Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – March 7, 2018
How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you. 2 Samuel 7:22
As a child I can remember praying over meals, “God is good, God is great”, and singing, “How Great Thou Art”” Respect and recognition of God was assumed, there was no room for pride. But along life’s journey I noticed a national shift toward dismissing, ignoring and otherwise denying the Lord, His greatness and His glory, instead of embracing the self-evident need for a Savior, because of our sins. Some labeled Christians criminal, even blamed for our problems. Really? How did we get here? What do we need to do? We need to make God great again! He is already great with or without our acknowledgement, but for our own good we must love and revere Him.
Even though King David was the most powerful person in the land, he humbly acknowledged his Sovereign Lord who reigned over all mankind. His reverent prayer recognized God as responsible for his position and the provider of national security and personal liberties. The Lord’s greatness overshadowed and captivated the one-time shepherd on the hillsides of Israel, who now, thanks to God’s sovereign plan, shepherded a nation. The earthly king prayed to and worshiped the King of Kings because of his desperate dependence on the Lord. David made God great, because He was great. The favor of the Lord rested on him, because he rested in Him!
“Ezra praised the Lord, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground” (Nehemiah 8:6).
How can we make God great again? One way is to value life created in His image. As long as the life of a baby in the womb is threatened, so all life outside the womb will be threatened. I wonder if school shooters might show greater restraint if our culture embraced all life as worthy of life—all life: the mentally ill, the handicapped, the diseased and those at the point of death. When we make God great again we will emulate His high value of human life—all created in His image.
How can we make God great again? When we are broken over what breaks His heart. Prayer-less and proud pew sitters break God’s heart. Will we as the people of God humble ourselves and pray, confessing our sins and our desperate dependence on the Lord Almighty? Broken families break God’s heart. Are we broken over the epic breakdown of the family to the point of strengthening our families and practically resourcing other families? Worship of affluence breaks God’s heart. Are we broken over greed’s control and compelled to radical generosity? We can make God great again by publicly and privately honoring the majestic name of Almighty God!
“Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all” (1 Chronicles 29:11).
Prayer
Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth, I honor your holy name, in Jesus’ name, amen.Application
How can I engage by serving in an area of need that breaks God’s heart?Related Reading
Deuteronomy 9:26; Psalm 69:13; Daniel 9:4; Hebrews 13:20; 1 John 3:20Post/Tweet today
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God is the same today as he was yesterday as he will be tomorrow.
Boyd your communications are always excellent but this one I belive is the most important and profound of all. Our contry and world is in a race to a secular life. As the race momentum builds so does the hatred, shootings, etc grow. Yet so few will look at the correlation. How much more suffering does there need to be before America wakes up to this reality? Our times today so much mirror the times of Christ and the hate for him. 2,000 years and little has changed with humanity. A broken world it is and always will be. Thank God for our savior and people like you that keep his word alive and in front of those that will see the truth.
Thanks Mark hope you and your family are well. In Christ, Boyd
Dear Theodore,
Thank you for taking the time to reach out to us after reading “Make God Great Again”. You are so right when you say “God is the same today as HE was yesterday as He will be tomorrow”. I rejoice in that fact and I am so grateful for His Holy “Consistency”!
This devotional has some powerful reminders for all of us:
“Will we as the people of God humble ourselves and pray, confessing our sins and our desperate dependence on the Lord Almighty?” and
“When we make God great again we will emulate His high value of human life – all created in His image”.
My prayer is that these statements and the others in this valuable lesson stay in my heart and that we as a community of believers rise up and join the effort to make God great again, especially in the eyes of unbelievers. Theodore, I feel a commitment that needs to be re-energized!
So grateful for you, my fellow wisdom hunter!
Rejoicing in the greatness of our Heavenly Father,
Gwynne
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Isaiah 61:1-2