Saturday Psalm ~ 11-28-09

The Lord is my strength and my shield;
My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped;
Therefore my heart exults,
And with my song I shall thank Him.
Psalm 28:7

Happy Thanksgiving!

May we all remember to be truly thankful today.

Happy (American) Thanksgiving everybody!

Give Thanks!

Reading through the Psalms, I noticed that there were several verses with the exact same wording, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting.” I pulled up my Bible study program on my computer and found there are five verses in the book of Psalms that say this. Growing up, I was taught that everything God said is important, when He says something twice it’s really important, and if He says it three times it’s really, really important. The Bible repeats these exact words five times! I think God is trying to tell us something through the Psalmist. He is commanding us to be thankful to God because He is good. His everlasting lovingkindness is not only another reason why we should be thankful to God, but it is also one of the many things we should be giving thanks for. God told us this five times, so let’s listen up and give thanks!

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting.”

Psalm 106:1; 107:1; 118:1; 118:29; 136:1(NASB)

Saturday Psalm ~ 11-21-09

I will give thanks to You among the nations, O Lord,
And I will sing praises to Your name.
Psalm 18:49

The Final Thought

In my last post, I wrote about feeding our minds and taking our thoughts captive. I have one more thing to share with you about our thoughts: “The last thing we think about at night is what we sub-consciously think about all night”. If what we are thinking about when we fall asleep is what we think about all night, that means we can control what we think about while we sleep! So, if we fall asleep meditating on Scripture, we will think about those Scriptures all night. What an amazing thought that is! Taking our thoughts captive is not only for while we are awake. We need to take our “sleep thoughts” captive too. What will you be thinking about tonight while you sleep?

Feeding Our Minds

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You are what you eat”. If we eat healthy food, we’ll be healthy, but if we eat junk food, we won’t be healthy. The same is true with our minds. We feed our minds with the things we listen to, watch, and read. What we feed our minds with effects our thoughts, and our thoughts effect our actions. In other words, what we feed our minds on is what shapes who we are. This can be a good, beautiful thing or it can be a bad, ugly thing depending on what we are using to feed our minds. When we read the Bible and meditate on Scripture, we become more like Christ and become beautiful to God. However, if we are reading books, watching movies, and listening to things that stir up wrong thoughts, we will eventually start acting in a way that displeases the Lord. The Bible says we are to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5). That starts with what we are using to feed our thoughts. If we control the types of things we are listening to, watching, and reading, we will be able to better control our thoughts. Does this mean we shouldn’t read anything except the Bible? No. We just need to be aware of what causes us to sin in our thoughts and stay away from those things. We can also give ourselves a standard or guidelines to help us decide whether we should feed our minds with a certain book or movie. Something that has helped me in this area is a standard that is found in the Bible. Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things”. While reading a book or watching a movie I can ask myself, “Is what is happening true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent, and worthy of praise?” If the answer to the majority of these is “no”, then I probably shouldn’t be reading or watching it. I admit I don’t always hold things up to this standard or put them away when they don’t measure up. However, we all need to be striving to take captive our thoughts by controlling what we are using to feed our minds.

Saturday Psalm ~ 11-14-09

I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart;
I will tell of all Your wonders.
Psalm 9:1

Internal Beauty

Everyone loves things that are beautiful, and, as women, we have a desire to be beautiful. The world puts great emphasis on outward beauty. It bombards us with advice on how our hair, teeth, skin, cloths, etc. should look in order to be beautiful. But that beauty is all external. God has a different plan. He wants us to be beautiful on the inside (1 Samuel 16:7). We have to decide who we want to be beautiful to, God, or the world. If we are living for the Audience of One the answer is God. Our desire to be beautiful should be a desire to be beautiful to Him. Being beautiful to God is living a life fully surrendered to Jesus Christ, and striving to be more like Him. It is having a personal relationship with God and making Christ our identity. We must be in The Word, seeking to know the Lord and walk in His ways. Inward beauty isn’t something we can just “spray on” like perfume. It takes time and effort. We should be spending at least as much time getting inwardly beautiful in the morning as we spend getting outwardly beautiful. Of course, it’s God who does the work in our hearts and makes us internally beautiful, but we need to have soft, moldable hearts for Him to work on. Our hearts can be like Silly Putty (soft and easy to shape), or they can be like the hard shell the putty comes in. The difference is between God being able to mold us, and Him having to break us. A beautiful heart is soft and moldable. When we have inward beauty, we are beautiful to God, and our lives bring Him glory. Each of us has a desire to be beautiful. Who do you desire to be beautiful to and what are you going to do with that desire?

Saturday Psalm ~ 11-7-09

I will give thanks to the LORD according to His righteousness

and will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.

Psalm 7:17

Living for the Audience of One

One of our downfalls as humans is worrying about what other people think of us. We are naturally “people-pleasers”. However, it shouldn’t be that way. As Christians, we should be living to please God alone. This is called “living for the Audience of One”. In Genesis 17:1 God told Abram, “I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless”. He didn’t tell Abram to walk before his family or his friends, God told Abram to walk before Him. It didn’t matter what others thought of Abram’s life, only what God thought. The same is true of our lives. What other people think of us can’t change who we are in Christ, so when our identity is in Christ it doesn’t matter what others are thinking or if we’re pleasing them. When we make God our “Audience of One”, it frees our minds from the thoughts that accompany trying to please others, and we are able to focus on becoming more like Christ. In other words, living for the Audience of One gives us the freedom to become the women God wants us to be. We need to determine whether we are living to please God alone, and choose to make Him our Audience of One.

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men?
If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10