Tuesday's Blog - Love your enemy!

Tuesday’s Blog – Love your enemy!

Proverbs 25:21-23 – If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for so you will reap coals of fire on his head and the LORD will reward you.

Bible Challenges and Comments

Most of the book of Proverbs is foreign to our thinking today, so much so that if we are not careful we find ourselves cursing our friends and running from our enemies. Our understanding of living life is crushed by the human reasoning by relaxing the proven standards or statutes found in the Living Word of God. We see this in churches across this land and I suppose this is where it all begins. Churches teach love without discipline and they teach work without faith.

For my thinking in this we have enemies because they are hungry, they are hungry for the food that produces relationships (physical and spiritual). Our churches have lost the focus of preparing a table of showbread. That word is interesting and can mean various things related to food (bread) but the thought that I picked out of it this morning from Strong’s Concordance is the following. Shew = bread; and Bread = that endures.

Solomon then in Proverbs feeds his readers with the challenges in the skill of living with thoughts that fill our hearts and minds with knowledge that endures. This same principle should be directed at our enemies too in that we who are fed should feed our enemies. The question then pops up. “Who then is the enemy of the saint?” Could it be the one who is not a saint?”

Then we have the thought of placing coals of fire on his or her head to reap a reward from the LORD for this action. If you have never used wood to heat your home you could miss Solomon’s intended challenge and the LORD’s reward. A person in need of food and water is no doubt in need of comfort in his or her home. They suffer the comforts of even the most trivial kind. Yet trivial is what trivial is and comfort is what comfort is. If you are cold and cannot warm up it is a serious misery.

In the day when Solomon reigned King over Jerusalem and in the day when Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem there were only wood stoves to keep the family warm. If a family is destitute of food and drink, they would also be cold in the fall, winter and spring months. So again the enemy, when in need may come and ask for a little fire to take home as his or her fire has gone out.

If you have ever carried the ashes to your dumping spot, you know you must wait several hours before you do this as the ambers will ignite and a fire will start if you dump the ash too soon. The KING is coming, did you read and hear? The KING is coming and He knows those who are HIS and HE rewards those who are obedient to HIS WORD.

Matthew 25:35-40 – for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.' Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?' And the King will answer and say to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'

Our churches today are in Spiritual decay, we are works minded instead of faith minded and the works we do are within the church rather than outside where the enemy today says. “Leave me alone now, I have learned to live without God, so don’t bother me with words of good news since I do not see this in your daily actions with me. You are much like I am, backbiting and judgmental so please leave me alone and I when I need something; I will just take it from you!”

Have yourself a day with God in it… if He is not in your day you will be lacking the joy of living!

Tuesday’s Blog – Love one Another; a command

Tuesday’s Blog – Love one Another; a command

Proverbs 18: 24 – A man (person) who has friends must show ( or may come to ruin) him or herself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Bible Challenges and Comments

We travel over words in the Holy Bible like we travel over the highways to and from work; this speed also affects our relationships with friends and relatives. We desire friendship and fellowship and sometimes we even demand it in ways that may come to ruin. Reaching out to the people in your life can be exhausting and discouraging and I believe we have all been on one or both of those paths from time to time.

Try to be friendly with someone and just note this, if you are a new neighbor on the block, a new student in school or a new person in church; people seem to fall all over you. Not to be a friend but to find out about you and to see if you fit somewhere in their future moments of time. People are quick at this, if you fail at being in their next moment they will find a way to escape and “poof” they are gone.

It is not a matter of meeting your need of friendship, that would be reaching out and these days we do not have “long arms” if you cannot tell; this is to me is a serious problem in our country, community and church. To relate to all three this morning would be time consuming, so I will focus the remainder of this devotional blog on the “church”.

I am not sure what you would call this statement. “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” Proverbs 17:17 especially when you connect it to brothers and sisters in Christ. We could call it an “oxymoron” but that would be foolish, we could say that it is two statements that contradict each other, but separate it from the definition of oxymoron. This then for me is the closer “human reasoning” meaning. Thus the statement is like putting on two socks that do not match. Were it not for my friend and wife I would never wear matching socks.

Friendship and Fellowship in the Living Word of God is joined together by one word, and that word is “Love” note with me; John 15:9-17 – "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.

It is time for the saints of God to back off on the accelerator of living and begin to enjoy the love of God once again. God the Father loves His Son, Jesus. Jesus brought that love to earth and if you are a believer in Jesus, He showed His love relationship with His Father to you and you accepted it and you like me would say that you abide in His commandment of Love (1 John 3:11) and I ask you?

What is the burden of relationship to one another? It can only be love; love that we refuse to give to another because of one or two related reasons, (1) we are not obeying the command to “LOVE” or (2) we do not understand the sacrificial love of God who laid down His Life for His friends. Here is a thought… you cannot choose your friends (true friends) but like Jesus they must choose you and when they do, you must (or come to ruin) show yourself friendly.

Hard to understand, yet here then is how it works; Jesus simply says “These things I command you, that you love one another.” Friendships develop out of love.

Hebrews 9:28 - so Christ was offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him shall He appear a second time without sin unto salvation.  Jesse <><

Tuesday’s Blog – Mirror, mirror James 1:23-25.

Tuesday’s Blog – Mirror, mirror James 1:23-25.

Psalm 119:104-105 – Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way. Your Word is a Lamp to my feet and a Light to my path.

Bible Challenges and Comments

When reading Psalm 119 we seldom break one section of eight verses from the other. Mostly we have been taught to keep these segments together and there are several reasons for it. One is that all twenty-two segments represent the Hebrew alphabet in that each section begins with the letter represented. As in verses 97-104 begin with the Hebrew (mem) or our letter (m) and verses 105-112 begin with the Hebrew (nun) or our letter (n).

Another factor is that each segment of eight verses is one day in the life of the psalmist who may have been Jeremiah as the Psalm has no author except the LORD God. During the Babylonian takeover of Israel the healthy men and women were captured and brought to Babylon, they had to walk and the trip took twenty two days. Therefore it is taught by some to be the personal thoughts of Jeremiah the Prophet as he made this journey with the captives.

Also, if these are the thoughts of Jeremiah that each eight verses represent the watch of the day as in one verse represents three hours. The Jewish day began; called the 1^st watch, the setting of the sun to 9pm. The 2^nd watch began at 9pm and lasted to midnight. The 3^rd watch from midnight to 3am, the 4^th from 3am to sunrise. Then repeated again; the 1^st watch, sunrise to 9am, 2^nd watch, 9am to noon, 3^rd watch, noon to 3pm and the 4^th, 3pm to sunset.

With these thoughts in mind the Psalm helps me to focus on personal application of the Word of God in the life of a prophet in the Old Testament. Yes these men were men just as you and I and these men were just as those men in the New Testament who were first disciples, then apostles, then church fathers and so on. They were family men just as we are, they had wives and children and God was and is even now their God. That would be the same God that you and I worship today. Hebrews 13:8 – Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.

Also I would like to point out that these men were employed, the apostle Paul was a tent maker, most of the disciples were fishermen and one was a tax collector. And if you study the Word; you know this as well as I do. The Old Testament men were farmers, shepherds, kings, priests and military leaders. In case you may be wondering who these are; they are Jeremiah, David, Joshua and Moses. Of course the lists are not inclusive. So then there is little wiggle room for you and me. We cannot say; “well these men had a special relationship with God, you know; one that is set apart and God has not called me!

Really? Are you not set apart too, are you not called of God to be a representative of the Gospel of God. Has not God known and fashioned you before you were delivered from your mother’s womb? Psalm 139:13-18. And yet you are right! There is a difference in that you are much like me and of course I just may be writing to myself as a challenge in that there is a difference in that most people of God today, as they live through the watches of the day we are not communing with our God. Like the apostle Paul has said; rejoice always, pray without ceasing; do we? 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17.

For example; from 3pm to sunset there few thoughts in my mind other than the approaching evening meal. “Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.” Then of course after the evening meal you will seldom find me saying to the LORD, “Your Word is a Lamp to my feet and a Light to my path”. Do you get the difference here? Well now just wait awhile and then when we are captive and our homeland is taken away, we may just seek the lamp for our feet. It is a matter of choice is it not? I chose just as you do, to commune with God or to commune with self, sadly in today’s Christendom we spend far too much time communing with self.