AUGUST 29

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES

Psalm 55:22

“Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you.”

Isaiah 26:3

“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you; because he trusts in you.”

Care, even though exercised on legitimate objects, if carried to excess, has in it the nature of sin.  The precept to avoid anxious care is earnestly instilled by our Savior, again and again, in His teachings.  It is reiterated by involving transgression:

 **For the very essence of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God, and the thrusting of ourselves into His place to do for Him what He has undertaken to do for us.

We attempt to think of that which we imagine He will forget.  We labor to take on ourselves our weary burden, as if He were unable or unwilling to take it for us. 

Anxiety makes us doubt God’s loving kindness, and thus our love for Him grows cold.  We feel mistrust, and thus grieve the Spirit of  God,  so that our prayers become hindered, our consistent example marred, and our lives ones of self-seeking. 

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This month we will continue the book, “Whatever Happens – How to Stand Firm in Your Faith When the World is Falling Apart.”  By a contemporary author of many best-selling Christian books, Robert J. Morgan.  He took care of his wife when she had MS, until she went home to her Savior.  “He knows of which he speaks.”  I pray that this book blesses you.

Philippians 4:19

 “And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

WHATEVER HAPPENS …..CONSIDER YOURSELF WORTH MILLIONS

Colossians 2:2

“My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches….”

Here’s another reference to our wealth in the book of Colossians.  Paul was praying here for the believers in Colossae.  This is his petition as rendered by the Living Bible. “that you will be encouraged and knit together by strong ties of love, and that you will have the rich experience of knowing Christ with real certainty and clear understanding.”

I think my favorite book outside of the Bible is J. I. Packer’s “Knowing God”.  In this classic work, Packer says:

“How can we turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God?  The rule for doing so is simple but demanding.  It is that we turn each truth that we learn about God into a matter of meditation before God, leading to prayer and praise to God.”

He went on to say that the effect of doing so “is ever to humble us, as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory and our own littleness and sinfulness, and to encourage and reassure us – comfort us, in the old, strong, Bible sense of the word – as we contemplate the unsearchable riches of divine mercy displayed and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The unsearchable, inexhaustible, incalculable richness of knowing Him, personally, intimately, eternally – that is the very best thing in life.

Colossians 3:16

“Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly.”

The older translations say, “let the Word of God dwell in you richly.”  That sounds like an individual instruction for each of us to become saturated with the Word of God  The above translation recognizes the fact that the “you” is plural and that Paul is saying the entire church should be saturated with the Word of God.

Of course, both are true.

I fell in love with the Bible almost as soon as I learned to read.  I got a small Gospel of John for learning the 23^rd Psalm, and I remember my father buying me a small New Testament with olive wood covers.  Soon thereafter, I received a copy of the entire Bible.  In those days the King James Version was the dominant translation, but because I heard it read in Sunday School and church I was able to navigate through the archaic terms.  My local elementary school had scripture memory exercises, and I memorized a ton of Bible verses.

In high school my father bought me a very nice Bible, leather bound, ribbons, tabs, and I read it every day.

At Columbia International University, my knowledge of the Bible grew exponentially, and I began learning to teach it and preach it to others.  It has been the book of my life.  The more I study it the more I want to study it.  As I can lay it on the table in front of me, God lays its words on my heart.  My very favorite thing to do in all of this life is to study God’s Word and to teach it to others, however feeble my efforts.

This wonderful book has sustained me through childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, marriage and parenting, and widowship, and it will bear me through to the very end.   When I rise in glory and see the face of our Lord Jesus and hug my wife, Katrina, and my dear parents, the next thing I want to do is to open a copy of the Bible in heaven and begin studying it all over again.  Forever is His Word settled in heaven. (see Psalm 119:89).

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