Psalm 34:8 commends the reader to “Taste and see that the Lord is good”. The cultural trope that faith is blind is maddening. God has provided evidence many, many times. He showed proofs to Moses, Pharaoh, and Gideon among others. Jesus offered evidence to Thomas when he doubted. And indeed history is littered with evidence for God generally and Jesus specifically. We needn’t have a “blind” faith. My faith is based not on unquestioning trust of some invisible promise! My faith is built on the incredible evidence for the Gospel of grace that Jesus died to offer to me, and to you. So I, like David, will commend any among you who is holding something back from God (whether that’s your life, your finances, your career, your time, or anything else) to give it over to Him. Trust Him. Watch Him. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Category: Devotional
Be True To Who God Made You To Be
Just a quick thought tonight. Farm boy David offers to fight the giant Goliath, who no one else in the Israelite army is willing to face. King Saul says the very idea is preposterous, but David insists that if God is with him, he will be successful. Saul relents and allows the boy to go fight the giant and offers David his armour for the battle.
David tries it on, but quickly realizes that he is simply not accustomed to Saul’s armour and so it becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Because that’s not who God made him to be. Saul’s armour wasn’t the right tool for David to use, because it was for Saul.
You can’t step into someone else’s blessing. You can’t copy someone else’s approach. You can’t be someone other than who God made you to be. I know it took me a great many years of trying to be Greg Laurie or Voddie Baucham or whoever the cool itinerate speaker du jour was before realizing that God had gifted me in different ways from those guys. And once I learned that I became a significantly better speaker and teacher.
What are you struggling to do under someone else’s power and plan? Turn that over to God and allow Him to show you how He has equipped you to do that thing is the way He has planned for YOU, not for whoever you might be looking at.
1 Samuel 17:32-19:24; Psalm 59 | 104/365
Cold Comfort and Eternal Perspective
Rachel. The wife Jacob loved. Just to hear it hurts. Nevermind actually BEING Leah, the first wife — the one without the ‘sparkle’ in her eyes. She lived her life in Rachel’s shadow. When Jacob was afraid of his brother Esau coming to exact revenge, he lined up the concubines and their children first, then Leah with her children, Jacob was in the last wave with Rachel. An inspiring picture of male headship at it best.
Back in Genesis 35 we read about Rachel dying after giving birth to Benjamin, and she was buried there in the desert. Meanwhile at the very end of Genesis, Jacob asks to be buried in the family tomb with Abraham & Sarah, Rebekah & Isaac… and Leah. Her body is already there waiting for him. After a lifetime of faithfulness to a man who didn’t love her. Who probably raised her sister’s children when Rachel passed away. She would be the one Jacob asked to be buried next to. He would grow to love her.
And more than that, God had a plan for Leah. She was the mother of Levi. The man whose priestly tribe would produce Moses, the one who would receive the next Divine Covenant from the LORD. She was also the mother of Judah. A wild man whose tribe would produce King David, the one who would receive the next Divine Covenant after Moses. And of course, Jesus Himself, the bringer of the New Covenant would come from the line of David the king, from the line of Judah the lion, from the line of Leah, the loved of God.
It can be cold comfort to know that we have treasures in Heaven or that God is using our suffering for some greater good, but we need to keep an eternal perspective. Even if we are here for more than 100 years, Heaven is eternal. When we’ve been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.
Genesis 47:28-50:26 | 018/365
Abandoned by God?
A Wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to. This famous line by Gandalf the Grey introduces us to the character and sets a tone for how we see him, and how he sees himself. It is no secret that J.R.R. Tolkien was a Christian and close friend of C.S. Lewis. And we can see reflections of Christian thoughts about good and evil and temptation and the darkness inside of us strewn throughout Middle Earth.
This line in particular is one that always stuck me as true of God. In particular His providential plans. Nothing happens before it’s time. God told Abraham the land of Canaan would be his… in 400 years. Because the Canaanites had not yet become lost to their own wickedness. God tells David a King will come from His line whose Kingdom will last forever. Again, it would be about 400 years before Jesus would be born to fulfill that promise. We see such things over and over again throughout the Bible.
Today’s story is no different, even if the timeline is substantially shorter. Joseph uses his God-given gift of dream interpretation to help out fellow prisoners who were from Pharaoh’s house. Joseph asks the cup-bearer to plead his case to Pharaoh on his behalf, that Joseph might be released to go home to his family. The cup-bearer agreed, then promptly forgot.
But God had other plans for Joseph. Some time later Pharaoh had a dream that he wanted interpreted. NOW the cup-bearer remembers Joseph and tells Pharaoh. Upon correctly interpreting Pharaoh’s dream and warning him about an impending famine, Joseph is hastily foisted into command of all of Egypt under only Pharaoh himself. This position would benefit not only Jospeh, but also his family in a powerful way. But for now we’ll stick that in our pocket, ’cause we’ll come back to it later.
This point is this: I don’t know why you are going through what you are going through. I don’t know why it’s hard for you right now. But, just as Hagar said, the Lord is “El Roi”, the God who sees you. You have not been abandoned, there is something coming. Because the Lord is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
Genesis 35:38-39, 40:1-41:57 | 015/365
God Could Never Use Me
How many of us have uttered this sentence, or held this thought?
If ever you feel like you’re too messed up to be used by God, read the Bible. See how He uses deeply flawed people to accomplish His purposes all the time.
Just in today’s passage; Jacob is cheated by Laban, so he rigs the system to get Laban back and Rachel steals from her father’s house and lies to his face about it.
This is the man who would become the namesake for Israel and the woman who gave birth to two of the 12 tribes of Israel. They are NOT insignificant contributors! God even appears to the unbeliever Laban to issue a warning.
The point is this: no amount of human sin or interference will stop God from achieving His plans.
So you should worry less about being perfect, and more about recognizing your sin and submitting yourself to God.
Remember David wasn’t a person patterned after God’s heart, but a deeply flawed person seeking after God’s heart.
So should we all be.