If I look at my own life I have to wonder how many times I take my eyes off of God and put them on something else? God tells me I am foolish for doing so! He declares how Big and Powerful He is in this verse, “…I, the Lord, define the ocean’s sandy shoreline as an everlasting boundary that the waters cannot cross. The waves may toss and roar, but they can never pass the boundaries that I set.” God is saying, “look I control the oceans!” Maybe Christians should go take a field trip to the beach and see who can stop the waves and who can control how far they come ashore. We cannot do it, yet everyday Christians and the church take our eyes off of God and we put them on things that God created versus on Him, the One that created all things, or we put them on ourselves as if we can control our life and what takes place around us.

I wonder how many of us are like Israel and Judah? Does God look at us and say, “Oh people with eyes who cannot see and ears that cannot hear?” Maybe today you should take a minute to examine what you are looking at…is it everything except God? Or is your focus on the one that controls the oceans?

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A Merciful God

I was reading through Jeremiah 3 today and came across verse 12…this verse stuck out to me because it shows just how merciful the God that we serve is. Once again Israel has given itself over to the worship of other gods, the true and living God compares Israel to an adultress wife (or a camel in heat in chapter 2), but God calls out to Israel with open arms…

“…O Israel, my faithless people,
come home to me again,
for I am merciful.
I will not be angry with you forever.”

The cool thing is, no matter how much we mess up, God is willing to take us back with open arms as well. He forgave us at His death, knowing that we would still screw up…a lot! Yet he still gave us the opportunity to be a part of his family and he still gives us mercy when we need it.