Aug. 19 – Thoughts on Psalm 103-104 & 1 Cor. 2

At our wedding, we read Ps. 103 and ever since it’s been one of my favorite Psalms.

“Praise the Lord!” comes first and last.
We begin by calling ourselves, all of ourselves, to worship.
We end by calling all in heaven and all on earth to worship.

And why worship?  Because God…
forgives, heals, redeems, crowns, and satisfies us.
works righteousness, makes his ways and deeds known.
is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love
doesn’t accuse, harbor His anger, treat us or repay us as we deserve.
instead removes our sins, has compassion, and remembers our frailty.
most of all, loves us.

Why is it so hard to remember all of these things?  Why do we so quickly decide that God is not just, doesn’t love us, and sometimes is even working against us?  Probably because we are so focused on ourselves that we forget that life is about focusing on Him instead.

You see, whenever things are bad, we need to remember one of my favorite phrases:  “God’s got this!”  If I were the type to get a tattoo, that’s what I would have it say:  “God’s got this!”  Because if we can remember this, that God has every situation in His hands and is watching out for my best interest, then I can stop spending all of my time watching out for myself.  And the time I usually spend watching out for myself I can spend watching out for others.

And it all begins with the call of this Psalm: “Don’t forget all His benefits…”  If I can do that, then loving, serving, and caring for others becomes natural.

Bless the Lord, you His people who read this.  Bless the Lord, O my soul.

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Aug. 18 – Thoughts on Psalm 100-102 & 1 Cor. 1

As a child, I spent my summers at camp.  Not like ordinary kids who go to camp for a week, though.  My dad, a school teacher by trade, had his summers off so for four years we spent every day from Memorial Day through Labor Day at Portage Lake Covenant Bible Camp where my dad managed the camp.  We would make the 6 hour ride up through Michigan (always stopping in Cadillac to see the gas station that had a real bear in a cage on display) and get there days before anyone else.  We would open up and air out the cabins, clean up the grounds, and prepare for the arrival of first the staff and then the weekly campers.

Every morning and every evening for 3 months each year, I got to sit in (and often participate in) chapel where we learned the old camp songs and heard speaker after speaker tell us about God’s love through puppets, memory work, games, illustrations, and bible teaching.  It was here that my love for God and His Word was watered as it took root, and it was here that I learned to memorize scripture through song.

One of my favorites was a song simply called, “Psalm 100”, and with that song in my repertoire, I had a Psalm of praise memorized for the rest of my life.  Not surprisingly, we never sang any songs about Psalm 102, however.  “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” is a much more enjoyable lyric than, “my bones burn like glowing embers.”  Yet God saw fit to put these two opposite cries of the human heart next to each other in the list of Psalms.

This is one of the reasons I tell anyone who asks me about an emotion they are feeling to go read the Psalms.  In this blessed and simple book of poetry and verse, you can find most every emotion known to humankind, and you can find it not just as an expression of your heart but as a prayer lifted to our God who cares about every emotion you feel.

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Aug. 17 – Thoughts on Psalm 97-99 & Rom. 16

Paul’s list of names that IS Rom. chapter 16 seems to be on par with the more famous Heb. 11, another list of faithfulness.  But while Heb. 11 is a list of familiar characters (from Abraham and David to the apostles themselves), this is a list of names virtually unknown to the modern church.  Besides Phoebe, Pricilla and Aquilla, these are anonymous saints.

Take a look at our anonymous list here.  Names of Greeks and Jews, people named after Roman emperors and Greek gods, good Jewish names like Mary and deeply non-Jewish names like Hermes populate this list.  This is the church of the New Testament, diverse and faithful.

At my last church, we celebrated an anniversary and our tagline for the year was, “Not just for Swedes anymore.”  Some laugh, some grumble, and some take pride in the -son, -quist, – berg, and -strom names in our church and throughout the Covenant, but at 33% ethnic and growing, we as a denomination are also becoming more diverse and faithful.

I like the idea of “anonymous saints”.  Isn’t this the Gospel’s call, to put others above yourself, to serve without comment or pride, to be an anonymous saint?  And this too is counter-cultural in a Facebook world where everyone wants to be seen, heard, and famous.  It is the mega-church pastors who speak at conferences (take the Global Leadership Summit for example, and you’ll find only the big names, though there are even more effective leaders in smaller businesses and churches.)

So today, can you value diversity and faithfulness among God’s people?  Can you hold your tongue when the chance arises to put out your name?  Can you consciously work to be an Anonymous Saint?

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Aug. 16 – Thoughts on Psalm 94-96 & Romans 15:14-33

For the last decade the world has been caught up in Avengers fever.  With the premier of Iron Man in 2008, Marvel created not just a fun movie, or a new way of doing movies, but changed the entire industry and our culture along with it.  We had seldom heard of the concept of a “movie universe” at the time, but today the initials MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) are everywhere, and this spawned other universes, like the DCEU, and even a MonsterVerse where both Godzilla and King Kong, stars of their own original movies, will fight each other.

Yet with an explosion of Universes, Marvel still rules the day, from television to movies to comic books.  And their core is the gathering of heroes called the Avengers.

Reading today’s Psalm, we see that God is the original Avenger.  Not a role we often think God takes in the world.  In fact, we usually pair God with forgiveness and grace, not vengeance, yet the bible tells us again and again that our God is a God of vengeance against the evil in this world.  In fact, the call of this Psalm is for God to avenge His people against the proud and wicked.

With any of these kinds of traits of God, we get very uncomfortable.  We don’t want God to hold people accountable, to pay back evil, or to penalize us for not following the rules.  We want a God who gives suggestions, not commandments, and who will be happy with as little as we are usually willing to give Him.  Until, that is, someone wrongs us.  Then we suddenly want a God of vengeance who punishes those rule-breakers.

For better or worse, God is not bound by what we think He’s like, or our opinion of His rules.  God is God, and He will take vengeance against those He chooses to.  We just have to be careful that this category doesn’t include us.

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Aug. 15 – Thoughts on Psalm 91-93 & Romans 15:1-13

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” – Rom. 15:7

‘Nuff said.

Well, not really.  “Acceptance” is too much of a buzzword in our culture today to let that pass without thought.  It’s socially acceptable to “accept” anyone and everyone, so we in the church, we who are called to be counter cultural, begin looking for the limits of this acceptance.  We try to redefine acceptance.  We try to explain away acceptance.  Why?  Because we want to be faithful to God’s word, to help people come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, and to avoid the sin of allowing sinfulness to go unaddressed.

So where are the limits?  Looking back at Paul’s teaching in Romans 15, the limits seem to be… none.  “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.”  Don’t bear with the weak to please yourself, but rather to please them, to build them up.  We begin relationships by building “the other” up, by pleasing them, by bearing with their weakness.  This, he says in v.5, takes endurance and encouragement.

Now being judgy, condemning the behavior or choices of another, doesn’t take any endurance or encouragement – we’re happy to do that for it’s own sake.  And it surely wasn’t Christ’s attitude toward us.  So let’s quit the judging, the condemnation, and the correction and spend more time accepting others.  If I read my bible correctly, I can trust God to judge, to convict, and to bring repentance and reconciliation and don’t have to do it for Him.

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