Psalm 81:10-11
“For it was I, the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it with good things. But no, my people wouldn’t listen. Israel did not want me around.”
We probably all know the feeling when someone doesn’t want us around. It’s painful. For some reason, they don’t come out with it plainly and clearly, but we get the clear impression that we are not welcome. However, it is much more tragic when people decide that they don’t want God around, and that’s how the psalmist described Israel. He was the God who had led them out of slavery in Egypt. He was nothing less than their God of salvation, but time and again they rejected him and refused to listen to him.
We are not just talking about ancient history – we are describing our society today. The majority of people totally ignore God. They don’t want him around because they think he will spoil their fun. They are concerned that they will lose their freedom. However, we need to take every opportunity to inform people that actually he is the God who wants to fill their lives with good things. As the psalmist put it in Psalm 84:11, “The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.” Far from spoiling our fun, God’s desire is to complete our enjoyment of life. Far from limiting our freedom, God enables us to find true freedom for the first time.
The key to receiving God’s blessing is listening. Israel’s refusal to listen to God was at the heart of their downfall. God is kind and merciful, and as soon as we listen to him, he is able to bless us. Listening is much more than simply hearing. The listening that we need to do is all about giving God our full attention and showing our willingness to turn his words into action. When we listen like that, it is like opening our mouths wide, and, when we do, God is then able to fill us with good things.
Question
Why do we often find it hard to listen to God?
Prayer
Lord God our Father, we thank you that you are always looking for an opportunity to bless us. Help us to listen hard to your voice and be willing to turn your words into action. Amen
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3:30
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3:30
November 2nd - Psalm 80:19
Psalm 80:19
Turn us again to yourself, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.
When someone looks at us with their full attention and warmth, it tells us everything we need to know – that we are welcome and that they are on our side. On three occasions in this psalm, Asaph expresses his longing that God’s face would shine upon the people. This psalm was probably written at the time of the fall of Samaria to the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. The destruction of the ten northern tribes left little Judah terribly exposed and the people feared for their lives. In their despair, they turned to God and longed that he would turn his face to them and give them his blessing.
God longed to give his people his blessing. Any loving father does, and the Old Testament makes clear to us that it was consistently God’s desire. Today’s verse reminds us of the Aaronic Blessing which we find in Numbers 6:24-26: “May the LORD bless you and protect you. May the LORD smile on you and be gracious to you. May the LORD show you his favour and give you his peace.” I love every opportunity to use those precious words. They poignantly express God’s desire to smile on us, but he will only do so when our lives are turned towards him in obedience and trust.
Long ago, a friend showed me a picture of her father. He was smiling warmly and she explained that when the photo was taken, he was looking at her. I think that’s a beautiful picture of our God who longs to smile at us and throw his arms around us, but can only do so when our lives are committed to him.
Question
In what way do you believe God smiles on you?
Prayer
Loving God, thank you for your continual love and faithfulness. Help me to turn my full attention to you each day. Amen
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3:10
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3:10
November 1st - Psalm 78:2-4
Psalm 78:2-4
I will teach you hidden lessons from our past – stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children; we will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, about his power and his mighty wonders.
In a speech in the House of Commons in 1948, Winston Churchill paraphrased the philosopher Santayana when he said: “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” This was precisely the concern of Asaph as he wrote this particular psalm, reflecting on five centuries of the life of the people of God. Time and again they had disobeyed God, but he had consistently responded with love and forgiveness. Asaph was concerned that future generations should be reminded of their history, and of the gracious way in which God had provided for his people.
Teaching the next generation about God always needs to be a priority for the Church. I often find that the approach to children’s and youth work is incredibly patronising. I hear people say, “They are the church of tomorrow”, but that precisely misses the point. Children and young people are an integral part of the Church of today, and we will have no future unless we are energetically and enthusiastically reaching out to them with the good news of Jesus.
Passing on the faith to younger generations is always a challenge because the world changes so fast. The ways in which we communicate have changed out of all recognition in the last few years. Twitter (now X) only came into the world in 2006. Snapchat was born in 2011. TikTok arrived in 2016. Billions of messages are sent every year on platforms that didn’t exist only a few years ago. Of course, the good news of Jesus Christ doesn’t change, but how we communicate it needs to, and we must ensure that the resources for this are available. If we fail to do so, the danger is that the sad history of people’s disobedience to God will repeat itself.
Question
What are you doing to ensure that younger generations are hearing the good news of Jesus?
Prayer
Lord God, we praise you for your faithfulness through thousands of years. Help us to be faithful in passing on this wonderful message to others. Amen
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3:43
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3:43
October 31st - Galatians 6:18
Galatians 6:18
Dear brothers and sisters, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.
The story of John Newton is well known. He first went to sea with his father when he was eleven years old and soon became deeply involved in working on slave ships. It was a terrible experience and, after falling out with the crew of the Pegasus in 1745, he even found himself in slavery. Three years later, he was rescued, and on his return home, he read the Bible and became a Christian. He became a Church of England vicar and famously reflected on his conversion in his hymn ‘Amazing Grace’. His life was completely transformed, and he knew that it was entirely down to God’s gracious gift to him. In his latter years, he fought for the abolition of the slave trade.
The apostle Paul often reflected on the amazing grace of God. The word grace takes us right to the heart of God’s nature. He is a generous God who loves to share his gifts with us, and he did that supremely by sending Jesus into the world to be our Saviour. When he wrote to the Ephesians, Paul said: “We praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins…God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God” (Ephesians 1:6-7; 2:8). God has given us the best gift imaginable, and there is nothing we can do to pay for it or deserve it.
If you have lived a good life, I’m delighted, but you will never live a life that is so good that you will deserve or earn salvation. It cannot be done. All we can do is recognise that God is incredibly generous and willing to give salvation to anyone who will receive it. No wonder Paul finishes this letter by longing that his friends in Galatia will experience the grace of God for themselves.
Question
In your own experience, what is so amazing about grace?
Prayer
Loving God, thank you for your incredible generosity. Help me not only to receive your gift but to pass it on to others. Amen
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3:36
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3:36
October 30th - Galatians 6:17
Galatians 6:17
I bear on my body the scars that show I belong to Jesus.
Alan Paton wrote a book called [itals]Cry, the Beloved Country[end itals] (Vintage) and was a fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa. He once wrote about his death: “When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, Where are your wounds? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, Was there nothing to fight for? I couldn’t face that question.” If we are willing to stand up for truth and justice in this world, we will pay a price for it. That was certainly the apostle Paul’s experience. He was thrilled with the new life that Christ had given him, but he had to pay a very high price.
When he wrote to the church in Corinth, Paul recounted the many occasions when he had suffered physically. He states: “I have…been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea” (2 Corinthians 11:23-25). There is no doubt that his scars revealed the depth of his commitment to Christ. When Paul wrote to the church in Rome, he spoke of himself as a slave of Christ, and he knew that slaves were normally branded. The mark of the owner was clearly placed on the body of the slave. Paul’s scars were the clear signs that Christ was his master.
I don’t believe that we should ever deliberately seek to suffer for Christ. However, I do believe that we shouldn’t be surprised when serving him is tough. Perhaps the reason that we haven’t suffered is because we have refused to stand up for the weak and vulnerable in our society. Perhaps it has been easy for us to serve Christ because we have ducked when more challenging roles have been offered to us. We all need to share Paul’s sense of privilege that he was called to do demanding work for the Lord he loved.
Question
How willing are you to do difficult work for Christ?
Prayer
Lord God, I thank you for the privilege of serving you. Help me never to flinch when the going gets tough. Amen
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