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Psalms 62:8 (61:9 LXX)

Hope in Him, all you congregation of people;
Pour out your hearts before Him;
God is our helper.

Encouraging Words

God is our helper. Do we really believe this? Do we really understand the depth of this? God promises us that He has sent us a Helper to guide us through our lives and yet we continually live our lives the way that the world tells us to. God promises us that He will meet our needs and yet we spend so much of our time and resources planning for retirement that we miss the opportunities of everyday life to invest in those around us. When it comes down to the bottom line of our faith, it can all be encapsulated in two things that God wants from us. These are to love Him above all else and to love our neighbor. We cannot do this unless we put our hope in Him. We cannot do this without a community of other believers around us encouraging us in this choice. We can do this through Him because He is our Helper and has led the way by loving us enough to die for us. God is our Helper. God is my Helper.

Judith 5:20-21

“Now my lord and master, if there is any sin of ignorance in this people and they sin against their God, then we will identify their offense and will go up to defeat them. But if there is no lawlessness in their nation, then let my lord leave them alone, lest their Lord shield them, and their God defend them, and we will become a reproach before the whole earth.”

Encouraging Words

Here in Judith, one of the Old Testament apocryphal books, we have Achior, an Ammonite, informing Holofernes, the commander of the Assyrian army, about the nation of Israel. The Ammonites were neighbors to Israel and had seen many of the mighty things that their God had done in their history. The Assyrians were conquering the known world and now had Israel in their sights. In this short passage, Achior is warning Holofernes to be careful with the Israelites. If they have not been sinning against their God then they will be a formidable force because their God will be commanding their puny army and He never loses a battle. Is this not a powerful message for us today? If we are striving to live our lives for our God, submitting our wills to Him, and obeying His precepts, will He not protect us as He did the nation of Israel? He keeps his covenants! Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!

Luke 5:31-36

Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Then they said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?”

And He said to them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”

Then He spoke a parable to them: “No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old.”

Encouraging Words

There is so much that could be unpacked from this passage. The one consistent thing across these three scenarios is the reminder that God does not do things the way that we expect Him to. We always forget that He has the whole picture in His view, past, present, and future. He knows the conditions of everyone’s heart as well as the intentions of their wills. That is part of the reason that while He walked here on this earth, so many of the things that He did caught everyone off guard. And many times I believe that is what He expects us to do, especially if we are to walk in His footsteps. Lord, have mercy! Lord, have many! Lord, have mercy!

Psalms 62:6-7 (61:7-8 LXX)

For He is my God and my savior,
My protector; I shall never be moved.
In God is my salvation and my glory;
He is the God of my help, and my hope is in God.

Encouraging Words

God is God and I am not. This is an eternal truth that I must always keep repeating to myself to fend off the temptation to be my own god. God has promised to be our God, both to the Church and to each of us as individuals in His Church. As our God, He is our savior and protector. No matter how big the storms of life get or worse yet, the sirens of distraction call out to me in times of peace and calmness, because of His steadfastness we will never be moved if we keep Him as our God. He is my salvation, my glory, my help, and my hope. I choose no other to be my God! Glory be to Him!

Tobit 13:3-4

Give thanks to Him before the nations,
O children of Israel,
For He scattered us among them.
Make known His greatness there;
Exalt Him in the presence of all the living,
For He is our Lord and God;
He is our Father unto all the ages.

Personal Challenge

Just as God had dispersed His chosen people, the nation of Israel, throughout the other nations, so too has He dispersed us, His followers throughout the world. He has done this so that we can be His emissaries, His ambassadors, to the people of this world and point them to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lord who loves them dearly. This means living our lives in a way that shines His light as beacons in the darkness. Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!

Luke 5:27-28

After these things He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.

Encouraging Words

We often focus on just the fact that Jesus was willing to call upon a tax collector to follow Him. Tax collectors were hated by their fellow Jews. Indeed, it is great news that Jesus would call someone like Levi (Matthew) to follow Him, for this gives me hope that He might be willing to call someone like me to follow Him as well. The other part of this story that is so powerful is Levi’s response, He was most likely living a pretty lucrative life because tax collectors were wealthy people. They got their wealth by swindling everyone that the collected taxes from. What is so powerful about this is that Levi dropped everything, left his wealth behind, and followed Jesus, who had no temporal wealth. Would I be willing to do that? Would I be willing to trust, obey, and follow this nomadic Rabbi? Is Jesus that important to me? Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!

Tobit 12:8-9

Prayer is good with fasting, almsgiving, and righteousness. A few prayers with righteousness are better than many with wrongdoing. It is better to do almsgiving than to lay up gold. For almsgiving rescues one from death, and it will wash away every sin. Those who do almsgiving and are righteous will be full of life.

Personal Challenge

It is so easy for me to get focused on those things that are considered acts of worship and neglect the things that God asks me to do. Things like prayer time, bible reading and study time, sitting through liturgy, and the list goes on. Tobit reminds us that while these things are still good, they do not truly deepen our relationship with our Lord unless they are coupled with fasting, almsgiving, and righteousness. Our modern Christian faith practices have stripped our Christian journey of these acts because we fear that people will get hung up on works. We know and teach in our Orthodox faith practice that we will never earn favor with God by our works. We know that there is nothing that we can do to earn our way into His family. Actually, we believe that we deserve nothing from our God. However, if I want to experience God’s grace, love, and mercy to the fullest extent then I must be fully investing of myself in His work, His labors. This is where fasting, almsgiving, and righteous acts give us our opportunities to grow in His image the most, Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!

Luke 4:18-19

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Encouraging Words

Many years before our Lord Jesus Christ came as a man, Isaiah had prophesied of the coming of our Savior with this proclamation. Jesus used these very words to announce His ministry and the plans that our Heavenly Father had for Him. Jesus made it clear that He is a part of the Trinity, God the son, and that He had always, since the beginning of time, been anointed by the Holy Spirit to do the work of the salvation of mankind. Jesus did not become something special or different because of this proclamation. He had always been the Son of God. Before He was born of the Virgin Mary, He was the pre-incarnate Son of Man, and after His birth, He was now the Incarnate Son of Man, This is all a mystery that God knows the truth of. But for us this means that He has preached the gospel of truth to us for we are poor, He has brought healing to us for we are brokenhearted, He has set or free from the captivity of death. He has cured our blindness, and He has released us from oppression. Thank You, oh my Lord!