Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Psalm 39... Selah

"Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; surely every man AT HIS BEST is a mere breath. Selah." Psalm 39:5 (Emphasis mine)

One of my favorite things about God's word is that no matter how many times you read through scripture, it can hit us in different ways and at deeper levels depending on our need in that moment. It is a living word that is there for us, and I love it.

This is what struck me today when reviewing yesterdays sermons in light of our small group study for next week, at his best. Even when I am feeling good and life is at its best, it is still just a breath.
Today, as I was laying down for my nap, I was having attitude issues. My pity party stems back to just this feeling that my life has not been going according to my plan, and therefore I am frequently taking out my frustrations on people who do not deserve it. As I was stewing today, I decided I needed to work on this study. Today we were supposed to meditate on Psalm 39. When I got to this (at his best) it really struck me; if even my best days are a mere breath, how insignificant a time is my bad times?

It makes it easier to relax when I am feeling bad about my day to put into perspective how short the time is compared to the eternity of great time ahead of me.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

A quick blurb on love

God loves you... its easy to brush that off, especially depending on what you believe about God. Its easy for me to just gloss right over it... but that does not make it untrue, or insignificant. It is also easy to brush off in light of what is defined as love anymore. It is easy to look at the cheap, dirty, filth that the world calls love and allow that to taint and diminish the true meaning of the word. Love is not a simple emotion, and it is not propagated by feeling. Love is something much deeper, it is something inherent in our souls. Our core being craves love because that is how we were created. We seek out love in this world because of that inner-longing for what we know we need. It is easy to understand why we are so easily tempted into things that promise us love.

God IS love... To say that we crave love, is to say that we crave God. We were created to bring glory to God, and to be with Him. Due to original sin and the fall of man, we are destined to be separated from God, and thereby, love. We are left with an emptiness and a longing for the thing we know we are missing. We recognize that absence as a need for love. What we forget is that God is love. We have that feeling of need because we need God! Satan has perverted this feeling in us, through sin. We no longer understand love, or God. We get trapped in the worldly version of love, believing that it will complete us. Only God completes us.

I realize that ultimately those two paragraphs say the same thing, and I am totally ok with it. Being someone who has fallen prey to Satan's luring to worldly replacements of love, I thank God that He doesn't give up on us. Never forget that God loves you, and God is love...