To follow up the post on New Year’s Resolution, I want to look at a short passage of Scripture.
"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." Ephesians 5:15-16 The year ahead is always something we cannot predict. Things often take turns we didn’t expect. Our passage points out that the days are evil. We know, from Scripture, that the days will get worse as we draw closer to the end. We don’t know when that day will actually be (Matthew 24:36) but we know that they will be similar to the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37-38). Genesis 6:5 says “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The days that we live in are truly no different. People are focused on the temporal, the past, the here and now.
We are to be different “not as unwise, but as wise.” Pay attention to your walk. Place one foot in front of the other, steady as you go. Carpe Diem, as the saying goes. The Greek word for time here means opportunity. Make the most of the opportunity that is the life you have been given. Worship and serve! God is to be our focus, our passion, our life!!
David Brainard, missionary to the Native Americans in the early your of
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2 comments:
I am really excited about a new year to serve our savior together. I will pray that you (and I) are faithful to the reading plan. However, I do want to add just one idea. Let's do be faithful to be in the word everyday, but let us also build in the flexibility to both our reading plans to just be stopped in our tracks and spend a little time in worship and awe of our God whenever the word overwhelms us.
I was flipping around in my esv last night, the one that I will be doing most of my private devotion reading in, and I hit Psalm 147:3,
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
NOW, if that does not bring you to worship, in confidence and fear, nothing will, OR you have no wounds, and no heartache ( saying nothing of heartbreak). And, brother, I know that is not the case.
See, from where I am and from what I can tell, God's people are called to put themselves in places that may well break their heart, and that may involve hurt. It will always glorify God, and it will be to our eventual good. And this is great encouragement for the believer that is battle worn, heartbroken, hurting, and needs the promises of his God to not only provide comfort, but for good old location verification. Because it IS good to know that the walk of faith is not plastic, and safe, and shiny. Sometimes it is a scuffed, stumbly, awkward-looking shamble of a walk.
David in the cave, Job being questioned before the whirlwind, Saul\Paul, blind in Damascus on day two before Ananias showed up: all awkward times and seasons I tend to think. Sure, we have benefit of the Word to see the end of those times, but the saints who lives them simply held on at those times and in those times, safe in the hand of our sovereign God, with scuffed spiritual knuckles. And , dood, That brings my heart to worship, to know that not only was my Savior there, as He experienced the worst , and was yet without sin - but these saints were there too.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
What a Great and loving God. He comforts those who, without His grace, would be His enemies still. He heals the new heart. He unites it to fear His name. He binds up the wounds of those who are healed by His stripes.
Amen
I’m just saying that while I do want to read on schedule, I pray we both get knocked off schedule quite often by the Holy Spirit illuminating the truth to us and driving us to praise and prayer.
pm
Schedule? We don't need no stinkin' schedule!!
Actually, we do. We need the daily discipline of Something (there's that word again) but we need the flexibility of Yeildedness (is that a word?), submitting to what we read and to what God is saying to us in His Word!
God Bless, what a great comment!
MP
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