August 17 thru 23, 2009

Monday, Joshua 24:15; In her family worship workshops my wife often tells participants about sitting with her family in the pew at her father’s funeral. She said that as I was delivering the message the question came to her mind, “Is this my faith or is it my father’s faith?” After pondering this question she realized that she had taken the strong faith her father had imparted to her and used it as the foundation upon which to build her own faith. In our text for today, Joshua challenges the people to move beyond blindly accepting the faith of their forefathers and establish their own faith based on their experience with the Lord. While we can be thankful for the faith of our parents and grandparents, we must, like the people of Joshua’s day choose to embrace it as our own--in all its newness and freshness (for even the faith “delivered to the saints” is made new by the applications to the challenges and temptations of each generation). That is the greatest choice we can make in life because it will serve as the guiding principle for all our life choices. Choose this day whom you will serve

Tuesday, Hebrews 11:24,25; When I was growing up, a favorite phrase of preachers was “One of the greatest lies of the devil is…” and then they’d add something connected to their theme. We don’t hear that phrase too much in these “more sophisticated” times, but if there is a “greatest lie of the devil” these days it would have to be that once a person makes the decision to follow God’s way their lives will be trouble free. There are times when making choices based on our faith can cause us to become the subject of ridicule, cost us friends and even our jobs. Now, I’m not advocating that we go out of our way to create situations where we can claim we are being “persecuted” (I’m thinking of a man I once counseled who lost his job because he refused to remove a huge Bible from his desk at work—as Jesus said of the Pharisees, “he had his reward”), but we need to realize that there are some things about which we should not compromise our choices. The wording of today’s text indicates that Moses “refused” to be called a son of Pharaoh’s daughter, making a choice to suffer with the people of God. The use of the word choosing indicates that he understood the ramifications of his decision, weighed the alternatives and based his decision on long-term rather than short-term gratification. Making good choices doesn’t always lead to short-term gratification, but in the long-term they prove to be right decision for all concerned. (Moses) choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin

Wednesday, Isaiah 66:4; The greatest truth about human existence is that the Good Lord created us with a free will. We are endowed with the capacity of choice from birth until death. Just as it is not enough to choose to obey the traffic laws one day each week and sporadically obey them the other six, it is not enough to choose to follow Jesus teachings one day out of seven and occasionally follow them the rest of the week. To have God’s peace, power, and guidance through the highs and lows of this life, as well as the assurance of life in the hereafter we must daily make choices consistent with our faith. (I, God) will bring upon them what they fear because when I called, no one answered…they did not listen…(they) chose what did not please me.

Thursday, Psalm 119:30; We live in a house that has a real front porch, not one of those little concrete slabs in front of the door, but a real porch complete with steps and pillars. On the porch are several plants which according to my wife must be watered daily. For some reason the task of watering them has been assigned to me. I figured that it wouldn’t matter whether they were watered everyday or every other day, but I quickly discovered three things. First, wives have a built in sensor that says “He didn’t water today” (which can destabilize the blissful existence of a husband). Second, because the porch faces the west the plants dry out and do require water on a daily basis. Third, the plants thrive better when watered daily. Therefore, I choose to water them faithfully every morning while my coffee is brewing. At first, I had to remind myself (thank God for sticky notes) to water, but now it has become a habit. Today’s text tells us that the psalmist has made a deliberate decision to be faithful to God’s truth when making choices. No doubt when he first made this resolution he had to stop to remind himself of his decision, but after time it became second nature for him to make his choices faithful to God’s ways. When we habitually make value judgments and choices based on God’s truths our lives become stabilized and our faith becomes firmer. The KJV uses the word “truth”, however the Hebrew word carries a connotation of faithfulness to truth. I have chosen the way of faithfulness…

Friday, Psalm 119:173; Several years ago, I had a dear attorney friend who was captivated by the life of Winston Churchill. In addition to reading everything he could get his hands on written by or about Churchill, he had a notebook in which he had collected various sayings by England’s wartime leader. He once confided that when he faced particularly difficult situations, he would shut himself in his home office and read from this notebook. “I know it wasn’t the ghost of Churchill” he told me, “But pondering his courageous words and sage advice, it is almost as if the great man is there to help me stay my course.” I think about his comment every time I read today’s text, because in essence what the psalmist is saying is that he has chosen to collect the “sayings” of God (the word precept implies the collected mandates of God), and therefore expects to find God’s help in time of puzzlement and difficulty. In order to be faithful to God in our choices shouldn’t we choose to take the time to collect and internalize the “sayings” of our Heavenly Father? I have chosen your precepts

Saturday, Proverbs 22:1; In its essence the choices we make as to our attitudes, actions and reactions toward other people and the circumstances of life determine not only our relationship to God, but what people think about us and how we will be remembered when we cross to the other side of this time/space continuum called eternity. One of the wonderful things about human existence is that with God’s help, we can “teach an old dog new tricks”. While we can’t go back and undo all the wrong choices we’ve made in our lives, we can decide today to begin making better choices. We can choose to be more loving, kind, generous and concerned toward others. We can make the deliberate choice to begin taking time to collect and meditate on the precepts of God. We can choose to establish a closer relationship between our professed faith and our daily lives. In other words, we can choose how people think of us in this life and after we are gone. That’s what the teacher is telling us in today’s text. While he applies it to unethical gain we could apply it to almost any decision we have to make. A good name is to be chosen rather than…

Sunday, Isaiah 7:16; Several years ago, my wife and I spent several days with our daughter’s family. I’m an early riser and as I enjoyed my first cup of coffee of the day my youngest granddaughter padded into the kitchen followed by her older sister. Both told me they were hungry. Peering into the refrigerator I told them that all I saw was chocolate pie. My oldest granddaughter (then six years old) told me that wasn’t breakfast food, but the youngest one (then three years old) said it sounded like breakfast to her. Both children love chocolate but they made different choices because of their age difference. As I’ve grown older I have come to realize that the real challenge of parenting (and grand parenting) is teaching children to make right choices. Based on the words of this ancient text, which most consider to foretell the coming of Jesus, even the child Jesus had to learn to make good choices. Unfortunately, many times as adults we forget to take the time to weigh our choices careful. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good...