Jesus

Another Day, Another Psalm

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“You’re all I want in heaven!
    You’re all I want on earth!
When my skin sags and my bones get brittle,
    God is rock-firm and faithful.
Look! Those who left you are falling apart!
    Deserters, they’ll never be heard from again.
But I’m in the very presence of God—
    oh, how refreshing it is!
I’ve made Lord God my home.
    God, I’m telling the world what you do!” (Psalm 73:25-28, The Message).

It struck me that one thing David did very well was to express gratitude for the goodness of God. Sure, he was vocal about some of the hardships he went through. He was very honest about his own struggles. But never forget that a large part of the Psalms is David singing God’s praises.

I think if believers were as loud about God’s goodness as we are about what’s wrong with everything, people might be more inclined to listen to what we have to say. As my old pastor used to say all the time, Christians are more known for what we’re against than what we’re for.

Worship is a way of expressing gratitude. It’s giving God His breath back, as I heard it put recently. That means we acknowledge that everything we are and everything we own, including the very breath in our lungs, comes from God. When we give thanks, we’re saying that God is God, and we’re not. We’re declaring our dependence on God that He will continue to be good to us.

I think expressing praise builds our faith muscles. When we verbalize our gratitude, we are testifying to God’s faithfulness and giving the most effective sermon anyone could ever hear. People can argue our politics, our theology, and our doctrines all day long, but they can never refute the genuine testimony of someone who has seen and experienced the goodness of God.

Lord, open our mouths to declare Your praises all day long as Your servant David did so long ago. Help us to be as faithful to share You with others as You were faithful to share with us by revealing Yourself to us and give us all things pertaining to life and godliness, Amen.

Gut-Level Honest Prayers

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“God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer.
When I’m far from anywhere,
down to my last gasp,
I call out, “Guide me
up High Rock Mountain!”

“You’ve always given me breathing room,
a place to get away from it all,
A lifetime pass to your safe-house,
an open invitation as your guest.
You’ve always taken me seriously, God,
made me welcome among those who know and love you.

“Let the days of the king add up
to years and years of good rule.
Set his throne in the full light of God;
post Steady Love and Good Faith as lookouts,
And I’ll be the poet who sings your glory—
and live what I sing every day” (Psalm 61, The Message).

I’m up to the Psalms in my yearly Bible reading. They were originally the equivalent of a hymnal for God’s people back in the days before Jesus. You could also call the Psalms the prayer book of the Bible. Many of them were penned by King David, who never was one to mince words with God. They’re honest. They’re raw. They’re confessional. They’re sometimes not very pretty.

I think we lose something when we try to “pretty up” our prayers to make them more presentable before God. After all, He already knows what you’re thinking when you’re heart is breaking and you’re still trying to use flowery language because you somehow think those kinds of prayers are more acceptable to God. I confess I’m guilty of that one.

Prayer is the one place you can be honest. You can be real. I do think that you should still be reverent and not make Jesus your homeboy, but I also think God can handle your emotions and your frustrations.

Prayer doesn’t have to be pretty. Prayer doesn’t have to be proper. What prayer does need to be is authentic. Don’t tell God what you think He wants to hear. Tell Him where you are and how you feel and where you want to be. The key in every prayer is to say, “Not my will but Thine.”

That’s the prayer that never fails. You’re saying to God, “I know that You know better than I do what’s good for me and what will make me more like Jesus. You still work all things together for good, so I can trust You with my life.”

The best way to get good at praying isn’t to read more books about praying (although that can be super helpful). The best way isn’t to attend all sorts of seminars and listen to all kinds of sermons about prayer (which again can be useful). The best way to get good at praying is to pray.

I mean pray all the time. Pray whenever it comes to mind. Pray when you feel like it. Pray when you don’t. Pray when the words flow. Pray when there are no words. To borrow the old Nike slogan, just pray.

Missing the Awe of God

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“I came to see that I was wired for awe, that awe of something sits at the bottom of everything I say and do. But I wasn’t just wired for awe. I was wired for awe of God. No other awe satisfies the soul. No other awe can give my heart the peace, rest, and security that it seeks. I came to see that I needed to trace awe of God down to the most mundane of human decisions and activities” (Paul David Tripp, Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do).

I was inspired by today’s sermon on this one. Basically, my pastor said that many of us are missing the awe of God in our daily lives. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

The way I understand it, fear isn’t me quaking in my boots, afraid to go near God. It’s a reverential awe where I recognize that God isn’t a bigger, faster, stronger version of me, but something other and something completely unknowable to me apart from divine revelation.

I know that reverential awe is missing if all my prayers start out with a wishlist to God of all the things I need and want. If God is my Cosmic Santa, then I don’t fear God or give Him the respect that’s due Him. I need to remember that God owes me nothing, but I owe Him everything.

According to Solomon, that kind of fear is the beginning of wisdom, which is knowing who I am and who God is. As I get older, I realize that wisdom isn’t always a reward for growing older. Some younger people have way more wisdom than those who have been around way longer.

True wisdom comes from a complete surrender and submission to God’s will out of a holy and reverent awe of who He is and what He’s done for us. I still love the analogy of the fear of God being like watching a storm from a safe place. You can witness the might and majesty of it while being safe from the dangers of it.

Lord, help me to love You well by learning to develop a healthy and reverent awe of You, remembering that You owe me nothing and I owe You absolutely everything. Thank You for loving me and saving me. Amen.

Planting Seeds

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“Planting seeds
inevitably
changes my
feelings
about
rain.” (Luci Shaw)

Growing up, I wasn’t overly fond of rain. It was something that inevitable spoiled my fun plans for the day. Rain meant staying inside and doing dull stuff (or at least what seemed dull to me at the time but would probably seem like a paradise now). I had to stay in and read or watch television or take a nap.

But these days, I find rain relaxing and soothing. To a point. I’m still not a fan of rain that lasts for several days with no sun in sight and only grey overcast clouds. But then again, if I were a farmer, I might think about rain a little different.

Think about the seed. It falls into the ground. It stinks into the mire. But instead of being set free from the mire, it gets buried further and further down into the earth, a kind of death. But then the rain comes, and from a seed dying and breaking open, new life is born.

Jesus said, “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love,“

Those parts of life that seem hard and cruel are the parts that lead to new life. The way God seems to press us into the earth instead of heeding our cry for relief leads to the seed cracking open, sprouting, and multiplying into a harvest. God knows what He’s doing.

Trust God in the dark and be thankful for the rain.

A Personal Shepherd

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I’ve been going through a short devotional plan on my Bible app. It’s a 7 day walk through Psalm 23. So far, I haven’t learned anything earth-shattering. There haven’t been any mind blowing revelations.

But one thing that’s been living in my head rent-free is from Psalm 23:1. The Lord is MY shepherd. That’s probably something I’ve overlooked for most of my life. In fact, I’ve heard this chapter so many times over the years that sometimes I zone out when someone starts reading it.

But the Lord is MY shepherd. He’s not a generic, one size fits all shepherd. He ministers and guides each of His own sheep individually with the utmost care. He knows that sheep on their own have no ability whatsoever to take care of themselves or to defend themselves against any kind of attack.

I still love that in Jesus’ parable, the Shepherd left the 99 to go and look for one lost sheep. In my book, a 99% retention rate is good. Actually, it’s better than good. It’s incredible. But for God, that one mattered more at that moment than the 99 who were safe and secure.

I don’t have to worry if God will meet my needs. I just have to read the rest of verse 1. I shall not want. I shall not be in need. My God will supply all my needs through Christ Jesus. He who did not spare His only Son, how will He not along with Jesus freely give me everything I need for life and godliness?

I have a Shepherd who is MY shepherd. I have nothing to fear.

Thank You, Lord, that You are MY Shepherd. You will lead me beside still waters, and You will give me rest. You will provide for my every need and lead me in paths of righteousness for Your name’s sake. Amen.

The Covenant Story

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I don’t know how many of you remember an old Rich Mullins song that talks about Leah and Rachel. It says that Jacob loved Rachel, and Rachel loved Jacob, and Leah was just there for dramatic effect. Rachel was the pretty one. Leah had “weak eyes,” which I’ve always been led to believe meant that she had a really great personality. You know what that means.

Leah was the pawn in Laban’s cruel practical joke on Jacob. Neither one of them loved her very much to treat her the way they did. It’s obvious that Rachel was the favorite child. Also, remember that this is just another in a long line of examples that show how polygamy in the Bible never had a positive outcome, yet God worked through these broken people with broken relationships to bring about the salvation plan for the world.

I read something recently that completely flipped my perspective on the whole Jacob-Leah-Rachel story in Genesis. I confess that I was a full-on Rachel fan for most of my life. She was the one I would have chosen, and Leah came across as whiny. But now I think that Leah was God’s chosen instrument to carry on the lineage that lead to the Messiah. Jesus didn’t come through Rachel, but Leah.

Read these words and remember that when you feel rejected by the world and by those you love, that God has a different story in mind for you. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:27, “Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these ‘nobodies’ to expose the hollow pretensions of the ‘somebodies’? (1 Cor. 1:27, The Message).

“Did you know Jacob was buried with Leah, not Rachel?
Not the woman he loved.
Not the one he cried for.
Not the one he labored fourteen years to have.
Leah.
In Genesis 49:29–31, when Jacob was about to die, he gave a clear instruction:
“Bury me… in the cave… where Abraham and Sarah are… Isaac and Rebekah… and there I buried Leah.”
Pause.
Rachel was his passion.
Leah was his alignment.
Rachel was the love story.
Leah was the covenant story.
Rachel had his emotions.
Leah carried the promise.
Rachel was buried on the roadside (Genesis 35:19).
Leah was laid in the ancestral grave of covenant—the lineage of God’s dealings.
And here is the mystery:
Leah was the rejected one.
The one Jacob didn’t choose.
The one he endured, not desired.
But heaven chose her.
From Leah came Judah.
From Judah came Jesus Christ.
Let that settle in your spirit—
The woman rejected by a man
became central to God’s redemptive plan.
This is where many people miss it:
We are all trying to be “Rachel”—
seen, desired, celebrated.
But God builds legacy through “Leah seasons”—
hidden places, painful processes, quiet obedience.
Jacob’s final decision was not emotional—
it was spiritual alignment.
At the end of his life,
he didn’t choose love…
he chose covenant.
And that is the gospel pattern:
God does not build His purposes on human preference.
He builds on grace and election.
So if you feel overlooked…
if you feel like second choice…
if life has not chosen you first—
hear this clearly:
God’s choice overrides man’s rejection” (Joanne Macfarlan Pharo)

Declaration of Dependence

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“We have to realize that we cannot earn or win anything from God; we must either receive it as a gift or do without it. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute; until we get there Our Lord is powerless. He can do nothing for us if we think we are sufficient of ourselves; we have to enter into His Kingdom through the door of destitution. As long as we are rich, possessed of anything in the way of pride or independence, God cannot do anything for us. It is only when we get hungry spiritually that we receive the Holy Spirit” (Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest).

I think Jesus said something about this. Blessed are the poor in spirit? That seems to ring a bell. It’s only when I realize that I am spiritually bankrupt that I can open my hands to receive what God has for me. It’s only when I confess my own destitution that I can be useful to God. As long as I think I bring something to the table when it comes to serving the Lord, I get in my own way.

The way to blessing is through a declaration of dependence. We can go to God and say that we are completely helpless and can do nothing apart from Jesus. We confess that our own righteousness is like filthy rags. We declare that it’s only through abiding in the Vine that we can grow and flourish.

Lord, I commit myself to You. I know that apart from You I have nothing and I am nothing. Everything good in me is from You. I make my declaration of dependence in You and want to live from now on in the freedom of being nothing other than Your beloved child in whom You are well pleased because when You look at me You see Jesus. Amen.

Another Post About Worship

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“To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God; to feed the mind with the truth of God; to purge the imagination by the beauty of God; to open the heart to the love of God; to devote the will to the purpose of God” (William Temple).

My absolute favorite definition of worship is still the one by Louie Giglio. Worship is giving God His breath back. The more I think about that one, the more I love it. There’s so much to unpack with worship being our response back to God with the very breath He put in our lungs.

But this is a good one. I really like this one because it encompasses all that worship is. We do tend to limit worship to Sunday mornings or the occasional worship night. Most of us use worship and praise interchangeably, but worship is more than singing songs.

As I’ve said before, worship is declaring the worth of God in every area of your life. You proclaim the goodness of God in the workplace by doing your job well. You proclaim the goodness of God in your home by loving your wife and family more than yourself and loving God more than your wife and family.

I believe that you can’t just show up on Sunday and expect worship to happen. If it’s not already a part of your everyday life throughout the week, then when you show up on Sunday, you’re just singing songs and going through the motions. Anyone can manipulate a feeling, but true worship goes beyond an emotional experience.

Lord, help us to worship You in spirit and in truth in everything we do. May we declare Your worth every time we open our mouths, whether it’s in song or encouragement or exhortation or simply breathing back Your breath. Help us to remember that it all came from You and it all belongs to You and that we have nothing apart from You, but You love us still. Amen.

Another Old School Hymn

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This one is from back in the day . . . and I mean BACK in the day:

“Whate’er my God ordains is right:
His holy will abideth;
I will be still whate’er He doth;
And follow where He guideth;
He is my God; though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall:
Wherefore to Him I leave it all.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He never will deceive me;
He leads me by the proper path:
I know He will not leave me.
I take, content, what He hath sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait His day.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
His loving thought attends me;
No poison can be in the cup
That my Physician sends me.
My God is true; each morn anew
I’ll trust His grace unending,
My life to Him commending.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He is my Friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm,
Though many storms may gather,
Now I may know both joy and woe,
Some day I shall see clearly
That He hath loved me dearly.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it, all unshrinking.
My God is true; each morn anew
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.

Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet I am not forsaken.
My Father’s care is round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall:
And so to Him I leave it all” (Author: Samuel Rodigast (1675); Translator: Catherine Winkworth (1863)

Just for the record, it wouldn’t hurt to throw in a few more hymns during Sunday worship, would it?

Strangely Dim

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“Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full, in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace” (Helen Howarth Lemmel)

For some reason, this hymn popped into my head out of nowhere today. What particularly stood out to me was the line about how the things of earth growing strangely dim. That’s a great way of putting it.

When I take photos with a camera, I like to focus on the subject and blur out the rest so that whoever’s looking at the photo will know exactly what the focal point of the picture is. Everything else fades into the background and becomes blurry.

That’s a picture of what happens when we look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Everything else fades into the background. Everything else loses focus. All those problems that seemed so important and critical seem way less important in comparison.

There’s something about the power of praise that sets everything else into perspective. A mindset of worship has a way of keeping us from spiraling over temporal things that preoccupy our thoughts the majority of the time.

What is keeping you up late at night? What keeps you from sleeping and gives you anxiety throughout your days? Perhaps if we could turn our eyes on Jesus — not just cursory glances or occasional sightings but full intentional gazing on His glory and grace — then maybe those things would grow strangely dim in comparison.

Lord, help us to see You more clearly and to see everything else in comparison with Your matchless glory and grace. Let everything else grow strangely dim so that we can see that You are all that ultimately matters in the end, and all Your promises are still yes and amen. Thank You for loving us. Amen.