Psalm 100 (99 LXX)

Shout aloud to the Lord, all the earth;
Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before Him with great joy.
Know this: the Lord, He is God;
He made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving
And into His courts with hymns;
Give thanks to Him; praise His name;
For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth is from generation to generation.

Encouraging Words

I love reading the Psalms. The Psalmist had such an awesome relationship with his Heavenly Father. At times he comes across as if he is arguing with God and chastising Him for His ways, and yet he always ends up acknow­ledging that God is God and that he is not and begins to praise God for who He is. At times, such as in this psalm he spends all of his time praising God and extolling His greatness. The obvious truth is that the Psalmist spent a lot of time with his Lord, which is the only way to get to know someone. Our God is good! His mercy is everlasting! His truth does go from generation to generation. Our role, my role, is to give thanks to Him, to praise Han, and to worship and adore Him, every day and every moment of my life. Glory be to God!

Proverbs 3:1-2

My son, do not forget my laws,
But let your heart keep my words;
For length of days, and years of life and peace
They will add to you.

Personal Challenge

Since we are all created in the image of God, He has put enough of Himself into every one of us that our nature knows the difference between right and wrong. Our nature knows that we need to be in a relationship with God because that is the only way that we will be complete. However, due to the fallen state of this temporal world, the busy-ness of life, and our own, stubborn. free will, we begin to forget God and His laws and the ways that He wants us to live. The writer is reminding us here, that the answer to this problem in our lives is our heart. It is our heart where Jesus can dwell, once we give our lives to Him. It is our hearts that can draw us back to a point where we listen to God’s Wisdom (Jesus) and begin to be obedient again. And as we strive to keep doing this, to keep yielding our free will to God’s will, listen to His teachings, participate in His Church, then God promises to add length of days, and years of life and peace to our very existence, We can experience this during the remainder of our life here on earth and into eternity with Him. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!

Luke 12:29-31

And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind. For all these things the nations of the world seek after, and your Father knows that you need these things. But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.

Personal Challenge

It is so easy to follow the lead of the world and begin to worry about how we are going to be able to live the lifestyle that we desire in our future days. So, we work longer hours hoping that we will earn more and be seen worthy to keep our jobs. We stop spending time and money on our families so that we can have a nest egg for that one day when we might need it. We postpone trips, vacations, and fun times with our loved ones because we might need that money for some future, unforeseen event. We should not be wasteful with the blessings that God has given us, but we also should not hoard it because we do not believe God will take care of us. Seeking God and His kingdom first, means loving Him and our neighbor. It means doing things in the present because that future that we are saving for may never come. God will take care of us, today, tomorrow, and through the rest of eternity. Glory be to God!

Psalms 96:10

You who love the Lord, hate evil;
The Lord keeps the souls of His saints;
He shall deliver them from the hand of sinners.

Personal Challenge

This is why those who love the Lord their God with all of their heart, soul, and body do not fit into the world. If we truly love our God we will come to a place where we hate all evil. Since the world is fallen, it is filled with evil. The difficult part of this is to balance the hate of the evil with the command by Jesus to love our neighbor. Our neighbor who might be caught up in the evil of this world is loved so deeply by Jesus that He died for them. So, if we love our neighbor as Jesus would, we become a reflection of the image of Christ in their lives. This does not mean, however, that we condone or encourage the evil in their life, we just love them. sometimes this may end up in having to apply tough love to those around us. Living our lives this way sets us at odds with the world, especially those who do not want to have anything to do with God. But as this verse confirms, our Lord will be there with us as we live our lives, keeping us in His hands and delivering us from evil. Lord, have mercy! Lord, have, mercy! Lord, have mercy!

Proverbs 2:1-6

My son, if you receive the words of my commandment
And hide them within yourself,
Your ear will be obedient to wisdom,
And you will incline your heart to understanding;
You will entrust it to your son as an admonition.
For if he calls upon wisdom,
And you utter your voice for understanding;
If you seek perception with a strong voice,
If you seek her as silver
And search for her as treasure,
Then you will understand the fear of the Lord
And find the knowledge of God.
For the Lord gives wisdom,
And from His face come knowledge and understanding;

Command With a Promise

This passage is full of commands, which tells us what to do, followed by promises of what will happen if we do the commands. The scriptures are full of these. Our God is a God of covenants, which always have two participants in them. Both participants must be willing to execute their part of the covenant in order to receive the other party’s contribution. Our God never lays down a bunch of rules for His children to follow so that He gets what He wants. He does not manipulate us into obedience. He tells us what He wants us to do and then tells us what we will get for doing it. This points to the truth of how much He loves us, cares for us, and desires the best for us. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!

Luke 12:8-9

Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God. But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.

Encouraging Words

I am not ashamed to share with people that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I am happy to bring Him into every discussion and every situation because He is the Lord and Master of my life. Jesus asks that we be willing to always confess Him before our fellow man. He does not need this for Himself. He is God! He does not need our proclamation of Him to feel better. He wants us to be willing to proclaim Him and what He has done for mankind so that those who do not know Him may be drawn to Him. Jesus died so that all might be Saeed. AS one of His followers it is up to me to proclaim this Good News, the Gospel, to everyone and everywhere that I go. This will not always be easy. The world and the demons of this world do not want His message shared. This means that the more that I stand up for Him then the more resistance I will encounter. But by the grace of God and the assistance of His angels that He confesses us to, we shall be able to overcome this world until that day that we are with Him in eternity. Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!

Psalms 94:19 (93:19 LXX)

O Lord, according to the abundance of grief in my heart,
Your encouragements consoled my soul.

Encouraging Words

No matter what state of feeling I am in, the Lord’s grace and love will certainly outweigh it. If I have great grief in my life, my Lord is there with consolation and love to help me to overcome the grief. If life has dealt me a tough blow and I have become discouraged or despondent, He is there with His encouragement and blessings. Nothing in this world, or that happens in this world, can ever outweigh what God can do. I have seen Him respond to people, as well as myself, in the midst of devastating earthquakes, catastrophic tsunamis, fires, loss of loved ones, loss of health, loss of jobs, times of depression, and many other natural and temporal things in the lives of His beloved children. His response is always loving and caring, full of grace and mercy because we are the apple of His eye. So, we should not lose heart in the midst of our trials. To the contrary, we should strengthen our heart’s dependency on our living Lord and relish His encouragements that will give us true joy and peace. Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy! Lord, have mercy!

Proverbs 1:20-21a
Wisdom sings in the streets;
She moves boldly in the squares.
She preaches on high city walls
And sits at the gates of lords.

Encouraging Words

Wisdom in the book of Proverbs is a reference to our Lord Jesus Christ. This was taught by the early church fathers and continues to be taught through to today. It is a powerful exercise to read through the proverbs substituting Jesus for Wisdom. When this is done, it becomes very clear that Jesus is our only source of true knowledge and wisdom and that without Him being the Lord and Master of our lives that it does not matter how much education or information that we have accumulated. Wisdom, Jesus, is a person that we can enter into a relationship with. He is someone that we trust and respect. He is someone that we can turn to in times of need or in times of abundance. He is our guide and protector through this journey of life. He is also the one that is singing out in the streets, moving boldly throughout the city squares, preaching from the city walls, and sitting at the gates of the city, trying to call in the lost sheep into His loving arms. Glory be to God.

Luke 11:28

But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

Personal Challenge

Wait a minute! Do you mean that all of this stuff that I hear about God in the sermons that I sit through, all of the things that I read about in my Bible studies, all the things the Jesus talked about in the Gospels, are things that I am supposed to do? Do you mean that when Jesus told us to love God and love our neighbor, that it applied to me? When He said that if I look at a woman with lustful eyes it was the same as going to bed with her or when I was angry with my brother it is the same as murder? How have we come to this place in our Christian faith practice that we spend all this time learning about God and yet do nothing with it? Jesus does not want us to just be pupils, He wants us to apply His teachings in our lives all of the time. Being a follower of Christ means putting our own lives and our own ways behind us. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner!