Category: Bible (Page 104 of 356)

Peace is transitory in our world.

People in Gaza don’t know peace the morning, nor do their neighbors in Israel. Ukrainians still don’t know peace, despite being pushed off the front page. Wars subside in one region of the world only to flare up in another, like heinous geysers spewing destruction.

Jesus spoke to the human heart when he said, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Geopolitical realities trouble my heart. But worries and fears closer to home keep me up at night. Some for good reason, and others due only to my imagination. Regardless of the source, Jesus extends relief.

Jesus promised the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who will teach his ways and remind his followers of what Jesus taught. The Holy Spirit roots the words of Jesus into our psyche. The more we look to the Holy Spirit and trust the words of Jesus, the closer we get to the peace Jesus described.

Lean in. Return again and again to the words of Jesus. Ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, then open the Scriptures and flood your soul. When I do so, fear subsides and hope emerges.

Look to the Prince of Peace for peace of heart and mind.

John 14 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Falaq Lazuardi

My wife and I walked into a post office to check on a delayed package. After explaining the situation, the clerk typed the tracking number into her computer and awaited the results. Out for delivery. I asked hopefully, does this mean the package will arrive today? The upbeat clerk replied in a chipper voice, Maybe!

In other words, God only knows. Like drawing Moses from the waters, we needed the hand of God to pull the package from the bowels of the postal service. The package arrived three days later.

The Lord took Ezekiel to a vast valley filled with dry bones. God asked him, Son of man, can these bones live? I love Ezekiel’s wise response—Sovereign Lord, you alone know.

Only God knows the answers to the many questions we face in life. Why did I lose that job? Why does my friend suffer? Why do children die in wars? God only knows.

Ezekiel addressed the Lord as Sovereign. The title connotes supreme power and authority. The Creator possesses authority over nature. In front of Ezekiel, God formed the bones into flesh and breathed live into the bodies, creating a vast army.

Our Sovereign works as he wishes. He infuses life into desolate situations and hope into our day to day.

Life often feels like the inner workings of the post office—God only knows what’s going on. But when I think more deeply about that phrase I find hope, because indeed God knows what’s going on.

Ezekiel 37 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Claudio Schwarz

There’s an old hymn I sang in church where the refrain goes:

Showers of blessing,
Showers of blessing we need:
Mercy-drops round us are falling,
But for the showers we plead.

Major Daniel Webster Whittle penned these words after serving in the American Civil War. Whittle referred to this passage in Ezekiel for his image of the Lord soaking his people with blessings like a day-long rain:

I will make them and the places surrounding my hill a blessing. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing.

Whittle turned to Jesus while lying in a hospital, his arm amputated above the elbow. In his despair, Whittle opened a New Testament his mother gave him as he left home. He read the small book over and over, and saw his way to salvation in Christ. His moment of conversion is powerful:

While laying in the hospital, a young man begged a nurse to pray for him, but she refused. He then begged Daniel who said “I can’t pray. I never prayed in my life. I am just as wicked as you are.” The young man again begged Daniel to pray for him. He felt God speaking to him, so he knelt at the boy’s bedside…

Major Whittle wrote “I dropped on my knees and held the boy’s hand in mine. In a few brok­en words I con­fessed my sins and asked Christ to for­give me. I be­lieved right there that He did for­give me. I then prayed ear­nest­ly for the boy. He be­came qui­et and pressed my hand as I prayed and plead­ed God’s prom­ises. When I arose from my knees, he was dead. A look of peace had come over his troubled face, and I can­not but be­lieve that God who used him to bring me to the Sav­ior, used me to lead him to trust Christ’s pre­cious blood and find par­don. I hope to meet him in hea­ven.”

In the middle of a bloody field hospital, arm throbbing from amputation (without anesthetic), lying next to a dying man, Daniel Webster Whittle embraced the Sender of Blessings. It’s a joyous mystery to me how some choose to follow the Lord in the midst of carnage and darkness.

Whittle wrote more than 200 hymns after the war. He never forgot the Lord’s goodness to him in granting him salvation. I love his line from his hymn I Know Whom I Have Believed:

I know not why God’s wondrous grace to me He hath made known;
Nor why—unworthy—Christ in love redeemed me for His own.

Whittle lived from that day in the hospital to the day of his death experiencing the blessings showering around him. As he wrote hymns one-handed, he never forgot the Lord’s goodness. Whittle’s example makes me aware of my need to pay attention to the goodness of the Lord, to peel off my coat and soak in the showers.

Ezekiel 34 in reading the Bible in 2023

I forgot to set the clocks back.

Daylight Savings Time expired here in Colorado this morning at 2 am. I knew I should fix the clocks last night, but I got busy. Then I fell asleep watching a football game and crawled into bed. Only this morning at 6 did my wife turn to me and mumble, we forget to set the clocks back. Sometimes lack of action leads to fortuitous circumstances. I blissfully snored for another hour.

More often our lack of action leads to problems. Ezekiel received this message from the Lord regarding his unmotivated audience:

My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to hear your words, but they do not put them into practice. Their mouths speak of love, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain. Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice.

Notice the repeat of the phrase, they hear your words but do not put them into practice. When it comes to a life of faith it’s the doing that matters. These folks thought of Ezekiel as a traveling minstrel. The wild-haired prophet made for good entertainment. But give credence to his warnings? Let’s not get crazy.

When faith competes with entertainment, faith loses. Formerly an after-hours activity, in our era of 24/7 amusement fresh diversions wait eagerly at our fingertips. The hard work of living the faith loses to lazy distraction.

But as Ezekiel understood, the words of God are the basis of life, not just another option to scroll through. With that in mind, gathering with the saints keeps our lives on track in ways a recorded service fails to accomplish. We need each other if we’re going to actually live the faith and push back the distractions.

Let us keep the faith, and put God’s Word into practice in the company of others. Over time we’ll find ourselves in a better place, and we’ll realize it was the doing that mattered.

Ezekiel 33 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Jon Tyson