For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have been doing this blog for over two years now. The discipline it has given me to read through the Bible every year since I began has been a wonderful experience for me. I want to encourage everyone to do so. I have come to understand the Bible so much more thoroughly as a result.

Proverbs 23:25-28

    Make your parents happy by staying away from promiscuous sexual partners. Getting involved with the promiscuous is a trap that it will be hard to escape. They constantly try to lure more people into their lifestyle.

Psalm 66:1-20

    This psalm sums up what it feels like when God has answered our prayers. We want the entire earth to sing His praises. When we cry out to God in desperation and He delivers us we see how God has performed mighty deeds throughout history. The psalmist reminds us of one important fact, when we cry out to God for help, we need to be honest about our sins, the mistakes we have made. It is only after we confess our sins, admit our mistakes, that God will listen to our cries and come to our aid.

Ephesians 1:1-23

    God planned for us to accept His wonderful grace before He created the world. It was His plan from the beginning that we would be united with Christ and all things work out according to God’s plan. It was only after Jews had heard and trusted in Christ that we Gentiles were able to hear and receive God’s wonderful gift. When we believed in Christ, God identified us as His own by giving us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God’s guarantee of His promises. He made those promises and gave us the Spirit as guarantee in order that we would praise and glorify Him.
    I am always challenged when I read here that Paul prayed continuously for the members of the Church at Ephesus (and elsewhere where he speaks of praying for other believers). I read this and realize that I do not pray nearly as much as I ought. As I write this, it reminds me that for years I sought the discipline to read the Bible every day (or at least, most days). I finally found that discipline when I began this blog. I am confident that God’s Spirit will show me the way to similar discipline on prayer. Perhaps, I will start a prayer journal.
    Back to the passage: It is worth noting that Paul prayed that God would give the recipients of the letter ever greater wisdom and knowledge, so that they might get to know God better. Do we strive to have our hearts and minds flooded by God’s light so that we can obtain ever greater understanding of the hope He gives us through His power? Let us seek to have ever greater confidence in the overwhelming power which God will work through us to accomplish His purposes on this earth. It is that power which has made everything, in all ways, subservient to Christ, whose body we are.

Isaiah 39-41:16

    “Shout,” the prophet tells us. Do not be quiet. Do not be afraid. Shout and then shout louder. God is coming. The Sovereign Lord is coming in power. Let us not be afraid of offending people by telling them that He is coming. God cannot be compared to anything made by man. People create things which they worship, whether from metal, or wood, or paper. They set things up which they think will stand the test of time. Yet these things are merely part of Creation. God stands above and outside of Creation. The whole of this earth and the sum of its peoples are less than a grain of sand before Him. How can we compare anything we can imagine, much less bring into being, to God, the Creator of all that is?
    Professional athletes in the prime of their careers, soldiers who have conditioned themselves relentless will become tired. They will reach a state of exhaustion where they can do no more. The task is greater than they have the endurance to complete. However, those who trust in the Lord will find their strength refreshed. If you are facing troubles which are wearing you out, wait for the Lord in prayer and He will renew your strength. If you are seeking to do God’s will and find your strength waning, wait for the Lord in prayer and He will give you fresh strength. If you wait for Him, you will run the race He has set for you without growing weary, you will walk the path He has shown you without growing faint.
    Shout it out. Cry out at the top of your lungs. Challenge the people of this world to see what our God has done. Do not be afraid. Trust in God, wait for Him to act, do the things He instructs you to do, and you will never grow too weary to do the next thing He asks.

     I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. In order to make that possible I read the passages and write my thoughts a day in advance. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.

Isaiah 39-41:16

     When Hezekiah recovered from his illness, the king of Babylon sent emissaries with a gift to wish him well. In his pleasure at the kind gesture, Hezekiah proudly showed the emissaries all the treasures of Jerusalem. Isaiah came to Hezekiah after they left and prophesied that all of the treasures in Hezekiah’s palace would be carried off by the Babylonians and Hezekiah’s own sons would be taken into captivity there. Hezekiah responded that this prophecy was good because it said that he would have peace for the rest of his life.
     Next is a transition from an historical account back to purely prophetic writings. Here is the passage that John the Baptist said spoke of his coming, but in a way it is also instruction for us. We are to clear the way for God, getting rid of the rubble and debris in our lives that obstruct Him acting through us. We are to be messengers for God, telling the people around us that God is coming. Indeed, He is already here among us.
     What, or who, can we compare God to? He is so much greater than all we can see, that there is nothing that can possibly be an adequate representation of what God is like. The entire world and everything in it is insignificant compared to God and His magnificence. Even if we were capable of gifting the entire Earth to God, it would amount to nothing compared to what He is and has. God will strengthen the weak and powerless. Then at the end of chapter 40 is the basis of one of my favorite hymns.

they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.(KJV)

Unfortunately the song is still under copyright or I would post the lyrics here. It was written by Stuart Hamblen and I will echo a piece from the refrain: Teach me, Lord to wait
Down on my knees
Till in your own good time
You will answer my pleas.
If we learn to do this, God will say to us, “You are my servant. I have called you from the ends of the earth. Do no be afraid for I am with you.” I will wait.

***

Ephesians 1:1-23

     In today’s passage Paul gives a primer on the Christian faith. Paul wrote that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing because we are united with Christ. God loved and chose us to be holy and blameless in his eyes even before He created the universe. At that time He determined to adopt us as heirs through Jesus Christ. He did this because it was what He desired and it gave Him pleasure to do so. We are redeemed, and our sins are forgiven, through the blood of Christ. God made known to us His plan by giving us the wisdom and understanding to comprehend it. This plan is to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ in due time.
     God’s purpose was that those who first came to know His message through Christ would bring praise and glory to God. Now that we who were not there at the start have heard the Gospel message, we have been included in those same blessings and purpose. When we believed we were marked with the seal that is the Holy Spirit. God did all of this so that we could and would praise and glorify Him.
     From the first moment that he heard about the Ephesian believers faith and love for God’s people, Paul had been praying for them. He asked that God give them wisdom and revelation through the Holy Spirit so that they might fully know the hope to which God has called us and His great power.

***
     There are some wonderful things in Paul’s teachings here. He tells us that God chose us to follow Him before He even created the universe. The universe was designed to bring us into a relationship with Him. We did not end up where we are by accident or chance. Every detail was planned to bring us to where we are today. He knew the bad choices we would make and designed the universe to give us every opportunity to love and surrender to Him. This same plan will, in due time, bring all aspects of this universe into unity in submission to Christ. When we accept God’s grace, He gives us the Holy Spirit as a seal to mark us as His. I just realized that this is like a king’s seal which he gives to favored individuals to allow them to speak on his behalf. That is a great and frightening honor, to know that with the Holy Spirit within me, I speak on God’s behalf. Does what I say bring honor to God?
     I am challenged by what Paul writes about praying for the Ephesian believers. In several of his letters, Paul speaks of praying constantly for those he is writing to. When I think about that, I realize how much time Paul must have spent in prayer. I do not come close to that. I struggle to spend even a few moments each day, let alone the hours which Paul must have spent. Lord God, please help me to spend more time praying to you. There are so many in my life that I need to be praying for: my friends who do not, yet, know Christ, my co-workers (both those who know Christ and those who do not. Which reminds me that I want to bring praise for the co-worker whose faith has recently been revealed to me), my friends who do know Christ, and others.

Psalm 66:1-20

     I will call on all the earth to praise God. He has done wonderful things. I cannot begin to summarize this psalm, but reading it brings me great joy. I confessed my sins and God listened to my prayers and answered my cry. He has done wonderful things for me. He will do wonderful things to you, if you turn from your sins and go to Him.

Proverbs 23:25-28

     Yesterday’s proverb stated that a godly child gives his father joy and a wise child is a source of pleasure. Today’s proverbs start by telling us that that we should make our parents happy by being godly and wise. Then the writer tells us that a promiscuous woman promises pleasure but delivers only danger. The same is true in the other direction as well (a promiscuous man promises pleasure, but delivers danger). The short term pleasure is less than the long term harm being involved with such people brings.