Things to Keep in Mind

2 Corinthians 13:11-13 ESV
11 Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet one another with a holy kiss. 13 All the saints greet you.

In the closing of his letters, Paul always gave a final instruction to his readers. This one was no different. In fact we would fare well if we took these things to heart.

• Rejoice. Cease concentrating on what’s wrong around you and take joy that you belong to Jesus!!!
• Restore. It’s much easier to turn your back on someone who has hurt you, but then you lose in the long run. The reward is when you can reconcile after there has been pain.
• Reassure. We all need a little help from our friends. Comforting is called for. Keep the “I told you so” to yourself and truly love your brother.
• Reach agreement. We don’t always see eye to eye. It takes work to agree with one another. Our God is not a God of chaos. He has provided us a point that we can agree on – seek that point.
• Rest in His Peace. I believe the best way to be at peace with one another is to be resting in the peace that passes understanding, the peace that Christ has given us. If you find that you are not at peace with your brothers, look to see if you have peace in Christ.
• Respond to others in Christ. Greet one another. Make sure you acknowledge others. Make them know that they are important to you. This is an area I have to be mindful of – I tend to get task oriented and let people pass me by.

I doubt that any words that Paul wrote at the end of his letters were just tacked on as ornaments. They were and are the word of God. Things that we are challenged to put into practice so that we can truly love one another.

Content with What You Don't Deserve

2 Corinthians 12:10 ESV
For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Many times in our lives we can find us “I don’t deserve this!” Troubles come and we get upset that they have made their way into our lives. Then I start to think of what I do deserve and realize that Christ took it for me. I deserved death for my rebellion (sin) against God.

With that in mind, how do you take the weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities? Do you see these as personal attacks against you? Or as a chance to see God at work? What brings you more joy, to say “I overcame this” or to say “God truly delivered me”? This is the point being made by this scripture. If we see adversities as a chance to see God at work and God demonstrating His love for us, then we have truly become strong.

Why Give?

2 Corinthians 9:6-8 ESV
The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.

Giving, or in our church language “stewardship,” is always a hard subject. Money tends to bring problems. Why? I Timothy 6:10 covers that, even to the fact that some in the ministry have turned from the ministry to money. Which brings us to verse 6 of today’s reading. Do you give little or do you give much? God’s word promises we receive depending on how we give. If you tend not to give much, you need to ask yourself “why?” Is it a distrust of church leaders? Is it that you don’t have much to live on? Is it because you just didn’t know why you had to? I can’t address all of these in this forum without writing pages upon pages, but what I can do is address one point that will cover all of the passage we are reading today: it’s about what you depend on more, either God or money.

First of all, God does not need your money, He just wants your love. God owns everything. (Ps 50:10). Giving to Him is not doing Him a favor. It is a way for us to show where we put our hope, trust and faith. As verse 7 puts it we must decide what we will give. In other words, where is the point that you are joyfully trusting in the Lord to meet your needs? This is not to put guilt on you, but to show that it is a growth process we all go through. Every time we trust Him a little more with what we have (money, talent and time), He grows us a little more.

That brings us to verse 8. When we totally put our trust in the Lord when it comes to finances, He frees us up from the worry of money so we are able to love Him and love others (“abound in every good work”). If you have followed this devotional, my opinion is that good works is our way of showing love – love in action.

Purity Before the King

Psalm 19:12-14 KJV
12 Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.
13 Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
14 Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

Let me start off that we do not have the ability to make ourselves pure before God. Only Jesus Christ can do that. But that should not diminish our desire to be pure before God.

Verse 12 clearly shows that on our own we cannot discern the impurities in our lives. We just can't figure out how much sin we may have. A prayer where we ask God to forgive us where we might have sinned doesn't quite help us in repenting - how do we turn away from something we are unaware of. Psalm 139:23-24 addresses this. Ask God to search your heart and thoughts to find what iniquity might be hiding there. But rely on Him.

Verse 13 is the cry for help in areas that we are aware that we are not strong in. If only we could cry out like this in all areas of our life. But I think you know what areas I mean: the place you go when you are frightened, tired, angry or hurt instead of going to the Father. The activities, thoughts and actions that you know sin against the Father. The things you justify to yourself and others, but know in your heart are not pleasing to God. Be like the psalmist and just give them over to God and seek Him for protection (Ps 46:1).

And finally in Verse 14 just ask God to help guard your heart and your mouth. The desire here is to let all your thoughts and words be pleasing to the Lord.

Yes, it is a tall order for us, but we know that with God all things are possible. And if we rely on Him and His strength, a pure and righteous life is possible.

The Benefits of the Lord

Psalm 19:7-10 KJV
7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple.
8 The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9 The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

LAW, TESTIMONY, STATUTES, COMMANDMENT, FEAR, and JUDGMENTS.

Be honest, when you read those six words, how do you feel? At first glance, these do not bring comfort to me - in fact a little bit of angst is stirred up inside of me. In our modern society, I would say all of these things have been perverted to the point that we just get a little worked up when we see these.

Interestingly enough these are things to be desired. Desired more than fine gold. And they are sweeter than honey. We can look at the bible passage and know that if they are from the Lord they all produce benefits. But, as I would like to point out, we still get a little angst over these areas. How can that be?

It may just be a matter of surrender. When we hear words like LAW, TESTIMONY, STATUTES, COMMANDMENT, FEAR, and JUDGMENTS, we don't always see the Lord blessing us, but rather someone telling us how to live our lives. Someone dictating to us how we are to do things. These attitudes probably pour over to our relationship with the Lord as well. Like Adam and Eve, we may just doubt that the Lord has our best interests at heart. Let me assure you, He does.

I would like you to read the passage above again, but let's do a learning experiment. When you see LAW, TESTIMONY, STATUTES, COMMANDMENT, FEAR, and JUDGMENTS this time, put "surrender to the..." in front of it. After "of the Lord" insert "because it is..." I'm not trying to change His word, but rather helping you to see the benefits of surrendering your life fully to the Lord.

Grace in Giving

2 Corinthians 8:1-7 ESV
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, 2 for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. 3 For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, 4 begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— 5 and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. 6 Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. 7 But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you — see that you excel in this act of grace also.

I notice a few things about the church in Macedonia and their giving.
A) They themselves were in affliction and poverty.
B) They gave beyond their means.
C) They begged for the opportunity to help other Christians.
D) They submitted to God and then to church leaders.
E) They found joy in the act of giving.

With the way our economy is I find this section of scripture very appropriate. The dollar has been losing value overseas long before we here in the states have felt the pinch. What that means is that missionaries that we support have technically have had their funding cut.

This is now our chance to shine, or moreover, to let God demonstrate his awesome power. Can we be like the Macedonians? Can we be like the Philippians? Can we count on God to provide and give to our missionaries overseas while we are in economic unrest?

Look at the qualities I listed. How many of us failed to keep up even during our "wealthy" times? Personally I have found that my giving increased as my salary decreased, but still all the needs of my family have been met. We know that God is in control, we know that He meets our needs, but do we live that way?

Here's the challenge: if you give to missions, try to increase what you give - even if it is a few dollars a week (give up that DD or Starbucks coffee once a week for missions). If you haven't given to missions, please start. Once again, if it's only a few dollars it will help. There are missionaries leaving the field because they can't afford to live in the areas to where they were called.

The Lord Deals with Your Heart

Psalm 18:25-26 KJV
25 With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright;
26 With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.

This passage is pretty straight forward. I believe that it speaks of your attitude and how God responds to your attitude. It shows that if your goal is to be merciful, upright, and pure that the Lord treats you in kind. Not to get too confusing, but I use the word "goal" because I believe that the only way to have those aspects in your life is to have a total reliance on Christ to infuse those qualities in your life.

The last line is a little difficult without looking at the Hebrew or another translation. Both instances of "froward" do not come from the same Hebrew word. The first instance refers to being crooked or deceitful. The second instance refers to struggle, to wrestle or to be unsavoury. With this being the case it makes perfect sense: if you are trying to be deceitful, the Lord is not what is pleasing to you - you will be butting heads with Him.

Now the tough part. Be honest with yourself. Which end are you on? Don't automatically dismiss the "froward" reference because you know the Lord. I say that because we tend to do that when we read His word.

Has there been times when it feels that you've been wrestling with God? Or times that you didn't want anything to do with Him? I believe this scripture reference is a "check yourself" or "red flag" more than a condemnation. If you're struggling with God, check to see what you may be hiding from Him. Then take the time to strive for mercy, righteousness and purity: put on Christ (Rom 13:14).