Something to think about as you start a new week

Monday Meditations are quick posts designed to get you thinking about God. They provide a fresh perspective as you jump into your routine.

Don’t Receive His Grace in Vain

By Paula

We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2 Corinthians 6:1

The grace God gives us because of Jesus Christ is a precious gift. We can’t begin to place a value on it.

Sometimes, though, we don’t value it. For example . . .

His grace gives us talents we don’t use.
Opportunities we don’t take.
Ministries we avoid.

His grace provides forgiveness we don’t receive.
Guidance we don’t follow.
Standards we don’t embrace.

His grace affords us a position we don’t aspire to.
Access we don’t avail ourselves of.
Intimacy we don’t enter into.

Paul pleads, “Don’t receive the grace of God in vain.”
Don’t squander it.
Don’t ignore it.
Don’t waste it.

Like Obadiah

By Paula

And Ahab had called Obadiah, who was in charge of his house. (Now Obadiah feared the LORD greatly. For so it was, while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the LORD, that Obadiah had taken one hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave, and had fed them with bread and water.) 1 Kings 18:3-4

His name means servant of God, worshipper of God.

This is not Obadiah the prophet.
He is the chief of staff for the most ungodly couple to reign over Israel – Ahab and Jezebel.

How could he, in good conscience, work there?
How could he serve them, know they not only were introducing idolatry into Israel setting them up for God’s judgment, but they were massacring the prophets, the preachers, the spokesmen of the living God?

The royal couple was systematically trying to silence the voice of God in their society.
It was a dangerous, fearful time to serve Jehovah.

I don’t know if Obadiah feared Ahab and Jezebel.
I do know he feared the LORD.
He used his position to protect and provide for others who feared the LORD.
He worked behind the scenes. Unknown. Unheralded.

What if we were like Obadiah?
What if we feared the LORD greatly regardless of the culture?
What if we viewed our situations as an opportunity to quietly, but actively, further God’s kingdom?

Maybe, like Obadiah, we’d see the drought end.

He is the Lord

By Paula

And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians. Exodus 3:7-8

He has seen
He saw the breakup.
He saw your dream postponed or given up.
He saw your tears.

He has heard
He heard the diagnosis.
He heard about the layoffs and cutbacks.
He heard your cries.

He knows
He knows what you really meant when your words were misunderstood.
He knows how hard you tried.
He knows your frustration and your fears.

And He has come down
He’s not a spectator.
He left His throne to walk beside us through it all.
He came to deliver us.

He is the Lord.

Remember Us

By Paula

In the United States, we recognize today as Memorial Day, a day to honor and remember those who have given their lives as part of their military service. This is not a dusty old remembrance. It is as fresh as today’s news. Honor them. Love them. Love the ones they leave behind.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. John 15:13

The young dead soldiers do not speak.

Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
Who has not heard them?

They have a silence that speaks for them at night,
And when the clock counts.

They say: We were young. We have died.
REMEMBER US.

They say: We have done what we could,
But until it is finished it is not done.

They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished,
No one can know what our lives gave.

They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
They will mean what you make them.

They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for,
Peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
It is you who must say this.

We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.

We were young, they say. We have died;
REMEMBER US.

Archibald MacLeish,
1892-1982, American Poet

A Benediction: 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

By Paula

Paul includes a beautiful benediction in 2 Thessalonians.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

Stop and think about the words.

Jesus our Savior and God our Father. Each loved us. (Loved us. We could stop and consider that for a very long time.)

His everlasting (won’t run out or get used up) consolation (comfort, removal of our sense of grief or loss)

And good hope (one that will be realized)

By grace (just because He wanted to, not because He was required to)

May He who has already given all this…

May He comfort your hearts (when we’re worried or distressed)

And establish you (make us unshakeable)

In every good word and work (So our belief in His truth is unwavering and our commitment to serving Him is unbounded)

AMEN!

Is there someone you can pray this benediction for?

God Stills the Roaring

By Paula

O God of our salvation, … who stills the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, Psalm 65:5-7 ESV

Jesus literally stilled the seas in the New Testament.
But many times, poetically, the sea represents confusion, disorder, and chaos.

Political unrest.
Social upheaval.
Personal conflict.

In all of those things, it is God who stills.
It is God who brings order.
It is God who delivers us.

I don’t know what today holds for you.
I don’t know what it holds for me either.

But I know there is nothing God cannot still
Or calm,
Or deliver me from.

Don’t Receive His Grace in Vain

Like Obadiah

He is the Lord

Remember Us

A Benediction: 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

God Stills the Roaring

Encounters Series

Covenant of Trust Series

Foundations Series