Tag: good life

What Is Your View of God? (Psalm 86:1-10)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
God’s Love… by Hope G. Smith

Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,
    for I am poor and needy.
Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you;
    save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; be gracious to me, O Lord,
    for to you do I cry all day long.
Gladden the soul of your servant,
    for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
    abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer;
    listen to my cry of supplication.
In the day of my trouble I call on you,
    for you will answer me.

There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
    nor are there any works like yours.
All the nations you have made shall come
    and bow down before you, O Lord,
    and shall glorify your name.
For you are great and do wondrous things;
    you alone are God. (New Revised Standard Version)

What is your view of God? 

For some, God is up there, somewhere, like some white-bearded old guy who is aloof to what is going on down here – there is neither anything personal nor personable about him, at all. If he gets involved, at all, it’s just to get out his divine BB gun and shoot a few sinners in the backside.

For others, God is a force which binds all things together; God is there, but you’re never quite sure how to get in touch with him – it’s like a crap shoot trying to connect with God. So, you might do all sorts of things to get God’s attention, like be especially good – and if that doesn’t work, maybe you’ll go the other way and be especially bad, just to get any sort of attention.

For yet others, God is perpetually perturbed about something; he’s got a bee in his divine bonnet and it’s our job to figure out what he’s sullen and upset about all the time, that we might appease God in some way. So, you might double-down on being self-sacrificial, try not to swear in front of the Pastor, and help others so that God will, in turn, help you.

The psalmist David, however, sees God in a very different way than all the aforementioned. God is not aloof and distant, nor angry. Instead, David understands and views God as personal, knowable, and reachable.

What characterizes God?

Reading today’s psalm tells us a great deal of how David thought and felt about God. Notice what we learn about God from David’s description: good and forgiving; abounding in steadfast love; listens and answers; and, does great and wondrous things.

Now this is a God you can sink your teeth into. This God is attentive, engaged, and is anything but upset all the time – which is why David has no problem asking God to listen and answer his prayer.

David put his trust in God to save him and make his heart glad. With this kind of God, David can willingly affirm his devotion. With a God of steadfast love and support, the worshiping and praying person’s heart forever belongs to the Lord.

If your view of God cannot support and bear the weight of your life’s hardest circumstances, then you need a different view of God!

Rather than God being the problem, it could be that your understanding of God is off. And if your understanding of God is off, then it’s likely that your own understanding of yourself is skewed – which is why many persons who have darker views of God are down on themselves and possess little self-worth.

I invite you to see the God of David. This God has both the ability and the willingness to satisfy your life’s greatest needs.

What will you do with your view of God?

In humility and brokenness, we call out in our misery. God responds in steadfast love and abundant mercy. With God, we can move from trouble to confidence.

And sometimes, we discover that our troubles and our circumstances change very little. But we ourselves have changed a great deal. Our compulsions for solid answers to our questions give way to a settled confidence in divine mystery. And our obsessions with a pain-free and problem-free life are replaced with a curiosity for what the hard situations in our lives will teach us.

The poor and needy cry out to God, knowing that grace and mercy characterizes the Lord. Life on this earth may not treat us well, but God gives us much more than we deserve.

The faithful trust in the Lord, fully confident that their preservation and protection are in God’s hands – and not in political leaders or padded bank accounts.

The miserable pray, constantly persevering in prayer, because their hope is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. They have learned to pray expectantly, understanding that sometimes the greatest miracle of all is being delivered from the need to have a miracle.

Those who lift their faces to heaven, looking for the bright sunshine of grace, will know joy, down deep in their soul – and not simply a fleeting happiness from temporary reprieve of trouble.

The ones calling on the name of the Lord, banking their lives on God’s love, discover forgiveness and a good peaceful life of peace – rather than the anxiety of constantly worrying about tomorrow.

The spiritually devoted are confident that God will answer in their day of trouble – and they are patient, knowing full well that God’s sense of timing is much better than their own. So, they learn to hold all things loosely, knowing that God gives and God takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

All those taking the time and effort to find the God who is truly characterized by kindness and compassion know in their gut, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is no one like the Lord – a God who does wondrous things and is attentive to justice and righteousness.

What is your view of God? Listen closely to the psalmist, and he will tell you what the Lord has done for him because of God’s basic nature of love and goodness.

Great God of David, you are above all things and beside all things and with all things. You are uniquely positioned and powerful to walk with me through all the situations of my life. Thank you for sending the Son of David to make your promises real to me. Amen.

Listen To Lady Wisdom (Proverbs 3:13-18)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Tree of Life, by Margarita Kriebitzsch, 2013

You’re blessed when you meet Lady Wisdom,
    when you make friends with Madame Insight.
She’s worth far more than money in the bank;
    her friendship is better than a big salary.
Her value exceeds all the trappings of wealth;
    nothing you could wish for holds a candle to her.
With one hand she gives long life,
    with the other she confers recognition.
Her manner is beautiful,
    her life wonderfully complete.
She’s the very Tree of Life to those who embrace her.
    Hold her tight—and be blessed! (The Message)

I like it that the author chose to personify wisdom as a woman. Maybe that’s because I have a wife and three daughters. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they, along with most of the women in my life, seem to have an almost mysterious quality of insight and understanding which transcends my very cerebral and logical approaches to life.

What I’m trying to say is that wisdom isn’t measured with a one-dimensional test of a person’s mental reasoning powers, but also requires emotional intelligence, social intelligence, interpersonal and relational intelligence, and spiritual intelligence, just to name a few.

And Lady Wisdom has it all. She’s the perfect combination of all the intelligent factors which make for a complete, fulfilling, and good life.

Everyone desires a good life. Nobody wakes up in the morning, sits on the edge of the bed, and thinks to themselves, “I really hope to have a bad day today!” A person might get up on the wrong side of the bed and grump their way through the first hours of the day, but no one makes a conscious decision to deliberately have a disappointing life. 

Indeed, we all want a good life. Students go to school hoping to have a good experience. Marriages begin with the hope of having a good life together. New employees start with the wish that there will be satisfaction in doing a job well done. Parents dream of their kids growing up to have a good life. 

We want the kind of life that brings contentment, joy, and happiness. So, how does it come?

A good life comes through embracing Lady Wisdom. And she has always been there, as the very Tree of Life:

“I was there when God set the heavens in place,
    when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
when he established the clouds above
    and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
when he gave the sea its boundary
    so the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
    Then I was constantly at his side.” (Proverbs 8:27-30, NIV)

A good life has a basic respect and honor for God at the heart of it. Lady Wisdom understands this, first hand. She knows we are prone to being afraid. So, she assures us that the pursuit of true wisdom is worth it. With Lady Wisdom at our side, we have calm and confidence; we know when to take risks and when to be patient.

Most of all, our insecurities and anxieties begin to melt away as we connect with the image of God within us. Trust bubbles up from the depths of our soul, and we are no longer afraid of the unknown and what may happen to us.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Proverbs 9:10, NIV

The fear of the Lord means to honor and obey God, to be loyal and submissive. We know there is a good God from which our own good lives derive.

In a state of trust, of calm and confidence, we are able to listen and hear Lady Wisdom’s sage instruction. So, if you want to live a good life – and not just survive but thrive – then we must adopt a posture of listening.

The prerequisite to any semblance of a good life is to have a teachable spirit, to give focused attention to Wisdom. A fool is a fool, first and foremost, because he does not listen. Instead, he is negative, complains, and spews advice based in partial information.

But the person who hugs Lady Wisdom and does not let go, has learned to be attentive to the voice of God.

Continual fear of people is a death-dealing practice. But the person who fears God by listening to wise counsel discovers a life-giving practice that will serve them well for a lifetime. 

The teachable spirit bends the ear to hear good advice. Such a wise spirit inclines toward acquiring knowledge and learning the skillset needed to live a spiritually abundant life.

For the Christian, therefore, we cannot learn if do not read. The Bible is a book. If the Bible was a car, I would tell us all to learn to be mechanics; if it were a fish or a deer, I would tell us all to learn the best ways to hunt and fish; or if it was a store, I would encourage us to learn about being good shoppers and consumers. 

Yet, the Bible is a book. So, we must read it, memorize it, meditate on it, and learn from it. Becoming familiar with the contents of Holy Scripture, and immersing ourselves in it’s wisdom, will mold us in the ways of humility and form us spiritually for a lifetime of peace, love, and joy. 

Maybe you aren’t a tree hugger. But I encourage you to become one. Embracing Lady Wisdom is the surest way to avoiding unnecessary problems and finding purpose in life. Indeed, because she is good, we become good.

Today, God of Wisdom, let me experience your good and gracious heart. Draw me into your very being, into the core of your love for me, others, and the world. Give me a glimpse of others from your good, right, and just perspective, in loving them, forgiving them, and delighting in the way they give glory to God through their very existence. Help me to discern out of that place of deep affection for humanity, that I, too, might be a useful conduit of your love in the world. Amen.

James 1:17-27 – Be Good because God Is Good

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

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of all he created.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.

Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (New International Version)

God is Good – All the Time

And all the time – God is good. That statement is a bedrock foundation for Christian faith. Without a basic affirmation and belief of God’s goodness, our faith will experience cracks and not stand the test of hardship and difficulty in life. Without the steadfast conviction that God is good, the alternative is that God is somehow fickle or even mean – that God does not care about my problems.

The trials and tribulations of life are intended by God to be watershed experiences that prove the genuineness, or lack thereof, of our faith. When life is good, it is easy to say God is good. However, when it isn’t, we may slide into a belief system that thinks God is the source of our trouble. And if we have not been working on a relationship with God, we will have scant resources to draw from to help us.

God is good, and not mean. Every single good gift there is in this world comes from God. Nothing evil comes from God. God’s grace is constantly around us. If his grace were not here, it would be like living inside a dystopian novel, or a zombie apocalypse, where everyone is constantly looking over their shoulders for the next evil thing to happen. Although evil exists, it could be a whole lot worse if it were not for divine grace and goodness.

“This is true faith, a living confidence in the goodness of God.”

Martin Luther

God is immutable, that is, God’s goodness is ever-present. On this earth we are constantly subjected to changing light as the sun rises and sets, and as the clouds come and go. Yet, God does not change like shifting shadows. God is not fickle or capricious. God’s goodness is always at high noon, standing like an eternal sun in a bright blue sky radiating unbroken grace to us.

God’s goodness has delivered people from sin, death, and hell. God’s grace has given us new life. God created the world and pronounced it “good.” God formed you and called you “good.” And God has forgiven you, in Christ, and says it is “good.”

God gave us a good word for us to accept and live by.

Hurry Up and Listen

There is a great need for listeners today. Precious little productive communication takes place because there are so many people in a hyper-vigilant state airing their opinions. They talk over and on top of each other because they’ve already made-up their minds about how things really are and what should be done. Nobody is listening.

Bible reading is a primary source for listening to God. Yet, although many people own multiple Bibles, and Scripture is freely available through digital sources, far too many persons simply don’t read and listen to it.

Slow Down and Speak

God has given us two ears and one mouth so that we will listen twice as much as we talk.   

Too much talk leads to sin. Be sensible and keep your mouth shut. (Proverbs 10:19, NLT)

A loose tongue and constant opining happens because of faulty listening.  An inability to listen leads to a lack of understanding because we do not take the time to get the whole story. It’s easy to pronounce verdicts with little information, and offer bad advice, when there is little listening.

Have a Long Fuse

Be slow to anger. A fool speaks without thinking, which stirs up strife. Slow to listen and quick to speak leads to anger flares. An angry spirit is an unteachable spirit, unwilling to listen to both God and others. 

Rash words said in anger produce an ugly unrighteous life. Selfish opinionated anger produces harsh bitter words and kills God’s plan for a good life.

We are to accept the Word of God. Throwing labels at people only de-humanizes them. They become objects of anger and scorn, and not people made in God’s image. Nothing good comes from ignoring God’s Word and giving-in to bitterness. It destroys good people.

Get Rid of Evil

Get rid of all moral filth, and the evil that is so prevalent. The unwillingness to listen, a loose tongue, and unrighteous anger are moral evils. Evil is not only perpetuated by serial killers, terrorists, and other people different from us. In fact, the face of evil rarely comes to us in the form of red horns and a pitchfork.

Evil also resides as soft-core wickedness – common ordinary evil. The demonic can work in an almost ho-hum manner, subtly questioning whether anyone can really live up to the precepts of God’s Word, and generally undermining all that takes place to the glory of God.

The face of evil is neither hot nor cold, but “meh.” It is the bitter slow-cooked seething anger bubbling just underneath the surface which comes out in a plastic smile while offering up a morsel of slander based on a lack of listening well. It comes out in fake gestures of niceness while being quick to make judgments with little to no information.

Put away the “meh.” Receive God’s Word. Take a teachable posture. Stop and listen to what God’s Word has to say.

Be a Doer of God’s Word, Not Just a Hearer

The Word of God is not truly received until it is put into practice. 

It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. (Romans 2:13, NRSV) 

Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it (Luke 11:28, NIV). 

The person who only hears is like a Mr. Potato Head that is only ears. He cannot stand because he has no feet.  He cannot do anything because he has no hands. Mr. Potato Head needs some feet so that he can follow Jesus wherever he goes. And he needs hands so he can do God’s will.

Listening to the Word without obedience is just that – it is mere hearing.  Profession of faith means nothing without a practice of that faith; learning the Bible is useless without living it; and acceptance of the Word is nothing more than a mental exercise without action to back it up.  Profession, knowledge, and acceptance alone does not satisfy God’s plan for our lives. 

Pay Attention to the Person in the Mirror

A person looks at himself in the mirror. He clearly sees all his flaws. Yet he does not respond, likely because he doesn’t like what he sees. It’s silly to look into a mirror, see a major bedhead, and just do nothing about it and go to work as if everything were fine. We look. We examine. We hear. We see exactly who we are. And we can’t even identify ourselves in a police lineup.

The person forgets what he looks like because he does not really want to face himself. This isn’t a clueless guy. It is one who sees himself as he really is and chooses not to do anything about it.

Forgetfulness happens because of inaction. Remembrance, communion, and hope all occur through active participation. God blesses the one who looks hard into the mirror of God’s Word, then intentionally makes changes based on what he finds.

Obedience to God’s Word brings freedom, not bondage. Listening, seeing, adjusting, and changing is a freeing activity. That’s because it’s how we are designed to live.

Holy and good God, give me grace to see you, others, and myself clearly so that I will be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Amen.

James 3:13-18 – Living Wisely

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Geschftsmann muss sich bei einer Weg-Gabelung entscheiden

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness. (NIV)

The great challenge of life for everyone is to respond to it rightly – to handle the people, situations, and responsibilities of life well.  We all need wisdom.  Wisdom is doing right and just things in the concrete actual situations of life.

Wisdom is much like driving a car.  There is a certain body of knowledge that you need to drive. Driving is much more than knowing the driving manual and passing the driving test.  The purpose of knowing the laws and how to drive a car is so that you can drive well on actual roads under all kinds of traffic and weather situations.  Driving wisely means you keep your eyes on the road and are mindful of all that is going on around you and even within you.  You do not fret about why there is a curve in the road or a stop sign in a certain location.  You do not try and figure out the mechanics of a stoplight, or the philosophy behind the engineering layout of the road system.  You just try to do what needs to be done on the road to get where you need to go by responding to the conditions as they come.  In Midwest America where I live, if you drive a car, you will face snow and ice conditions; you will have to respond to a deer in the road; you will have to deal with other drivers and practice wise defensive driving skills.  And you must come to grips with your own road rage when getting from point A to point B when it does not go as you think it should.

Wisdom in the Christian life includes and is more than knowledge. The Bible is not a three-ring binder that covers every single life situation that you can simply look up and follow the three steps.  Rather, Holy Scripture has a body of knowledge contained in differing kinds of literary genres to give us wise guidance for all of life.  Like driving a car, Christian wisdom involves being attentive and mindful of the people and circumstances around us as we move through life by responding with gracious practical knowledge to everything and everyone.  So, then, wisdom is the practical application of biblical truth to all of life.

Wise people possess two distinguishing marks: a good life, and a humble life. 

A wise person is the same inside and out, with integrity between the inner attitude and outward behavior.  The motive for being good springs from a disposition of meekness and gentleness.

The distinguishing mark of the unwise person is hidden agendas. 

The unwise are continually doing something, which on the surface seems altruistic and good, yet something else is driving them: bitter envy and selfish ambition. If we want to live the good life, it begins with identifying the envy that will sometimes arise within us and the selfish ambition that goes with it – then choose a path of true wisdom by embracing the good gifts and abilities of others and delight in them.  At the same time, we focus on our own gifts and abilities and are at peace with them, able to express them.  There is real beauty when this happens.

False wisdom (selfish pride) is earthly, unspiritual, and evil.  It relies on tactics of manipulation, power politics, parking lot conversations, and passive-aggressive behavior. Having good intentions but utilizing bad methods to get it is false wisdom.  Having an evil intention but cloaking it in good words is demonic. Our words and our behavior both need to be good.

The unwise person has a pathological progression occurring within them:

  1. Envy over not having something someone else has or losing something that was once possessed.
  2. Devious plans for dealing with it.
  3. Using pious language to cloak that plan in religious garb.
  4. Strife, division, and disharmony to get what they want.
  5. Unhealthy practices and habits of life which damage others.

The wise person, in contrast to the unwise, possesses seven characteristics which enables them to live well and enjoy a good life:

  1. Pure. There are no mixed motives with purity – no hidden agendas, no secret desires that are self-serving. It is a purification through repentance of the old unwise person and embrace of the new through the cross of Jesus.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).  “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

  1. Peace-loving is more than the absence of conflict. Peace is to embrace harmony, to work well together, and to enjoy full relational experiences. Wise and godly people are healers, active in bringing unity and integration.

“Blessed are the peace-makers for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).  “Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.  Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:13-14).

  1. Considerate of others is to be flexible, open to reason, level-headed in anxious situations, gentle, non-combative, non-retaliatory, and generally understanding. It is the wisdom to make allowances for the weaknesses and shortcomings of others and takes the kindest possible perspective.

“Remind the people… to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone” (Titus 3:1-2).

  1. Submissive attitudes and actions are a choice. If a person is coerced into submission, that is slavery, not submission. To submit means to willingly place oneself under someone else’s authority. The submissive person is teachable and humbly receives correcting wisdom.

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

  1. Merciful. Mercy is compassion in action. It is to empathize with the needs of others, and then do something about it.  There is always good fruit that results from mercy.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (Matthew 5:7).

  1. Impartial people are without favoritism. It is to be the same person toward everyone. They are steady, consistent, and not swayed by the crowd; and, do not act one way with a certain group of people, and then act different with another group. Impartial people have a passion for justice and despise injustice, believing that all people’s needs must be met with equity.

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great but judge your neighbor fairly” (Leviticus 19:15). 

  1. Sincere hearts are without hypocrisy. The sincere person is the same both inside and out, having no ulterior motives and no skeletons in the closet.

“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for you brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 5:22).

The telltale signs of false wisdom are envy and selfishness – resulting in disorder and all kinds of unhealthy practices.  Conversely, the signs of true heavenly wisdom are good deeds done from a devoted heart to God and a humble attitude – resulting in righteousness and peace. This, my friends, is the good life.

Heavenly Father take me to the place where I am saved from my pride and arrogance and where Christ’s humility is center stage, where I am lifting clean hands and a pure heart to you. Take me to the place where I am no longer looking at obstacles but looking down upon them, where I can see clearly, and my decisions are flooded with your divine light, truth, and justice. I bend my knee and receive your truth. I open my ears to receive your counsel. I open my heart to receive your godly wisdom through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.