Month: October 2015

Hebrews 3:7-19

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            Although many people do their outdoor grilling with propane and propane accessories, there are still some who go with the old charcoal grill.  The key to a good hot grill is in the stacking of the briquettes into a neat pile before lighting them.  If this is not done, it is likely the white hot fire will never get going.  At the most, the briquettes will become warm but quickly grow cold and die.
 
            The New Testament lesson for today operates with the same principle.  “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”  Just as a pile of charcoal needs all the individual briquettes together in order to become hot and not grow cold, so every Christian needs other Christians to speak into his/her life every day.  If this dynamic does not happen, the heart will grow cold and hard and eventually lead, if unchecked, to a falling away from the faith.
 
            There is much we can learn from the Korean church on this matter.  Every day they have opportunities early in the morning to gather together for prayer and encouragement before going off to their jobs and busy lives.  There is a reason that the Korean church has grown hot for God with many Christians and lots of missionaries going all over the world.  It would be not only wise, but necessary to re-think and re-do our American spiritual practices to better accommodate and reflect an obedience to these very verses in Hebrews.
 

 

            Blessed Holy Trinity, I have been made in your image – the image of the triune God.  Help me to reflect that image every day by encouraging my fellow believers and allowing them to exhort me toward love and good deeds in the faith of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Psalm 55:1-15

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            We all know of the modern day proverb, ‘the squeaky wheel gets oiled.’  The saying is often used in reference to someone who is loud, even obnoxious, about what they want.  In today’s psalm, David cannot avoid the squeaky wheel.  There are people in his face.  All we know about David’s enemies from the psalm is that they were nursing a grudge against him for something.  David was hurt and betrayed.
 
            So, David prayed.  “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy!  Attend to me, and answer me; I am restless in my complaint and I moan, because of the noise of the enemy… in anger they bear a grudge against me.”  David felt the ache of certain persons speaking against him.  For whatever reason, they had an axe to grind and were determined to make David’s life difficult.
 
            Although, like David, we sometimes feel like flying away and being at rest from the turmoil, we must deal with the insults, the untrue and half-true rhetoric of others.  The way David confronted the problem was primarily through prayer.  When David prayed, it was never a quick on-the-run sort of prayer to God in the rush of dealing with all his kingly duties.  Instead, David offered specific, agonizing, timely prayers asking, even begging God to not let the violent speech and actions of his enemies prevail.
 
            Out of the range of possibilities that we could do in response to sins of the tongue against us, prayer needs to be the primary weapon.  Heartfelt, passionate, detailed, and pointed prayers need to be offered to the God who hears the righteous in their grief.  If you are in such a position of being oppressed by another, a sage way to begin addressing the situation is through praying the very same psalm that David did when he was under duress.
 

 

            Listening God, you hear the cries of the righteous.  Give ear to my plea.  I cry out to you for respite from those allayed against me.  I ask for justice so that the wicked and the unrighteous do not have their way in this world.  In the mighty name of Jesus I pray.  Amen.

Job 8:1-22

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            There are various kinds of suffering, and the biblical character of Job experienced them all.  One of the most severe kinds of hurt, and the one that gets far more attention than any other in the book of Job, are the short-sighted rebukes from Job’s “friends.”  God had a severe mercy for Job.  But the friends lived in a black and white world.  Bildad expressed: “God will not reject a blameless man.”
 
            For Bildad, personal suffering equals personal sin and God’s disfavor, period.  Bildad could only see a linear connection, a direct line from sin to calamity.  It was simply out of his equation to think otherwise.  Since Bildad saw suffering as the direct result of sin, his remedy was to exhort toward confession of sin.  The problem with this view is that we, as the readers, already know this to be a patently false understanding of Job’s suffering.  Bildad saw the suffering, but did not discern the unseen dimension of good and evil contending behind-the-scenes between God and Satan.
 
            It is only normal to wonder if we have sinned against God whenever we find ourselves in the crucible of suffering.  But if we have done patient work to determine there is no personal reason for the pain, perhaps there is something going on that is much bigger than us.  Our task, like Job’s, is to entrust ourselves to God.  We might chafe at such counsel because we like to fix things that hurt.  But suffering will not last forever; it will eventually pass.  And God will always have his way in the end.  We must continually keep in mind that permanent faith transcends temporary pain.
 

 

            Loving God, take pity on my life as I seek to embrace you in both good times and bad.  I belong to you, therefore, I will not forsake you no matter how much I do not understand the suffering.  In Jesus’ name I pray.  Amen.

Job 7:1-21

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment


            Few people have ever suffered such agonizing loss as the Old Testament character of Job.  He literally lost everything but his life.  All his kids were killed, and he was so racked with physical pain and ill health that even his closest friends barely recognized him.  Yet the most severe suffering of all came from the grinding silence of God about the whole affair.  Job felt the spiritual pain of a seemingly distant God:  “Why have you made me your mark?  Why have I become a burden to you?”
             Indeed, when one is in the throes of grief, and God does not respond, the suffering seems pathetically senseless.  As I write this, another spate of shootings have this week rocked American towns in the West and Mid-West.  Where is God in all this?  As families grieve and communities reel in shock, how can the loss of life and safety square with a God who is Sovereign over all creation?
             It’s the silence that often hurts so badly.  Groans, laments, and anguish seem to fly up and away with no easy answers and no immediate relief.  Yet, God hears.  God sees.  And God knows.  We have a big picture perspective of the book of Job.  We know the end of the story.  We even know why Job suffered, even when he himself never knew.  But even with such an understanding, there is still a large mystery to the ways and the silence of God.
             It is a great temptation for many Christians to give neatly wrapped answers to life’s most difficult realities.  But the book of Job does not allow for it.  What we have is a man who never understood all that happened in his life, yet held onto his integrity and his faith in the God he never fully understood.  After all, if we understood all there is to understand about God, he would not be God at all.
             Invisible God, you are not only unseen physically, but many times spiritually and emotionally unseen, as well.  Open the eyes of my heart so that I might catch but a glimpse of your working.  Even though I am but a child and know so little, yet I trust in your steadfast love even in the most difficult experiences of life.  Amen.