Category: Morning Musings

Morning Musings: 2 Chronicles 33:12-13

Leave a comment

“And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers.  He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom.  Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Manasseh’s story should give us a great deal of hope.  He was the most evil and overtly pagan of any of the kings to rule over Judah.  He essentially took his father Hezekiah’s legacy and turned it on its head.  If there was some practice that would offend the Lord, he jumped into it with both feet.  He led the whole nation astray and primed the pump for terrible judgment.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: 2 Chronicles 26:16

Leave a comment

“But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.  For he was unfaithful to the Lord his God and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Uzziah’s punishment can seem awfully big in light of his apparent offense.  I mean, he burned a bit of incense in the Temple.  Why should that have drawn a punishment of leprosy?  But, the light external offense was only a symptom of the much more dangerous internal issue.  As faithful as he had been throughout his reign as king, he eventually started to see himself as the source of that success.  Once he did this, his downfall was nigh.  <!–more Read the rest…–>

This poses a stern reminder for all of us.  The perils of success are great.  We should run after it with all we have, but if we begin worshiping it as our god, it will lead to our doom.  We never escape the necessity of being wary of this temptation.  Pride, or a belief that we are sufficient in and of ourselves for, really, anything, will always eventually lead to our undoing, and not only ours, but often for all the people who have attached themselves to our wagon as well.  This is never pretty.  Instead, let us always remember who is God and remain humbly reliant on Him; constantly aware that apart from Him we are nothing.

Morning Musings: 2 Corinthians 1:9

Leave a comment

“Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.  But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

One of the questions that has haunted humans since sin entered into the world is why bad things happen.  How do we reconcile the presence of evil in the world with our innate sense that the world was designed to be good?  For those who have heard the Christian claims of a God who is perfectly loving and all-powerful at one and the same time this challenge becomes even more acute.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: 2 Corinthians 1:4

2 Comments

“…who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Why does God comfort us?  Why does He extend any grace to us?  Well, the first answer is that He does it because He is gracious.  It is in His nature to do this for us.  The fuller answer and the one to which Paul is pointing here is that He does it so that we can pass along the blessing to other people.

God always acts in the best interest of the other.  His love always moves outward to find an object.  When that love is poured out on us regardless of the form it happens to take, it is intended not to stay with us, but to be poured out on still others.   Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Psalm 103:8-12

Leave a comment

“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.  He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.  For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

For anyone who would argue that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different from the God of the New Testament by being much angrier and more focused on judgment, you have to explain away passages like this one.  And this is not the only time this characterization appears in the Old Testament.   Read the rest…