Category: Daily Inspirational Devotional

As Malachi 3:10 points out to us, You can’t out give God! And Paul wanted us to realize not only this truth, but by quoting Psalm 112:9 here, wanted us to remember that God will supply all our needs. So in return we are to be generous in our giving. For when we give joyfully it deepens our experience of God’s grace…setting our hearts free from material possessions…and with it comes blessings unspeakable in return. But becoming a generous person takes practice…but if you can see yourself as a steward or caretaker of what God has given you…giving to others will take on new meaning. Think on this then… when we sow into another person’s life that which is right and good, it brings about a harvest of blessing into our lives from the Lord.

Let this seep down into your soul today…God is good and He only does what is good. He is good to everyone and everything…that’s called Common Grace… meaning, all His creation receives the same goodness from His hand. Then His Son, Jesus Christ, came preaching the message of salvation, called, you guessed it, the Good News…God’s plan for man to again be in right standing with Him by way of His Son. God’s goodness can range from what’s practical and economical to what’s beautiful and inspiring. God is good and He only does good…so teach us Your precepts and statues to live by Lord, that we may see Your goodness in everything around us.

The ultimate trust of God is shown in who we rely on. Or when something wonderful happens in our life, who we give credit to. The Psalmist is very clear here…we are not to get the glory in anything that happens in our life….for it is God Who is directing and causing it. The ultimate trust in God is when we glorify Him, not ourselves, and when faith overrides selfish ambitions. We are to ascribe to the Lord the glory due His Name, Psalm 96:8 tells us…in other words, all glory rightfully belongs to God, not us. So ultimately, who we place our trust in will determine who receives this glory…ourselves or God.

It’s human nature to want to get even, to pay others back for what they’ve done to us, to even take the law into our own hands…but all it shows is our loss of control and self-restraint. The Greek word in this verse for God’s wrath – Orge – it’s an angry state of mind, but completely in control with rational and calculated desired results. Both Proverbs 20:22 and Proverbs 24:29 say the same thing…don’t repay evil with evil, but rather wait patiently for the Lord to take vengeance on your behalf.

This Chapter in II Samuel is a song of praise from David’s heart when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies. Now David was Israel’s most famous king, considered to be the ideal ruler and prototype for the promised coming Messiah…he was called “a man after God’s own heart”…but he was also a man with many failings. Probably the worst being his sordid affair with Bathsheba and the wrongful death of her husband Uriah. But despite his shortcomings, David’s heart was steadfastly in the Lord’s hands. And as we read through this passage we can see the Lord’s faithfulness and deliverance on David’s behalf…starting with David praising God as his “savior”, followed by him pouring out his distress and petitioning God for relief…and finally to praising God for his personal rescue. We are all like David in a way…wanting to do the right thing, but still allowing sin to creep in occasionally. But Praise God, even when we are faithless, God is faithful and willing to deliver us from evil.

The Thessalonian Church was a persecuted Church, and Paul’s second letter to them reinforced the need to remain faithful to the cause…living a life worthy of God, filled with patience and joyful discipleship even in the face of abuse from those hostile to the faith. It’s interesting that when Paul wrote, “That He may fulfill every good purpose of yours.” he used the Greek word Agathosyne rather than Chrestotes. Both describe bringing about good, but Chrestotes uses softness and tenderness where Agathosyne does not spare sharpness and rebuke. God’s plan and purpose for our lives is perfect and He will do what it takes to effectively shape right desires and intentions within us. For true saving faith bears fruit in obedience to the Lord… no matter what we’re going through and Paul wanted to encourage the persecuted Church that it was all worth it… “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” I Thessalonians 1:3)

Diligence and self-sufficiency can easily be broken by oppression and injustice of another. Verse 11 in this Chapter of Proverbs tells us that the wisdom of honest hard work is the opposite of the folly of dishonest gain by those who violate other’s personal rights. But what are we to do when we see such wrongdoing…when fairness and moral and legal correctness for a person is being denied? Elsewhere in Proverbs it exhorts us to, “He who gives to the poor will lack nothing, but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.” (Proverbs 28:27) In other words, when we see oppression and injustice and turn a blind eye to it, we are silently condoning and making excuses why we shouldn’t get involved…but meanwhile, it goes on and people suffer because of it. Oppression and injustice is here to stay, consequently, the only way to change it is to change how we do or don’t get involved.

After a very painful visit to the Corinthian Church, Paul wrote what was called a “severe letter”…rebuking them for their conduct while he was there. These verses show clearly that as a loving Christian we must sometimes cause sorrow to those we care for in order to lead them into the light. You may call it Tough Love, or Speaking the Truth in Love…or in some cases, an Intervention. The focus is to not inflict pain and condemnation, but to show you are genuinely seeking their best interest in order that they might confess their sin and repent. Paul called this “Godly Sorrow” which brings repentance that leads to salvation, and that should be what we all want for each other.

This theme is echoed in Psalm 27:14 when it says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” But let’s just admit it, waiting is hard…and waiting in the middle of sickness, devastation, or loss is very difficult to do. And now it tells us here we are to wait in confidence and hopeful expectation while our whole world is falling down around us…how!? Well, as we read here, it all starts with praise. We praise God for what He’s done in the past, how faithful He’s been in our life, and how He will never leave nor forsake us. We praise Him for all the blessings in our life and we remember all the times He has rescued, restored, healed, and encouraged us. And when we praise God like this, it leads us closer to Him… and we then can fully and with confidence place our hope in Him… as we wait.

Our level of knowledge may have grown from Biblical times, but there are still enormous areas of our world and universe that we have no cue about…even the simple idea of a seed sprouting in the dirt. Sure, we may have the agronomy bit down…but why a seed does what it does, do we really know why and how for sure? And as this verse points out, we have nothing to do with it after its planted…it’s totally up to God to bring about the harvest. In another Parable to illustrate the Kingdom of God, Jesus told of a field that had been planted with good seed, but during the night the enemy had scattered weed seed among them…so both grew up together. Again we see that there is no way anyone can truly understand God’s workings. In explaining this Parable to His disciples, Jesus showed that the field was the world, the righteous were the wheat, and the wicked were the weeds…with God for now with-holding His judgment for the sake of the elect living among the unrighteous. Yes, there is so much we don’t understand about our world and the Kingdom of God. That’s because His Kingdom is both within our hearts and an everlasting Messianic Kingdom of glory to come…and our small minds don’t know how this can be. So what we do is trust and believe in the things we cannot understand.