Daily Walk In The Word

Galatians 5:22 – But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness

Seems that the Lord is trying to tell me something lately. Everywhere I turn, Sunday sermons, radio programs, blog sites, all have something to do with patience. Debbie and I have been struggling about what to do about moving to a warmer climate, mainly Florida. Both of us being somewhat controlling personalities we want to make the decision and make it NOW! Learning to wait on the Lord, I think, is one of the hardest things for me to accept. Have to learn to let things happen in His time rather than in my time.  My little graphic above points out that fact. Just give me a sign Lord, any sign. Sometimes He’s giving us the sign but we’re usually not listening or seeing. Too busy with our own agenda. Gotta work on that. How about you?

New American Standard

in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.

The Message

I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present.

Someone once asked Mother Theresa what the job description was for someone who might want to work beside her on the grimy streets of Calcutta. Without hesitation she mentioned only two things: the desire to work hard and have a joyful attitude. In today’s passage Paul is telling the church at Phillipi that he is so proud of them that they have deiced to work along beside Him and proclaim God’s message to the unbelievers. It makes me think about how many times have we had the opportunity to do that but resisted because of fear of rejection. As Mother Theresa said in her job description, proclaiming the Gospel takes hard work but oh, how much easier it is if we have a joyful attitude. I want to share with you what a co-worker of mine at IBM shared with me. It’s a video of his testimony and some of the struggles he’s had to deal with.   You’ll see that joyful attitude come out.  http://www.vimeo.com/22301272

Lord, we pray today that you’ll give us an opportunity to tell someone what a difference having you in our life has made, and give us the courage to say it to them.

I saw this in one of the morning devotionals I read and since the Super Bowl is this Sunday thought I would share. This one is from one called Moving Mountains by Amazing Facts. amazingfacts.org

It takes about 35,000 cows to make a year’s supply of regulation NFL footballs.  Despite the nickname”pigskin,” today footballs are actually made of leather. Wilson Sporting Goods, official supplier of NFL footballs, says one cowhide produces 15 to 25 footballs. Wilson makes about 700,000 regulation NFL footballs every year. David Gassko and Ian Stanczyk decided to ask one day, “What are the odds that any given cow will make it into the Super Bowl, via a football?” Of those 700,000 regulation balls, the NFL uses just 12,000 per year. Meanwhile, one in two adult cattle are slaughtered every year. Of those, the hides of one in 952 will become NFL footballs, of which one in 58 will be used in an NFL game, and about one in 158 of those will be used in the Super Bowl. So what are the odds that a random cow will be in the Super Bowl? About 1-in-17,420,000, or so say Gassko and Stanczyk. The Psalm says God owns “the cattle on a thousand hills.” In fact, God claims every beast of the forest as well. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without Him noticing. “Of how much more value are you?” Jesus asked. “Even the hairs on your head are numbered.” With a God who loves you this much, do you know the odds that you’ll go to heaven and live with Him forever? Accept Him as your personal Savior, and they’re one in one.

KEY BIBLE TEXTS: “For every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains and the wild beasts are Mine” (Psalm 50:10, 11). “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29–31). “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Facts, Amazing (2011-11-17). Moving Mountains: A Daily Devotional (Kindle Locations 944-946). Amazing Facts. Kindle Edition.

We all have those days when we feel like we’re walking in the desert. Right? I mean some of us have had enough of those days to last two lifetimes. We just want it to end. Yesterday one of our pastors shared something that I thought might help.  It comes from Psalm 106. I would urge you to read it through, it’s only 48 verses and would take about 5 minutes. He gave 10 responses when you feel like you’re out on that desert…all alone.

1. Believe in His Words, His promises – v.12a

2. Sing his praises – know that apart from Him I can do nothing – v.12b

3. Remember what he has done for me – look at all the blessings he’s given me so far -v.13a

4. Seek His counsel pray, pray, pray to Him – v13b

5. Do not give in to sinful desires – ever hear of someone trying to drown their sorrows – v14

6. Do not envy others – if only I had what they have -  v16

7. Do not turn to familiar idols – maybe if I go shopping it will make me feel better – v19

8. Do not despise the place God has me in – He knows what’s best for me and has a bigger plan that he can see but I can’t – v.24a

9. Do not grumble – probably the hardest one, sometimes you just want to let it all out – v.25a

10. Obey the Lord – let Him lead you and He will never let you down – v25b

Phillipians 1:3-4

NASB – I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,  always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all

The Message – Every time you cross my mind, I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart.

So we have to back up a little bit and understand the context of when Paul was writing this letter to the church in Phillipi. He was in prison. If there ever was a time when a guy should be depressed, this would be it. But no, he’s writing this letter, and at the time didn’t know if he was going to get out of prison or get beheaded, with a total joy in his heart for the people of the church. The “saints” as he called them in verse 1 . He’s giving thanks for his spiritual brothers and sisters, who over the years, have given him great joy.

All of us at one time or another go through stages of depression.  I’ve seen where doctors give the stages a numerical value of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst stage of depression. Seems like Paul was at level 0. How did he do this? Well it wasn’t from self – hypnosis or any of the other new age techniques for “self actualization” that gets thrown around these days.  It was his undying love for his Savior, Jesus Christ.  If you put your complete trust in Him and understand that He controls it all, then it doesn’t’ matter what circumstance you’re in, you know that He has a plan and you just have to go along with it. Much easier said than done, but the next time you’re in that situation, think about Paul sitting in a dank, dark prison cell writing about the joy he had in his heart for the Lord. Better yet pray for someone else right now who you know is going through a tough time. That’s what Paul did. He wasn’t focused on his troubles. He focused on others. Try it.

Starting a new study in Phillipians.  As we did before with James, we’ll take one or two verses at a time and dig a little deeper with it.  I’ll be using study guides written by John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll, Max Lucado, as well as notes from a sermon series we did at our church. I encourage you to go ahead and read the whole book first. It’s short and shouldn’t take you too long.

Paul wrote Philippians, along with Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon, from prison in Rome.  Paul penned this letter to his beloved Philippian congregation to thank them for their generous gift (4:10–19), explain why he was sending Epaphroditus back to them (2:25–30), inform them of his circumstances (1:12–26), and warn them about the danger of false teachers (3:2,18–19).

As before I’ll show the New American Standard version along with The Message. I like the Message sometimes in the way it rephrases the text into modern English.

So let’s get started with verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 1.

NASV – 1:1-2 – Paul and Timothy, bond-servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Phillipi, including the overseers and deacons: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  

The Message – Paul and Timothy, both of us committed servants of Christ Jesus, write this letter to all the followers of Jesus in Philippi, pastors and ministers included. We greet you with the grace and peace that comes from God our Father and our Master, Jesus Christ.

Pretty obvious that Timothy was there with Paul in prison and that they leave no doubt who their master is. Jesus.  Saints refers to believers in Christ.  Even today you’ll often hear followers of Christ referred to as saints. Being raised Catholic I used to think that the only saints were the ones that were designated by the church. As I read more of the Scriptures I understood what Paul was talking about when he says saints.  If you’ve trusted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior in your heart then you too are a saint.  I feel that at this point I need to go back and do some refresher on what that means. Here it is in a nutshell and this all comes from the Scriptures, not from Bill.  To accept Christ, or be “born again” simply means to believe that we all are sinners (Romans 3:3), that if we continue to sin and live the life we’ve been living it will result in an eternal life in Hell but if we believe in Jesus as the son of God we will have eternal life with Him in Heaven (Romans 6:23). Also to be able to understand that this is a gift from God, it’s not possible to “earn” your way into heaven with good works (Ephisians 2:8-9), and then finally I think The Message says it best from Romans 10:9-11,  “It’s the word of faith that welcomes God to go to work and set things right for us. This is the core of our preaching. Say the welcoming word to God—”Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: “God has set everything right between him and me!”

 ^11-13Scripture reassures us, “No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.” It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.” You are then guaranteed your entrance into heaven when you die.  While we’re still here on earth though, being the fallen people that we are, we are still going to sin, hopefully only occasionally but it happens. It does not negate your entrance into heaven when you die. You simply have to realize that your sinning and ask the Lord to help you refrain from ever doing it again. It’s amazing after you have accepted all of this and want to start leading a life that would be pleasing to Him, how you have a new realization within your conscience that what you’re doing is wrong.  If you do the wrong thing long enough you become desensitized to it. It becomes the new norm. To guard against that happening you need to listen to that first alarm that goes off that says, “you might want to rethink what you’re doing.”  Here’s what I’ve found helpful. If Jesus were standing beside you, in the flesh, would you do the same thing. Or would you be ashamed.

Well I got off on a little tangent there from a description of what a saint was but I thought it was important that we all get on the same page as Paul. We’ll dive into verses 3 – 5 next time.