make it a good one (part 1)

The Word for today:
Psalm 105

[Psalms 105 and 106 read like a journal of the relationship between God and Israel. Over the next couple days, Stand in the Rain will develop the concept of the story you are writing with your life.]

Shelley writes in her journal every day.

As she follows the "Stand in the Rain" reading schedule, she opens her journal whenever she opens her Bible. She takes the journal to church on Sunday. She'll take it on vacation next week.

I don't know exactly what she writes in there. It's never occurred to me to look inside. But I have an idea, knowing her, that in those pages a relationship is developing. I'll bet you there's a love story unfolding.

Psalms 105 and 106 read like a journal of the relationship between God and Israel. There are many, many biblical passages which read the same way.

These passages tell us that the history of a relationship is important to God. Think, for a second, about what that might mean. What if God keeps not just collective journals--about his children--but individual journals about each child.

Well, there's no if about it. We find throughout scripture the mention of various books, their contents yet to be revealed, which chronicle our individual lives.

Right about here you're sensing that you're going to get a heavy dose of "So Be Good for Goodness Sake" -- 

He's making a list
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice...

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!

But no, you won't be getting that here. We're assuming you're already making that attempt.

What we urge you to do is to live out a good story, a love story for God to write in his journal. Live out a good, great, grand, sensational, sizzling, scintillating love story for God to record in his book.

I've got a feeling that's what's being recorded in Shelley's journal. It must be, because I see her living out a love story for the ages.

Lucky guy, that Jesus.

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devil's design

The Word for today:
Psalm 104

mark this: Psalm 104:1-8, 33-35 --
Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great!
You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.
He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind;
he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire.
He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.
You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.
At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.
The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.

I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.
May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD.
Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more!
Bless the LORD, O my soul! Praise the LORD!

We live in an upside down age.

People claim they don't believe in God because they can't see God. That is upside down. The truth is that people can't see God because they actively will themselves not to believe him. Unbelief is not a matter of the mind. It is a matter of the will. The will of the unbeliever suppresses the truth that he sees (1).

Psalm 104 speaks of the majestic order of God's creation, of the intricate interplay of the tides and times, of the choreography of forces and spheres.

But our schools and universities teach our children that this is the result of random chance and natural selection.

Right about here some Christians will tell us what idiots the unbelievers are. But the Bible doesn't call them idiots. The Bible calls them evil.

Romans chapter 1 teaches us that nature serves as an introduction to God; but that mankind suppresses (literally, "holds down") the truths about God which nature teaches (1).

Unbelievers take part in a vast, methodically planned and executed campaign to aggressively and actively hold down the truth. It is not a mere matter of misunderstanding what they are seeing. It is far more perverse than that.  It is a matter of willfully hiding the truth under the rug.

Unbelievers deny intelligent design even as they engage in the suppression of truth masterminded by the Father of Lies, Satan (2). Consider the irony here: The suppression of intelligent design is by intelligent design.

Right about here some Christians will tell us to feel sorry for the person who does not believe. That, like so many of our operating assumptions, is not dictated by scripture:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind. (Romans 1:18-21, 28)

We are in enemy territory.  They seek your eternal life, and the eternal lives of your children. This is a deep and twisted idolatry -- a sacrifice of lives to the god of their chosen realm; with the institutions and bureaucracies and confederacies of the world arranged and arrayed as front men for the principalities and the powers of this present darkness.

Right about here, you might be tempted to call this writer a kook. You don't know me then, because I may be the most cold-bloodedly sane person that you have never met.

And you might think this sounds extreme. I know you might, because I certainly do! This is not what they taught me at Anna Merritt, North Park, Washington Hunt, Emmet Belknap Junior High, Lockport Senior High School, William and Mary, Buffalo State, or Niagara University. That these truths might strike us as radical testifies to the infiltration, by diabolical design, of the enemy into every crevice of our minds, and into every pew of our churches.

Satan, copycat that he is, has always fought holy fire with profane  fire (3).  He fought the Word of God in Eden with an unauthorized version of those words. He is now fighting the enlightenment provided by intelligent design with a benighted version of that design.

Which version are you reading? Which version am I teaching?

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(1) Romans 1:18/NKJV; (2) John 8:44; (3) Leviticus 10:1

in search of the lost chord

The Word for today:
Psalm 103

I'm a writer. But should I write a God-zillion psalms, I will never write anything as exquisite as this. So we keep on writing.

I'm a Christian. But from my gushing love for Christ will never spring praise so perfect as this. So we keep on praising.

A chord was lost, so we keep on searching. We heard it in a fragment of a dream, so we've sought it ever since. It sounded forth the inexpressible: the absolute, the infinite, the divine.

I searched for a lifetime until I found it here, in the blood and poetry of Passovers long ago:

The sacrificial lamb lived in the household for four days. It was observed over that time, inspected. There could be no flaw, no spot or blemish. The kids, no doubt, considered it their pet--little Fluffy or Tuffy or Snowball. They were about to find out the cost of sin.

After four days their Father took the lamb, slit its throat, and the blood poured out into a basin on the floor at the door. Then a hyssop branch was taken and the blood was daubed on the door posts and on the lintel, above the doorway.

The points of blood if connected form perpendicular lines--a cross.

At the intersection of that cross, God met man in Jesus Christ: fully human, fully divine.

Spreading outward from the intersection was the offer of God's grace to all people; to every point of the compass, to the four winds.

Outward from the intersection, an infinite vertical proclaims his love:
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;

Outward from the intersection, an infinite horizontal proclaims his mercy:
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

In a life passed away, I heard it. In the life which shall not pass away, I will sound it forth:

Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities; who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from destruction; who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies;
Who satisfies your mouth with good things; so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

Bless the LORD, you his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.
Bless the LORD, all you his hosts; you ministers of his, that do his pleasure.
Bless the LORD, all his works in all places of his dominion: bless the LORD, O my soul.

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between them was a cross

The Word for today:
Psalm 102

Psalm 102 transports me.  It just carries me away.

The introductory ascription tells us that this is a prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed and pours out his complaint before the Lord.

We know this man is Jesus because the Holy Spirit, the author of the Bible, identifies him in Hebrews 1:10-12.

What we overhear in the opening verses of Psalm 102 is no less than the voice of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. It's the voice of a lone soldier, far away from home, readying himself for the battle to come.

But the tone and the setting change abruptly in the second half of Psalm 102. No longer is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, his cross just ahead. Now resurrected, he looks back to that time, that place:
For he has looked down from the height of his sanctuary;
from heaven did the LORD behold the earth. (verse 19)

Then suddenly, at a set time, he re-appears in his glory--because the time to favor her has arrived (verses 13, 16).

The time to favor her? Who is she?

***

I've got some Good News:  she is we, and the arrangements have all been made:

Though it hasn't been revealed yet, the time has been set.  It's a date!
A new wedding garment (verse 26) has been purchased--at a place just a stone's throw from Gethsemane.

A new home is being readied:
In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)

There's going to be a big reception:
If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. (John 14:3)
He'll be picking us up!

***

How can a Psalm that begins so sad and lonely end so happily? Here's how:
For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Just like the Bible, Psalm 102 starts in a garden, then ends in a heaven. And between them was a cross.

I am in absolute rapture over this Psalm. It just carries me away!

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reading out loud

The Word for today:
Psalm 101

Let's bear down today for some advanced Bible study...

Today, we will consider the concept of voice in scripture. Look at the first verse of Psalm 101. Who is speaking?

That's easy, we say. It's David. The ascription says so:
A Psalm of David.

Alright. Who is speaking here?--
I will behave wisely in a perfect way...I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. (Psalm 101:2/NKJV)

Could that still be David? David was an adulterer who conspired to have the husband of his paramour murdered. So how can he say I will behave wisely in a perfect way.

Here's how:
1. King David is a child of God, speaking for himself. Just like you and me--two other rank sinners--he is predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ; to be transformed into that image from one degree of glory to another. (Roman 8:29; 2 Corinthians 3:18)

So David can honestly say that I will behave wisely in a perfect way--because some day he will!
Thus we hear the voice of King David in Psalm 101.

2. David is a prophet, speaking for the LORD.
Spoken through the prophet David, these become the words of Jesus Christ, the eternal King.
Thus we hear the voice of King Jesus in Psalm 101.

3. David, as a Bible author, speaks as both man and God at the same time. (If you're spooked, you're not alone.) Just as Jesus is both God and man, the Bible is both a God book--written by God; and a man book--written by man:
For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:21)
The Word of God was not just on their tongues, it came from deeper within:
The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. (2 Samuel 23:2/KJV)

***

The Bible is complete, so you and I will never speak with the third voice heard in Psalm 101. But we will speak with the other two voices which are heard there:
1. We (obviously) will speak for ourselves as children of God.

2. As the body of Christ, we are Jesus' voice to the world. In this urgently real and consequential sense, you and I are the Word of God.

You might have thought you were standing silently in the rain, when all along you've been reading out loud.

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we don't get into the room unless Jesus goes first

The Word for today:
Psalm 99, 100

mark this: Psalm 100:4 --
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

Prayer is the working out of a relationship with God. Is that phrasing too technical? Then how about this:

Prayer is the practice of the presence of God. Too alliterative? Then how about this:

Prayer means you're in the room.

We enter that room through what Jesus did on the cross:
Therefore we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus. (Hebrews 10:19)

That's the reason we say "In Jesus' name I pray." We should pray in Jesus' name. We have to pray in Jesus' name. But it is a serious misunderstanding when we tack Jesus on the end of our prayers as if we were pinning the tail on the donkey.

We should heed this advice from Psalm 100:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.

The name 'Jesus' is not a magical incantation; inherently, it has no power. It is a shorthand acknowledgement and affirmation of all that he is. He re-opened the lines of communication with God. He took the curtain down. We enter through his ripped flesh,
by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body. (Hebrews 10:20)

I might startle some of you with this declaration:
Scripture indicates that God doesn't hear a syllable of prayer until he hears "Jesus." With one technical exception -- "God, have mercy on me, a sinner (1)" -- the phone stays on the hook until "Jesus" rings in the Father's ears.  That's why Jesus explicitly says that we should pray in His name:

John 14:13--"Ask in My Name..."
John 15:16--"...ask in My Name."
John 16:23-24--"...ask in My Name."
John 16:26--"...ask in My Name."

Someone might think that I'm making a bigger deal over this than it deserves. But I think that waiting until we exit to enter is asinine.

Don't let Jesus' name be the tail on the donkey. Thankfully speak his name as you enter into the presence of God in prayer. Because we don't get into that room unless Jesus goes first.

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(1) Luke 18:13

all dogs go to heaven

The Word for today:
Psalm 97, 98

mark this: Psalm 98:7-9 --
Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise! Let the earth and all living things join in. Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the LORD.

I've had to bury a couple of my dogs. Both times, I fashioned a little cross and wrote their names and their years. And then I wrote "Romans 8:21"--because the cross of Jesus Christ will cover more ground than we might think.

We think of Jesus dying to redeem sinners. But don't stop there, because Jesus also redeemed creation from the effects of our sins.

We call the degradation of nature ecological pollution. The Bible calls it a curse, a direct result of mankind's sin:
And to Adam he said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you." (Genesis 3:17)

Something that God described at the point of creation as very good (Genesis 1:31) has been badly disfigured at the hand of man:
The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. (Isaiah 24:4-5)

But in Psalm 98, seas, rivers, and mountains express their joy! That's because God's salvation doesn't just affect human beings:
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Colossians 1:19-20)

Romans 8:21 promises that when rebellion against God finally ends,
the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

That's when we're going to hear clapping and singing from some surprising sources:
Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise! Let the earth and all living things join in. Let the rivers clap their hands in glee! Let the hills sing out their songs of joy before the LORD. (Psalms 98:7-9)

And that's when old Shep will come bounding into view. His eyes won't be dim and his gait unsteady anymore.  All dogs go to heaven. Two little crosses in our back field say so.

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