Hope for the Upside-Down

 

I say, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.”

—Lamentations 3:18

Suppose you thought that the answer to your happiness came from standing on your head. You had watched other people who could accomplish this feat and saw how happy they seemed, so you tried it and it stuck. You felt you had truly found the way to look at life and the key to your happiness.

Now this sounds absurd to us. But, I believe we all have dreams of wonderful things, even pray and expect the Lord to fulfill our wishes. We feel the real key to our happiness comes from hoping that He will bring whatever we seek to pass in the manner we think He should.

Perhaps a career path we saw as the ultimate goal for our life looked possible. We had prepared for it, we had prayed for it, we had worked hard to achieve it. Yet just when we hoped that God would fulfill our dream, it was taken from us.

Or perhaps, we had looked forward to purchasing that beautiful house on the corner of our street, had prayed and hoped that the Lord had that house for us. But, when it came time to buy it, someone else actually offered more money, bought it ahead of us, and moved into what would have been our ideal residence. Our dreams were shattered.

When we lose hope, we end up in despair. In our Scripture passage at the beginning of this devotional from Lamentations 3, we see that Jeremiah had great hope for himself and for God’s people. He had hope that God would work to bring the kind of splendor and blessing to the Holy City of Jerusalem that he felt was within reach. However, that hope had been shattered.

In Lamentations 3:18-26, we find Jeremiah remembering the affliction, the wandering, and the bitterness he had experienced while praying and preaching to God’s people. In his remembering and despair, he meditated on his dreams. But, and most importantly, Jeremiah also meditated on his God. Once his attention shifted and he was able to look at things “right-side-up,” everything changed.

Note in verse 25 what the Prophet Jeremiah says:

The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.

Do you see the one word that has changed from the verse that appears at the beginning of this devotional? We go from “upside-down”—hoping from God, to “right-side-up”—hoping in God.

This one change in focus changes everything. Instead of hoping for something Jeremiah thought would please him and answer the troubles he had, he decided to hope in God and trust that God would bring to pass the best results for himself and for God’s people. It was all a matter of trusting God and submitting to God’s will over Jeremiah’s will.

Sometimes this kind of change in thinking takes time, struggle, faith, and waiting, as this passage also relates. But then again, sometimes this kind of change just takes a change in our way of thinking, a new perspective—a change to right-side-up thinking!

—Posted: Monday, February 15, 2021

 

 

A Psalm for Sequentials

 

I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.

—Psalm 34:1

Do you like lists? I do. I think I even have some lists of lists! We “Sequentials” like to put things in order and then to look back and forward to gauge where things stand. We like binders with page dividers.

Studying my Teacher’s Plan Book, I could see what my students were taught last week, last month, and last year. By looking back at previous records, I could know what I wanted them to have learned by the end of the month and the end of the year. I could even determine what I wanted them to have learned by the time they finished elementary school.

Several of the Psalms were written as acrostics. Psalm 119 is the longest of these. But, my favorite Psalm of this type is Psalm 34. This particular Psalm is sequential, through and through. And, I love it.

An acrostic is based on a sequential list beginning with a letter of the alphabet. Each stanza of Psalm 34 begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This sequential format made it easy for Hebrew children to study and memorize this Psalm.

Acrostics have long been used to provide memory hooks for students. Early readers in the United States of America used acrostics to help them learn, even memorize, their lessons. Some of the acrostics appeared on counted-cross-stitch designs based on a page from the Puritan primer, like the one at the beginning of this blog post. As the children in colonial times, and later, embroidered these designs, they learned the lessons the designs intended to teach.

Beyond the connection to acrostics and sequential learning, Psalm 34 details how the Lord should be extoled (or praised). If you choose to meditate on all the words of this Psalm, you will quickly observe that praise comes from our lips, (v. 1) from our souls, (v. 2), from our faces (v. 5) and from our lives (vv. 8-9).

As we continue to meditate on Psalm 34, we learn that when we look at the way God takes care of us, and how He keeps us, we see that we fall under His protection, (vv. 6-8), under His provision (vv. 9-10), under His constant attention (vv. 15-16), and under His compassion (vv.17-20).

How’s that for a set of sequential lists?

To further break this Psalm down into learnable chunks, each of those categories listed in the above paragraphs goes into detail. For example, when we praise the Lord from our souls, we do it with boasting, with audible exaltation, and by exalting Him with others.

Do you see how perfectly Psalm 34 was planned and written?

And for what reason do you suppose that God gave us this wonderful, sequential, perfectly crafted song of praise? God gave us Psalm 34 to help us praise Him, to understand His care, and to comprehend the detail with which He watches over us and provides for us.

Studying Psalm 34 may also encourage you to write your own sequential Psalm. You can begin doing this by asking the question: “How has God shown up in my life?”

As you answer that question, you will likely discover that God has made Himself known in your life through His love, His power, His wisdom, His compassion, and by the application of His many other great attributes.

I strongly encourage you to join me in meditating on this wonderful Psalm. Together we will see the beauty of the words. But more importantly, we will see the beauty and majesty of our God!

 

 

God's Omniscient Journal

 

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

—Psalm 139:16

Both of my grandmothers kept diaries. My mom also kept a diary. I keep one, as well, but I call mine a journal. I find the styles and the myriad of ways that people write down what has happened in their lives quite interesting.

My one grandmother used a pencil to write in tiny bank books. Usually, she merely wrote just one line a day:

“M and G came from Cleveland today.”

She included no details. Just the facts. It was as if she had taken lessons from the character, like Jack Webb, on the TV show “Dragnet.”

My mom’s diaries had similar entries. But with each entry, she always recorded the weather, like any good farm wife of her day.

Each day, my other grandmother wrote many paragraphs of newsy information about the family and the neighbors. She wrote using the most beautiful penmanship with a lovely script handwriting.

None of these women forerunners of mine ever wrote about their feelings. They also never wrote about the spiritual lessons they’d learned, or anything deeply personal.

My own journal writing has changed over the years. At first, my journals carried only Scripture passages and spiritual lessons that I had learned. Now, my journal entries are a combination of those spiritual meditations, my feelings about them, a running day-to-day recording of activities, and once in a while, even comments about the weather.

All this, by way of introduction, to say that God keeps a journal on us, too. God’s journal about us in an “omniscient journal.” Studying the nature of God, at least to the extent that He has revealed His nature to us in the pages of His written Word, we learn that God has written odd and magnificent things in His journal about our days before they have taken place. No human that I know has such an ability.

Yes, we do make plans. But, as the Scripture tells us in Proverbs 19:21:

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Even more than having written the activities of each day ahead of time, God has written our feelings about Him, our feelings about life, and our feelings about those things He has brought about to bring us closer to Him. He records our trials, our joys, our thoughts, our dreams, and our physical ailments. He knows more about us before our actual days happen than we know about ourselves after those days happen.

Can you record in advance how God brought about that meeting with someone who needed your word of encouragement? Can you record in advance the blessing you gave to someone whom you never saw again? Of course not. I repeat: God knows more about us before our actual days take place than we know about ourselves afterwards.

What does this fact cause us to do? First of all, I believe that it should cause us to joyfully worship Him, acknowledging His power, love, and omniscience. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, who exclaimed in John 4:29:

“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

Then, knowing what we now understand about God’s knowledge of us, we should find this fact comforting, as we look at days before they occur and wonder what will ever happen to us in this situation, or in that one. God already knows what will happen, how He will help get us through that situation, and the reasons He has for allowing everything to occur the way that they do.

As we continue to move through each day in our lives, may the wonderful knowledge of God’s omniscience cause us to trust His awesome love and power. Knowing that God sees what will happen to us before it even occurs should give us a sense of peace that passes all understanding.

 

 

Contract or Covenant

 

This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

—Hebrews 8:10

God doesn’t do contracts. Contracts, according to Webster’s Dictionary, are created by both parties and signed as legally binding agreements. Most often, love has nothing to do with a contract document. In fact generally speaking, people enter such contracts in order to prevent the other party from taking advantage of them.

God made a divine covenant with His dearly loved children in the Garden of Eden. He made Adam, and Adam’s race, care-givers of God’s new creation.

Later, as a result of sin, God made another covenant with man and with Satan. Throughout the Old Testament, God often visited His chosen and dearly loved people with covenants of one kind or another.

Humans have made covenants with each other, too. In her study of King David in 1 Samuel 18, ¹ Beth Moore shows how the relationship between Jonathan and David gives us a perfect picture of God’s new covenant with us. She points out that a Godly covenant has three parts:

1. a sign
   
   
2. a sacrifice
   
   
3. a spoken commitment
   
   

In the case of Jonathan, he signaled his covenant by giving David his robe, his tunic, his sword, his bow, and his belt. He sacrificed to David the very throne to which he was entitled as the son of then King Saul. And, Jonathan spoke his commitment in 1 Samuel 20:13:

If my father is inclined to harm you, may the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if I do not let you know and send you away safely. May the Lord be with you as he has been with my father.

Like God’s new covenant with us, the foundation for Jonathan’s covenant with David was based on his deep brotherly love for David. What a perfect picture of God’s covenant with us.

Beth Moore also points out that the covenant between Jonathan and David was not based on David’s love for Jonathan, but the other way around. The evidence of love flows from the one who initiated the covenant. ²

So it is with the covenant God has made with us through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The evidence of God’s love for us flows to us through His covenant with us. This divine covenant cannot hold together by relying on our poor and imperfect love for God. The glue in this covenant comes to us because of God’s unfailing, undying, and eternal love for us.

God’s love for us, His covenantal love, should inspire us and move us ever closer to Him. We should faithfully and gratefully serve and love our God in response to His faithfulness shown to us through His covenant with us.

______________________

1 Moore, Beth. Portraits of Devotion. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Company, 2014. Pp. 29-30.

2 Ibid.

 

 

Progression

 

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

—Psalm 1:1

Sin works subtly to trap us. In the verse from Psalm 1:1 at the beginning of this blog post, we already can see that walking in the wrong counsel can lead to standing with those who lead us there, and then to sitting among those who mock and despise God’s truth. We need vigilance to overcome the enticements that come from our fallen nature and from the enemy of our souls.

At the end of Judge Samuel’s life, King Saul became the ill-advised leader of Israel. His coronation came against the counsel of God’s prophet and led to years of bad leadership. However, Saul himself fell into the deadly progression of sin that, according to Romans 6:23, in the end leads to death.

Saul’s story begins in 1 Samuel 9, with the documentation of his confirmation as king. His reign began innocently enough. Saul’s sin started to overtake him when he became impatient. He tried to please his men when they expected him to present a burnt offering. This kind of self-motivation led Saul to oppressive, foolish leadership, in which he required his men to fast during battle! (1 Samuel 24).

When Saul’s army defeated the Amalekites, as God had commanded in 1 Samuel 15, he clearly disobeyed God by not destroying everything. He then progressed downward to the sins of pride and arrogance by building a monument to himself. He stepped further down into sin by lying to Samuel and blaming his soldiers.

As Saul’s story moves through the next 40 years, one bad decision after another marked his reign. Once David entered the picture, Saul’s sin went from jealousy of David to attempts at murder, unholy schemes, and to assigning his murderous plans to others. King Saul became obsessed with the narcissistic murder of David, finally delving into the counsel of witchcraft. Where does all this end? It ends with death, of course. King Saul committed suicide on the battlefield when war with the Philistines went badly.

1 Samuel 31:6 tells us:

So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearers and all his men died together that same day.

I like the way author Beth Moore sums up King Saul’s story:¹

How does a man who is the people’s choice lose a kingdom? Saul provides a sad object lesson. All his life he focused on himself instead of his God. Therefore, he feared public opinion; he would not trust God but rather had to feel he was in control. He disobeyed, because obedience requires the trust and humility he did not possess.

Saul. The first king of Israel. The people’s choice. Not an accident waiting for a place to happen but a train wreck mangling the lives of others. Sad but true. A head taller but a heart shorter.

We find it easy to read a story like this one and not to realize that we could fall into the same pattern as King Saul: from a revered leader to a murderous crazy person. We must ask God to make us aware of any downward steps we take. Perhaps God will warn us when we, like Saul, begin to fall into sin by trying to please others above God.

Whatever our weaknesses, we can rest assured that our enemy, Satan, will tempt us to sin. Satan will strive to tempt us to begin a downward progression that, in the end, will lead to spiritual death. May the Lord, deliver us!

______________________

1 Moore, Beth. Portraits of Devotion. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing, 2014. p. 21.

 

 

Divine Interruptions

 

Divine Interruptions

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

—Isaiah 55:8-9

^{___________________}

PAUL

Interrupting the Acts of the Apostles!
Knocked from his horse
by an unseen Force.
Blinded,
hearing a thundering voice—
truth, like a spear in his side.
Stunned, waiting further instruction,
Stumbling.
Anointed and driven to Arabian desert.
Three clarifying years.
Commissioned.
Ready.

^{___________________}

Have you ever been “knocked from your horse,” so to speak? Stunned in such a way that everything changed?

Perhaps the sudden death of a companion, or the pink slip that you had no idea was coming? Certainly the Apostle Paul’s story of conversion demonstrates such an event.

He was traveling on behalf of the temple leaders in Jerusalem on his way to Damascus. He had been given the duty to imprison anyone he found belonging to the cult of “The Way,” the group that started over the influence of their crucified leader several years before.

Paul was of the temple establishment that believed this new group meant nothing but trouble to those traditional Jews in Palestine. Known for his zeal, he enjoyed the respect and responsibilities given him by this auspicious group from Jerusalem.

Even the Book of Acts itself, telling the story of the work done by Jesus’ Apostles in establishing the new Church, is interrupted by this story. No one saw it coming! This sudden call, transformational, an obviously divine moment.

No doubt shocked above all others, Paul needed time to process all that happened to him that day. After such a forceful occurrence, he needed to get away, to think, and pray, and study. He spent three years in such an occupation away from it all in the Arabian wilderness.

God alone knew what this world-interrupting event meant to His new work in the world. He gave this commissioning to the leader He had chosen to take the Gospel to the Gentile nations. Paul’s life-focus had to change. He could never go back to his old life and his old ways.

Perhaps you have had a “spear” thrust into your side that struck with such force that you knew God wanted your attention. The best response you can give is to say, “Lord, what do you have for me to do?”

Remember Moses’ experience at the burning bush, as recorded in Exodus 3. Remember Isaiah’s vision and God’s call to him, as found in Isaiah 6. And, remember Mary’s breathtaking news of a virgin pregnancy, as detailed in Luke 1. All of these events acted as preludes to something new that God was doing.

At the beginning of this new year, let’s watch for God’s work in this world. Let’s particularly be aware of events He will bring about through us.

If events seem to turn in a backwards directions, we should ask what God is doing. In this time in history, we should anxiously await His call to action—even and especially if that call comes in a new and startling moment. We must recognize that He has plans far above our puny insights and timetables.

 

 

Living on the Detour

 

“I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.”

—Isaiah 42:16

I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable, nor eager, to use detours. They take me out of my way. They take me places I may never have been, or places I don’t really want to go. Can I trust the guy who set up the signs that they will get me where I need to go? What if somebody moved the signs? This just slows me down and wastes my time.

This year of the COVID-19 pandemic seems like a detour. We were moving blissfully through life, as we knew it, on our way to somewhere of our own making and suddenly, without notice, we ran into the sign: “Warning! Detour! COVID-19! Shut down. Stay home. Stay away from people.” Without any time to ponder, we had to sit still and watch the world go by, with no indication of how long we would remain sidelined.

Yet, as we turn the corner into a new decade and a new year, I know that this detour continues. It does not magically disappear, just because we have the promise of a miracle vaccine. Rarely do things go as smoothly, or as quickly, as we would desire. Like driving on back streets, it seems to slow us down and cause us to say, “Hey, I’m not getting any younger here!”

So, as Christians, what should we do, as we travel on this detour? Should we simply bide our time and wait it out until better days come along? What if those better times don’t appear? What if God has other plans for us, plans that are vastly different than the plans we might make? He knows we are blind to His sovereign purposes. But, God wants to lead us. God wants us to trust Him. And, what if He actually wants us to “live on the detour”?

In a favorite book of mine, The Scars That Have Shaped Me, written by Vaneetha Rendall Risner, ¹ she spends a chapter on this very subject. She writes:

The old road often seems like it was more relaxing and easy to drive. The new road can be bumpy and twisty, narrow with sharp curves. And I find myself longing for the ease of what I used to have. But the new road has benefits too, perhaps not in ease but in seeing life differently. More reflectively. Really noticing reality rather than rushing forward, oblivious to my surroundings… I realize that I cannot cling to the past. I cannot get back on the old road and put everything back the way it was… But the old road is gone. And in my mind, it will often be remembered as better than it actually was.

As we begin this new year on the same detour, we need to slow down and admire the scenery. We need to find new ways to glorify God and enjoy Him. We need to make good use of this time. We need to experience new joys and hopes for the New Year.

After all, even though we may find that, like the Israelites in the wilderness, we are “living on a detour,” we will find that God will lead us forward with His light and His provision. We certainly can’t do any better than that.

______________________

1 Risner, Vaneetha Rendall. The Scars that Have Shaped Me. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Desiring God Publishing Company, 2016. Pp. 68-69.