Delight & Commit

Ok, following up on yesterday's Psalm 37:3 post:

37:4 Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee
the desires of thine heart.
37:5 Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in
him; and he shall bring [it] to pass.

Yesterday, I wrote how we need to Trust in the LORD, and how He is worthy of our trust because of Who He is, and what He has done.

Wednesday, I wrote on Joy, and how we should have Joy in the Lord, and in the things of the Lord. Psalm 37:4 speaks of the same thing: Delight yourself in the Lord. When we are doing the things of the Lord, and doing them with Delight, God will "give us the desires of our hearts." Does that mean He will just give you whatever you want? Well, Yes, because your desires will be in line with what God wants - because you're delighting yourself in Him. But, also, that verse may be saying that when you delight yourself in the Lord, that He will give your heart the desires that it should have. He will give the desires of your heart.

Verse 5, says, Commit thy way unto the Lord. This is the thought for today. To Commit is to give something over to something us. We commit our time to something, by giving our time to whatever it is. We commit our lives to our spouses - we give them over to them. So, to Commit our way unto the Lord, is to give it over to Him. How do we do that?

1) We only give something to Him that He would want - We don't want to give Him our way, if our way is walking "in the counsel of the ungodly," etc. So we will only commit our way unto Him if it is in the right direction - not sure what that is? I believe God's word, the Bible, will act as a lamp unto your feet, and a light unto your path... Yeah, I'm pretty sure about that.

2) We give Him our way by acknowledging Him in all our ways - Proverbs 3:6, "In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." Boy, I fall short of this one - acknowledging God in all of my ways. I see 'acknolwedging' as being first of all walking with a conscience towards God, having Him in mind, praying without ceasing, a constant communion with Him. I also see 'acknowledging' as making mention of Him to those around you in your way. We acknowledge those that have helped us out in something - well, we should acknowledge God - if He is helping us out in our ways...

I'm sure there are more ways to "Commit thy way unto the LORD..." Maybe you all could help -

The result of Trusting in the Lord, Delighting in Him, and Committing your way unto Him: He will bring your ways to pass. The desires that you have at that point, and the paths that you want to take after you've trusted, delighted and committed - He will bring them to pass! But that means we have to stop trusting in the arm of the flesh, stop delighting in the things of ourselves instead of those of God, and give our way over to the LORD...

Trust in the LORD...

I was reading Psalm 37 last night, and couldn't get past the first few verses.

1: Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.
2: For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.
3: Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

We're not supposed to worry when we see the wicked prospering, but we are to Trust in the LORD. He will "keep us in the land" and we will be fed. What is the first thing that we do when we get bad news? "There's going to be some lay-offs, and you're going to be one of them!" I would suggest that our first inclination is to either start arguing about it and complain, or maybe we are bigger than that, and we just leave silently thinking about where we're going to go look for work next or to apply for unemployment or whatever... Or maybe the creditors are calling and you need to pay up and you don't know how you can - you start trying to figure out how to make more money... God tells us: Trust in the LORD!

Webster's 1611 Dictionary defines trust as: "1. Confidence; a reliance or resting of the mind on the integrity, veracity, justice, friendship or other sound principle of another person."

Wow!

• Trust in the LORD = Confidence in God's integrity, that is, in His consistency throughout, His faithfulness in everything.
• Trust in the LORD = Rest your mind on God's veracity. Rest, stay on His truthfulness in all that He says.
• Trust in the LORD = Rely on God's justice - know that what He does is right, and that He will work all things out together for good (if you love God, and are the called according to His purpose)
• Trust in the LORD = Rest your mind on God's friendship - He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?!!!

Psalm 34:8: O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

Piper - last day

Ok, one more plug for John Piper's stuff. His website is having a $5 per book sale - www.DesiringGod.org/store. I just wanted to mention it again! Lunch-Time thought will be coming in a little while!

Joy... in the Lord

(Hab 3:18) Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my
salvation.

There is joy in the Lord... (ok, who's got the song in their head now?). I was thinking about joy, and the joy in the Lord, and came to realize that you can't just say, I have joy. It doesn't work that way - that's not real joy. Instead, real joy comes when you are walking in the Spirit (another fruit of the Spirit). That is, when you are in a close communion with God, then the result will be Joy. We can "rejoice in the LORD," and "joy in the God of my salvation." But when we are not walking with Him, then we are to turn our laughter into mourning and our Joy to heaviness.

John Piper's most-known teaching is probably what he terms: "Christian Hedonism." That is, God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him - or something like that. The idea is that when we are finding our joy in Him, and in doing what He has for us, then He is most glorified. (On the subject of John Piper, his website: http://www.desiringgod.org/ is having a book sale today where every book is $5. I suppose that's why I wasn't able to connect to the store part of his site a little while ago.)

George Mueller, the great man of prayer, wrote this in his booklet, Soul Nourishment First : "I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world; and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit."
That booklet is fantastic, and if you have never read it, I recommend it: http://www.biblebelievers.com/george_muller/g-m_appendix-l.html will get you to it.

Be glad in the LORD and rejoice ye righteous. And shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart!

Joy in the Lord, sorrow outside of Him... what a contrast.

Forgotten Fruit

So, I'm preparing my lesson for Couples Connection this Sunday - if you're going to go to Couples Connection, this post will be the gist of the message (maybe you won't have to go any more!)

Eli the Priest, 1 Samuel 1-4: Much has been taught about Eli. He was the guy that began to rebuke Hannah because she acted like she had been drinking alcohol. He also taught Samuel the ways of the Lord. He had a couple of sons, Hophni and Phinehas who in 1 Samuel 2:12-17 we find were taking more food from the offerings that the people were bringing to the tabernacle than they were supposed to take. Later on in verse 22 we find that they were committing fornication with women that were assmebling there at the tabernacle. Eli is often give the bad rap that he failed to rebuke his kids, and that was his downfall. Here's my observations and thoughts...

When it says that Eli heard about the fornication with the women, in 1 Samuel 2:22, we find in the next three verses the he rebukes them for it. We already saw that he spoke up to Hannah when she appeared drunk. He seemed to be a man that was willing to stand up against those "big" sins - fornication, drunkenness, etc. He had his boundaries set firm!

It's interesting, when the man of God came to Eli with his curse, the charge that God laid on him (found in 1 Samuel 2:29) is: "Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honourest thy sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel my people?" The rebuke was not for his sons fornication, or for anything else - but that Eli was making him and his sons 'fat with the chiefest of all the offerings.' The reason behind it was that he honored them above God. Here's the thing, we know from 1 Samuel 4:18 that Eli himself was a "heavy" man, and he was included in the rebuke from God: "make yourselves fat."

I think that Eli was not an ungodly man. I think he trained his kids up to know what was right and wrong. But I think that Eli forgot one of the fruit that comes from the Spirit: temperance. He was willing to compromise a little. (I mean, the priests, in fact, were supposed to be fed by the offerings of the people.) But his not restraining himself spilled over to his boys.

Temperance is not just manifested in food - though that does appear to be a great way to gauge it. We can show temperance when it comes time for shopping. We can go without, or buy less of something, and in turn we would be able to use the money saved for buying things of eternal value. We could show temperance in turning the air conditioning down a bit and living with the heat, or in the winter turning the furnace down and living with the cold. We can show temperance with our tongues - refraining from saying things that could have negative consequences (by the way, even a fool, when he holdeth his peace is counted wise, and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding). There are many other ways to demonstrate temperance.

Remember, though, temperance is a fruit of the Spirit. You can manufacture "Self-Control" (which is a close definition for temperance, but not exact) in your self, but you can't manufacture fruit from the Spirit in your self. When you walk in the Spirit, temperance is one of the fruits from that - but often a forgotten fruit.

KJV-Only Reason # 3

Just a reminder what I mean by KJV-Only, see: KJV-Only Reason # 1.

Reason # 1: Because a man of God challenged me on the issue when I spued my ignorant challenges against it.

Reason # 2: Because the KJV has all of the verses that are supposed to be in there.

The third reason has to do with a comparison with the translators of the KJV and the critical revisers of the other translation - specifically I refer to the Revised Version of 1881, and many of the textual critics that have followed since.

You see up until 1881, the KJV and the underlying Textus Receptus were the "Received Texts" of the Bible. Then in the 2nd half of the 19th century, some very old manuscripts were found - I'm sure I'll get into the specifics of those manuscripts some other time - a couple of textual critics by the name of Westcott and Hort, used these corrupted manuscripts and put together a new Greek Text from which the Revised Version New Testament of 1881 was translated. In their preface to their Greek edition, they write:

"We dare not introduce considerations which could not reasonably be applied to other ancient texts, supposing them to have documentary attestation of equal amount, variety and antiquity" (The New Testament in the Original Greek, p.277.).

That is, they say the Bible should be treated as if it were any other book!

Reason #3: Because the Translators of the King James Bible treated the Scriptures as the word of God.

The text in the image above, written in the old English typeset says this:

"But now what piety without truth? What truth (what saving truth) without the word of God? What word of God (whereof we may be sure) without the Scripture? The Scriptures we are commanded to search. Joh. 5:39. Isa. 8:20. They are commended that searched & studied them. Act. 17:11 and 8:28, 29. They are reproved that were unskillful in them, or slow to believe them. Mat. 22:29. Luk. 24:25. They can make us wise unto salvation. 2 Tim. 3:15. If we be ignorant, they will instruct us; if out of the way, they will bring us home; if out of order, they will reform us; if in heaviness, comfort us; if dull, quicken us; if cold, inflame us."

No, it's not just another ancient text - the Scripture stands apart from the rest of the books in the world. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold! The entrance of thy words giveth light, it giveth understanding unto the simple. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is Profitable! For doctrine, reproof, correction and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works...