Scripture for Sunday, July 10 (7/10)

The scripture for today, July 10, is Psalm 7:10 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

0-Luke-Slave&Physician KINDLE Cover“My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart.”

We wouldn’t need a shield if everything on earth was good. But God gave us free will to love him or not, to follow him or not. He did not want robots to love and follow him, for that is not true love or true commitment.

And so each of us has an assignment in life: To bloom where we are planted. To be strong in the Lord when others want to tear us away from him. To be an example. And when sometimes things get too difficult for us (and they do from time to time), God stands ready to shield us while we rest.

He loves us so.

Scripture for Saturday, July 9 (7/9)

The scripture for today, July 9, is Deuteronomy 7:9 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

REV-Cover-Kindle“Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands.”

Our amazing God! He loved our great great grandparents and He will love our great great grandchildren. The average age of having children is 30. Therefore, if we took this literally, 1000 generations would be 30,000 years. In that case, we’ve only just begun.

If taken figuratively, 10 to the Jews meant all inclusiveness, and 1000 is 10 x 10 x 10 or all inclusiveness times all inclusiveness times all inclusiveness. This means God will love us all inclusive years, times all inclusive years, times all inclusive years ~ for eternity!

And God gives everything we ask of him if it is good for us. All he asks in return is for us to give the little bit that he asks of us ~ faithfulness and keeping his few commandments. What a grand arrangement!

Scripture for Thursday, July 7 (7/7)

The scripture for today, July 7, is Matthew 7:7 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

Acts of the Apostles-Cover-Kindle“Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

How beautiful. The Creator of the universe pays attention to each and every one of us. How does he do it? How does he even sort us all out when thousands of us are praying to him at the same time?

Sometimes we may not think he is listening to our prayers. But it takes time to answer some of them. If I am praying to meet my future husband or wife, God may have to move him or her from the other side of the country, get a new job for him or her, and arrange for us to “accidentally” bump into each other. This is just one example.

Also, when Jesus said whatever we seek will be given to us, he had already explained that we must “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). So only within that context, God will give us our heart’s desire.

Maybe today you can do a little bit of extra seeking and extra knocking.

Scripture for Wednesday, July 6 (7/6)

The scripture for today, July 6, is Mark 7:6f as found in the New Testament of the Bible.

Life-Changing-Scriptures-Cover-medium“He [Jesus] replied, ‘Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’ “

It is the trend today to say that all religions ~ even those who teach opposing things ~ are right and all are good. But Jesus did not say this. Well, then, how do we know which religious things we are taught and do today are from God and which from men?

You are smart. Read the sacred writings of all major world religions for yourself. Do they have built-in proofs they are really sacred ~ scientific, archaeological, ancient inscriptions, prophecies fulfilled? Here is a website with nearly 400 proofs the Bible is from God:

http://www.churchofchrist-cg-az.com/Bible

Then, if you conclude the Bible is true, use a concordance and do a study of everything the Bible says about any topic. That way you will have God’s opinion, not men’s.

Here is a website with an online Bible concordance and it’s easy to use:

http://bibletab.com/

You can find out for yourself, you can KNOW, whether what you were told to believe by family, friends, and leaders is what God told you to believe.

Scripture for Saturday, June 25 (6/25)

The scripture for today. June 25, is Matthew 6:25 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

0-Mefiboset-KINDLE Medium“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”

Do you sometimes wonder how God can allow people to starve with such a promise as this? Try to remember the Big Picture.
Remember the Jews being in slavery in Egypt for 400 years? They must have prayed thousands of times to be freed, but most died still in slavery, believing their prayers never had been answered. God had a greater plan for them ~ a plan to give them time to multiply from the original 70 people who went to Egypt to the over 3 million who left Egypt.

So, too, God has a Master Plan for each person and each nation. It is our assignment to hang on and keep believing in Him and that which we do not understand. We may not understand, but God always does.

Scripture for Friday, June 24 (6/24)

The scripture for today, June 24, is Numbers 6:24f as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

Oldoldstory-COVER-KINDLE“The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

This beautiful blessing from the Bible has been set to music and turned into a spiritual song. Enter this on the internet, and you should be able to hear it sung: http://bit.ly/1HAztLI

 

Scripture for Thursday, June 23 (6/23)

The scripture for today, June 23, is 2nd Chronicles 6:23 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

00-Heroes-Alone-COVER-KINDLE“Then hear from heaven and act. Judge between your servants, repaying the guilty by bringing down on his own head what he has done. Declare the innocent not guilty and so establish his innocence.’

Did you notice here that God brings down on our head what we do to others? It includes how we treat him too. If we don’t have time for God, God doesn’t have time for us. If we put God last, he puts us last. If we refuse to forgive others, he refuses to forgive us. This is the boomerang effect. Here are several scriptures that reflect God doing to people what they do.

“The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. The Lord is known by his justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands.” (Psalm 9:15-16)

“In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises.” (Psalm 10:2).

“The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose ways are upright. But their swords will pierce their own hearts.” (Psalm 37:14-15)

“Let the heads of those who surround me be covered with the trouble their lips have caused.” (Psalm 140:9)

“He mocks proud mockers.” (Proverbs 3:34)

“Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned?” (Proverbs 6:27)

“If a man digs a pit, he will fall into it; if a man rolls a stone, it will roll back on him.” (Proverbs 26:27)

“Woe to you, O destroyer, you have not been destroyed! Woe to you, O traitor, you have not been betrayed. When you stop destroying, you will be destroyed; when you stop betraying, you will be betrayed.” (Isaiah 33:1)

“According to what they have done, so will he repay wrath to his enemies and retribution to his foes.” (Isaiah 59:18)

“I will judge you according to your conduct and repay you for all your detestable practices.” (Ezekiel 7:8)

“As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head.” (Obadiah 1:15)

In the meantime, we’re to leave punishment to God. And, if you are falsely accused of anything, God will declare you innocent. His is the important judgment.

Scripture for Wednesday, June 22 (6/22)

Cover-Bible Women-CreatespaceThe scripture for today, June 22, is Ephesians 6:22 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

Bible Women-CREATESPACE-INTERIOR-6X9“I am sending him to you for this very purpose: That you may know how we are, and that he may encourage you.”

Have you sent a letter to anyone in your family lately? How about your elderly parents, your grown children, aunts or uncles, nieces or nephews? Do they love you? If they do, they are going to worry about you until they hear how you are.

I have a letter written by my great grandmother to her daughter (my grandmother) saying (besides the usual chit-chat), “You never write.” I have another letter written a generation later by my grandmother to her daughter (my mother) saying, “You never write.” And I have a letter from my mother saying to her daughter, “You never write.”

Each generation goes through this. We grow up, go out on our own, get busy, and forget to write our loved ones. They spent somewhere around 20 years raising you, taking care of you, making sure you were clean, your clothes decent, you did your homework, you got along with your friends, your scratches were healed, you ate right. How can they devote that much daily time and energy (both physical and emotional) on someone until they are grown, and then just turn it off? Just quit caring? They cannot.

So today, sit down and write a letter to someone who helped raise you. If you think you don’t have anything to say, you really do. Tell them what you had for lunch yesterday, what song on the radio you heard, where you went, who you saw. Just chit-chat things. All they want to do is know how you are. Then they will feel a lot better. Because they love you.

Scripture for Tuesday, June 21 (6/21)

The scripture for today, June 21, is Romans 6:21ff as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

PAUL COVER-KINDLE-“What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Sometimes we do things we are ashamed of, and decide God would be too ashamed of us to accept us as his child. But God can get rid of the shame, for he can forgive so completely that it is as though we never did those things.

Some people bristle from the phrase “slaves to God” or even slavery at all. But we’re all slaves to something ~ a big car, high position, beauty, a hobby, chasing after the opposite gender, reading, eating, music, sports, etc.

From the beginning of time, sin has always resulted in death. Death means “separation” , and in the case of sin, it means separation from God. God allowed us in Old Testament times to kill a perfect animal in our place, but we had to keep doing it throughout life. Then Jesus came as our perfect Lamb of God, and allowed himself to be killed in our place.

The wages were paid through Jesus; so by believing this is true and following Jesus, we are no longer in debt.

Scripture for Monday, June 20 (6/20)

 

The scripture for today, June 20, is Matthew 6:20f as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

0-Mefiboset-KINDLE Medium“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

In describing heaven, terms are used like pearls, diamonds, emeralds, gold, and so on. So certainly God is not against riches. Otherwise, he would not have described heaven with those terms.

So what is the problem? We must ask ourselves, “If I lost everything tomorrow, could I face life?”. We may say yes, but what about friends who are now unsure they want to associate with someone with nothing? So, it is not only a greed problem, but a social problem. It is a problem of losing both our possessions and our friends.

Some have solved this problem by moving out into the country where possessions and social status don’t mean so much. Or we could stay where we are and just change our choice of friends. Our new friends may be truer friends than we ever had before and may need us more.

Lastly, if we lost our job, our car, our home ~ our identity ~ would we be so devastated that we would contemplate suicide as some have done? Or would we be able to look around us and see what we can do without having possessions and without having a job to occupy our time?

There are always things we can do for others. Is that truly where our heart is? In that case, loss of everything will not bring catastrophe. Rather, it would give opportunity to reveal what stuff we are made of deep down inside where our true treasure is ~ in our heart.