Meditations on His Word, October 2019
 
                          Psalms Chapter 143, Verses 1-12


Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.
Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.
I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.
I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.
Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.
Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.
Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me.
Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.
Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name's sake: for thy righteousness' sake bring my soul out of trouble.
And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.

When our enemy strikes us with trials and tribulations the above verses can sustain us.  We can trust in the Holy Word of our Heavenly Father.  Amen

 

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             Meditations on His Word, September, 2019
 
James 2:10 For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all

We have observed many times discussions among Christian people whether or not some sins are worse than others.  Of course, is it not obvious that someone is trying to justify their own transgressions as not in the same category of others transgressions?

Nothing should bring us quickly to our humbled knees than realizing that in our guilty judgment of others we are also guilty.  No one is perfect and our self-proclaimed “minor” sin is as offensive to our Heavenly Father as someone else’s “major” sin.

James 2:11 For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also,Do not kill.  Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. 

We are being taught in these verses that we are not to make judgments on others that we are not willing to make on ourselves.  We are not to treat others as if we are more righteous than they are because the degree of our transgressions are not as serious as theirs.  Doesn’t it feel wonderful to not have the burden of determining how each sin measures up for condemnation and punishment?  When we accept that ALL sin is offensive to our Heavenly Father we should be joyous to know that ALL have a way to be forgiven for all transgressions through our faith in Jesus our Christ.  Jesus fulfilled the law, but we can still be breaking that law by our sins.  There is no degree of sin.  ALL of us must accept that fact and repent to be forgiven.  If we fool ourselves into believing that our sin is not as offensive, then we will not repent and therefore; not be forgiven.

Jesus taught us this in Matthew 5:27 & 28 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time Thou shalt not commit adultery, But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.  This also should be a humbling awakening for us as we mature in becoming the children of God we are supposed to be.  We must accept responsibility for our soul’s condition and not look for loopholes for ourselves while judging and condemning others.

Thank God ALL can repent, no matter the degree of sin, and ALL can be forgiven!

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    Meditations on His Word, August, 2019
 
Psalms 23:5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
 
Our Lord who knew us before we were born has prepared us for the path we are to follow.

"Thou preparest a table before me"  The table (just like the table at the Last Supper) represents the food (Christ’s body) and wine (Christ’s blood) we are to partake of in serving Him. That food being the Bread of Life, our Christ, Jesus; John 6:35 And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Christ shed His blood in the act of dying for all mankind’s redemption.

"In the presence of mine enemies” entails all those who would try to ridicule, condemn or mislead us on our righteous paths in this life.
II Peter 3:17 Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.

“Thou anointest my head with oil” tells us that if we seek the Lord and ask Him for wisdom he will fill our minds with Truth/Oil.

Jeremiah 29:13 And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
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James 1:5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him

“My cup runneth over”. We are promised an abundance of
knowledge, wisdom, peace and love when our Lord is our Shepherd.
What a wonderful Father and God we have!  Halleujah!

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     Meditations on His Word, July, 2019
 
James 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
 
What is the crown of life that we are promised from our Lord?
The word crown traditionally represents power, legitimacy, victory, triumph, honor, and glory, as well as immortality, righteousness, and resurrection.  All this we are promised if we truly love our Lord
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Too many teach and dwell on the literal meaning of crown as a headpiece made of gold that we will wear in heaven.  Their image of walking around in white robes and a golden crown in heaven appeals to one’s grandiose and prideful opinion of oneself.  It distracts from the teaching, purifying and maturing of us as servants of God.  These crowns are represented in Revelation 4:10 & 11 as the ones that we lovingly cast at the feet of our Savior.  Revelation 4:10 & 11 The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
 
The crown we are to desire to obtain is the one of righteousness in dealing with others and the faith in the victory over the demise of our souls given to us by the death and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus our Christ.   Crown of Life is the eternal life our Father wants to give us.  It is why He made a sacrificial way for us to have that eternal life using His only begotten Son.

Let us rejoice in a promised crown of eternal life with our Father and Savior and not in a literal and worthless crown of gold. 


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           Meditations on His Word, June, 2019

Luke 10:27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.
 
How do we show that love for our Lord?  We may confess our love for our Father with our mouths, but how do we really show what is in our hearts?
 
It seems to bother some self-professed Christians that our Christ will save all mankind.  Some before death and some after.  They seem to have a really hard time with the after death salvations.  They argue that why should anyone try to follow the commandments, pray, love one another and truly try to be as our Savior and our Heavenly Father commands us to be.  Why shouldn’t everyone just go about committing adultery, fornicating, lying, stealing, killing, raping, not caring for others, etc. if they still will be saved after death?
 
Why?

If we truly love our Father God our hearts and minds should be joyful about abstaining from and repenting for sinful things to become more like our Father and His only begotten son, Jesus.  If we are angrily begrudgingly resentful that we can’t do what others are sinfully doing, then we are not loving our Father with all our hearts, souls, strengths and minds.  We certainly are not loving our neighbors (all mankind) as ourselves.  We should have empathy for those caught up in sin and missing out in this earthly life on the peace, tranquility and spiritual maturing that our Father wishes for us.  We are condemning ourselves to being outside of the Kingdom of God if we are not happily seeking spiritual peace.

We must be careful of those teachers, preachers and evangelists who would seduce you into worshipping the carnal desires and materialistic pleasures of this world and therefore become jealous of those who are involved in these sins.  We must recognize that these teachers, preachers and evangelists are caught up in a false sense of righteousness and we must come out from under their influence.  They are involved in the very sins that they think others should not receive salvation for after death.

Let us not be negligent in examining our own love for our Heavenly Father.


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        Meditations on His Word, May, 2019
 
Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
 
Our ignorance of the Truth of God’s Holy Word should be our launching point to seek wholeheartedly the scriptures for knowledge and wisdom.  James 1:5  If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.  We should not be ashamed of that lack of knowledge, but determinately desire to come out of ignorance and into the light of Truth.  We must search the scriptures as men search for treasure because this pleases our Heavenly Father and our Teacher, Jesus our Christ. Psalms 119:72  The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.

Scripture is the voice of the Spirit of Jesus.  He uses His Holy Spirit to comfort, teach and chastise us. Let us not be satisfied with what others tell us the scriptures mean, but search the scriptures ourselves to see if what we are being taught aligns with the Word of God.  I Thessalonians 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.  We must give the Holy Spirit a voice and vocabulary to help us hear with a rational, reasonable and logical way of speaking to our spirits.  When He speaks to us it will ALWAYS align with the Word of God.  We will have no doubt we are hearing from Him for our edification and maturing for our service here in the Kingdom of God.
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Now when we hear from the Holy Spirit we are not to just bury that revelation (Parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30), but we are to share when asked so that the Truth may be sown, watered and increased in ourselves and others.  We are to come out of confusion to become the best servants of God that we can.

Revelation 18:4  And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her (Babylon, Confusion), my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. 
 
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      Meditations on His Word, April, 2019
 
Jude 20-23 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.  And of some have compassion, making a difference:  And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

We are being instructed in the above verses to take heed to our own relationship with our Heavenly Father and our Savior so that we may help others to examine their relationships.  If we are not “praying in the Holy Ghost” (faithfully, soulfully and fervently listening for His guidance and influence through His Holy Word) how can we hope to help others to enter the Kingdom of God, here on earth and for eternity?  We must not ignore how these verses are warning us of our own precarious maturing situation of our salvation before we begin to try to help others.

“And of some have compassion” is the first step to helping anyone who is weak or unknowing of our Lord.  If we try to understand others upbringings, financial and societal circumstances, we can have empathy and sympathy for them.  We can gently and lovingly be examples of our Heavenly Father’s love for them.  However, we must then understand that some will not want or accept our compassion.  They are willful, stubborn, rebellious, and mutinous and determined to have things their own way and not the Lord’s way, (Let us also examine ourselves for these attributes before we try to help others). These are the “others” to help to save with fear: reverence and respect for our Creator and His plan for our salvation.  If someone were walking into a burning building you would not gently and quietly say, “Take heed and don’t go in there”, you would earnestly, lovingly and fervently implore them to not “go in there!”

“Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”  This is like saying, “Hate the sin, but not the sinner.”  Garments represent sins one is involved in.  Garments are what we put on to cover what we don’t want others to see.  Be careful that some are wearing an outward appearance that is not a true representation of their inward selves.  We must discern who is in need of reproof and encouragement to repent.  We also must protect ourselves from being so compassionate that we become like-minded and defiled by the same sins of which others have succumbed.  Some, in their vocations, have ordained, blessed and become themselves active in sins that our Father has condemned. 
I Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

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         Meditations on His Word, March, 2019
 
Matthew 21:28-31 But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work today in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not.  Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you.

What a beautiful teaching!  Our Master is teaching us how important it is to repent.  We all sin and are in the process of being matured by our Lord.  We all must examine our minds and souls as to how we are listening to the Holy Spirit of our Lord.  Is our first reply to His instructions, “I will not”, then we are sorely in need of repentance.  Those who know they have answered his calling with disobedience (symbolically, publicans and harlots) repent and are accepted into the Kingdom of God before those who have said they are obeying and appearing to live a Godly life, but in truth are not.

Jesus was trying to reach the religious leaders and teachers of that time and today of their hypocrisy.  How many heard and were convicted of what He was teaching and then repented?  How many of us today hear and are conscience-stricken with our own lack of repentance?  How wonderful is it that if we repent we are accepted into the Kingdom of God here on earth and forever with our Father and our Savior!

Isn’t it comforting that our Lord used the example of two sons because we are all the sons of God.  Sons being corrected, convicted, chastised and loved by our Heavenly Father.

Hebrews 12:5-8  And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, ​My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.  If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?  But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.


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   Meditations on His Word, February, 2019
 
Psalms 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
 
When we struggle through life’s trials and tribulations that beset all mankind in one way or another, we must pause to take refuge in faith in our Heavenly Father.  We must calm our spirits and souls so that we may take comfort in the peace and reassurance that we are loved.  We must not give way to our fleshly emotions that try to hinder or destroy our faith while we are walking in the valley of the shadow of death. We must believe that our Lord is with us and will see us through our trials and tribulations. 

It is humanly very hard for us to truly accept that our Father will be exalted among the heathen (unbelievers) because of our trials and tribulations, but it is written in His Holy Word and it is His Truth to us.  We only know the feelings of anguish, fear, dread and uncertainty when we are experiencing our trials and tribulations, but we will always be amazed when we go through them and come out stronger in our faith.  We are those heathens at the time that we are going through something so painful in our lives that we falter and doubt our faith and trust in His promises to us.  Only when we come out on the other side are we astonished at how we survived.  Our faith is strengthened and He is exalted!
 
When we experience someone lose a battle to an illness, lose a child or other loved one, we watch in awe at how they are sustained by our Father and we witness His exaltation. We know with all our hearts that we could never make it through without His love, comfort and literally supporting us to rise and carry on in this day-to-day life.  We all have experiences in our lives that we know exactly when we were led and carried through situations we never could have handled on our own. Phillipians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.   We know when we were almost devastatingly overcome with fear and then we heard our Father command, “Be still!” We must praise Him and be grateful and humbled at the love and spiritual strength we have been given by our faith in His Son, our Savior, Jesus.  We must revel and take comfort in the fact that we are His children and we are loved.

    
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       Meditations on His Word, January, 2019
 
Romans 10:9 & 10 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
 
There is way too many judgmental declarations of others’ salvation among Christians than is taught in the Word of God.  That is why we do not get to judge whether or not someone is or is not going to Heaven or has or has not gone to Heaven.  Thank God we do not get to decide because we would be horribly unloving and unforgiving in our decrees of someone else’s salvation.

Sometimes we encounter others or know personally those in our own families that we may think by their life choices and their hellish addictions that they surely are not saved and need us to show them the way.  When in reality they are some of the strongest and most humble in faith in our Heavenly Father and His Son, our Savior, Jesus.  In their agony they cry out to the Lord to help them or others from the consequences of their actions.  If as to the verse above, they do not believe in Jesus and His resurrection from the dead, who are they crying out to?  Is this not their confession with their mouths and belief in their hearts that we are told is necessary to be saved?  It is a beautiful thing to witness that faith in someone who does not feel worthy because of their life choices. We should learn humbleness by their show of faith.

Many may not follow our self-righteous discernible guidelines to be saved.  They may not go to church, dress as we think they should or live as we think they should, but they may have more humbleness, kindness, forgiveness, meekness and love than most card-carrying Christians who lack these spiritual attributes.  We can learn so much from those that we think are in need of our great knowledge and judgment of salvation.

This is what we are taught to understand from the following example:  Luke 18:13 & 14 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Be very careful that we are not exalting ourselves by thinking that we have the right to judge another’s salvation.  We can learn so much about humility from those we are so quick to judge.