Morning Musings: Psalm 104:1

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“Bless the Lord, O my soul!  O Lord my God, you are very great!  You are clothed with splendor and majesty.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

One of the things popular in sports psychology is self-talk.  How we talk to ourselves can affect how we perform, and not just in sports.  Folks with a positive conversation going on in their minds and hearts will tend to do a bit better in life on the whole than folks with a negative conversation going.  Constantly telling ourselves we’re no good isn’t terribly helpful.  When we can point our hearts to hope instead of doubt, faith instead of fear, joy instead of gloom, we will be better off than otherwise. Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: 2 Corinthians 3:17

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“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Two points here.  The first is that you won’t find a more direct connection between the Father and the Spirit than this.  While the connection between the Father and the Son is fairly easy to make in the Scriptures, for the sake of the Trinity, it is more difficult sometimes to connect the Spirit as the third person.  What Paul says here makes it pretty plain.  The Lord is the Spirit.  There you have it. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: 2 Chronicles 33:12-13

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“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

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“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.

Digging in Deeper: Proverbs 22:1

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“A good name is to  be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.”  (ESV)

One of the memories from my childhood that will always stick with me is a picture that hung in the hallway of the house where I grew up.  It had a picture of my dad’s dad (whom I never met), a picture of my dad, and a picture of me.  Next to the pictures, in its own space, was a poem.  I never knew who wrote it, and some digging on the internet has revealed more than one version attributed to more than one author.  The version that hung on the wall goes like this:  Read the rest…