Welcome to the Monday Night Bible Study. Here we are again.
Song: WOW I love this song. I had not heard it for ages. The Love of God https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fla6EO07I3E
Prayer: Holy Spirit we thank you for always being with us. We invite you to move among us tonight in a profound way. Help us to set aside the cares of this day and simply be with you. Father thank you that every single time we come into your presence we ARE changed. Bless each of us tonight we ask in Jesus name amen.
Pondering Today:
The Lord tells us in Matthew 7:11 that when we ask him, he will give us good gifts. (If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!)
He also says he will set our feet in spacious places. (He brought me out to a spacious place; he delivered me, for in me he takes delight. Psalm 18:19)
Dodi Note: Notice the last part…in me He takes DELIGHT.
He said he will reveal secret treasure hidden in darkness. (I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. Isaiah 45:3)
I will give you hidden treasures, so that you may know that I am the LORD…Isaiah 45:3
Dodi Note: Notice he calls us by name…
All three of those verses speak of his love and care for us.
Sometimes, you know, the world is so “dark”. People we care about get sick. We get sick. We don’t even want to think about the people and the stuff going on in government.
Our culture is scary. And yet the LORD is good. He invites to come to Him whenever we are weary. (Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28)
Sometimes, our hearts do get weary, don’t they? Just from normal stuff and yet…there are always what I call “Little Gifts” scattered throught our days.
The other day, a friend and I went to see the big waves at the beach. Pam was showing me some of her favorite beach places and suddenly, as we leaving, we saw this beautiful home. The gate photo was a gift. I knew I wanted a picture of it.
It made me think of “spacious” places and at the same time the narrow gate.
So I looked up some verses to see what the Word had to say on the topic.
Verses to Ponder:
He brought me out to a spacious place; he delivered me, for in me he takes delight. Psalm 18:19
Dodi Note: Notice…the LORD delights in us. This Psalm is interesting. We are going to ponder parts of it a bit.
Psalm 18
The Lord Is My Rock and My Fortress
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said:
Dodi Note: God rescued David more than once. David’s response is praise and telling others.
1 I love you, O Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
Dodi Note: Do you, do we, know God as our Rock? Our fortress, our Deliverer? Our refuge? Our shield? The Horn of our Salvation and our Stronghold?
He is…even those times when we were not able to recognize his hand at work.
Next David reminds himself and us of a truth:
3 I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.
4 The cords of death encompassed me;
the torrents of destruction assailed me;
5 the cords of Sheol entangled me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called upon the Lord;
to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
and my cry to him reached his ears.
Dodi Note: Sometimes when a “situation” arises, for a bit we might forget that God is always listening for our weakest cry for help. And God will hear. And God will answer. Maybe not the answer we wished for, but an answer which will be good for us in the long run.
Verses 7-15 describe in a poetic way just how the Lord saved David from his ememies.
Then in verses 16-19 he speaks of his rescue:
16 He sent from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters.
17 He rescued me from my strong enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
19 He brought me out into a broad (spacious/safe) place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.
Verses 20-29 elaborates on that.
Then in verses 30-32 he describes more about the protection and provision of God.
This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
31 For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God?—
32 the God who equipped me with strength
and made my way blameless.
This Psalm continues for 50 verses and you can read the rest of it later.
Mostly we remember, God is our PROTECTOR and DEFENDER and leads us to His refuge, in spacious places. Good places. Pleasant places simply because HE LOVES us.
Next verse is one I like a lot. I like it because God has done it for me and I bet God has also done the same thing for each one here.
Psalm 40:2
He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
NIV He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
NLT He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along.
GNT He pulled me out of a dangerous pit, out of the deadly quicksand. He set me safely on a rock and made me secure.
ISV He plucked me out of a pit of confusion, even out of the quicksand; he placed my feet on a rock and established my steps.
Dodi Note: Before we were born again…life was a pit of destruction, a slimy pit, a dangerous pit, a pit of confusion, a pit of despair.
It was wasn’t it? We tried to meet our legitimate needs in our own way. How well did that work out?
But then, God not only rescued us…he made us secure, established out steps, and steadied us as we walked along.
Of course sometimes, maybe quite often, we need to “remember what we know”.
Isn’t it fun to consider the various translations?
Psalm 37:23 The steps of a man are established by the LORD, And He delights in his way.
Dodi Note: Notice the capital “H”. God delights in us when we are walking in His way.
The AMP version says, The steps of a [good and righteous] man are directed and established by the Lord, And He delights in his way [and blesses his path].
We want and need God’s blessing as we go through life. I read an interesting article on this verse and am going to share it here because I liked how he explained “good”.
It was written by a pastor named Mike Thornsley.
Mike says: Before we begin I want to acknowledge that the Bible states “... there is none good but one, that is, God” (Mark 10:18).
We understand that all men are born sinners and that we need the forgiveness of God and his shed blood to redeem our souls from hell. Because of this there are no “good” men in and of themselves.
But, when a person accepts Jesus Christ as their Saviour, they are clothed in a “robe of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:10) and God no longer sees their sinfulness; all he sees is Jesus.
As such we find that this verse is directed to the Children of God. In this verse we find two important attributes of a Christian’s walk with God: 1) His steps are directed and 2) God delights in this person’s walk.
David, whom God called “a man after mine own heart” (I Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22), had seen God’s direction in his life.
This does not mean that God dictates our way, as we see David veers a few times from the path.
“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord” show us that God has given directions as to the way his people should walk (i.e., live) in this world.
God’s Word is our road map for the Christian life. Everything God wants us to know is found within its covers. Every situation you can think of God has given direction as to how we should respond and deal with them. All we have to do is read and study God’s Word!
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (II Timothy 2:15). If we will follow the Scriptures we will then allow God to order our steps, and this is the testimony of a “good man.”
The second attribute is that God delights in the way of the good man. Matthew 16:24 shows us the path to delighting God: “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” To deny ourselves is to yield our will and our dreams to Christ.
Taking up our cross is to not just say that we are Christians but to show it by gladly assuming the shame and reproach of that cross. When we do this we will follow Christ’s example. We will truly be a Christian – i.e., Christ-like. This is what God delights in.
Today many of us walk in pride. This is listed in Proverbs 6:16-19 with six other things that God hates. Let those of us that truly know Jesus Christ as our Saviour hang that pride on the cross, yield ourselves to his directions and follow him! I promise you, if you will do this you will hear “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21).
Dodi Note: Wasn’t that good?
The next verse I considered was Psalm 118:5:
From my distress I called upon the LORD; The LORD answered me and set me in a large place.
Dodi Note: There surely are distressing things in life, sometimes multiple times in a day. We are invited to call upon the Lord. Which implies that first we have to admit that we are simply not capable of handling “life” on our own.
I for one am so GLAD that at any time I can call out to God and know for sure that he not only hears he will answer.
The verse in Psalm 86:7 says so.
In my troubled times I will call on you, for you will answer me.
I love 1 John 5:14-15 (ESV)
14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
Mainly…remember we have talked about this verse before….the key sort of the “if…..then clause”…is asking according to his will.
The first thing to do when life is simply too much is just call out to God and seek his direction and He WILL come and He WILL answer and He WILL lead us to that “spacious” place where we know his love and presence.
May each of our hearts find a resting place in His love for us today.
I want to share briefly a jouneling exercise I have been doing. It is from Deeper Walk International. I am taking a course from them and so are several of my local friends. One is also teaching from their material.
They propose interactive journaling which is simply jounraling prayer time with Abba or Jesus, whichever you prefer, Dear God or Dear Jesus.
At first the structure of the format drove me crazy because I am used to interactive journaling with God, but not by a format.
I am going to share the format and post it in case you want to give it a go or explore their website for some good stuff.
You always start with gratitude and then from there on you write whatever thoughts come to you. Sort of like if God was sitting there speaking to you. The last part is reading it aloud.
Dear God, I am thankful for.
My Dear child...
I can see you...
I can hear you...
I understand how...
I am glad to be with you.
I can do something with you and for you.