For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
You can tell if the person giving you advice is godly by considering the outcomes they advise you to strive for. If they are recommending that you follow a just and fair course of action, they are godly. If the person advises that you do things which are not just and fair, it is likely that following their advice will serve their interests, but not necessarily yours.
I read this psalm and parts of it resonate strongly with me and others, not so much. The psalm starts out with the psalmist crying out for God to rescue him. While I have been in such circumstances in the past, that is not where I am today. Then there is verse 7:
because you have been my strength and protection.
I am not so sure that my life has been an example to many, but God has been my strength and protection. Which is why I can never stop praising God for what He has done for me. A little later the psalmist says that he keeps hoping for God’s help. I do the same, but I do not just hope for that help, I am receiving it. God has blessed me and helped me in so many ways. Therefore I praise Him more and more.
Then comes verse 17, which I connect with so well:
and I constantly tell others about the wonderful things you do.
Here I connect most thoroughly with the first part. God has indeed taught me from my earliest childhood. My parents gave me wonderful examples of what it means to follow God. I am so very grateful to them for that. However, I do not tell others about the wonderful things God does nearly enough. I pray that His Spirit will move me to do so more. Finally there is verse 20, to which I can barely relate:
but you will restore me to life again
and lift me up from the depths of the earth.
I have most definitely NOT experienced much hardship, but I am confident that God will lift me up from the depths if I descend into them and He will comfort me when sorrow comes upon me. The Lord has been good to me and I owe Him so much praise.
One problem with reading through the Bible the way I am is passages like today’s where it has not been very long since I read, and wrote on, the similar passages in Matthew and in Mark. As a result, it is sometimes hard to see a lesson which is not the one I just wrote about a few weeks ago. It is not that I mind writing more or less the same thing. My problem is that I want to see what the Spirit is telling me as I read the passage and not just think, “Oh, the story of Jairus’ daughter. Here is the lesson that teaches.” The whole point of reading the Bible every day is for the Spirit to reveal lessons from Scripture that I need to apply in my life.
That being said, Jairus and the woman in the crowd had something in common. They were both desperate. Jairus’ desperation was urgent and threatening to destroy him. His little girl, his princess, was sick and about to die. He had striven all of her life to protect her. Now, he was powerless in the face of death. There was only one thing he could. He went to Jesus and begged Him to heal his little girl. He went to Jesus, and joy of joys, he had hope once more. Jesus was coming. Then on the way they were interrupted by a woman as desperate as he (we will get back to her in a minute). When they resumed their progress a messenger arrived and told him his precious daughter had died. There was no reason to disturb Jesus any longer. Complete deflation, it was over. But Jesus’ said to him, “Don’t be afraid. She will be healed.” And she was, despite the fact that the neighbors laughed at Jesus when He got there. The little girl was healed and restored to her father.
Now back to the woman in the crowd. She too was desperate, but her desperation was the soul-crushing desperation of someone who has been struggling with something for years. She has tried this and she has tried that. None of it has helped in the least. Her problem remains. She has one last hope, perhaps if she can get close enough to Jesus to touch the fringe of His clothing, then she could be healed and have a normal live. She got there, touched Him, and was healed. Best of all, no one needed to know of her desperate attempt. Except that Jesus knew and called her out in the crowd. But then all He did was tell her that her faith had made her well and sent her on her way. She must have wanted to dance a jog.
I know people as desperate as these two. The problem is that they do not know Jesus well enough to have the kind of faith in Him described in this story. I am praying that the Holy Spirit gives me direction so that they become introduced to Him.
Moses warned the Israelites against those who would try to lead them to follow other gods. He points out the different ways in which people would attempt it. He points out that there will be people who perform miraculous signs (or, at least, what appear to be miraculous signs) and people who make predictions about the future which come true who will attempt to use these abilities to convince others to leave off following God. There will be those who offer the thrill of the secret, or being part of a “special” group, to entice us to leave off from following God. In all of these cases, we are encouraged to examine what they are teaching to see if it is indeed something other than the word of God. But if we conclude that it is, we should have nothing to do with them.
