"One Thing Needful"

      May I never suppose I am in Christ unless I am a new creature, never think I am born of the Spirit unless I mind the things of the Spirit, never rest satisfied with professions of belief and outward forms and services, while my heart is not right with Thee.
     May I judge my sincerity in religion by my fear to offend Thee, my concern to know Thy will, my willingness to deny myself.
     May nothing render me forgetful of Thy glory, or turn me aside from Thy commands, or shake my confidence in Thy promises, or offend Thy children.
     Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful.
     May I not be inattentive to the design of Thy dealings with me, or insensible under Thy rebukes, or immobile at Thy calls.
      May I learn the holy art of abiding in Thee, or being in the world and not of it, of making everything not only consistent with by conducive to my religion.

- "Sincerity" from Valley of Vision

This semester has been overwhelming.  Between RA responsibilities, working in the admissions department, singing in Evidence, serving in church, and being a full-time seminary student, somehow activities overtook life.  It was bad...I'll just leave it at that.

A number of things helped get life back into proper perspective, but one of them was hiding from campus life in a basement over Fall Break.  There was time to sleep, eat fruits and vegetables, sleep more, read some disappointingly limp fiction, sleep some more, and spend more time than usual in devotions.  The lines from Valley of Vision that were particularly meaningful were, "Let not my temporal occupations injure my spiritual concerns, or the cares of life make me neglect the one thing needful."

The semester had become so full of the "temporal occupations" of memorizing music, various prayer meetings late at night, rushing from meeting to meeting, and squeezing bits of Hebrew homework into cracks in the schedule, that the "one things needful" - resting in Christ's finished work on my behalf - had been pushed out of sight, and when that happens, it is only a matter of time before life falls apart.  

There's still a lot to do.  But I hope that I have learned  not to let "temporal occupations" crowd out the "one thing needful."

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

    and to inquire in His temple.

- Psalm 27:4

God's Power and Us

"'Do you not fear me?' declares the LORD. 'Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail; though they roar, they cannot pass over it.'" - Jeremiah 5:22

I found this verse this morning, and it really stuck out to me, so I went and read Jeremiah 5 to make sure it hadn't been taken out of context.  In Jeremiah 5, God uses this image of His greatness to remind His people that He is great enough to judge their wickedness.  Certainly, God' s power should should cause fear for those who are not His people, but what should God's power do to those who are His people?  Here are just a couple of ideas:

• His power should cause us to fear Him, both the respect kind of fear and the afraid kind of fear. 
• His power should create worship towards Him for His mighty acts.
• His power should compel us to tell the people around us about His greatness. 
• His power should strengthen our trust in Him because He is big enough to handle all of our problems.
• His power should re-assure us that we can rest in His sovereignty over us and our lives.

What has God's power done for you?

Reading the Prophets

For the past 9 months, I have been working my way through the prophetic books during my devotions, spacing them with some Psalms and New Testament epistles.  Although in future I will be organizing my Bible reading system differently, it's been interesting to read so many prophets at one time.  The following notes from the post "Some Guidelines for Reading Prophetic Literature" by Julian Freeman crystallized thoughts that have been forming in my mind over the past months.  Some of the comments could be understood in a number of different ways, so this isn't an endorsement of his blog because I haven't read it extensively.  The comments definitely do a good job of summarizing how to study the prophets and will go into my file of "Things to Refer to Later."  

1. Because prophets speak mainly to their own day, we need to make sure we understand their day
2. Don’t be afraid of (good) Study Bibles and commentaries
3. Read a whole prophetic book rather than just sections; main themes and rhetorical strategies are important for interpreting the various parts
4. Use a cross-referencing system to see how the NT interprets / borrows the passages you’re reading
5. In apocalypse, remember the big picture: This world is messed up beyond repair and exists in a state of turmoil until God intervenes by judgement, bringing victory for the good, which ushers in a time of peace, where justice reigns
6. In highly image-driven apocalyptic sections, always remember that the author’s main purpose was to effect change in his contemporaries; if our interpretation doesn’t include a call to holiness in the present, our interpretation is wrong
7. Always look for the persistence of hope: the shining of the light of redemption through the dark clouds of God’s judgement; this is where the nature of our God is magnified—this is where we see the cross
8. Because the prophets write to a people in a different covenantal  relationship, the application is less direct; the application will spring from the heart of God revealed in his dealings with his people
9. Application should always be done through Jesus, the one who lived our righteousness, became sin, and took our curse so that we could know the hope & blessing the prophets extend to the righteous.
10. Prophecies of judgement, showing us the wrath of God toward sin, and what we truly deserve, should always make us more thankful for the cross.

 Freeman cites How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Fee & Stuart, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by Klein, Blomberg, and Hubbard, An Invitation to Biblical Interpretation by Kostenberger and Patterson, and Knowing Scripture by R.C. Sproul.