Things related to faith

Hebrews 13:5 Your lifestyle must be free from the love of money, being content with what you have. For he himself has said, “I will never desert you, and I will never abandon you.” Hebrews is a long sermon and near the end of that sermon are some imperatives for God’s people. The Bible is anything but Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, but Hebrews 13 has some pretty basic instructions that are wise to remember. There are 2 in this verse to encourage me this morning: Your lifestyle must be free from the love of money For he himself has said Reflect # The lifestyle comment just such a particularly relevant thing to me right now as God has brought changes to my work/career. In many ways my lifestyle is very free from the love of money - we live below our means, give money away, etc. But I know my heart is fickle, and if there’s not as much money as I think there should be in our account I feel something in me that is most certainly sinful. I know what having more than we need is lik…

2 Corinthians 7:6 But God, who comforts the humble, comforted us by the coming of Titus,… Paul didn’t have to credit God as one “who comforts the humble” - he could’ve just praised God for the comfort brought through Titus showing up. But instead, Paul just tosses the nugget in there. At a glance, maybe it looks like Paul is building himself, or his group, up by self-referencing as “humble”. But calling yourself humble isn’t the proud and arrogant claim that it sounds like today… In reality - humility is an honest view of oneself, not in inflated or deflated view - but I won’t digress farther than that… Paul isn’t bragging about his own humility, or claiming that because he’s humble then God comforts him. No, the sense of the word ταπεινός (tapeinos) is downcast… ie. someone in need of comfort. Paul is giving God praise, just naturally in his own language, as the one who comforts people who need it. By God’s grace on my life, I believe I have seen a similar pattern - I even outlined in…

Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening” today ended with a poem: Trials forge and reveal faith in our lives - faith in something that is… Yahweh uses trials as a megaphone to his people though. For those called into his family, the trials of temporary life should, and for the true believer ‘do’, bring us closer to the King’s throne. The trial highlights a larger reality of existential need of a savior. Trials have severity because there are different kinds, but the need for a King is of one kind. It is the highest and most necessary need of us all, but not everyone knows it. Trials can reveal it. Praise the Lord for trials that bring us closer to him, for no trial of earth can compare to the Glory of the King.

Philippians 4:11 Not that I speak from need, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. Context # This verse showing up in Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening is a divine grace to me. Today is a significant day in a journey God has had me on towards contentment. The circumstances of that journey, the specifics, are known to some but I can still speak generally enough about it in this reflection because the generalities are not unique to me - anymore than the requirement to learn contentment, for it’s not a natural state for a man. For me, like a lot of others, it’s about money right now. Over the last few years I’ve been able to make a pretty significant income and God has blessed me through the work I’ve done, but something I have noticed is the work itself has felt less and less blessed, and more like a burden as the goal became money. I want to be a billionaire and never concern myself with a financial struggle - but this is childish thinking. The last few years hav…

I went to sit down this morning with a cup of coffee and do a meditation like I try to do at least a few times a week. I meditate on the Bible, on God’s word because I believe it is God’s word - and what a shallow belief it’d be if I knew nothing about the Word. For the last few years this has been the normal way I spend time with Jesus, and he has brought comfort and guidance to me, not through new knowledge necessarily, but through perspective and wisdom. This feels almost like a lazy way out of hardened theological study, a practice I hope to come back to before too long, but through semi-regular reflection, meditation, and writing Jesus has done a lot of good to my heart. I hope it wouldn’t take years of the Lord’s work on my heart to recognize the blessing in my life, but left to my own devices I certainly look at what he’s given me and still desire more. So, that wish is certainly nothing more than a fancy - and praise God for that, because it only further shows my need for him.…

Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening reflection for this morning is Micah 2:10 “Arise, and depart”. context Typical note about reflections not being deep study. Also noting that Spurgeon’s meditations are often about what comes to mind from the words of a verse (or part of it) as opposed to the context of the verse. Micah 2:10 Arise and go, for this is no resting place, on account of uncleanness that destroys with painful destruction. So the context of the rest of the verse isn’t that consistent with the direction of Spurgon’s meditation but nonetheless his springboard is good to think about… Someday everyone of us will answer the call to “arise and go” - death comes for us all but death isn’t itself an existential end, it is the time to obey the Lord. At his word, I will leave the world and go to where he calls me. This is true for everyone, it’s an inescapable part of the reality that Yahweh has created for all Creation. Death fills some with dread, but for the Christian it’s the passage t…

Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening today is from Jeremiah 23:6. Warning Again with these reflections, I"m not an OT scholar and I don’t know, or didn’t do a lot of search on, the context of the passage. This isn’t educational, this if a reflection on what God brings to mind through his Word and my time with him, not teaching about the historical context of where the words in Jeremiah 23 actually affect the story Jeremiah 23:6 In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’ The Lord is our righteousness # There’s a lot of tension in the details of the story of the world in how humans and God relate to each other. On one hand, God created everything, and he created humans with a unique purpose to be his seen-imagers in the physical world who carry out his will. On the other hand, humans take that position of privilege and often destroy the world in our sin and dismay. The theology surrounding t…

John 7:37 Now on the last day of the feast—the great day—Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let him drink, The Last Day # So, today obviously isn’t the last day of a feast Jesus is speaking at, I don’t mean to impose anything beyond a trivial relationship between “the last day” and today being New Year’s Eve. The reflection is for reflecting, not education and so today I pray the Lord be good to me in meditating on this text this morning. Jesus Cried Out # Yahweh longs for all people to be reconciled to him. It’s a fact that that won’t be the case because of the degrees of wills that can coexist even though the mechanism of their relationship is hidden from us - The Hidden Things Belong To Yahweh. However, a clear truth here is that “Jesus cried out”. His voice goes out, loud and all around, to all people within ear-shot - “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me”. Warning If anyone is thirsty Jesus gives no qualifiers on who his message…

Deuteronomy 29:29 The hidden things belong to Yahweh our God, but the revealed things belong to us to know and to our children forever, in order to do all the words of this law. Here is a truth every Christian should meditate on and remember whenever they find themselves so sure of a biblical teaching. There are things not meant for us to know - not that we cannot enjoy the musings, but we need to rightly understand that there are mechanisms in the world that are only known to Yahweh. Just like my daughters have no actual understanding of how they became my daughters, or how money shows up in our account every month, or how water comes to our house… These things are beyond their scope of existence to be honest, and there are analogous things that we fully-grown mature adults need to recognize are beyond us and are for the Lord, only. This is not an excuse or encouragement though to never be sure of a conviction… there most certainly are “revealed things [that] belong to us to know”. So…

Galatians 2:19-20 19 For through the law I died to the law, in order that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, 20 and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and that life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. This is one of the most common verse-memory verses I think. Probably there’s good reason for that - Paul has a lot to say to the Galatians, and these 2 verses summarize one of the simple truths of the Gospel - the life a Christian is given is freed from the law of death and make alive to Jesus. The gospel truth is that the law is no longer the thing we answer to - everyone will, certainly. There’s no mistake to be made that every human has accountability for their own agency. In our “free” will, bound to sin and death and to the law for approval, we aren’t free at all but slaves to an oppressive overlord. Jesus frees the Christian to live a life free from that oppression, in the life-giving security…