January 17th, 2009 Bible Blog

Today's Reading:

Psalms 103-104
Romans 14


My Response:

Well today did not quite work out the way I wanted it to, but I am getting some time right now to blog and I am thankful for that! Today's reading was great and I was immediately touched by it. We began in Psalms 103 where a section of the reading spoke to me:

Psalms 103:2-5
2 Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

Praise the Lord and don't forget His benefits. This sound funny to me because whenever I think of benefits I think of my health insurance which is lousy! What are the benefits though? The Psalmsist here tells us exactly what our benefit of serving God is. He forgives our sins and heals us from sickness and disease, He has redeemed our lives from the pit of hell and graced us with His love and compassion, He is the giver of good things, and He renews us when we need it most. I read this list and it makes me in three verses want to shout before the Lord and praise His name just as this Psalm begins. Our God is so good and He has showered so much upon us. He alone deserves to be praised and honored with our lives.

Psalms 103:8-10
8 The LORD is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.

There are a lot of people that want to say our God is vengeful and mean because they look at a few passages and see the destruction that He allows. However, they neglect the simple fact that God was slow to anger just as verse 8 states. God has been slow to become angry in my life despite my repeditive failures of flesh. And we also must tell people that God has not treated us as we deserve to be treated. What I mean by this is that we are unrighteous and unworthy of His love. What we are worthy of in comparison to Him is His spite, yet God does not deal with us in this way. Our God is a God of grace and mercy. He does not punish us as He could because He loves us dearly and wants us to come to him without the need for punishment.

I am running out of time as Ethan is stirring and I will need to do something to calm him, but to sum up Chapter 14 of Romans I would have to say this is what I get. Don't be judgemental! Some of this seems pretty petty to us like looking down on someone who doesn't eat some kinds of meat, especially given that it is normal in our culture today to eat no meat. But I believe Paul's most basic principla here is that we should not look at how one person is living their life and look down upon it. Christ made all foods clean to all people but if one does not eat of something because they think it is wrong then it is wrong for them and we should not judge that. In fact we should not judge anyone for anything plain and simple!

My Prayer:

Lord please forgive me for not finding more time to write out all that I am learning in Your Word. As You know things have been very busy, but I am thankful that over the past many months I have been able to stay on track with my reading and studying. You have taught me so much more than I could ever write here on this website and I thank You for drawing me close to You.