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Clap for Joy – VOTD.12.26.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 26th, 2017 | by

Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy! Psalm 47:1

I hope you had a merry (joyful) Christmas!

Think of a child opening a big brightly-wrapped Christmas present. There’s something inside them that needs to be expressed as they discover what the gift is. You can see it when the young kid claps with glee as they discover the exciting gift inside. That’s the idea behind today’s verse: That spontaneous, joyful response.

Everyone clap your hands, (All people)
Everyone shout to God with loud songs of joy!

It sounds like the Sons of Korah (who wrote this psalm) were familiar with exuberant displays of worship. And part of that exuberant display were loud songs of joy. The biblical concept of clapping to the Lord includes more than keeping time to music. When God’s children drink from the river of His delights (Ps 36:8) or discover the gifts of His grace, we can’t help but respond in joy. (more…)

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We Have Seen His Glory – VOTD.12.25.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 25th, 2017 | by

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only. Who came from the Father full of grace and truth. John 1:1,2, 14

We hardly get into John’s Gospel – his attempt to tell a story that is beyond telling (Jn 21:25) – and he explains: “We have seen His glory!” We’ve handled, touched and heard… We encountered the ‘One and Only’…we’ve experienced Jesus.

Everything else John writes is based on that pivotal fact: This is what I’ve experienced. This is my testimony to what I’ve seen; the character of the one I know; “We have seen His glory”.

‘Glory’. Christians often use this biblical word, but we don’t always recognize what it reveals about our God—and the beauty of all He is and does. Moses asked God “I pray You, show me Your glory!” (Ex 33:18). We, today, might long for the same opportunity, because the glory of God attracts us, draws us, and compels us to seek more of Him.

The most common Hebrew word for glory is kabod, meaning “heavy in weight.” When you glorify God, you recognize His importance, or the “weight,” of His uniqueness. Beauty, majesty, and splendor are what we’re attributing to God when we glorify Him. You and I are probably more familiar with the Hebrew word ‘shekinah’. That word never appears in the Bible, but the concept certainly does. (more…)

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Wisdom is Peace-filled – In Heart – VOTD.12.19.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 19th, 2017 | by

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons and daughters of God. Matthew 5:9.

Last time we ended with the question, ‘Since Jesus left His peace for all believers (Jn 14:27), why don’t we see more of it?’ Especially since the peace that Jesus gives is often sited in evangelistic messages as one of the greatest reasons to give your life to Jesus? Not all followers of Jesus walk in this kind of peace on a consistent basis. Ever wonder why?

That’s exactly what Jesus was talking about when He spoke today’s verse: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons and daughters of God.” The Body of Christ at large does not put much of a value on sonship and daughtership. We focus on a lot of things, but often that’s not one of them, even though we routinely refer to God as our Father.

So first of all, a peacemaker is known as a son or daughter of God. That means we enjoy peace with God. That’s where peacemaking starts. But peace with God does not display itself in our lives automatically…it’s not simply a byproduct of ‘saying the sinner’s prayer’, or of becoming a Christian.

Of course Jesus has already made peace and we come to God accepting His terms of peace which is Jesus (Rom 5:1, Col 1:19,20). But living in that peace comes from trusting God, and that is a continual growing activity. The more we experience the faithfulness of God, the more we trust Him from the heart, and the more at peace our hearts become. (more…)

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Wisdom is Peaceable – Within – VOTD.12.18.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 18th, 2017 | by

But the wisdom from God is always…filled with peace… James 3:17

Christ-like wisdom is filled with peace. It’s peaceable and peace-loving. But what does that mean? Many people think that the opposite of being peaceable is being hostile and mean. But more often, the opposite of peaceable is the perversion of peaceable:

It’s a spirit of wishy-washy. It’s the spirit of ‘don’t make waves’. It’s standing for nothing. It’s selling out to keep the peace. It’s so focused on the absence of conflict that it trades off its personal peace to try to establish a fake peace—an outward appearance that looks like it has no conflict, but turmoil is just below the surface as tensions go underground, swept under the carpet, hoping it will just go away. That kind of ‘peace’ is just a powder keg waiting to blow up. (more…)

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Wisdom is Pure – In Heart – VOTD.12.12.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 12th, 2017 | by

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8

Last time we saw that Christ-like wisdom is empowered by the Holy Spirit and is constantly being drawn toward more complete holiness both in our hearts and in how we live. To that we add today’s verse which was spoken by Jesus: “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”

And there you have the goal of the Christian life: seeing God… Experiencing our Christian faith in such a way that we are seeing God. It’s all present tense here. Psalm 73:25 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you (that’s future) and on earth there is no one I desire besides you (that’s here and now).”

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that today’s verse is the glue that holds all the rest of Scripture together. It’s the context for the teaching, the history, the stories. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” How does that work in our everyday life…with our family, at work, in ministry…what does that look like?

To understand that we have to begin with the ‘heart’. In the Bible the ‘heart’ is used to describe the command center of our life. Who you and I are in our totality. It includes our emotions, our rationality, our reason, thoughts, decision-maker (where we make decisions), the place from which our words speak forth… Put it all together and we have a very comprehensive description of who we are. “As a mirror reflects the face, so the heart reflects the person” (Prov 27:19).

Next we need to understand ‘pure’. Pure means ‘undivided’. “Give me an undivided heart, O Lord, that I may wholeheartedly revere your name” (Ps 86:11). Sure, a pure heart is cleansed, but it’s clean because it’s undivided. It’s undivided between God and everything else. Jesus was still talking about this a chapter later when He said, “You can’t serve both God and Mammon” (6:24). You and I can’t server God and stuff—God and anything else. That’s not being pure in heart. That’s a divided heart. (more…)

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Wisdom is Pure – By Faith – VOTD.12.11.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 11th, 2017 | by

But the wisdom that comes from God is most of all, pure… James 3:17

Christ-like wisdom is pure since it is a gift from God, but we make a mistake when we think the opposite of pure is always impure—it isn’t; at least not all the time. The opposite of pure is the perversion of pure: it’s puritanical. It’s keeping rules and exerting discipline. It’s adhering to the “traditions of the elders”. Pure wisdom is not a mixture of rules and good intentions. Christ-like wisdom is empowered by the Holy Spirit and is constantly being drawn toward more complete holiness both in our hearts and in our life experience.

When the Holy Spirit is transforming our minds, then our thoughts are being purified…not only that, our desires mirror Jesus’ desires (that’s what real holiness is) in all aspects of life. We desire what God desires and He gives us the desires of our hearts because they are in line with His wisdom.

BUT, when we don’t allow the Holy Spirit to fill our thinking, attitudes, actions and desires, we are left trapped in all kinds of impurity. That’s when we start to rely on rules and traditions to achieve a pseudo-holiness—and the result is that we are puritanical and legalistic. Kind of like the Pharisees of old: hypocrites, knowing the right rules but powerless to actually carry out their ideals. (more…)

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Wisdom: Trustworthiness Brings Trust – VOTD.12.05.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 5th, 2017 | by

Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful (trustworthy) over a few things; I will make You ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord. Matthew 25:21

We ended last time asking the question: What do being trustworthy and wisdom have to do with each other? Just this: Wisdom recognizes trust for the incredible value it bestows upon us. Fools can blow off trust, and then wonder why no one believes them—even when they are sincere.

But when we treat the trust of others as a fragile gift… When we recognize that in trusting us people in our lives make themselves vulnerable and that in trusting us they have given us the power to harm them… We begin to recognize just how important maintaining a reputation of trustworthiness is.

When we are trustworthy, people can rely on us. We can be counted on to do what we say we will do. If we make commitments, we follow through on them. Being trustworthy doesn’t mean we will never let others down… we would have to be perfect to pull that off. But it does mean that we take the trust placed in us seriously and have a reputation of living up to it. So trustworthiness is both an attitude and a pattern of behavior that honors the trust placed in us. (more…)

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Wisdom Brings Trustworthiness – VOTD.12.04.17

Posted in Verse of the Day | December 4th, 2017 | by

“Of all my house, Moses is the one I trust.”  Numbers 12:7 (That’s God speaking.)

Trustworthy: Truthful, dependable, ethical, faithful and authentic. All these words combine to describe what a trustworthy person is like.

Most of us spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether God is trustworthy. When we face uncertain times, we wonder where God is; when prayers go unanswered, we question if He’s listening, if He cares.

But today’s verse changes the game appreciably. Perhaps the important question isn’t whether we can trust God… Maybe for those of us who want to live a life that is saturated in Jesus, a better question is: Can God trust any of us? Can God trust you? Can God trust me?

Of course, this is not a question God is trying to figure out. He already knows the answer. Yet, according to Jesus, our relationship with God depends a lot on whether God can trust us. The character representing God in His Parable of the talents says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful (trustworthy) over a few things; I will make You ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.” (Matt 25:21)

The irony of all this, is that the way in which we become trustworthy to God is by trusting Him… that’s one of the key points of the parable. Unconditional trust in God is the only way we can become people who God can trust. Because it is only if all that we have—all that we are—has been relinquished into God’s hands that anyone can be trusted with those things. (more…)