Ferndale Tonight

Meditate: Acts 2:47

Typically, we go through this and while there’s some extra reading there’s no paperwork.

Today’s different. So get ready to do some writing (or at least some heavy thinking). It’s review time!

See, throughout history one of the ways we praise God is just to review our history with Him. To look back at what God has been up to in our lives, families, or nations and give Him credit, to give Him praise.

If you’ve been doing the “Digging Deeper” segments this week, you’ve already seen some of this. Today it’s your turn. But don’t worry I’m going to walk you through this.

Start simple.

Read Psalm 136 then copy verses 1-3. That’ll get you warmed up.

Now list an attribute or characteristic of God that especially strikes you, and list it.

Begin by saying “You are…” and follow this with the line: “Your faithful love endures forever.“

Next, think of something God has made that you’re particularly amazed by. Begin with “You made…” and follow it with “Your faithful love endures forever.“

Next think of something that God has rescued you from or, like Esther, a disaster that He’s prevented. Write it and follow with “Your faithful love endures forever.“

Name a tough place or time that God got you through. “Your faithful love endures forever.“

Has there been a time God provided for you? List it. “Your faithful love endures forever.“

Something that used to control you that God has freed you from or a particular way that God’s redefined you? “Your faithful love endures forever.“

Keep going. Spend some time thinking about God and let your mind and your heart race. Take your time and enjoy. Make as many lines as you want.

When you’re done you’ll have a psalm of praise, a record of God’s work in your life. Take it out from time to time as a reminder, as an argument against darkness and doubt.

Now for extra credit, get together with your family or a group you’re close to and do this together. Review God’s history with your family or your group. Make some history together and pass it along.

Let me know how it goes.

Pray:
Praise: You are the Lord of Lords, the God of Gods.
Confess: You are faithful through all generations.
Thank: Your love endures forever.
Ask: Fix in my heart and mind the truth of your never-ending love.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 136

Meditate: Acts 2:47

We often forget that our actions speak so loudly. It’s not what we say that shows what we believe most deeply, it’s what we do. For instance, Americans say we value integrity but too often we wink when you cheat on taxes.

It’s common to say that we value worshipping God. But are we really there, ready in our hearts and minds to come before Almighty God and express His worth? (worship = worth-ship, expressing the value of someone)

Are we there as participants or spectators? Are we expressing or holding back? Does it come from my heart or just from my mouth? Some churches are in a running battle over music and form. Is our worship about God or about asserting our preferences? Is it praise or nostalgia? Is it about God or is it about me?

Speaking of battles, are we living in unity with our Christian brothers and sisters? That’s a form of praise. It shows we value God as Father enough to care about getting along with His children.

Are we trusting God with our resources? The Bible spends a lot of time talking about God as Provider. Trusting is praising.

Are we living in obedience to His Word and His Spirit? “I respect you but I won’t listen to you” doesn’t fly anywhere that matters. Why would God accept that kind of praise?

• Is my praise acceptable to God?

Pray:
Praise: You are God. How mighty are Your wonders!
Confess: I often like the idea of following more than really following You.
Thank: You made me and I am Yours.
Ask: Help me to listen to You so that I become a true Jesus follower.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 106

Meditate: Acts 2:47

Jesus tells us that God knows about our need for food, water, shelter, clothing and so forth. He points out that birds and flowers seem to be doing all right and that the same God who looks after them, is looking after us so we should just lighten up about that stuff and focus on God’s Kingdom instead of this world.

David says, “I was young and now I’m old, yet I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”

Now, I’m not as young as I once was either and I know as I write this that some of y’all are already twitching with those “God help’s those who help themselves” thoughts. (It’s like there’s a button that’s pressed every time someone starts talking about trusting God.)

What’s that got to do with “praising God?” Well, we can go down through history looking at nations, individuals, families, tribes, all levels across the board.

And we’ll find history littered with the wreckage of those who thought God needed their help.

Or thought they had a better idea.

And we’ll just as consistently find that those who truly praised God, trusting Him and obeying Him (is there any higher praise?) have been kept and provided for.

See, “God helps those who help themselves” isn’t in the Bible, not even as a general principle. But “Sanctify yourselves-tomorrow the Lord will do great things among you” is. “I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken” is.

“Helping” ourselves distracts us - it makes us compromise - but seeking God’s kingdom enables us to stand before kings and say, “We do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O King, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, praise God for what He’s doing right now, and don’t get wound up about what may or may not happen.

God, our God, the one worthy to receive all praise, glory, and honor, has it covered.

• How do my actions praise God?
• Am I trusting and obeying or am I “helping?”

Pray:
Praise: You are my Light and my Salvation. No other God can save.
Confess: I have trusted in my own hands more than Your love.
Thank: You will never leave me or forsake me.
Ask: I believe in You, help my unbelief. Fix my mind on You.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 107

Meditate: Acts 2:47

While on this run about ancient history, here’s my own two cents: over 30 years ago I became a Christian. Time sure flies…

So to build on praising God for sending people to us with the Gospel, and for God’s faithfulness in watching over us, I would add my thanks for God’s love.

I agree with St. Patrick that God has “guarded me, and comforted me as would a father his son.” As time has gone on, the reality of Jesus’ promise that He would never leave us or forsake us has become more intense. Psalm 118 says:

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;
His love endures forever.
In my anguish I cried to the LORD,
and He answered by setting me free.
The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.
What can man do to me?
I was pushed back and about to fall,
but the LORD helped me.
The LORD is my strength and my song;
He has become my salvation.
I will give You thanks, for You answered me;
You have become my salvation.
You are my God, and I will give You thanks;
You are my God, and I will exalt You.
Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;
His love endures forever.

That pretty much sums it up.

• What’s my experience of God’s love?

Pray:
Praise: Lord, You are good and Your love endures forever!
Confess: You are always more ready to hear than I am to call to You.
Thank: I was pushed back and about to fall and You saved me.
Ask: Draw me closer; keep me in Your love.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 118

Meditate: Acts 2:47

If you’ve got a certain kind of calendar, you might have noticed the word Purim listed among the holidays. To learn the origins of this holiday you have to go back to the Bible’s Book of Esther.

The Jewish people had been conquered and forcibly resettled. Esther is a Jewish orphan who’s being raised by her cousin and finds herself the winner in a “beauty contest” to choose the replacement for a disgraced queen. She’s just settling in at the palace when the king’s right hand man sets in motion a plan to have all the Jews killed and their property seized.

Thanks to her cousin, Esther learns of the plan. She fasts and asks all the local Jews to do the same.

With time running out, Esther risks her life to expose the plot, the crisis is averted, and the evil guy gets what’s coming to him. (Makes you want to read the book, doesn’t it?)

Purim is celebrated as a reminder of how God intervened to save His people.

Esther and Mordecai, her cousin, demonstrate that God always makes a way for His people. Mordecai says it best when he points out that Esther was brought to the throne “for such a time as this.” Just in time, God brought a lowly outsider, a Jewish orphan, to the throne of the most powerful nation on earth.

Praise God for His faithfulness!

• How has God shown His faithfulness in my life?
• Have I been put anywhere “for such a time as this?”

Pray:
Praise: Your love endures. You are faithful throughout all generations.
Confess: I focus on my own plans and overlook the grace of Your will.
Thank: You keep watch over me in all my ways.
Ask: Let Your faithfulness guide my actions and comfort my fears.
Digging Deeper: Psalm 117; Esther (at least start reading it.)

Originally published on March 17 — Saint Patrick’s Day!

Meditate: Acts 2:47

He grew up hearing stories of raiders who destroyed villages and hauled the people away to “the ends of the earth.” When he was 16 it happened to him.

A cruel master put him to work as a shepherd. Alone there with the sheep, he began to pray.

And God heard him. He later wrote, “There the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my abjection, and mercy on my youth and ignorance, and watched over me before I knew Him, and before I was able to distinguish between good and evil, and guarded me, and comforted me as would a father his son.”

After about eight years he escaped, returned home, and entered the ministry.

Years later when he’s in his forties, established and “successful,” God calls him to return to the people who’d enslaved him.

He’s rich but he sells it all, goes back, and over the next 30 years baptizes perhaps 100,000 converts (he lost count), brings human sacrifice to an end in that country, and becomes the first Christian leader to go on record against slavery. (He throws a guy out of the Church for slave-trading.)

By the time of his death he had established over 200 churches and launched a missionary movement that many credit with keeping Christianity alive through the Dark Ages.

In fact, if you trace your Christian roots back through “the people who told the people who told the people who told you” there’s a pretty good chance you’d eventually run into this guy.

So join me in praising God for the heritage of St. Patrick and all the other people God has used to bring us the Good News about the Kingdom of Heaven.

• Who brought the Good News to me?
• Where is God calling me to take the Good News?

Pray:
Praise: You are the Merciful One. You don’t treat us as we deserve.
Confess: I ignore You in good times and cry out when times are bad.
Thank: You did not abandon me in my sins but reached out in Your love.
Ask: Turn me to You with all my heart that I might serve Your people.

Digging Deeper: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 10:1-17

Meditate: Acts 2:46

I don’t know about your experience but in mine it’s no big deal to find people who can tolerate one another long enough to slurp down a meal. It’s something else altogether to find folks who can do it with “glad and sincere hearts.” (NIV)

From the different translations of this sentence, a sense of celebration comes out. Not an outright party but a “hey, we’re really glad y’all are here” kind of lightness and hospitality.

This is pretty amazing when I take into account that this Church wasn’t just your typical home group. Remember they had over 3,000 people in the Church already. There’s not really anything said about the logistics of this; whether this is two’s and three’s or 50’s and 100’s we don’t know.

Another thing that’s challenging is the image here of what the group dynamics folks call “assimilation.” Remember that “over 3,000″ number I just threw out? We know that because of the reference in the previous paragraph that “about 3,000″ were believed and were baptized on that first day. These “hearts” were “glad and sincere” enough to absorb this influx in genuine fellowship. Present company excepted of course, but if this happened in many churches we’d spend all our time sizing one another up to figure out who the “newbies” were.

In my mind, I hear the voices of pastors I heard long ago who insisted that if you truly loved God, you’d be pretty excited about His family, the Church. And, they went on, if your heart wasn’t in spending time with the family maybe it’s because you’re not a part of it.

I don’t know that I’d totally agree with that but I do know this. My wife is enough to bring my mother-in-law and I together. Any one who’s survived boot camp seems to be able to find plenty to talk about with a fellow veteran. An American can hear an American accent on a street in a foreign country and that common citizenship is often enough reason to talk on a level you’d never reach on a city bus.

And if all that’s enough, then maybe we Jesus followers, we fellow adoptees of the Lord Almighty, ought to be able to muster “glad and sincere hearts” in one another’s company.

• Tell us how you really feel. How often do glad and sincere apply to my attitude about fellowship?
• Is my “heart” generally “glad and sincere” or do I save that for certain people only?

Pray:
Praise: You are the Lord, the Almighty, the Everlasting Father.
Confess: I’m not always glad or sincere in the presence of Your people.
Thank: You have given us Your family to love, serve and watch over us.
Ask: Fill my heart with Your love for Your family.

Digging Deeper: Psalm 133

Meditate: Acts 2:46

It’s interesting to think that the life of this fledgling Church centered around daily gathering. It’s not as if none of them worked.

Life was certainly hard enough in those times. Virtually everything had to be done by hand. Grinding your own flour to bake your own bread wasn’t just a trendy hobby.

No central heat, A/C or indoor plumbing. A horse and cart was the upper end of transportation technology.

Passing the word meant just that-messages still involved real messengers.

What passed for a “high standard of living” is something you’d have to go to the most impoverished third world country to see in our world. Crime and a lack of street lights meant that it was a really good idea to be home at a very reasonable hour.

And still, this time of Word, prayer, and community still rated daily attention. Somehow they find room in their schedules.

Now put away your sackcloth and ashes. I’m not asking you to punish yourself at how “unspiritual” we’ve become.

See, what I get out of this is that they used the methods common to their culture to express how Jesus had joined them together. Going daily to the Temple showed the place God had in their lives. In a world with no telephones or email, meeting up was the standard way to really communicate. Taking meals together was something only families (or people “like family”) did; you didn’t’ bring strangers to your table.

But the fact is that we wouldn’t dream of meeting down at the church every day or of taking over a different restaurant for lunch each day just so we can stay in touch. And it’s easy to just say that times have changed and move along without asking what this level of commitment to God and our brothers and sisters would look like in our culture.

I once heard a guy say that if you’d show him your checkbook and your calendar, he could tell you what mattered to you. Well, I often hear people say that they’re longing to see God move in our day as He has in days past. Maybe you’ve even said this so let me ask…

• Is there a place in my schedule for God?
• Who does Jesus’ join me together with?
• How can I meaningfully communicate with my Christian brothers and sisters?
• How can we show our world that we’re God’s family?

Pray:
Praise: You are the Lord of All, including time and culture.
Confess: Independence is a hard attitude for me to overcome.
Thank: You have given me brothers and sisters all over the world.
Ask: Teach me how to communicate the Truth of You to my world.

Digging Deeper: Philippians 2:1-18