I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 143-150.

    My theme from today’s psalms is Praise the Lord, not just when things are going well, or when things are going poorly. Praise the Lord all of the time, in whatever circumstance you find yourself in. God will prepare us for whatever battle He intends for us to fight, but make no mistake, He is preparing us for battle. God will be our shield as we go out into the battle to which He has called us. The enemies we will face in this battle lie constantly, even when they swear to tell the truth, they lie. But we must strive to stick to the truth, all of the truth, not just the part that pleases us. We will find the strength to go on fighting God’s battles by praising Him for every victory He gives us. We must not let the stories of what God has done get lost. We must tell the next generation what God has done in our lifetimes, and we must tell them the stories which those who went before us told to us. When I look at the things which I see going on in the world around me, I want to remind everyone that God helps the fallen and lifts those bent beneath the heavy load. He will give justice to the oppressed. He will listen to those who call on Him. Let us praise the Lord and lift our prayers to Him. That is the answer to the terrible things going on in our country, praise the Lord and lift our hands in prayer to Him.

• Praise the Lord
• Pray for those who are suffering
• Pray for those who are angry
• Pray for those who a frightened
• Pray for those who have been wronged
• Pray for those who have done wrong
• Praise the Lord

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 136-142.

    I am going to focus on Psalm 139 today. The other psalms have value (although I always have trouble figuring out what to make of 137). God knows everything about us in great detail. He knows when we sit down and when we stand up. He knows our every thought, no matter how far we travel. He knows what we are going to say before we say it. There is no place we can run to get away from God’s Spirit. We cannot escape God. That should be a scary thought, but it should also be a comforting thought. No matter where we find ourselves, God will be there to guide us, support us, and protect us. We cannot hide our sins from God, but we, also, cannot be anywhere that He cannot help us. There is another part to this. God knows our flaws. He knows every single thing we have ever done wrong, all of the reasons to despise us. Yet, He loves us and cares for us. Finally, I will pray the thoughts which the psalmist ends this psalm with:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

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I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 120-135.

    Today’s psalms do not have a common theme, but they are all inspiring. Psalm 120 tells us to take our troubles to the Lord. If we cry out to Him, He will answer our prayers and rescue us. The psalmists cry to be rescued from liars and deceitful people rings so true in today’s world. I look around and see people who deceive and lie rather than take responsibility for their actions. In addition, there are many people who call for unity while working to divide one group from another. Let us take our troubles to the Lord.

    Psalm 121 has a similar theme, although not quite the same. Here the psalmist reminds us that our help comes from God. There is no reason to look to the mountains or to the sea for help, they will not be able to give us greater help than God. He will not let us stumble or fall. God does not sleep, not even a nap. He will keep watch over our comings and goings, whether during the day or at night. He will not let us come to harm.

    We should be joyful when we are invited to join others to worship and praise God. When we have truly experienced what it means to serve, worship, and praise God we will be filled with joy at the very thought of doing more of it with our fellow believers. The longer we serve God the more closely we watch Him for the least hint or sign as to what He wants us to do next. The proud and the arrogant may scoff at our efforts, but we will dismiss them and only listen to God.

    There is a lot more I could write, but I will stop with some thoughts on Psalm 127 (although I hope you take the time to read the rest of these psalms). No matter what we are working on we will accomplish nothing useful if God is not part of what we are doing. There is no point in working too hard, either what we are working on is God’s will, or it isn’t. If what we are working on is NOT God’s will, it does not matter how hard we work, we will accomplish nothing of value. On the other hand, if what we are working on IS God’s will, He wants us to be properly rested and will help us accomplish the task without having to work too hard.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 117-118.

    I was initially going to title today’s blog “God’s Faithful Love Endures Forever.” That would have fit today’s passage, but as I was reading today’s psalms for the third time* the words I actually chose for the title felt like the true summation of this passage. No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, we should praise the Lord. His love is faithful and will endure forever. Today is the day that God has made. No matter how bad it may seem to us, everything about it will serve to bring glory to God, and good to those who love Him. In this psalm the psalmist talks about the stone which the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone. This is a reference to Jesus, but it is also a reference to how human leaders reject a key element of God’s will as they make their plans. Time and again those who wish to create Utopia on this earth start their plan by rejecting one or more of God’s laws. As a result their plans fail and God is shown once more to be victorious. I want to touch on one thing the psalmist says that we must never forget:

The Lord is for me, so I will have no fear.
What can mere people do to me?

Let us never forget that if we serve God, nothing can happen to us that is not His will. And we know that it is His will that all things work together for good for those who love Him.

    I wanted to point out how many parts of Psalm 118 are either the inspiration of songs or are re-statements of thoughts which are inspirations for songs. Obviously, there is my title, “This Is the Day the Lord Has Made”. There is, also, “The Lord Is My Strength and Song” (I believe there are a couple of other songs using this). Then there is “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His faithful love endures forever.” I am not going to link to these because there are so many and the examples I most readily find are still copyrighted.

*How many times I re-read the passage each day depends on how long it takes to get my thoughts together. Some days, I can read the passage once and start writing, only going back to read again to get the sentences (or paragraphs) to come out right. Other days, I have to read the passage again and again to find something to write (my failing, not the passage’s). Today was in between. I knew the basic thought I wanted to write about from the very first read through (God’s faithful love endures forever), but it took me several readings to get the words to start.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 108-116.

    Once again I struggled with finding a theme or thread which tied these psalms together. They do all have as a theme that we should praise God for all that He has done, but many of the psalms speak of praising God. What makes these come together with a message for us, for me, today? Then I came to Psalm 115:

Not to us, O Lord, not to us,
but to your name goes all the glory

Let us live our lives so that we bring glory not to ourselves, but to God. Then when our enemies slander and libel us we need not let it concern us. If their slander and libel extends from us to God, then we need not fear because God will once more show the world His righteousness and justice. Everything God does reveals His glory and majesty, the slander of sinners will whither in the face of God’s actions. If their slander and libel is only of us and leaves God out of it, we need not be concerned because God will use their lies to bring even more glory to Himself. And even if all the world believes the lies about us, God knows the truth and will reward us for our faithfulness. The key in all of this is to have confidence in God and His laws. With that confidence we can continue to do what is righteous in the face of the lies of those who hate us.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Psalms 105-107.

    I love the way these three psalms fit together. Psalm 105 shows us how God plans for the long term. Bad things happened to the people of Israel (famine in the land of Canaan, Joseph sold into slavery, etc). God did these things in order to show His great power, shape the descendants of Abraham into a people, and bring them out of Egypt wealthier than they would otherwise have been. Psalm 106 reminds us about how quickly we forget the good things God has done for us and fall back into sin. Despite our many sins, God will gather us back to Himself when we repent and call on His name. Finally, Psalm 107 calls on us to tell others how God has redeemed us. There the psalmist describes a few of the many ways in which people have been redeemed. I am always inspired by reading the accounts of how God has rescued those who call on Him.

1. Some were lost and homeless.
2. Some were imprisoned.
3. Some were fools and rebelled
4. Some faced devastating natural disasters.

But they all had one thing in common; in the depths of their troubles they cried, “Lord, help.” God heard their cry and saved them from their distress. Whatever your story of redemption, speak out, tell others about how God has redeemed you from your troubles.

    I am going to take the psalmist’s advice and tell how God redeemed me. I was raised in a Christian home and I had experiences of faith throughout my teen and young adult years. However, I was also raised to seek proof of what I believed (this is not a bad thing). I sought solid incontrovertible evidence that God existed, evidence I could present to someone else as proof. After examining the logic of the universe I came to the conclusion that either the God of the Bible had created the universe, or everything had happened by chance. I desperately wanted evidence of that God, but had not found any which truly satisfied. I was going through a period where life was hard and the idea that there was nothing more than the material world made me feel somewhat depressed. One day I was driving along and considered running my car into an obstacle at speed to just end it. However, I realized how much grief doing so would bring to my mother and I could not do that to her. I cried out to God, “What am I going to do? I cannot go on living like this. My life must have meaning.”
To which He replied, “Your life does have meaning. It’s meaning is to serve Me.”
“Yes, but how do I know You even exist? What if I am just making you up to soothe myself?”
“well,” God replied once more, “is that so bad? Here are your choices. You can choose to believe that the world happened by chance and nothing means anything. Or you can choose to believe that I AM and that I created you for a purpose.”
My response was, “I cannot live with the former. So I will act as if I believe the latter.” It was amazing, up until then, despite my many professions of faith, I had struggled repeatedly with doubt. Since that time, every time doubt starts to rise in my mind something happens to once more prove to me that God is real and created me for a purpose. Perhaps another time I will write about some of those occasions. But for now I will leave you with Psalm 34:8, which sums up my point: