Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

2 Chronicles 36:11-21

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            There are parts of the Bible’s Old Testament that are just plain sad.  Perhaps the most pitiful commentary of all is that God’s people acted like a spouse who was so distant and dissatisfied that they did not know how good they had it.  So, they looked for relationships with other gods, other lovers.  Despite God’s furious and longing love for his people, they spurned his advances and his appeals.  Judah’s King Zedekiah “did what was evil… He did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke from the mouth of the LORD… He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD.”  What is more, Judah’s leadership was “exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations.”
 
            God was patient, he was persistent, and he was long on love for his people.  “The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place.”  Finally, after centuries of chronic neglect of God and active pursuit of idolatry, Judah reached the point of no return, and they lost it all.  Yet, even in this abject stubbornness and lack of love from Judah, God had compassion and did not forget.  The Chronicles end with a note of grace, letting the reader know that God’s mercy always has the last word. 
 
            God’s wrath is the servant of God’s love.  His punishes so that he can pursue; levels natural consequences so that he can meet needs; and, rebukes so that he might bring rest.  The end game for God is always restoration, renewal, and revitalization – a reviving of relationship between himself and his people.  This ought always to be our purpose, as well, to persistently, patiently, and lovingly pursue lost people because God rescued us from the dominion of darkness and has brought us into the life of his Son, the Lord Jesus.
 

 

            Merciful God, your anger flares but lasts only a moment.  Yet, your love is eternal and everlasting.  Thank you for sniffing me out and saving me by your amazing grace.  May I demonstrate the love you have shown to me toward others, so that your purposes are accomplished in my life today and always through Jesus Christ, my Lord.  Amen.

God Rejoices Over You

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment
 
 
God is love, and he loves and rejoices over you.  There is a reason why so many people in this cruel and calloused world are unloving and unkind:  they lack knowing that God loves them.  If we do not believe or know that God infinitely loves us, then our words and our actions will reflect more of hate than love.  God really truly does love you and me.  This is crucial.  Do not forget this.  Believe it.  Live it.  Enjoy it.  Know it.  Tell it to yourselves until you are thoroughly bathed in it because it is more wonderful than any 70’s sappy love song could ever describe it.
 
            There is a verse tucked away in the small book of Solomon’s Song of Songs.  It is an ode to love.  The verse, Song of Solomon 7:10 says, “I am my Beloved’s, and his desire is for me.”  Far too often we think of God’s love in some abstract, distant, detached way.  But the truth is that we belong to God and his desire is for you and me.  God has an intense and overpowering longing for you.  I encourage you to pray that verse every day this week, multiple times in the day.  Let the deep desire of God for you shape and form your thoughts so that fear is replaced with faith; loneliness with enjoyment; the fickle nature of others with satisfaction; praying as duty with praying because I want to be with the God who loves me so much.
 
            Oh, how we need a vision of God singing over us with joy!  Yes, God loves you that much!  Grab a hold of this verse:  Zephaniah 3:17 – “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”  Even the most unlovely of people are made lovely through God’s persistent and pursuing love for them.  You are being seen every single day by the infinite gaze and eternal compassion of God, who watches our every step with delight.
 
            Christianity does not “happen” simply by knowing some belief statements about him; rather, Christianity “happens” when individuals experience the white hot burning love of God in Jesus Christ.  Jesus came not only for those who skip church and only occasionally read their Bibles, but also came for the hard-hearted prick, the immoral adulterer, the strung-out addict, the terrorist, the murderer, and for all those caught up in bad choices and failed relationships.  “I have not come to call the self-righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13).  “Go and make disciples” (Matthew 28:19).  “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). “Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34-35).  All of Christ’s words and actions are because of God’s intense desire to love the world, and to love it through his church.
 
            God’s love is never based on our performance, or how good we look to others; it is never conditioned by our moods.  The love of God only looks longingly at you and me with the potential of what we can become in Christ and cares for us as we are.  It is a world-altering revolutionary thought that God loves me as I am and not as I should be.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
 
            Despite the inroads of atheism in our Western world, the vast majority of people still believe that God exists.  Conversely, however, the majority of people do not believe that God really loves them.  We are in a crisis of love.  People need to know the God who is Love.  Christianity never begins with what we do for God to make ourselves lovely for him.  No! Christianity always starts with what God has done for us, the great and wonderful love that exists for us in Christ Jesus.
 
            “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy” (Titus 3:4).  All the wrong turns in the past, the mistakes and the moral lapses, everything that is ugly or painful all melts in the light of God’s acceptance and love for us.
 

 

            If the consuming passion of church ministry and followers of Christ is not showing God’s love, then we have lost both our mission and our first love of Jesus.  Perhaps we must let time evaporate as we bow at the foot of the cross and experientially know the great love of God in Christ for us and for the world.

Psalm 71:1-6

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


            The biblical psalms do two wonderful services for us as God’s people:  first, a constant stream of reading, quoting, memorizing, and meditating on them actually shapes our faith into a full-orbed, mature, and robust belief; and, second, the psalms provide us with a healthy means of expressing the complete range of our human experience.  So, then, the psalms both reflect our feelings, and, at the same time, form those feelings in order to know God better, cope with situations, and relate appropriately with others.  The fourth-century Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, had it right about the psalms when he said:  “Whatever your particular need or trouble, from this same book you can select a form of words to fit it, so that you not merely hear and pass on, but learn the way to remedy your ill.”
             Today’s psalm is one of lament, the expression of a person getting along in years and discovering all the limitations and weaknesses that go along with aging.  It is a plea for help.  Whereas in younger days the psalmist had the vigor to engage problems and enemies, now he has the realization that he must more and more depend upon God.  
             I have personally encountered far too many people hitting the aging process that do not deal with it well.  The change to their bodies, even their minds, is so unwelcome that they do not cope quickly, or, sometimes, at all.  Based upon the psalms I would insist that lament is a powerful and necessary form of coming to grips with change.  God has not promised us life-long health and constant energy; rather, he has promised to be with us as our refuge and help through all the vicissitudes of changing health and altered situations.  Let praying the psalms, then, be a regimen as familiar and daily as your using your pill planner and taking your meds.
             Ever-watchful God, you are a rock of refuge, a never changing deity in a world of constant change.  You are my hope, Lord, and my faith has been in you all my life.  I lament all the difficult changes I encounter; I can never go back to the way things were.  So, please open to me a new reality where fresh hope and life can be found, through Jesus Christ my Savior.  Amen.

2 Chronicles 34:1-7

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
            Josiah started out as a boy king.  Evidently, he had some good training because by the time he became a teenager, Josiah was raring and ready to exercise his kingship in the best sense of leadership.  After generations of kings before him who followed other gods, Josiah committed himself fully to Israel’s one true God.  And, as a twenty-year old king, he showed the real muster of his reign.
 
            Josiah took charge to do what was right in the eyes of God – no matter the consequences.  He did not just worship God, but aggressively took active steps to rid his kingdom of all the false gods that permeated the land.  Josiah did not stick his toe in the water to test what the response might be to removing a high place of Baal or an Asherah pole; he jumped right in and put his entire kingship on the line.  All of the power brokers who were dealing in false gods could not have been happy about this turn of events in Judah.  But any kind of pushback did not prevent Josiah from doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord by eradicating idol worship.
 
            Josiah’s clear sense of purpose led him to do the things he did.  He had a direction from God in order to lead people back to God.  This is not only an ancient purpose; God is still in the kingdom business of bringing all of his creation back under his rule and reign.  It still remains the purpose of God’s people to lead others, caught in the web of idolatry, back to the one true God.  Like the ancients before us, there is still a need to exercise courage and confidence in following God by making disciples who will worship him alone.  Reconnecting with our overarching purpose in life is quite necessary in order to take bold steps of faith in this idolatrous world.
 

 

            Holy God, you alone are the Sovereign of the universe.  Expose the things in my life that I might be trusting in other than you.  Wean me away from evil, and bend my heart and mind to truth and good.  Help me to be aggressive in my Christian walk so that I will follow Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, leading others to faith along the way.  Amen.