Saturday, May 31, 2014
Kindness begets kindness
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Mark 12:31
Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.
Luke 6:31
Friday, May 23, 2014
Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed
Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed
By DNA | May 12, 201432 Comments
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
By DNA | May 12, 201432 Comments
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
The Marred Vessel
The Marred Vessel
And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.—Jeremiah 18:4.
The whole process of pottery as it was practised by the Israelites is represented on wall paintings still in existence. The clay was dug from the field, and then trodden by the feet of labourers until it became a workable paste, ready for the hand of the potter. His implements were few and simple. A disc of stone or wood rested upon a point fixed into a larger disc below, and upon it the clay was placed, and while the disc was whirled rapidly, the potter shaped the vessel with his hands. He wrought the work upon the wheels until it was complete; then it was smoothed, coated with a glaze, and burned in a furnace. And it is remarkable that pottery thus simply and swiftly made was so durable that fragments of it are the only signs left of many once flourishing cities, sole witnesses to life and industry long since passed away. The trade, which the Israelites had learned in Egypt, was common among them. Culinary vessels, jars for the safe keeping of parchments, tiles of all sorts were made in vast numbers. Indeed, in the Book of Chronicles we read that there was a royal pottery establishment, and it was either the site of that old factory, or else the place where fragments or potsherds from it were cast away, that is referred to both in the Old and in the New Testament as the Potters Field. To this well-known pottery Jeremiah was sent, not to preach a sermon, but to prepare one—a reminder to us that ordinary scenes and secular work may be eloquent with Divine teaching to any whose hearts are ready to receive it. Indeed, there is no sphere of activity anywhere about which God cannot say to His servant as He said to this prophet, “There I will cause thee to hear my words.”
A few years ago I had the privilege of closely observing an Eastern potter as he was seated at his work. When I began to watch him his wheel was at rest, for he was in the act of preparing the clay for the moulding, kneading it just as a woman kneads dough. When satisfied that it was just right for his purpose, he took up a short stick, placed it in the junction of one of the spokes on the inner side of the rim, and then with some six or eight vigorous turns he set the wheel a-spinning swiftly. Then he lifted the shapeless mass of clay, placed it in the very centre of the wheel, by doing which, of course, he caused it to revolve with great rapidity. He then smoothed the clay and fashioned it with both hands, till it looked just like a low cone; and then he thrust the thumb of his right hand down through the top of the cone to the centre, carefully widening the hole so as to give the sides the requisite thinness; and thus with wonderful dexterity, and in a surprisingly short space of time, he fashioned a beautiful vase. So far as one could judge from the mere observers point of view, that vase was perfect, but I noticed that time after time his fingers returned to it in the endeavour to do something that had not been effected. His practised, keen eye and his delicate touch informed him that there was a flaw, a defect, of which those who were round him were wholly ignorant; and much to the surprise of us all who stood around him, he, after one moments pause and careful scrutiny, crushed that vase into a shapeless lump of clay again, began to remodel it, and produced an entirely different vessel. As I stood there and saw it all, this incident recorded in the Book of Jeremiah was vividly recalled to my mind. There before me was a living commentary on this particular section of Scripture, and the whole scene was well calculated to impress the spiritual truth more deeply on ones memory and heart.1 [Note: J. M. Munro, in The Christian World Pulpit, lxxviii. 381.]
Let us note—
The Original Design of the Potter.
The Marring of the Vessel.
The Final Result.
I
The Original Design
1. The text clearly teaches that God has a plan for every life, a pattern for every character, an ideal for every soul. God is the Almighty Potter; and, in one sense, we are but clay in His hands. There is some definite, desirable, and beautiful ideal which God wishes us to realize. All mens lives are in Gods hands. In Isaiah 45:5, God says of Cyrus, “I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.” This is striking language. It is as if God had said, “I placed on thee the military belt, and prepared thee for war and conquest.” Men who are strangers to God are often employed by God to accomplish His providential plans. Thus He raised up Cyrus on account of the Hebrew people. In a sense, Cyrus was the Lords anointed, as we learn from the first verse of this same chapter. This does not mean that Cyrus was a worshipper of the true God; but it means that God had set him apart to perform a most important public service. The title here given to Cyrus is one of appointment to office rather than one expressive of holiness of character. He was Gods instrument in the accomplishment of His vast designs among the nations. All nations and kings are in Gods hand. In this sense He called Nebuchadnezzar His servant, the staff of His indignation, and the rod of His anger. God “doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.” He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings. He makes the wrath of men to praise Him and the remainder of wrath He restrains.
There seems to lie in all men, in proportion to the strength of their understanding, a conviction that there is in all human things a real order and purpose, notwithstanding the chaos in which at times they seem to be involved. Suffering scattered blindly without remedial purpose or retributive propriety—good and evil distributed with the most absolute disregard of moral merit or demerit—enormous crimes perpetrated with impunity, or vengeance when it comes falling not on the guilty, but the innocent—
Desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity—
these phenomena present, generation after generation, the same perplexing and even maddening features; and without an illogical but none the less a positive certainty that things are not as they seem—that, in spite of appearance, there is justice at the heart of them, and that, in the working out of the vast drama, justice will assert somehow and somewhere its sovereign right and power, the better sort of persons would find existence altogether unendurable. This is what the Greeks meant by the Ἀνάγκη or destiny, which at the bottom is no other than moral Providence.1 [Note: J. A. Froude, Short Studies, ii. 8.]
2. This implies the living presence of the Potter in this world which is being moulded. It involves the constant, direct impact, if one may so speak, of the Divine fingers. That is one part of St. Pauls great argument in the Epistle to the Romans. The Israelites thought that God had selected them and wound them up like a clock, so that they were to go on and on without further change for ever. St. Paul says No. God has not taken His fingers from the work. He never bound Himself to have mercy on you and on no one else. “He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.” And if you do not answer His purpose, He will change matters with you. And so, according to the picture before us, God is ever actively present, and what we call secondary laws are figments of the imagination, phrases that speak out our ignorance, the sign of the veil upon our eyes. We so speak because we cannot see the great Hand at work, touching every individual thing, allowing nothing, whether law or anything else, to intervene between His living purpose and the world that is being moulded by Him. If God is indeed thus moulding the world, secondary laws in any real sense are out of the question. When you start the world like a clock, as some scientists suppose, and then leave it going by its own machinery, all moulding is over, all purpose beyond that point has vanished, all progression has disappeared. You have nothing but a monotonous mechanism that goes on without progress until the wheel runs down. But in the picture of the potter Gods presence here is a living presence. He has the clay in His hand; He has moulded it, and is shaping it on His wheel.
No one has shown more lucidly than Dr. Martineau has that in all our Ideals there is revealed a Divine Presence which, though felt in us, is also felt to be not of us, so that we can clearly distinguish between this self-revelation of the immanent God, which carries with it the sense of an objective reality, and those subjective desires, affections, and sympathies which pertain to us as separate individuals. But though the Divine Ideal is ever more or less vividly present in our consciousness, and is that which gives to our life all its highest features, and all its truest charms and blessedness, yet it first distinctly reveals itself and its authority when it resists and condemns our personal desires and aims. Now it is this aspect of the Ideal as opposing us, commanding us, obliging us, which is the characteristic feature of our ethical consciousness; and it is this experience which is a continual warning to us against falling into the paralysing fallacy of supposing that our lives are nothing more than transient modes or phases of Gods eternal life. Here it is we learn our true individuality, and learn also, what Kant so clearly saw, the quite infinite value of a “Good Will.”1 [Note: The Life and Letters of James Martineau, ii. 473.]
3. The pattern which it is possible for any man to reach may be, indeed must be, different for each. There was one ideal possible for Egypt, another for Assyria, and another for Babylon, with their respective privileges and opportunities, and quite another for Israel, with its pre-eminent advantages. These other nations were not required to be everything that the Jewish people ought to have become. God is not unrighteous to demand equal attainments from unequal gifts. He gives to one five talents, to another two, and to another one; but He does not look at last for ten from each of them. And what is true thus of nations is true also of individuals. God has one ideal for those who, like ourselves, are favoured to the full with gospel blessings, and another for such as have not our advantages. But there is a possible result that shall be worthy of His approval for each; and that each may attain to it has been His original and primary design in their creation. The ideal is not the same for all, but it is in each appropriate to and in correspondence with the environment in which he is placed.
The one secret of life and development is not to desire and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work—to do every moments duty aright—that being the part in the process allotted to us; and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended for each of us from the first. If men would but believe that they are in process of creation, and consent to be made—let the maker handle them as the potter his clay, yielding themselves in respondent motion and submissive hopeful action with the turning of the wheel, they would ere long find themselves able to welcome every pressure of that hand upon them, even when it was felt in pain, and sometimes not only to believe but to recognize the Divine end in view, the bringing of a son into glory.1 [Note: George MacDonald.]
4. There are two things to be remembered with respect to this moulding of our individual life by God. One is, that God always moulds our life with a view to righteousness. That is the one undeviating Divine aim. God is righteous. “Can there be unrighteousness with God? God forbid!” Then every touch of the Divine finger must be a touch on behalf of righteousness. Every imprint on the clay must stamp the eternal righteousness on it, and must make for righteousness. Another thing to be remembered is, that because God moulds for the sake of righteousness, He moulds first and chiefly intelligent creatures, with mind and thought and moral purpose and will of their own. So we are led on from step to step; and here is where the great perplexity, the great wonder, comes in, though, after all, a good deal of perplexity is created by our thinking that our minds ought to be large enough to comprehend the infinite nature of God. We cannot get our way except with puppets that will not move unless we touch them. But God will get His way in a grander fashion, not with puppets, but with men, with creatures that can resist His will, with creatures that have something of the God stamped on their own lives, with creatures that shall stand as gods in the glory of the eternal Presence.
In a letter to Mr. Watts Russell, regarding the scheme for the transfer of the oratory of St. Philip Neri from Birmingham to Cheshire, Faber writes, “Gods will is the one thing; it seems to magnify its own sweetness the longer and the more lovingly we adore it; one is fit to burst out into raptures of venturesome congratulation of God that His will is so all-strong, and we so base and vile; and to wonder that He has not crushed us in the path of some great providence instead of making such as we are a part and parcel of His overwhelming, onward-bearing will.”2 [Note: The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber, 265.]
Thou, Thou art the Potter, and we are the Clay,
And morning and even, and day after day,
Thou turnest Thy wheel, and our substance is wrought,
Into form of Thy will, into shape of Thy thought.
Should Clay to the Potter make answer and say,
“Now what dost Thou fashion?” Thy hand would not stay:
Untiring, resistless, without any sound,
True, true to its Master, the wheel would go round.
How plastic are we as we live in Thy hands!
Who, who as the Potter the Clay understands?
Thy ways are a wonder, but oft, as a spark,
Some hint of Thy meaning shines out in the dark.
What portion is this for the sensitive Clay!
To be beaten and moulded from day unto day;
To answer not, question not, just to be still,
And know Thou art shaping us unto Thy will.
This, this may we plead with Thee, Workman Divine—
Press deep in our substance some symbol of Thine,
Thy name or Thy image, and let it be shown
That Thou wilt acknowledge the work as Thine own.
II
The Marring
1. The raw material with which the potter works is clay. This is the stuff of which each vessel, no matter what its shape may be, is composed. There resides in it the promise of becoming an object of usefulness or of beauty, once it has been subjected to the process of manufacture. Our lives possess a similar capacity. There are possibilities in us that admit of being realized. Out of the undeveloped material, which the fact of our existence in time represents, there can be produced forms and modes of personality of the most diverse kinds. Like the clay, we yield to treatment. Our natures are plastic. Powers of body and mind and will, abilities of a physical, an intellectual, and a moral order, manifest themselves. Character expresses itself, and more and more tends to stereotype itself on settled lines, and to harden into a permanent shape. Whereas in the early period there was little by which to distinguish one life from another; in the later, peculiarities assert themselves, differences are conspicuous. We display our individuality not only by the features of our face, our height, our speech, our manner of walking, but in a multitude of characteristic ways, definable in some cases, but in others too subtle to be explained in words.
I have been spending the weeks end with a friend in Sussex. On Sunday morning we strolled upon the downs—ascending many miles to a stretch of pasture where, losing sight of the sea, we had nothing but the zenith above us and the wide veldt below. There we lay upon the grass, where Proserpina had evidently been before us, for it was bright with flowers; the summer air was soft, and flooded with golden light, and there was no sound except the singing of a lark at an immeasurable height. Suddenly the line against the sky formed by the brow of the hill was broken with moving shapes, and almost before we could spring to our feet we were surrounded by a countless flock of sheep. On they came, like Dantes lost souls in the Divine Comedy. To me they seemed all alike, but the shepherd told us that he knew every one of them, as a schoolmaster knows his scholars. My friend and I exchanged thoughts. He was a landscape painter, and our conversation fell on the limitations of our vision. We found that a traveller—we were both travellers—in a strange country is quick to discern the difference between race and race; but slow to discern the difference between face and face in the same race. To an Englishman, visiting for the first time a plantation in the Southern States, the are black—that is all. To the African in London, we are—white. To both of us all pigtails are alike. The subtler differences of form and expression, by which we discriminate character and disposition, and which we count beautiful or ugly, have to be learned like a new language.1 [Note: Sir Wyke Bayliss, Olives, 137.]
2. Clay and human life are alike subject to effects being produced on them by a cause outside themselves. We know this about ourselves, that our lives do not consist of a series of experiences which we determine beforehand. We have not the choosing of our future, any more than we had of our past or of our present, in all the circumstances of it. The orbit of our career does not follow the path traced by our preconceptions and wishes. Things happen to us—bringing unexpected joys, or unlooked-for sorrows. Events take place, in whose initiation and accomplishment we had no part. We are indeed often denied even the opportunity of foreseeing them and preparing for them. They occur without any premonition. Perhaps we are apt to forget this fact about the circumstances of our lives. Incidents of an ordinary kind, while they befall us in the character of unanticipated happenings, are not sufficiently unfamiliar to remind us of it. But when any great event takes place—any event, that is to say, which is fraught with serious consequences to us and ours, and which transforms our whole outlook; when God asserts His power in our life either in His providence or in His grace—then we realize that, in a true sense, we are clay.
The evening exercise, on the question anent the providence of God, was sweet to me; and in converse after it, it was a pleasure to think and speak of the saints grounds of encouragement from that head under trouble; particularly, how tis their God that guides the world; and nothing do they meet with but what comes thro their Lords fingers; how He weighs their troubles to the least grain, that no more falls to their share than they need; and how they have a covenant-right to chastisements, to the Lords dealing with them as with sons to be rightly educated, not as servants whom the master will not strike but put away at the term.1 [Note: Thomas Boston, A General Account of My Life, 107.]
3. This clay failed to answer to the potters design. “The vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter.” Why was it marred? There was no lack of skill; no, but there was some gritty substance there, some stubborn resisting quality that would not yield to the deftness of the potters hand. Human nature is often resistant, rather than pliable, to Gods touch. Our wills conflict with His. Our way winds and bends like the flow of a river, when it should be straight as an arrow. An evil disposition in our nature mars the vessel in the hands of the Potter. The child must be docile if it is to learn, and we yielding if we are to profit.
We recognize at once that there is a great difference, almost an infinite difference, between us and a lump of clay. That is passive, powerless, helpless in the hands of the potter. It has no power of will, no liberty of choice, no possibility of decision. We are not clay. We were made in the image of God. We have some likeness to God. His image is defaced, but not effaced. It is our glorious, but also our terrible, prerogative that we are endowed with the power of choice. We can oppose the Divine Potter. We may joyously submit to God, or we may wickedly oppose God. Weak and wicked men may say, “No,” to the mighty and holy God.
Ay, note that Potters wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Times wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.…
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamps flash and trumpets peal,
The new wines foaming flow,
The Masters lips a-glow!
Thou, heavens consummate cup, what needst thou with earths wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily, mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
So, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o the stuff, what warpings pass the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!1 [Note: Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra.]
III
The Final Result
1. The potter does not fling away the marred vessel, but he breaks it and puts it on the wheel again and reshapes it. The potters skill is not to be baffled. He wants to give his ideal reality. And he will shape and break, shape and break again, till the clay has taken the form he wishes. Jeremiah saw what that meant for the Israelites as a nation. It meant the breaking of their nation, their land left desolate, submission to the iron rule of Babylon. That was the breaking of Israel. But the prophet saw that God would still hold them, and by sterner discipline, by harder blows and hotter fires, would mould them to the use and form He wanted. That was the answer to Jeremiahs question, What can God do with this perverse nation? Break it and reshape it.
The patience and persistence of God with man is the truth which this sets forth. God will not easily let man go. He stands over mankind and over every individual soul with boundless patience. The gifts and calling of God, says St. Paul, are without repentance, without recall or change.
“So he made it again.” That is surely very wonderful when we remember that the parable applied first of all to a nation that had deliberately defied its Maker and refused His counsel; but the prophecy was actually fulfilled in the wonderful national revival under the Maccabees, and will yet have its final fulfilment in that glorious day when Israel shall “blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.” And as with nations, so also is it with individuals. He can remake us. Our dead selves may become stepping-stones to higher things. He who transformed Simon into an apostle can transform our lives, if we permit it, into vessels meet for His own use.
It is reported of Wedgwood that he was trying to make an imitation of the Portland Vase in the form of jasper ware. In the soft clay the vases were done to perfection, but when they came out of the oven they were spoiled. This went on for six months. Then one of the workmen said to Wedgwood in despair, “Master, we have drawn the oven again and we havent got a single good vase.” The masters reply was, “Well, you have had your wages, havent you? Go on.” They did go on, and shortly after they succeeded, and the celebrated vase was produced. So God persists till His purpose is achieved.1 [Note: F. B. Cowl.]
2. “He made it again another vessel.” The potter could not make what he might have wished; but he did his best with his materials. So God is ever trying to do His best for us. If we refuse the best, He gives the next best. If we will not be gold, we may be silver; and if not silver, there are still the clay and the wood. How often He has to make us again! He made Jacob again, when He met him at the Jabbok ford, finding him a supplanter and a cheat, but after a long wrestle leaving him a prince with God. He made Simon again, on the resurrection morning, when He found him somewhere near the open grave, the son of a dove—for so his old name Bar-Jonah signifies—and left him Peter, the man of the rock, the Apostle of Pentecost. He made Mark again, between his impulsive leaving of Paul and Barnabas, as though frightened by the first touch of seasickness, and the times when Peter spoke of him as his son, and Paul from the Mamertine prison described him as being profitable.
The marred life will never again be what it might have been and what it ought to have been. It is said with deepest reverence that even God Himself cannot fully restore a marred life. It is sometimes supposed that Gods grace is peculiarly manifested when a great sinner is saved, when a man is lifted from the gutter and placed among Gods redeemed children. Gods grace is vastly more honoured when boys and girls are converted to Christ in their sweet childhood, before they have gone down into the awful depths of sin. It is ten thousand pities that the potters vessel was ever marred; it is ten thousand pities that men should ever know the degradation of sin by a personal experience. How much sweeter, cleaner, purer, and diviner their lives, had they never served sin and Satan. But it is better that a life should be saved though marred than that it should be utterly lost. God will not throw your marred life away if you bring it to Him to be mended. You may have failed to realize your noblest possibilities and your highest ideals; you may have added failure to failure in your struggles toward noble attainment; nevertheless, you may bring your marred life as it is to God to be restored. He is waiting to be gracious; He desires to give you another chance.
Broken Earthenware is the title of Mr. Harold Begbies book in which he gives some account of the saving work of the Salvation Army in a particular district of West London, and by “Broken Earthenware” he means the broken human lives which have been mended and sanctified, and made meet for the Masters use by the work of our friends of the Salvation Army. The book is full of interest to the philosopher and the psychologist, because it furnishes abundant evidences of that possibility of conversion in human life and character which modern psychology is ready to allow. But it is of still more interest to the Christian, the Christian who believes that the whole purpose of religion is to save the lost and to make the bad good. In that comparison of Christianity with other religions of the world, which is now conducted with such thoroughness that it ranks as a science, the most striking thing, perhaps, that is brought out is that Christianity is alone among the religions of the world in even entertaining the thought, and much more in accomplishing the fact, of making bad men good.1 [Note: R. F. Horton.]
Last summer, at one of the great Chautauqua Assemblies, I had the opportunity of hearing Mr. Bilhorn, the famous evangelist singer. One of his most effective solos is Butterworths little poem, entitled, “The Bird with a Broken Wing.” The bird with a broken wing was found in a woodland meadow; it received tender care and made progress toward complete restoration. But the wound was still there, and its sad effects never could be forgotten, nor could they be obliterated. Thus Mr. Bilhorn sang:
I healed its wound, and each morning
It sang its sweet old strain;
But the bird with the broken pinion
Never soared as high again.
Then the song told of a broken life and its second chance:
I found a young life, broken
By sins seductive art;
And, touched with a childlike pity,
I took him to my heart.
He lived with a noble purpose,
And struggled not in vain;
But the life that sin had stricken
Never soared as high again.
But the bird with a broken pinion
Kept another from the snare;
And the life that sin hath stricken
Raised another from despair.
But the soul that comes to Jesus
Is saved from every sin,
And the heart that fully trusts Him
Shall a crown of glory win.
Then come to the dear Redeemer,
Hell cleanse you from every stain;
By His wonderful love and mercy
You shall surely rise again.1 [Note: R. S. MacArthur, Quick Truths in Quaint Texts, ii. 215.]
3. When the clay has received its final shape from the potters hands, it must be baked in the kiln, to keep it; and even then its discipline is not complete, for whatever colours are laid on must be rendered permanent by fire. It is said that what is to become gold in the finished article is a smudge of dark liquid before the fire is applied; and that the first two or three applications of heat obliterate all trace of colour, which has to be again and again renewed. So in Gods dealings with His people. The moulding Hand has no sooner finished its work than it plunges the clay into the fiery trial of pain or temptation. But let patience have her perfect work. Be still and know that He is God. Thou shalt be compensated when the Master counts thee fair and meet for His use.
Canon Wilberforce told me that he had his likeness painted by the great artist Herkomer, who told him the following story: Herkomer was born in the Black Forest, his father a simple wood-chopper. When the artist rose to name and fame in London, and built his studio at Bushey, his first thought was to have the old man come and spend the rest of his years with him. He came, and was very fond of moulding clay. All day he made things out of clay, but as the years passed he thought his hand would lose its cunning. He often went upstairs at night to his room with the sad heart of an old man who thinks his best days are gone by. Herkomers quick eye of love detected this, and when his father was safe asleep his gifted son would come downstairs and take in hand the pieces of clay which his old father had left, with the evidences of defect and failure; and with his own wonderful touch he would make them as fair as they could be made by human hand. When the old man came down in the morning, and took up the work he had left all spoiled the night before, and held it up before the light, he would say, rubbing his hands: “I can do it as well as ever I did.” Is not that just what God Almighty is going to do with you? You are bearing the marks of failure just because you have been resisting Him and fighting Him. But, ah! my Lord comes with those pierced hands, and says: “Will you not yield to Me? Only yield, and I will make you again.”1 [Note: F. B. Meyer, The Souls Ascent, 29.]
4. There is a point when discipline ends, and God takes a man as he is, not for probation but for judgment. When, or where, that point is reached we dare not say of others, seeing we scarcely know it of ourselves. But always we must keep it in view as a dread possibility which may be nearer to us than we think. Now, if under any circumstances it is conceivable that final failure should be the result—what then of the Divine sovereignty? Perhaps we are too sensitive in this connexion. God is great enough to fail. He has failed in the past; He is failing every day. He cannot escape the risk of failure so long as He has to deal with free intelligences in a state of probation. No passage in Scripture is so pathetic as that which records our Lords final departure from the Temple courts. How often had He come there, as boy and man, to worship and to work. How often had He looked into the wistful faces of the men and women that thronged past Him, and thought of the weary hearts that lay behind, and would have gathered them, but they would not. Now, His work is done; He will go His way and leave them to themselves. Slowly the sun sets; the evening lights linger on the Temple towers; the solemn hush of twilight falls over the busy city, as He moves away into the deepening gloom, into the shadow of the cross. “I would, and ye would not.” It was the greatest failure in history; but we know what came of it. For it was Love that failed; and Loves failures are Lifes triumphs.
He who staggers striving after the ideal life, even though he fail, is not himself utterly lost to good and God; that striving spirit is still an asset in the All-wise Eye. “Its of no use,” say some after their early failures; “I must dree my ain weird and play out the game as it has begun.” But it is of use. Many a man of good standing to-day was braced by his failures when outward-bound; many a man successfully “pulled himself together,” and, like Jacob the errant, became, after his sifting discipline, a prince and power. Avert your ear from the demoncritic who would nip your better mind, and bind yourself by all the domestic and religious ties available to the things that save and make a man. Believe greatly, and life and God will answer to your faith and hope. Accept and openly wear the ring of discipleship that wards off temptation and keeps you safely heart-bound.1 [Note: R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 47.]
Why hast Thou made me so,
My Maker? I would know
Wherefore Thou gavst me such a mournful dower;—
Toil that is oft in vain,
Knowledge that deepens pain,
And longing to be pure, without the power?
“Shall the thing formed aspire
The purpose to require
Of him who formed it?” Make not answer thus!
Beyond the Potters wheel
There lieth an appeal
To Him who breathed the breath of life in us.
I know we are but clay,
Thus moulded to display
His wisdom and His power who rolls the years;
Whose wheel is Heaven and earth;—
Its motion, death and birth;—
Is Potter, then, the name that most endears?
I grudge not, Lord, to be
Of meanest use to Thee;—
Make me a trough for swine if so Thou wilt;—
But if my vessels clay
Be marred and thrown away
Before it takes its form, is mine the guilt?
I trust Thee to the end,
Creator, Saviour, Friend,
Whatever name Thou deignest that we call.
Art Thou not good and just?
I wait, and watch, and trust
That Love is still the holiest name of all.
I watch and strive all night;
And when the mornings light
Shines on the path I travelled here below;—
When day eternal breaks,
And life immortal wakes,
Then shalt Thou tell me why Thou madst me Song of Solomon 1 [Note: J. J. Murphy, Sonnets and other Poems.]
http://biblehub.com/commentaries/hastings/jeremiah/18-4.htm
And when the vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.—Jeremiah 18:4.
The whole process of pottery as it was practised by the Israelites is represented on wall paintings still in existence. The clay was dug from the field, and then trodden by the feet of labourers until it became a workable paste, ready for the hand of the potter. His implements were few and simple. A disc of stone or wood rested upon a point fixed into a larger disc below, and upon it the clay was placed, and while the disc was whirled rapidly, the potter shaped the vessel with his hands. He wrought the work upon the wheels until it was complete; then it was smoothed, coated with a glaze, and burned in a furnace. And it is remarkable that pottery thus simply and swiftly made was so durable that fragments of it are the only signs left of many once flourishing cities, sole witnesses to life and industry long since passed away. The trade, which the Israelites had learned in Egypt, was common among them. Culinary vessels, jars for the safe keeping of parchments, tiles of all sorts were made in vast numbers. Indeed, in the Book of Chronicles we read that there was a royal pottery establishment, and it was either the site of that old factory, or else the place where fragments or potsherds from it were cast away, that is referred to both in the Old and in the New Testament as the Potters Field. To this well-known pottery Jeremiah was sent, not to preach a sermon, but to prepare one—a reminder to us that ordinary scenes and secular work may be eloquent with Divine teaching to any whose hearts are ready to receive it. Indeed, there is no sphere of activity anywhere about which God cannot say to His servant as He said to this prophet, “There I will cause thee to hear my words.”
A few years ago I had the privilege of closely observing an Eastern potter as he was seated at his work. When I began to watch him his wheel was at rest, for he was in the act of preparing the clay for the moulding, kneading it just as a woman kneads dough. When satisfied that it was just right for his purpose, he took up a short stick, placed it in the junction of one of the spokes on the inner side of the rim, and then with some six or eight vigorous turns he set the wheel a-spinning swiftly. Then he lifted the shapeless mass of clay, placed it in the very centre of the wheel, by doing which, of course, he caused it to revolve with great rapidity. He then smoothed the clay and fashioned it with both hands, till it looked just like a low cone; and then he thrust the thumb of his right hand down through the top of the cone to the centre, carefully widening the hole so as to give the sides the requisite thinness; and thus with wonderful dexterity, and in a surprisingly short space of time, he fashioned a beautiful vase. So far as one could judge from the mere observers point of view, that vase was perfect, but I noticed that time after time his fingers returned to it in the endeavour to do something that had not been effected. His practised, keen eye and his delicate touch informed him that there was a flaw, a defect, of which those who were round him were wholly ignorant; and much to the surprise of us all who stood around him, he, after one moments pause and careful scrutiny, crushed that vase into a shapeless lump of clay again, began to remodel it, and produced an entirely different vessel. As I stood there and saw it all, this incident recorded in the Book of Jeremiah was vividly recalled to my mind. There before me was a living commentary on this particular section of Scripture, and the whole scene was well calculated to impress the spiritual truth more deeply on ones memory and heart.1 [Note: J. M. Munro, in The Christian World Pulpit, lxxviii. 381.]
Let us note—
The Original Design of the Potter.
The Marring of the Vessel.
The Final Result.
I
The Original Design
1. The text clearly teaches that God has a plan for every life, a pattern for every character, an ideal for every soul. God is the Almighty Potter; and, in one sense, we are but clay in His hands. There is some definite, desirable, and beautiful ideal which God wishes us to realize. All mens lives are in Gods hands. In Isaiah 45:5, God says of Cyrus, “I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.” This is striking language. It is as if God had said, “I placed on thee the military belt, and prepared thee for war and conquest.” Men who are strangers to God are often employed by God to accomplish His providential plans. Thus He raised up Cyrus on account of the Hebrew people. In a sense, Cyrus was the Lords anointed, as we learn from the first verse of this same chapter. This does not mean that Cyrus was a worshipper of the true God; but it means that God had set him apart to perform a most important public service. The title here given to Cyrus is one of appointment to office rather than one expressive of holiness of character. He was Gods instrument in the accomplishment of His vast designs among the nations. All nations and kings are in Gods hand. In this sense He called Nebuchadnezzar His servant, the staff of His indignation, and the rod of His anger. God “doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.” He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings. He makes the wrath of men to praise Him and the remainder of wrath He restrains.
There seems to lie in all men, in proportion to the strength of their understanding, a conviction that there is in all human things a real order and purpose, notwithstanding the chaos in which at times they seem to be involved. Suffering scattered blindly without remedial purpose or retributive propriety—good and evil distributed with the most absolute disregard of moral merit or demerit—enormous crimes perpetrated with impunity, or vengeance when it comes falling not on the guilty, but the innocent—
Desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity—
these phenomena present, generation after generation, the same perplexing and even maddening features; and without an illogical but none the less a positive certainty that things are not as they seem—that, in spite of appearance, there is justice at the heart of them, and that, in the working out of the vast drama, justice will assert somehow and somewhere its sovereign right and power, the better sort of persons would find existence altogether unendurable. This is what the Greeks meant by the Ἀνάγκη or destiny, which at the bottom is no other than moral Providence.1 [Note: J. A. Froude, Short Studies, ii. 8.]
2. This implies the living presence of the Potter in this world which is being moulded. It involves the constant, direct impact, if one may so speak, of the Divine fingers. That is one part of St. Pauls great argument in the Epistle to the Romans. The Israelites thought that God had selected them and wound them up like a clock, so that they were to go on and on without further change for ever. St. Paul says No. God has not taken His fingers from the work. He never bound Himself to have mercy on you and on no one else. “He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.” And if you do not answer His purpose, He will change matters with you. And so, according to the picture before us, God is ever actively present, and what we call secondary laws are figments of the imagination, phrases that speak out our ignorance, the sign of the veil upon our eyes. We so speak because we cannot see the great Hand at work, touching every individual thing, allowing nothing, whether law or anything else, to intervene between His living purpose and the world that is being moulded by Him. If God is indeed thus moulding the world, secondary laws in any real sense are out of the question. When you start the world like a clock, as some scientists suppose, and then leave it going by its own machinery, all moulding is over, all purpose beyond that point has vanished, all progression has disappeared. You have nothing but a monotonous mechanism that goes on without progress until the wheel runs down. But in the picture of the potter Gods presence here is a living presence. He has the clay in His hand; He has moulded it, and is shaping it on His wheel.
No one has shown more lucidly than Dr. Martineau has that in all our Ideals there is revealed a Divine Presence which, though felt in us, is also felt to be not of us, so that we can clearly distinguish between this self-revelation of the immanent God, which carries with it the sense of an objective reality, and those subjective desires, affections, and sympathies which pertain to us as separate individuals. But though the Divine Ideal is ever more or less vividly present in our consciousness, and is that which gives to our life all its highest features, and all its truest charms and blessedness, yet it first distinctly reveals itself and its authority when it resists and condemns our personal desires and aims. Now it is this aspect of the Ideal as opposing us, commanding us, obliging us, which is the characteristic feature of our ethical consciousness; and it is this experience which is a continual warning to us against falling into the paralysing fallacy of supposing that our lives are nothing more than transient modes or phases of Gods eternal life. Here it is we learn our true individuality, and learn also, what Kant so clearly saw, the quite infinite value of a “Good Will.”1 [Note: The Life and Letters of James Martineau, ii. 473.]
3. The pattern which it is possible for any man to reach may be, indeed must be, different for each. There was one ideal possible for Egypt, another for Assyria, and another for Babylon, with their respective privileges and opportunities, and quite another for Israel, with its pre-eminent advantages. These other nations were not required to be everything that the Jewish people ought to have become. God is not unrighteous to demand equal attainments from unequal gifts. He gives to one five talents, to another two, and to another one; but He does not look at last for ten from each of them. And what is true thus of nations is true also of individuals. God has one ideal for those who, like ourselves, are favoured to the full with gospel blessings, and another for such as have not our advantages. But there is a possible result that shall be worthy of His approval for each; and that each may attain to it has been His original and primary design in their creation. The ideal is not the same for all, but it is in each appropriate to and in correspondence with the environment in which he is placed.
The one secret of life and development is not to desire and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work—to do every moments duty aright—that being the part in the process allotted to us; and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended for each of us from the first. If men would but believe that they are in process of creation, and consent to be made—let the maker handle them as the potter his clay, yielding themselves in respondent motion and submissive hopeful action with the turning of the wheel, they would ere long find themselves able to welcome every pressure of that hand upon them, even when it was felt in pain, and sometimes not only to believe but to recognize the Divine end in view, the bringing of a son into glory.1 [Note: George MacDonald.]
4. There are two things to be remembered with respect to this moulding of our individual life by God. One is, that God always moulds our life with a view to righteousness. That is the one undeviating Divine aim. God is righteous. “Can there be unrighteousness with God? God forbid!” Then every touch of the Divine finger must be a touch on behalf of righteousness. Every imprint on the clay must stamp the eternal righteousness on it, and must make for righteousness. Another thing to be remembered is, that because God moulds for the sake of righteousness, He moulds first and chiefly intelligent creatures, with mind and thought and moral purpose and will of their own. So we are led on from step to step; and here is where the great perplexity, the great wonder, comes in, though, after all, a good deal of perplexity is created by our thinking that our minds ought to be large enough to comprehend the infinite nature of God. We cannot get our way except with puppets that will not move unless we touch them. But God will get His way in a grander fashion, not with puppets, but with men, with creatures that can resist His will, with creatures that have something of the God stamped on their own lives, with creatures that shall stand as gods in the glory of the eternal Presence.
In a letter to Mr. Watts Russell, regarding the scheme for the transfer of the oratory of St. Philip Neri from Birmingham to Cheshire, Faber writes, “Gods will is the one thing; it seems to magnify its own sweetness the longer and the more lovingly we adore it; one is fit to burst out into raptures of venturesome congratulation of God that His will is so all-strong, and we so base and vile; and to wonder that He has not crushed us in the path of some great providence instead of making such as we are a part and parcel of His overwhelming, onward-bearing will.”2 [Note: The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber, 265.]
Thou, Thou art the Potter, and we are the Clay,
And morning and even, and day after day,
Thou turnest Thy wheel, and our substance is wrought,
Into form of Thy will, into shape of Thy thought.
Should Clay to the Potter make answer and say,
“Now what dost Thou fashion?” Thy hand would not stay:
Untiring, resistless, without any sound,
True, true to its Master, the wheel would go round.
How plastic are we as we live in Thy hands!
Who, who as the Potter the Clay understands?
Thy ways are a wonder, but oft, as a spark,
Some hint of Thy meaning shines out in the dark.
What portion is this for the sensitive Clay!
To be beaten and moulded from day unto day;
To answer not, question not, just to be still,
And know Thou art shaping us unto Thy will.
This, this may we plead with Thee, Workman Divine—
Press deep in our substance some symbol of Thine,
Thy name or Thy image, and let it be shown
That Thou wilt acknowledge the work as Thine own.
II
The Marring
1. The raw material with which the potter works is clay. This is the stuff of which each vessel, no matter what its shape may be, is composed. There resides in it the promise of becoming an object of usefulness or of beauty, once it has been subjected to the process of manufacture. Our lives possess a similar capacity. There are possibilities in us that admit of being realized. Out of the undeveloped material, which the fact of our existence in time represents, there can be produced forms and modes of personality of the most diverse kinds. Like the clay, we yield to treatment. Our natures are plastic. Powers of body and mind and will, abilities of a physical, an intellectual, and a moral order, manifest themselves. Character expresses itself, and more and more tends to stereotype itself on settled lines, and to harden into a permanent shape. Whereas in the early period there was little by which to distinguish one life from another; in the later, peculiarities assert themselves, differences are conspicuous. We display our individuality not only by the features of our face, our height, our speech, our manner of walking, but in a multitude of characteristic ways, definable in some cases, but in others too subtle to be explained in words.
I have been spending the weeks end with a friend in Sussex. On Sunday morning we strolled upon the downs—ascending many miles to a stretch of pasture where, losing sight of the sea, we had nothing but the zenith above us and the wide veldt below. There we lay upon the grass, where Proserpina had evidently been before us, for it was bright with flowers; the summer air was soft, and flooded with golden light, and there was no sound except the singing of a lark at an immeasurable height. Suddenly the line against the sky formed by the brow of the hill was broken with moving shapes, and almost before we could spring to our feet we were surrounded by a countless flock of sheep. On they came, like Dantes lost souls in the Divine Comedy. To me they seemed all alike, but the shepherd told us that he knew every one of them, as a schoolmaster knows his scholars. My friend and I exchanged thoughts. He was a landscape painter, and our conversation fell on the limitations of our vision. We found that a traveller—we were both travellers—in a strange country is quick to discern the difference between race and race; but slow to discern the difference between face and face in the same race. To an Englishman, visiting for the first time a plantation in the Southern States, the are black—that is all. To the African in London, we are—white. To both of us all pigtails are alike. The subtler differences of form and expression, by which we discriminate character and disposition, and which we count beautiful or ugly, have to be learned like a new language.1 [Note: Sir Wyke Bayliss, Olives, 137.]
2. Clay and human life are alike subject to effects being produced on them by a cause outside themselves. We know this about ourselves, that our lives do not consist of a series of experiences which we determine beforehand. We have not the choosing of our future, any more than we had of our past or of our present, in all the circumstances of it. The orbit of our career does not follow the path traced by our preconceptions and wishes. Things happen to us—bringing unexpected joys, or unlooked-for sorrows. Events take place, in whose initiation and accomplishment we had no part. We are indeed often denied even the opportunity of foreseeing them and preparing for them. They occur without any premonition. Perhaps we are apt to forget this fact about the circumstances of our lives. Incidents of an ordinary kind, while they befall us in the character of unanticipated happenings, are not sufficiently unfamiliar to remind us of it. But when any great event takes place—any event, that is to say, which is fraught with serious consequences to us and ours, and which transforms our whole outlook; when God asserts His power in our life either in His providence or in His grace—then we realize that, in a true sense, we are clay.
The evening exercise, on the question anent the providence of God, was sweet to me; and in converse after it, it was a pleasure to think and speak of the saints grounds of encouragement from that head under trouble; particularly, how tis their God that guides the world; and nothing do they meet with but what comes thro their Lords fingers; how He weighs their troubles to the least grain, that no more falls to their share than they need; and how they have a covenant-right to chastisements, to the Lords dealing with them as with sons to be rightly educated, not as servants whom the master will not strike but put away at the term.1 [Note: Thomas Boston, A General Account of My Life, 107.]
3. This clay failed to answer to the potters design. “The vessel that he made of the clay was marred in the hand of the potter.” Why was it marred? There was no lack of skill; no, but there was some gritty substance there, some stubborn resisting quality that would not yield to the deftness of the potters hand. Human nature is often resistant, rather than pliable, to Gods touch. Our wills conflict with His. Our way winds and bends like the flow of a river, when it should be straight as an arrow. An evil disposition in our nature mars the vessel in the hands of the Potter. The child must be docile if it is to learn, and we yielding if we are to profit.
We recognize at once that there is a great difference, almost an infinite difference, between us and a lump of clay. That is passive, powerless, helpless in the hands of the potter. It has no power of will, no liberty of choice, no possibility of decision. We are not clay. We were made in the image of God. We have some likeness to God. His image is defaced, but not effaced. It is our glorious, but also our terrible, prerogative that we are endowed with the power of choice. We can oppose the Divine Potter. We may joyously submit to God, or we may wickedly oppose God. Weak and wicked men may say, “No,” to the mighty and holy God.
Ay, note that Potters wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
“Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!”
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Times wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.…
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamps flash and trumpets peal,
The new wines foaming flow,
The Masters lips a-glow!
Thou, heavens consummate cup, what needst thou with earths wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily, mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
So, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o the stuff, what warpings pass the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!1 [Note: Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra.]
III
The Final Result
1. The potter does not fling away the marred vessel, but he breaks it and puts it on the wheel again and reshapes it. The potters skill is not to be baffled. He wants to give his ideal reality. And he will shape and break, shape and break again, till the clay has taken the form he wishes. Jeremiah saw what that meant for the Israelites as a nation. It meant the breaking of their nation, their land left desolate, submission to the iron rule of Babylon. That was the breaking of Israel. But the prophet saw that God would still hold them, and by sterner discipline, by harder blows and hotter fires, would mould them to the use and form He wanted. That was the answer to Jeremiahs question, What can God do with this perverse nation? Break it and reshape it.
The patience and persistence of God with man is the truth which this sets forth. God will not easily let man go. He stands over mankind and over every individual soul with boundless patience. The gifts and calling of God, says St. Paul, are without repentance, without recall or change.
“So he made it again.” That is surely very wonderful when we remember that the parable applied first of all to a nation that had deliberately defied its Maker and refused His counsel; but the prophecy was actually fulfilled in the wonderful national revival under the Maccabees, and will yet have its final fulfilment in that glorious day when Israel shall “blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.” And as with nations, so also is it with individuals. He can remake us. Our dead selves may become stepping-stones to higher things. He who transformed Simon into an apostle can transform our lives, if we permit it, into vessels meet for His own use.
It is reported of Wedgwood that he was trying to make an imitation of the Portland Vase in the form of jasper ware. In the soft clay the vases were done to perfection, but when they came out of the oven they were spoiled. This went on for six months. Then one of the workmen said to Wedgwood in despair, “Master, we have drawn the oven again and we havent got a single good vase.” The masters reply was, “Well, you have had your wages, havent you? Go on.” They did go on, and shortly after they succeeded, and the celebrated vase was produced. So God persists till His purpose is achieved.1 [Note: F. B. Cowl.]
2. “He made it again another vessel.” The potter could not make what he might have wished; but he did his best with his materials. So God is ever trying to do His best for us. If we refuse the best, He gives the next best. If we will not be gold, we may be silver; and if not silver, there are still the clay and the wood. How often He has to make us again! He made Jacob again, when He met him at the Jabbok ford, finding him a supplanter and a cheat, but after a long wrestle leaving him a prince with God. He made Simon again, on the resurrection morning, when He found him somewhere near the open grave, the son of a dove—for so his old name Bar-Jonah signifies—and left him Peter, the man of the rock, the Apostle of Pentecost. He made Mark again, between his impulsive leaving of Paul and Barnabas, as though frightened by the first touch of seasickness, and the times when Peter spoke of him as his son, and Paul from the Mamertine prison described him as being profitable.
The marred life will never again be what it might have been and what it ought to have been. It is said with deepest reverence that even God Himself cannot fully restore a marred life. It is sometimes supposed that Gods grace is peculiarly manifested when a great sinner is saved, when a man is lifted from the gutter and placed among Gods redeemed children. Gods grace is vastly more honoured when boys and girls are converted to Christ in their sweet childhood, before they have gone down into the awful depths of sin. It is ten thousand pities that the potters vessel was ever marred; it is ten thousand pities that men should ever know the degradation of sin by a personal experience. How much sweeter, cleaner, purer, and diviner their lives, had they never served sin and Satan. But it is better that a life should be saved though marred than that it should be utterly lost. God will not throw your marred life away if you bring it to Him to be mended. You may have failed to realize your noblest possibilities and your highest ideals; you may have added failure to failure in your struggles toward noble attainment; nevertheless, you may bring your marred life as it is to God to be restored. He is waiting to be gracious; He desires to give you another chance.
Broken Earthenware is the title of Mr. Harold Begbies book in which he gives some account of the saving work of the Salvation Army in a particular district of West London, and by “Broken Earthenware” he means the broken human lives which have been mended and sanctified, and made meet for the Masters use by the work of our friends of the Salvation Army. The book is full of interest to the philosopher and the psychologist, because it furnishes abundant evidences of that possibility of conversion in human life and character which modern psychology is ready to allow. But it is of still more interest to the Christian, the Christian who believes that the whole purpose of religion is to save the lost and to make the bad good. In that comparison of Christianity with other religions of the world, which is now conducted with such thoroughness that it ranks as a science, the most striking thing, perhaps, that is brought out is that Christianity is alone among the religions of the world in even entertaining the thought, and much more in accomplishing the fact, of making bad men good.1 [Note: R. F. Horton.]
Last summer, at one of the great Chautauqua Assemblies, I had the opportunity of hearing Mr. Bilhorn, the famous evangelist singer. One of his most effective solos is Butterworths little poem, entitled, “The Bird with a Broken Wing.” The bird with a broken wing was found in a woodland meadow; it received tender care and made progress toward complete restoration. But the wound was still there, and its sad effects never could be forgotten, nor could they be obliterated. Thus Mr. Bilhorn sang:
I healed its wound, and each morning
It sang its sweet old strain;
But the bird with the broken pinion
Never soared as high again.
Then the song told of a broken life and its second chance:
I found a young life, broken
By sins seductive art;
And, touched with a childlike pity,
I took him to my heart.
He lived with a noble purpose,
And struggled not in vain;
But the life that sin had stricken
Never soared as high again.
But the bird with a broken pinion
Kept another from the snare;
And the life that sin hath stricken
Raised another from despair.
But the soul that comes to Jesus
Is saved from every sin,
And the heart that fully trusts Him
Shall a crown of glory win.
Then come to the dear Redeemer,
Hell cleanse you from every stain;
By His wonderful love and mercy
You shall surely rise again.1 [Note: R. S. MacArthur, Quick Truths in Quaint Texts, ii. 215.]
3. When the clay has received its final shape from the potters hands, it must be baked in the kiln, to keep it; and even then its discipline is not complete, for whatever colours are laid on must be rendered permanent by fire. It is said that what is to become gold in the finished article is a smudge of dark liquid before the fire is applied; and that the first two or three applications of heat obliterate all trace of colour, which has to be again and again renewed. So in Gods dealings with His people. The moulding Hand has no sooner finished its work than it plunges the clay into the fiery trial of pain or temptation. But let patience have her perfect work. Be still and know that He is God. Thou shalt be compensated when the Master counts thee fair and meet for His use.
Canon Wilberforce told me that he had his likeness painted by the great artist Herkomer, who told him the following story: Herkomer was born in the Black Forest, his father a simple wood-chopper. When the artist rose to name and fame in London, and built his studio at Bushey, his first thought was to have the old man come and spend the rest of his years with him. He came, and was very fond of moulding clay. All day he made things out of clay, but as the years passed he thought his hand would lose its cunning. He often went upstairs at night to his room with the sad heart of an old man who thinks his best days are gone by. Herkomers quick eye of love detected this, and when his father was safe asleep his gifted son would come downstairs and take in hand the pieces of clay which his old father had left, with the evidences of defect and failure; and with his own wonderful touch he would make them as fair as they could be made by human hand. When the old man came down in the morning, and took up the work he had left all spoiled the night before, and held it up before the light, he would say, rubbing his hands: “I can do it as well as ever I did.” Is not that just what God Almighty is going to do with you? You are bearing the marks of failure just because you have been resisting Him and fighting Him. But, ah! my Lord comes with those pierced hands, and says: “Will you not yield to Me? Only yield, and I will make you again.”1 [Note: F. B. Meyer, The Souls Ascent, 29.]
4. There is a point when discipline ends, and God takes a man as he is, not for probation but for judgment. When, or where, that point is reached we dare not say of others, seeing we scarcely know it of ourselves. But always we must keep it in view as a dread possibility which may be nearer to us than we think. Now, if under any circumstances it is conceivable that final failure should be the result—what then of the Divine sovereignty? Perhaps we are too sensitive in this connexion. God is great enough to fail. He has failed in the past; He is failing every day. He cannot escape the risk of failure so long as He has to deal with free intelligences in a state of probation. No passage in Scripture is so pathetic as that which records our Lords final departure from the Temple courts. How often had He come there, as boy and man, to worship and to work. How often had He looked into the wistful faces of the men and women that thronged past Him, and thought of the weary hearts that lay behind, and would have gathered them, but they would not. Now, His work is done; He will go His way and leave them to themselves. Slowly the sun sets; the evening lights linger on the Temple towers; the solemn hush of twilight falls over the busy city, as He moves away into the deepening gloom, into the shadow of the cross. “I would, and ye would not.” It was the greatest failure in history; but we know what came of it. For it was Love that failed; and Loves failures are Lifes triumphs.
He who staggers striving after the ideal life, even though he fail, is not himself utterly lost to good and God; that striving spirit is still an asset in the All-wise Eye. “Its of no use,” say some after their early failures; “I must dree my ain weird and play out the game as it has begun.” But it is of use. Many a man of good standing to-day was braced by his failures when outward-bound; many a man successfully “pulled himself together,” and, like Jacob the errant, became, after his sifting discipline, a prince and power. Avert your ear from the demoncritic who would nip your better mind, and bind yourself by all the domestic and religious ties available to the things that save and make a man. Believe greatly, and life and God will answer to your faith and hope. Accept and openly wear the ring of discipleship that wards off temptation and keeps you safely heart-bound.1 [Note: R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 47.]
Why hast Thou made me so,
My Maker? I would know
Wherefore Thou gavst me such a mournful dower;—
Toil that is oft in vain,
Knowledge that deepens pain,
And longing to be pure, without the power?
“Shall the thing formed aspire
The purpose to require
Of him who formed it?” Make not answer thus!
Beyond the Potters wheel
There lieth an appeal
To Him who breathed the breath of life in us.
I know we are but clay,
Thus moulded to display
His wisdom and His power who rolls the years;
Whose wheel is Heaven and earth;—
Its motion, death and birth;—
Is Potter, then, the name that most endears?
I grudge not, Lord, to be
Of meanest use to Thee;—
Make me a trough for swine if so Thou wilt;—
But if my vessels clay
Be marred and thrown away
Before it takes its form, is mine the guilt?
I trust Thee to the end,
Creator, Saviour, Friend,
Whatever name Thou deignest that we call.
Art Thou not good and just?
I wait, and watch, and trust
That Love is still the holiest name of all.
I watch and strive all night;
And when the mornings light
Shines on the path I travelled here below;—
When day eternal breaks,
And life immortal wakes,
Then shalt Thou tell me why Thou madst me Song of Solomon 1 [Note: J. J. Murphy, Sonnets and other Poems.]
http://biblehub.com/commentaries/hastings/jeremiah/18-4.htm
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Looking Back
God, please enhance my character growth day by day, that i become more like U with each passing day, so that i can become a man of righteousness, upright and holy. a man of character, wise and honest. a man with joy and peace, humble yet prudent, with generousity and a heart of servitude and worship. in Jesus' name i pray...amen... thank u jesus..
April 10 2008
Monday, May 19, 2014
Youth and Beauty
So refuse to worry, and keep your body healthy. But remember that youth, with a whole life before you, is meaningless. Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Run from anything that stimulates youthful lusts. Instead, pursue righteous living, faithfulness, love, and peace. Enjoy the companionship of those who call on the Lord with pure hearts.
As the Scriptures say, "People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear.
As a father has compassion on his children,so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
A beautiful woman who lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig's snout. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, Nor let her capture you with her eyelids. Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.
Eccs 11:10 2 Timothy 2:22 1 Peter 1:24 Job 14:2 Psalm 103:13-18 Isa 40:6-8 Prov 11:22 Prov 6:25 Prov 31:30 1 Peter 3:3-4
As the Scriptures say, "People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. We blossom like a flower and then wither. Like a passing shadow, we quickly disappear.
As a father has compassion on his children,so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field.
7The grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.
Surely the people are grass.
8The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
A beautiful woman who lacks discretion is like a gold ring in a pig's snout. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, Nor let her capture you with her eyelids. Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes.You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.
Eccs 11:10 2 Timothy 2:22 1 Peter 1:24 Job 14:2 Psalm 103:13-18 Isa 40:6-8 Prov 11:22 Prov 6:25 Prov 31:30 1 Peter 3:3-4
Saturday, May 17, 2014
Salvation in the Lord
Turn to the Lord and you will be saved, but if you reject Him He will also reject you.
Rend Your Heart
12“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
13Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14Who knows? He may turn and relent
and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the Lord your God.
Joel 2:12-14
1“If you, Israel, will return,
then return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“If you put your detestable idols out of my sight
and no longer go astray,
2and if in a truthful, just and righteous way
you swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’
then the nations will invoke blessings by him
and in him they will boast.”
3This is what the Lord says to the people of Judah and to Jerusalem:
“Break up your unplowed ground
and do not sow among thorns.
4Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
circumcise your hearts,
you people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
or my wrath will flare up and burn like fire
because of the evil you have done—
burn with no one to quench it.
Jer 4:1-4
2“The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. 3Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. 4Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?
Zec 1:2-6
19Therefore this is what the Lord says:
“If you repent, I will restore you
that you may serve me;
if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be my spokesman.
Let this people turn to you,
but you must not turn to them.
20I will make you a wall to this people,
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you
but will not overcome you,
for I am with you
to rescue and save you,”
declares the Lord.
21“I will save you from the hands of the wicked
and deliver you from the grasp of the cruel.”
Jer 15:19-21
25After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, 26I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. 27The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. 28There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. 29But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. 31For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.
Deut 4:25-31
The Offer of Life or Death
11Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Deut 30:11-20
19Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.
Acts 3:19
Repentance to Bring Blessing
1Return, Israel, to the Lord your God.
Your sins have been your downfall!
2Take words with you
and return to the Lord.
Say to him:
“Forgive all our sins
and receive us graciously,
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.a
3Assyria cannot save us;
we will not mount warhorses.
We will never again say ‘Our gods’
to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
4“I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.
5I will be like the dew to Israel;
he will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon
he will send down his roots;
6his young shoots will grow.
His splendor will be like an olive tree,
his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
7People will dwell again in his shade;
they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom like the vine—
Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.
8Ephraim, what more have Ib to do with idols?
I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a flourishing juniper;
your fruitfulness comes from me.”
9Who is wise? Let them realize these things.
Who is discerning? Let them understand.
The ways of the Lord are right;
the righteous walk in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them.
Hosea 14
He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
John 12:48
"Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me."
Luke 10:16
But if you reject me, I will tell my Father in heaven that you don’t belong to me.
Matthew 10:33
But I'll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, he's the one to fear.
Luke 12:5
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
Isa 30:18
Warning Against Unbelief
7So, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
10That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”b
12See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15As has just been said:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”c
16Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
Hebrews 3:7-19
Rend Your Heart
12“Even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
13Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14Who knows? He may turn and relent
and leave behind a blessing—
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the Lord your God.
Joel 2:12-14
1“If you, Israel, will return,
then return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“If you put your detestable idols out of my sight
and no longer go astray,
2and if in a truthful, just and righteous way
you swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’
then the nations will invoke blessings by him
and in him they will boast.”
3This is what the Lord says to the people of Judah and to Jerusalem:
“Break up your unplowed ground
and do not sow among thorns.
4Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
circumcise your hearts,
you people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
or my wrath will flare up and burn like fire
because of the evil you have done—
burn with no one to quench it.
Jer 4:1-4
2“The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. 3Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. 4Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?
Zec 1:2-6
19Therefore this is what the Lord says:
“If you repent, I will restore you
that you may serve me;
if you utter worthy, not worthless, words,
you will be my spokesman.
Let this people turn to you,
but you must not turn to them.
20I will make you a wall to this people,
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you
but will not overcome you,
for I am with you
to rescue and save you,”
declares the Lord.
21“I will save you from the hands of the wicked
and deliver you from the grasp of the cruel.”
Jer 15:19-21
25After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, 26I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. 27The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. 28There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. 29But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. 31For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.
Deut 4:25-31
The Offer of Life or Death
11Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Deut 30:11-20
19Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, 20and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus.
Acts 3:19
Repentance to Bring Blessing
1Return, Israel, to the Lord your God.
Your sins have been your downfall!
2Take words with you
and return to the Lord.
Say to him:
“Forgive all our sins
and receive us graciously,
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.a
3Assyria cannot save us;
we will not mount warhorses.
We will never again say ‘Our gods’
to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion.”
4“I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.
5I will be like the dew to Israel;
he will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon
he will send down his roots;
6his young shoots will grow.
His splendor will be like an olive tree,
his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
7People will dwell again in his shade;
they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom like the vine—
Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.
8Ephraim, what more have Ib to do with idols?
I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a flourishing juniper;
your fruitfulness comes from me.”
9Who is wise? Let them realize these things.
Who is discerning? Let them understand.
The ways of the Lord are right;
the righteous walk in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them.
Hosea 14
He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
John 12:48
"Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me."
Luke 10:16
But if you reject me, I will tell my Father in heaven that you don’t belong to me.
Matthew 10:33
But I'll tell you whom to fear. Fear God, who has the power to kill you and then throw you into hell. Yes, he's the one to fear.
Luke 12:5
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
Isa 30:18
Warning Against Unbelief
7So, as the Holy Spirit says:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness,
9where your ancestors tested and tried me,
though for forty years they saw what I did.
10That is why I was angry with that generation;
I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,
and they have not known my ways.’
11So I declared on oath in my anger,
‘They shall never enter my rest.’”b
12See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15As has just been said:
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”c
16Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
Hebrews 3:7-19
Friday, May 16, 2014
Not seeking approval of men
Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. You know what he wants; you know what is right because you have been taught his law. Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.
Galatians 1:10 1 Thessalonians 2:4 2 Corinthians 10:18 Romans 2:18 2 Timothy 2:15
Galatians 1:10 1 Thessalonians 2:4 2 Corinthians 10:18 Romans 2:18 2 Timothy 2:15
All pass away, His word endures
And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
1 John 2:17 Matthew 24:35 1 John 2:15 Matthew 18:18
1 John 2:17 Matthew 24:35 1 John 2:15 Matthew 18:18
Claim your Right
Claim your right and believe it.
I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
– Luke 10:19-20 (NIV)
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. - 2 Tim 1:7
Psalm 91
1Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.a
2I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
4He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
9If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
11For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
12they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
14“Because heb loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
16With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”
You need not be afraid of sudden disaster or the destruction that comes upon the wicked, for the LORD will be at your side and will keep your foot from being snared.
Prov 3:25-26
You'll be protected from the accusing tongue; you need not fear destruction when it heads your way.
Job 5:21
I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
– Luke 10:19-20 (NIV)
For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. - 2 Tim 1:7
Psalm 91
1Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.a
2I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
4He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.
9If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.
11For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
12they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
14“Because heb loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
16With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”
You need not be afraid of sudden disaster or the destruction that comes upon the wicked, for the LORD will be at your side and will keep your foot from being snared.
Prov 3:25-26
You'll be protected from the accusing tongue; you need not fear destruction when it heads your way.
Job 5:21
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
One True God
One true God
Regarding Buddhism:
So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself — who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 1:25
Regarding Islam:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
John 14:6
For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Matthew 24:24
Regarding Taoism, Hinduism and other religions:
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
1 Cor 16:26, Psalm 96:5
Let all those be ashamed who serve graven images, Who boast themselves of idols; Worship Him, all you gods.
Psalm 97:7
All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame.
Isa 44:9
But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.
Psalm 115:4-8
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
Psalm 96:5
Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
Isa 44:6
This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles.
2 Thes 2:9
” It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities.”
Acts 16:16-19
You shall have no other gods before me.
Exo 20:3
Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you
Deut 6:14
You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not worship any god other than me.
Psalm 81:9
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
Exo 34:14
For at just the right time Christ will be revealed from heaven by the blessed and only almighty God, the King of all kings and Lord of all lords.
1 Tim 6:15
The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.
Isa 8:13
Who among the gods is like you, LORD? Who is like you-- majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
Exo 15:11
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
Psalm 73:25
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. Col 2:8
If anyone comes to your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don't invite that person into your home or give any kind of encouragement. 2 John 1:10
But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him. 1 John 2:27
He replied, "Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Matthew 13:11
A Call to Return to the Lord
1In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo:
2“The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. 3Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. 4Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?
3“You shall have no other gods before me.
4“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exo 20:3-6
Manasseh King of Judah
1Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. 2He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.
7He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. 8I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their ancestors, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.” 9But the people did not listen. Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.
10The Lord said through his servants the prophets: 11“Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. 12Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. 14I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and give them into the hands of enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their enemies; 15they have done evil in my eyes and have aroused my anger from the day their ancestors came out of Egypt until this day.”
2 Kings 21:1-15
1Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
2Let my teaching fall like rain
and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants.
3I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
4He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.
5They are corrupt and not his children;
to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation.
6Is this the way you repay the Lord,
you foolish and unwise people?
Is he not your Father, your Creator,a
who made you and formed you?
7Remember the days of old;
consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
your elders, and they will explain to you.
8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of Israel.b
9For the Lord’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted inheritance.
10In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
11like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them aloft.
12The Lord alone led him;
no foreign god was with him.
13He made him ride on the heights of the land
and fed him with the fruit of the fields.
He nourished him with honey from the rock,
and with oil from the flinty crag,
14with curds and milk from herd and flock
and with fattened lambs and goats,
with choice rams of Bashan
and the finest kernels of wheat.
You drank the foaming blood of the grape.
15Jeshurunc grew fat and kicked;
filled with food, they became heavy and sleek.
They abandoned the God who made them
and rejected the Rock their Savior.
16They made him jealous with their foreign gods
and angered him with their detestable idols.
17They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—
gods they had not known,
gods that recently appeared,
gods your ancestors did not fear.
18You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
19The Lord saw this and rejected them
because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
20“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who are unfaithful.
21They made me jealous by what is no god
and angered me with their worthless idols.
I will make them envious by those who are not a people;
I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
22For a fire will be kindled by my wrath,
one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.
It will devour the earth and its harvests
and set afire the foundations of the mountains.
23“I will heap calamities on them
and spend my arrows against them.
24I will send wasting famine against them,
consuming pestilence and deadly plague;
I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts,
the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.
25In the street the sword will make them childless;
in their homes terror will reign.
The young men and young women will perish,
the infants and those with gray hair.
26I said I would scatter them
and erase their name from human memory,
27but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy,
lest the adversary misunderstand
and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed;
the Lord has not done all this.’”
28They are a nation without sense,
there is no discernment in them.
29If only they were wise and would understand this
and discern what their end will be!
30How could one man chase a thousand,
or two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
unless the Lord had given them up?
31For their rock is not like our Rock,
as even our enemies concede.
32Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom
and from the fields of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are filled with poison,
and their clusters with bitterness.
33Their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.
34“Have I not kept this in reserve
and sealed it in my vaults?
35It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.”
36The Lord will vindicate his people
and relent concerning his servants
when he sees their strength is gone
and no one is left, slave or free.d
37He will say: “Now where are their gods,
the rock they took refuge in,
38the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices
and drank the wine of their drink offerings?
Let them rise up to help you!
Let them give you shelter!
39“See now that I myself am he!
There is no god besides me.
I put to death and I bring to life,
I have wounded and I will heal,
and no one can deliver out of my hand.
40I lift my hand to heaven and solemnly swear:
As surely as I live forever,
41when I sharpen my flashing sword
and my hand grasps it in judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
and repay those who hate me.
42I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
while my sword devours flesh:
the blood of the slain and the captives,
the heads of the enemy leaders.”
43Rejoice, you nations, with his people,e f
for he will avenge the blood of his servants;
he will take vengeance on his enemies
and make atonement for his land and people.
Deut 32:1-43
“Then they repented and said, ‘The Lord Almighty has done to us what our ways and practices deserve, just as he determined to do.’”
Zec 1:1-6
Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:21
Regarding Buddhism:
So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself — who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 1:25
Regarding Islam:
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
John 14:6
For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Matthew 24:24
Regarding Taoism, Hinduism and other religions:
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
1 Cor 16:26, Psalm 96:5
Let all those be ashamed who serve graven images, Who boast themselves of idols; Worship Him, all you gods.
Psalm 97:7
All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame.
Isa 44:9
But their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell. They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.
Psalm 115:4-8
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
Psalm 96:5
Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
Isa 44:6
This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles.
2 Thes 2:9
” It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her. When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities.”
Acts 16:16-19
You shall have no other gods before me.
Exo 20:3
Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you
Deut 6:14
You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not worship any god other than me.
Psalm 81:9
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
Exo 34:14
For at just the right time Christ will be revealed from heaven by the blessed and only almighty God, the King of all kings and Lord of all lords.
1 Tim 6:15
The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread.
Isa 8:13
Who among the gods is like you, LORD? Who is like you-- majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?
Exo 15:11
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
Psalm 73:25
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. Col 2:8
If anyone comes to your meeting and does not teach the truth about Christ, don't invite that person into your home or give any kind of encouragement. 2 John 1:10
But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him. 1 John 2:27
He replied, "Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Matthew 13:11
A Call to Return to the Lord
1In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo:
2“The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. 3Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. 4Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?
3“You shall have no other gods before me.
4“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exo 20:3-6
Manasseh King of Judah
1Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. 2He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.
7He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever. 8I will not again make the feet of the Israelites wander from the land I gave their ancestors, if only they will be careful to do everything I commanded them and will keep the whole Law that my servant Moses gave them.” 9But the people did not listen. Manasseh led them astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.
10The Lord said through his servants the prophets: 11“Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. 12Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 13I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. 14I will forsake the remnant of my inheritance and give them into the hands of enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their enemies; 15they have done evil in my eyes and have aroused my anger from the day their ancestors came out of Egypt until this day.”
2 Kings 21:1-15
1Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
2Let my teaching fall like rain
and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
like abundant rain on tender plants.
3I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
4He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
upright and just is he.
5They are corrupt and not his children;
to their shame they are a warped and crooked generation.
6Is this the way you repay the Lord,
you foolish and unwise people?
Is he not your Father, your Creator,a
who made you and formed you?
7Remember the days of old;
consider the generations long past.
Ask your father and he will tell you,
your elders, and they will explain to you.
8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided all mankind,
he set up boundaries for the peoples
according to the number of the sons of Israel.b
9For the Lord’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted inheritance.
10In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
11like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them aloft.
12The Lord alone led him;
no foreign god was with him.
13He made him ride on the heights of the land
and fed him with the fruit of the fields.
He nourished him with honey from the rock,
and with oil from the flinty crag,
14with curds and milk from herd and flock
and with fattened lambs and goats,
with choice rams of Bashan
and the finest kernels of wheat.
You drank the foaming blood of the grape.
15Jeshurunc grew fat and kicked;
filled with food, they became heavy and sleek.
They abandoned the God who made them
and rejected the Rock their Savior.
16They made him jealous with their foreign gods
and angered him with their detestable idols.
17They sacrificed to false gods, which are not God—
gods they had not known,
gods that recently appeared,
gods your ancestors did not fear.
18You deserted the Rock, who fathered you;
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
19The Lord saw this and rejected them
because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
20“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who are unfaithful.
21They made me jealous by what is no god
and angered me with their worthless idols.
I will make them envious by those who are not a people;
I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
22For a fire will be kindled by my wrath,
one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.
It will devour the earth and its harvests
and set afire the foundations of the mountains.
23“I will heap calamities on them
and spend my arrows against them.
24I will send wasting famine against them,
consuming pestilence and deadly plague;
I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts,
the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.
25In the street the sword will make them childless;
in their homes terror will reign.
The young men and young women will perish,
the infants and those with gray hair.
26I said I would scatter them
and erase their name from human memory,
27but I dreaded the taunt of the enemy,
lest the adversary misunderstand
and say, ‘Our hand has triumphed;
the Lord has not done all this.’”
28They are a nation without sense,
there is no discernment in them.
29If only they were wise and would understand this
and discern what their end will be!
30How could one man chase a thousand,
or two put ten thousand to flight,
unless their Rock had sold them,
unless the Lord had given them up?
31For their rock is not like our Rock,
as even our enemies concede.
32Their vine comes from the vine of Sodom
and from the fields of Gomorrah.
Their grapes are filled with poison,
and their clusters with bitterness.
33Their wine is the venom of serpents,
the deadly poison of cobras.
34“Have I not kept this in reserve
and sealed it in my vaults?
35It is mine to avenge; I will repay.
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.”
36The Lord will vindicate his people
and relent concerning his servants
when he sees their strength is gone
and no one is left, slave or free.d
37He will say: “Now where are their gods,
the rock they took refuge in,
38the gods who ate the fat of their sacrifices
and drank the wine of their drink offerings?
Let them rise up to help you!
Let them give you shelter!
39“See now that I myself am he!
There is no god besides me.
I put to death and I bring to life,
I have wounded and I will heal,
and no one can deliver out of my hand.
40I lift my hand to heaven and solemnly swear:
As surely as I live forever,
41when I sharpen my flashing sword
and my hand grasps it in judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
and repay those who hate me.
42I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
while my sword devours flesh:
the blood of the slain and the captives,
the heads of the enemy leaders.”
43Rejoice, you nations, with his people,e f
for he will avenge the blood of his servants;
he will take vengeance on his enemies
and make atonement for his land and people.
Deut 32:1-43
“Then they repented and said, ‘The Lord Almighty has done to us what our ways and practices deserve, just as he determined to do.’”
Zec 1:1-6
Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
1 John 5:21
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Word of Light
Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
Psalm 119:105
"No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.
Luke 8:16
Teach me your way, LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing. Teach me, LORD, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end.
Psalm 86:11, 25:4, 25:5, 143:10, 119:33
Psalm 119:105
"No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.
Luke 8:16
He says: "It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."
Isa 49:6
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Cor 4:4
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
John 8:12
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,
Prov 6:23
All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
2 Tim 3:16
I believe in your commands; now teach me good judgment and knowledge.
Psa 119:66
If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well.
Rom 12:7
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way.
James 3:1-2
if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth--you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Isa 49:6
The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Cor 4:4
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
John 8:12
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,
Prov 6:23
All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
2 Tim 3:16
I believe in your commands; now teach me good judgment and knowledge.
Psa 119:66
If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well.
Rom 12:7
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. Indeed, we all make many mistakes. For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way.
James 3:1-2
if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth--you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.
Romans 2:19-27
Romans 2:19-27
Psalm 86:11, 25:4, 25:5, 143:10, 119:33
To know
With knowledge, you may live. For with knowledge of the law we become conscious of sin. Men die for the lack of knowledge. We avoid sinning consciously knowing it is wrong.
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Romans 3:20
What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."
Romans 7:7
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge
Hosea 4:6
Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.
Heb 10:26
But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we live for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life.
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Eph 3:14-19
For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
Romans 3:20
What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."
Romans 7:7
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge
Hosea 4:6
Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins.
Heb 10:26
But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we live for him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life.
1 Cor 8:6
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:6
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.
1 John 4:6
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Eph 3:14-19
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
What makes a fool? (Part 2)
Fools do not give thought to their ways, their folly is deception.
Fools mock at making amends for sin.
A fool is hotheaded and yet feels secure.
He is quick tempered and does foolish things.
The mouth of the fool gushes folly.
A fool spurns a parent’s discipline.
The hearts of fools are not upright.
A foolish man despises his mother.
Folly brings punishment to fools.
Even with a hundred lashes, a fool still not knows rebuke.
It is better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool bent on folly.
Fools do not understand wisdom.
A fool brings grief to his parents.
A fool's eyes wander to the ends of the earth.
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.
A fool's lips brings him strife and his mouth invite a beating.
The mouths of fools are their undoing, and their lips are a snare to their very lives.
Prov 14:8,9,16,17 Prov 15:2,5,7,20 Prov 16:22 Prov 17:10,12, Prov16,21,24, Prov 18:2,6,7
Fools mock at making amends for sin.
A fool is hotheaded and yet feels secure.
He is quick tempered and does foolish things.
The mouth of the fool gushes folly.
A fool spurns a parent’s discipline.
The hearts of fools are not upright.
A foolish man despises his mother.
Folly brings punishment to fools.
Even with a hundred lashes, a fool still not knows rebuke.
It is better to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than a fool bent on folly.
Fools do not understand wisdom.
A fool brings grief to his parents.
A fool's eyes wander to the ends of the earth.
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.
A fool's lips brings him strife and his mouth invite a beating.
The mouths of fools are their undoing, and their lips are a snare to their very lives.
Prov 14:8,9,16,17 Prov 15:2,5,7,20 Prov 16:22 Prov 17:10,12, Prov16,21,24, Prov 18:2,6,7
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
What makes a fool?
A person who does not follow God's commandment
Sam 13:13
A person who bears resentment.
Job 5:2
A person who says "There is no God."
Sam 13:13
A person who bears resentment.
Job 5:2
A person who says "There is no God."
Psalm 14:1
A person who reviles God and mock at God.
Psalm 74:18,22
Fools don't understand God's words and are senseless.
Psalm 92:6
A person becomes a fool through his rebellious ways and suffers affliction because of his iniquities.
Psalm 107:17
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Prov 1:7
Fools hate knowledge and delight in mockery(of God).
Prov 1:22
Fools are destroyed by complacency.
Prov 1:32
Fools get only shame.
Prov 3:35
A foolish son brings grief to his mother.
Prov 10:1
A chattering fool comes to ruin.
Prov 10:8,10
A fool's mouth invites ruin.
Prov 10:14
A fool conceals hatred with lying lips and spreads slander.
Prov 10:18
A fool finds pleasure in wicked schemes.
Prov 10:23
Fools serve the wise.
Prov 11:29
A fool's way seems right to him.
Prov 12:15
Fools show their annoyance at once
Prov 12:16
A fool’s heart blurts out folly.
Prov 12:23
Fools expose their folly.
Prov 13:16
Fools detest turning from evil.
Prov 13:19
A fool tears down his own house.
Prov 14:1
A fool’s mouth lashes out with pride.
Prov 14:3
A fool has no knowledge on his lips.
Prov 14:7
A person who reviles God and mock at God.
Psalm 74:18,22
Fools don't understand God's words and are senseless.
Psalm 92:6
A person becomes a fool through his rebellious ways and suffers affliction because of his iniquities.
Psalm 107:17
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Prov 1:7
Fools hate knowledge and delight in mockery(of God).
Prov 1:22
Fools are destroyed by complacency.
Prov 1:32
Fools get only shame.
Prov 3:35
A foolish son brings grief to his mother.
Prov 10:1
A chattering fool comes to ruin.
Prov 10:8,10
A fool's mouth invites ruin.
Prov 10:14
A fool conceals hatred with lying lips and spreads slander.
Prov 10:18
A fool finds pleasure in wicked schemes.
Prov 10:23
Fools serve the wise.
Prov 11:29
A fool's way seems right to him.
Prov 12:15
Fools show their annoyance at once
Prov 12:16
A fool’s heart blurts out folly.
Prov 12:23
Fools expose their folly.
Prov 13:16
Fools detest turning from evil.
Prov 13:19
A fool tears down his own house.
Prov 14:1
A fool’s mouth lashes out with pride.
Prov 14:3
A fool has no knowledge on his lips.
Prov 14:7
If you lack anything, pray
And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.
Mat 21:22
Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.
Mat 7:7
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
Luke 18:1
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Mark 11:24
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
John 15:7
In that day you will not ask Me anything. "I assure you: Anything you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.
John 16:23
God gives generously (wisdom) to all without finding fault.
James 1:5 (edit)
And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.
John 3:22
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
1 John 5:14
Let them shout for joy and rejoice, who favor my vindication; And let them say continually, "The LORD be magnified, Who delights in the prosperity of His servant."
Psalm 35:27
Mat 21:22
Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.
Mat 7:7
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
Luke 18:1
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Mark 11:24
If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
John 15:7
In that day you will not ask Me anything. "I assure you: Anything you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.
John 16:23
God gives generously (wisdom) to all without finding fault.
James 1:5 (edit)
And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.
John 3:22
This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
1 John 5:14
Let them shout for joy and rejoice, who favor my vindication; And let them say continually, "The LORD be magnified, Who delights in the prosperity of His servant."
Psalm 35:27
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Slandering
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor? James 4:11-12
"Do not spread slanderous gossip among your people. "Do not stand idly by when your neighbor's life is threatened. I am the LORD.
Lev 19:16
Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy; No one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will I endure.
Psalm 101:5
Hiding hatred makes you a liar; slandering others makes you a fool.
Prov 10:18
He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23
1Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, 2to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.
3At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.
Titus 3:1-8
Psalm 15
Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain?
2The one whose walk is blameless,
who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from their heart;
3whose tongue utters no slander,
who does no wrong to a neighbor,
and casts no slur on others;
4who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
and does not change their mind;
5who lends money to the poor without interest;
who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
will never be shaken.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
Eph 4:31
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
1 Peter 2:1
And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
Matthew 12:31
If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
Matthew 18:15
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Matt 18:21-22
"Do not spread slanderous gossip among your people. "Do not stand idly by when your neighbor's life is threatened. I am the LORD.
Lev 19:16
Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor, him I will destroy; No one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will I endure.
Psalm 101:5
Hiding hatred makes you a liar; slandering others makes you a fool.
Prov 10:18
He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23
1Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, 2to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone.
3At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.
Titus 3:1-8
Psalm 15
Lord, who may dwell in your sacred tent?
Who may live on your holy mountain?
2The one whose walk is blameless,
who does what is righteous,
who speaks the truth from their heart;
3whose tongue utters no slander,
who does no wrong to a neighbor,
and casts no slur on others;
4who despises a vile person
but honors those who fear the Lord;
who keeps an oath even when it hurts,
and does not change their mind;
5who lends money to the poor without interest;
who does not accept a bribe against the innocent.
Whoever does these things
will never be shaken.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
Eph 4:31
Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.
1 Peter 2:1
And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
Matthew 12:31
If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
Matthew 18:15
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Matt 18:21-22
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Friday, May 2, 2014
Hoarding on earth or Treasures in Heaven
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. Those who use the things of the world should not become attached to them. For this world as we know it will soon pass away. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. A person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt. The generous man will be prosperous, And he who waters will himself be watered. People curse the one who hoards grain, but they pray God's blessing on the one who is willing to sell. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth.
The worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don't have. True godliness with contentment is itself great wealth.
John 15:19, John 17:14,16, 1 John 2:15-17, 1 Cor 7:31, Matthew 6:19, Luke 12:21, Luke 12:33
Psalm 39:6, Eccs 5:10,13, Prov 11:25-26, Eccs 11:2 Mark 4:19, Eccs 6:9, 1 Tim 6:6
Parable of the Rich Fool
One of the multitude said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?" He said to them, "Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man's life doesn't consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses."
He spoke a parable to them, saying, "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, 'What will I do, because I don't have room to store my crops?' He said, 'This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry."'
"But God said to him, 'You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
Luke 12:13-21
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. Those who use the things of the world should not become attached to them. For this world as we know it will soon pass away. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. A person is a fool to store up earthly wealth but not have a rich relationship with God. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.
Surely a man goes about as a shadow! Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather! Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt. The generous man will be prosperous, And he who waters will himself be watered. People curse the one who hoards grain, but they pray God's blessing on the one who is willing to sell. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth.
The worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don't have. True godliness with contentment is itself great wealth.
John 15:19, John 17:14,16, 1 John 2:15-17, 1 Cor 7:31, Matthew 6:19, Luke 12:21, Luke 12:33
Psalm 39:6, Eccs 5:10,13, Prov 11:25-26, Eccs 11:2 Mark 4:19, Eccs 6:9, 1 Tim 6:6
Parable of the Rich Fool
One of the multitude said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?" He said to them, "Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man's life doesn't consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses."
He spoke a parable to them, saying, "The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, 'What will I do, because I don't have room to store my crops?' He said, 'This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry."'
"But God said to him, 'You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
Luke 12:13-21
Thursday, May 1, 2014
Let your speech be of grace
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
Eph 4:29
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
Eph 5:4
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
Col 4:6
The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.
Prov 15:4
The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Prov 12:18
Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious, but fools are consumed by their own lips.
Eccs 10:12
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
Matthew 12:36-37
Eph 4:29
Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
Eph 5:4
Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.
Col 4:6
The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.
Prov 15:4
The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Prov 12:18
Words from the mouth of the wise are gracious, but fools are consumed by their own lips.
Eccs 10:12
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
Matthew 12:36-37
Essential Faith
1Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2This is what the ancients were commended for.
3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
4By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.
5By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.”a For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
7By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
8By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because sheb considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
13All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”c 19Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.
20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.
21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.
23By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.
24By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. 27By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. 28By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
29By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.
30By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.
31By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.d
32And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions,34quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37They were put to death by stoning;e they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Hebrews 11:1-40
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.
2 Peter 1:5-7
So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Gal 3:9
These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold--though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
1 Peter 1:7
3By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
4By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.
5By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.”a For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
7By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
8By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because sheb considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
13All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”c 19Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.
20By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.
21By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
22By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.
23By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.
24By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. 27By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. 28By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel.
29By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.
30By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days.
31By faith the prostitute Rahab, because she welcomed the spies, was not killed with those who were disobedient.d
32And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, 33who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions,34quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. 35Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. 36Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37They were put to death by stoning;e they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.
39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, 40since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.
Hebrews 11:1-40
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.
2 Peter 1:5-7
So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
Gal 3:9
These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold--though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
1 Peter 1:7
For we live by faith, not by sight.
2 Cor 5:7
2 Cor 5:7
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