Re: Verse reading–Genesis 37-39 (day three)
“When he told [the dream] to his brothers, they hated him all the more.” It’s easy to expect too much of Joseph. He is, after all, in the Bible. But here, he is a seventeen-year-old kid. To be foolish and seventeen is not the same as to be foolish and thirty. Life’s hostilities can set the stage for the transformation of the heart. It doesn’t always happen that way, but in Joseph’s story, we see that not all is lost when dreams fade. If God shows a little bit of what the future could hold, he also stands ready to help the heart do the hard work of growing to make that dream a reality. As Joseph discovered, paying attention to the life that is will help get a long-neglected dream ready for the real world.
Author: Bryan Richardson
Bryan Richardson is the Associate Pastor for Counseling and Pastoral Ministries at FBCSA.
Desire
Re: Verse reading–Judges 16:4-30 (day three)
“She prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.” At some point, Samson began to cherish his own desire above all else. He knew what was right. He understood the parameters of human interaction. He comprehended that God had called him to champion Israel. But none of that shaped his character. Something else received his allegiance: desire. Samson’s life gives us a picture of a life shaped by desire: He wanted food, and he flouted ritual dietary law to obtain it; he wanted sex, and no parental authority or moral code stood in his way; he was “sick to death” of conflict, and no trust proved too sacred to violate. Woody Allen once observed: “The heart wants what it wants.” When that becomes the extent of the heart’s moral reasoning, it never, ever, ever finds what it wants.
Here
Re: Verse reading–Daniel 1 (day three)
“[Daniel] asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.” The scriptures tell us that “Daniel resolved not to defile himself.” As undesirable as the circumstances appeared to Daniel, his first inclination was not to rail against his surroundings, but to please the Lord within his surroundings. There was a voice in Daniel’s life–from the Lord, from his upbringing, from wise counsel, from somewhere–that expressed this thought to him: “You’re here; what are you going to do about it?” It’s the same thing Paul knew later on: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” Early on, Daniel, like Paul after him, decided that his priority, wherever he found himself, was to live with God. Here. Now. Security followed.
Sing-along
Re: Verse reading–Psalm 118 (day three)
“From the house of the Lord we bless you.” A friend of mine, in commenting a few days ago on verses 26 and 27 of this Psalm, which give us a picture of people assembling for a worship service, made this remark: Some songs you just want to sing in a group. That’s exactly right. The psalmist recounts how the Lord has rescued, saved, preserved, defended, and delivered time after time. And near the end of this Psalm, he gathers with people to remember together with them all the ways in which the Lord has saved their necks. It seems strange to say it, but people forget these kinds of things. We just do. So we need to remind each other. This is one way we come to know God better. Some songs you just want to sing in a group.
Confident
Re: Verse reading–Psalm 95 (day three) “Today, if only you would hear his voice…” Jesus took this Psalm seriously. He did not hurry about in his life because he along with the Psalmist knew something about this world. He knew, in the words of late Dallas Willard, that “the universe was a perfectly safe place for us to be.” Whether a little girl lay dying, or he himself suffered hunger in a trackless wilderness, or temple guards travelled to arrest him by night, Jesus found himself and others at home in God’s good universe. Even adverse circumstances took place within a world that God made and that God commands. Jesus’s ancestors in the desert did not take this reality seriously. Our Lord shows us how it looks for a human being to live a life that confidently remembers today the Creator’s voice of authority over every created thing.
Vulnerable
Re: Verse reading–Psalm 91 (day three)
“For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” We can say, “If I live according to God’s ways, I’m invulnerable.” We can say that, but we’re wrong. The truth is, we’re never more vulnerable than when we do live according to God’s ways. Our protection is this: We do not have to fear those things that could kill us—even thought they might. When we learn our way of life from the Lord, we find everything in life—even pain—rich with the beauty of the great and true story of God’s love bringing us along. We would never hear that story if we strained to hear only some assurance that we’re indestructible.
Review
Re: Verse reading–Psalm 69 (day three)
“I am forced to restore what I did not steal. You, God, know my folly…” One’s own heart appears blameless at first: “Many are my enemies without cause.” But in the give and take of honest conversation with God, the heart comes into clearer focus: “My guilt is not hidden from you.” That confession does not excuse malicious behavior from those who position themselves as enemies. It does, however, restore the soul’s ability to rest in God’s safekeeping during times of hostility. A cry for God’s help can become a review of your own life before the Lord. If you’ve ever wondered, “How did it come to this?” then let these ancient words teach you how to live from this moment on in a world in which everyone—even you—needs God’s forgiveness and wisdom and promise.
Bootstraps
Re: Verse reading–Psalm 53 (day three)
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” “The universe can and will create itself from nothing” (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinaw, The Grand Design, 180). The aforementioned quote from Stephen Hawking’s book is not meant to label the brilliant physicist a fool. It is meant, though, to highlight the lengths to which we will go to place something—anything—at the center of the universe other than a God who has created us and holds us accountable. If we have to posit a universe that pulls itself into existence by its own bootstraps, so be it. If we must have something because we want it, if we decide that we have not harmed someone because we did not intend to do so, so be it. All such thinking comes from the kind of foolish thinking that convinces us that we create our own reality.
Ears
RE Verse reading–Psalm 40 (day three) “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.” People use their ears for more—much more—than listening. Often, ears function as filters: You hear what you want to hear. Ears also serve as early warning systems: You recognize the voice of someone you don’t wish to see, so you go somewhere else. God calls us to hear him—to stop even our religious observances lest they become a substitute for paying attention to him. Jesus often punctuated his teaching with a call for people to use their ears to take his words into their minds and think: “He who has ears, let him hear.” If we listen, we can ponder; if we ponder, we can pray. If we pray, we God will hear.
Think
Re:Verse reading–Psalm 32 (day three)
“Do not be like the horse or the mule…” A society that has estranged itself from the Bible says God functions as a substitute for thinking. A society that has estranged itself from the Bible says religion keeps people in an intellectual cave. A society that has estranged itself from the Bible says no one can really know what’s true. Actually, rote belief and slavish thinking have no place in the life of anyone instructed by God’s word. Control by bit and bridle is for mules, not for people. To understand the seriousness of sin, to confess to the Lord, and to learn from God how to live and not die—this is height to which God calls the human mind. God actually has a higher view of human beings than a society which claims that truth is out of reach for us.