Oh, God, you never stop watching me. You never sleep in order to make it possible for me to sleep. You never close your eyes in order to make it possible for me to close mine. You never rest in order to make it possible for me to rest. You look for me when I lose sight of you. You yearn for me when I lose hope. You have faith in me when I lose faith in you. You are so strong and mighty. My strength is from you, in you, and for you.
I thank and praise you for you have been so good to me. So many people in the world are not nearly as blessed as I ~ lives full of turmoil and terror, or confined where they do not wish to be, and so many other horrible situations. I live in peace. May I never take advantage of that peace to throw it away on the selfishness of a leech. Ah, the responsibilities you have put on me to protect this peace, not only among people but between people and you. I will rise up each morning of my peace and draw people to you like the rays of the morning sun. You are the morning star. I thank you. I worship you.
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I praise and adore you, Lord God of heaven and earth. Of angels and people. Of stars and beasts. Of galaxies and molecules. So great and so minuscule ~ too large and too small for me to even see. You are in all. You made all. Your glory and might and wonders are reflected in all. You are my Maker, my Defender, the Lover of my soul. You make darkness light. You make rough roads smooth. You make my chains break and fall away. I feel so warm and loved in your presence. You alone are worthy of worship.
Thank you, Jesus, for all your sacrifices. Over and over you sacrificed ~ heaven, a normal childhood, being a suspected bastard, being hounded by would-be assassins for two years. You went in and out of hiding. You dared them to live what they demanded of others. They hated you for it. They tortured you, insulted you, crucified you. Then death and hell. So much. Because of my sins. My sins. You never gave up on me. Satan tried to destroy you. No one can destroy God. You destroyed him. You destroyed my sins. Your persistence brought light into my life. Your love brought eternity into my soul. Your love is unfathomable.
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The stars praise you, oh God, with their singing. The mountains praise you with their rumbling. The meadows praise you with their whisperings. The oceans praise you with their ebb and flow in tune with the rest of the universe. Ah, my Lord, to be with you without Satan always trying to lure me away from you. His lies won’t work, Lord! I will not let them. And when I am weak, you will stand between us not let him get to me. Nothing praises Satan except emptiness, shadows and hollow egos. All things good and grand and glorious and praise you now and forever.
Lord, sometimes I eat too much. Why do I do that? The taste is with me but a moment, then whisks away and I have to take another bite to get it back. And another. And another. Help me eat until I am no longer hungry instead of when I am full and about to burst.
Thank you for my family and friends. Thank you for the animals that sometime show more love than do humans. And for birds that hop around and flutter and fly and sing to me. And the fish that wiggle and splash and sparkle. And touch ~ the softness of cotton, the smoothness of silk. Bumpy tree bark and smooth flower pedals. And knowing for sure that spring will return some day.
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I praise you but cannot praise you enough. You have done everything necessary to save me from the terrible fate Satan has ready for me. You continue to struggle with me to help me win. Win over Satan and Death. Win to live and love forever. I cling to you. I fall at your feet unworthy. I sin but you save me anyway. Whatever blessing you have crowned me with, I return that crown to you. Only you, my Lord, deserve the crown.
Please forgive me when I feel sorry for myself. If I were truly dead with Christ living in me, I would have nothing left of my ego. It would be dead and gone. Give me that heroic conquest of self. The next time I start to feel sorry for myself, help me praise instead.
Thank you, Jehovah God, for your fascinating Word, the Bible filled with words to live by, act by, and love by. I learn something new and exciting nearly every day. It titillates my imagination with new truths. How can that be? I’ve been reading it so many years. I suppose ~ I know ~ that, if I could understand it all, I would be God. Each spiritual meal I have with the bread of your word gives me strength to keep living, victorious over Satan in this world he only thinks he controls. Ah, my Lord, my heart overflows and I worship you.
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The scripture for today, May 27 (5/27), is Job 5:27 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:
“We have examined this, and it is true. So hear it and apply it to yourself.”
How many times have we gone to worship or listened on TV to a minister/priest/rabbi/imam and believed everything he said because the speaker looked so holy and convincing? Isn’t that confusing when so many different holy-looking religious leaders teach different things and conflict with each other?
What is the answer to this dilemma? Examine the Bible for yourself! You’re smart! You can do it!
The best way is to get a concordance. It lists every word in the Bible alphabetically, and every scripture that contains that word. If you want to know God’s opinion instead of man’s, use your concordance and look up every passage your chosen topic appears in. You can buy one (it is the size of an unabridged dictionary but not expensive) or use one on the internet.
Then examine everything God ~ not man ~ has to say about anything. Then there are no doubts. You have examined the facts. Now you know the truth. Now you are ready to apply it to yourself. The truth will set you free.
The scripture for today, May 2 (5/2), isMicah 5:2 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:
“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be rulerover Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
In today’s world completely connected and interconnected universally, people are asking “Who is the Higher Power?”. Some say the Muslim Allah is, some say the Hindu Brahman is, some say the Buddhist Nirvana, some say the Jehovah of Christianity is. This is called the “New Age Movement”.
Buddhism (though most people do not realize where it came from) has infiltrated the young American culture by declaring there is no such thing as truth. One thing is true to one person, an opposite thing is truth to another person, so believe what you want.
None of the writings of these religions have been proven true. The Bible is the only religious book in the world with built-in proofs that it is of divine origin. Prophecies of many events in the life of Christ and entire empires flow throughout the Old Testament. No human could have known these hundreds of known facts hundreds of years before they happened. And, if these prophecies were truth, then the rest of the Bible is truth.
Today’s amazing scripture prophecies where the “ruler…from ancient times” will be born. It gives the exact city Jesus (who had been in heaven before his human birth) would be born in but was written seven centuries before his birth.
The Word of God in flesh wasn’t just a prophet, he wasn’t just a good man, he wasn’t a fraud. Thank God, He thought of everything to help us believe Jesus was, indeed, the Son of God!
The scripture for today, April 29 (4/29), isDeuteronomy 4:29 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:
“But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
Ah, to find God. Who are you, God? What do you do all through my day? What do you have to say to me? Or do you not say anything? Do you even see me, God? Where are you? I cannot find you.
Open your eyes, friend. God is always nearby. There is an old expression, “To know him is to love him.” So true. To find God, get to know him. He is talking to you right now in his Bible, explaining what he is like and how he reacts to every possible situation in life. Open your Bible. Look through the mini-books within. God not only gives you examples of right and wrong ways to seek Him, but he gives you beautiful psalms and proverbs for your everyday life. And, wonder of wonders, He tells how He came down to us and walked among us as Jesus. Seek him there. He is talking to you.
Well, don’t you have anything to say about this? Of course, you do. The conversation turns the other way when you talk to him in response to what you have read, or what you are trying to apply to your life, or your concern for others.
Yes, seek and you will find. This mutual conversation with God is the with-all-your-heart-and-soul kind. You can do it. He is waiting for you.
The scripture for today, April 9, is 1st John 4:9f as found in the New Testament of the Bible:
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This islove: Not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
How perplexing. We are stymied. There is no solution. We humans do not have the will to live perfect lives. We give in to sin. We can never get it right. Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death. In the Old Testament era, God let people kill an animal in their place whenever they sinned, but it had to be done over and over. But still, every time we sinned, our souls died a little more.
Then came our answer, our rescue our solution. But the cost. It was so high. God sent his Son to us for a while with a body so his Son’s body could be killed (collecting our wages, the cost of our sins) in our place.
Finally, God invited mankind to bring our souls back to life through him ~ that is, become Christ-ians. How do we become alive through Jesus? Of course, we know about believing Jesus was the Son of God and repenting of our sins. Also Romans 6:4 says when we are baptized and come forth out of the Spirit’s watery womb, our souls are born again and we now have a new life.
But it does not stop there. We must try the best we can to live as Jesus lived, speak as Jesus spoke, love as Jesus loved. With Jesus living in us, we are his mouth, his hands, his feet. It is then that we offer our own bodies as daily sacrifices (Romans 12:1).
Oh, Lord God. I want to do this. Help me. Help me.
The scripture for today, April 6 (4/6), is1st Corinthians 4:6 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:
“…learn from us the meaning of the saying, ‘Do not go beyond what is written.’ Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.”
Periodically through the Bible, there appears this same warning for us to not “go beyond what is written.” 2nd Peter 1:20 says prophecy is scripture. Prophecy was needed before the New Testament was written, but no more after that, for now, the prophecy of the apostles had been written down and were being passed around.
It is important to find out if what we are being taught is “beyond what is written.” It can be done. How? Simple. Use a concordance. A concordance is the size of a large-city telephone book in fine print and includes every keyword in the Bible and every scripture that contains each word. Many libraries have one. Or you can order one from your local bookstore. There are some concordances on the internet too. Here is one: http://bibletab.com
You are an intelligent person. Don’t take for granted what others tell you. Check things for yourself. Read the Bible for yourself. Decide for yourself whether any of your leaders have gone “beyond what is written.” You’re smart. You can do it: Find out for sure.
It is liberating. Your heart will soar and your soul will embrace God in a whole new way.