[Monday's Devotional] - Old Hundredth

Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his,
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”
Psalm 100: 3 [ESV]

 

My day now starts differently to how it used to. I seem to have finally cracked daily Bible reading by doing it first thing in the morning.  My alarm rings at 6 and I pick up my Bible before I do anything else.  Most days my prescribed reading takes in a Psalm.  It is interesting to note, when reading them, how often they sound familiar.  These ancient hymns have been used down the millennia to inspire Christian worship songs.  So I thought that this week, we would look at some of the Psalms that more modern Christians have found to particularly speak to their generations.

 

I was brought up in a very traditional church with a choral tradition.  I can well remember singing ‘All people that on earth do dwell’ which is based on Psalm 100 as a teenager.  The church seemed to fill with the sound of choir and organ from the moment that the hymn started.  You can listen to a recording of this old hymn by clicking on the link below.  But before you lose your church in the glorious choral music, or not depending on your taste, I want to think for a few moments with you about verse 3.

 

Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his,
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

 

Now read the verse again.  Go on do it.  Have you read it properly?  Ok, I will take my teacher hat off now.  But the point is obvious, whatever you are facing today, rest in this truth.  God is God.  End of!  He made us and we are his.  There is nothing heading in our direction today that can separate us from him because he made us and we are the sheep of his pasture.  He made us for his pasture, to prosper and love us.  However, you may feel about today that is the truth that you need to base your day on.

 

Click on the link if you want to experience the glory of a traditional choral setting of the Psalm.

 

All people that on earth do dwell YouTube 4:41

 

Come ye before him and rejoice!

 

John Martin-Jones

[Friday's Devotional] - Fount of every blessing

As a worship leader, I try to keep up with new songs, but I have a love for older songs too.  Recently one song on my mind has been the old hymn “Come thou fount of every blessing”. I find it such a beautiful confession and celebration of our own sinful tendencies eclipsed by God’s incredible unending grace. The song is written from one of those moments of clarity where the songwriter is aware of his sin, aware of the grace that is required to remove it, aware this will not be the last time he will have to be washed in the grace of God, and knowing he will always be welcomed back. The song is such a great expression of how deep the grace of God is, it recognises the unfailing love of the grace of God, Streams of mercy never ceasing and Mount of God’s unfailing love.

 

The grace of God has always awed me, grace has never been so undeserved, so precious, but equally never so bountiful.  That I can be washed daily in that which is most precious and beautiful just leaves me in awe. It also recognises the paradoxical encompassing way in which we are called to God’s grace by God grace. Beckoned in an act of grace to receive grace, Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God and Hither by thy help I come, that we come to receive grace because of grace in the first place demonstrates the otherness of God, the way he really loves like no other. On top of all this it recognises the debt we owe to the grace of God beautifully in the line O to grace how great a debtor, daily I’m constrained to be, yet ends the hymn even more perfectly recognising that even though we are so in debt to grace we are also still so reliant on grace. Relying on it to bind us to him and bring us back to him that his grace might bring us home.

 

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love,
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it, Seal if for thy courts above.

 

God’s grace has been the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced, since the day it first found me, so much so that I named my daughter after it.  But sometimes, day-to-day life can get pretty consuming and I can forget the beauty of it, and this song helps my heart remember the grace that first found it and will one day, I hope by God’s good pleasure, safely bring it home.

 

Tim Holt

[Thursday's Devotional] - Being sons and daughters

In the last two years my relationship with God has changed dramatically, because I am now seeing The Father through a father’s eyes.   But not only that, being a father, I am seeing myself as a son in a new way as well.

 

I absolutely adore my son, and now my new daughter.  I love them in a way I never knew before I had kids - but my son has now reached the age where he adores others.  I have been blessed that as a father he usually adores me back.  When I walk in the door he is as excited to see me as I am to see him.  When he wakes in the morning he smiles right back at me as I walk in the room.  When he has a nightmare, there is as much relief in his eyes seeing me as he snaps out of it as there is in mine.  While his love may be steadfast his adoration is not always as true. As is true of all children he is growing and maturing, and while it brings me so much joy watching him grow, it has not been an entirely pain-free experience.

 

Over the last few months, as he has grown in confidence and experiences, he sometimes takes to someone new, it may not be an incredibly deep connection, it may not even last very long but boy is he taken by them in the moment and I have felt the twang of one way affection. This is not a criticism of my son in any way, as a father I have to let him grow, to be his own person and have his own experiences for he is not simply created for me, however it caused me to think of myself as a son and the father God I was created for.

 

The reason I struggle to be left behind by my son is because I love him, sometimes jealously, and I want the best for him.  I care for him, I love him as I was built to love him, as my father loves me.  Then it hit me, “Wait, is this how you feel about me?”.  It was a dimension of God’s jealous love I had never grasped. I mean from my early Christian years I understood that God was hurt when I ran from him right into the arms of sin, he loves me and hates sin, and I know he loves relationship with me but until I became a father I never got how he loves me. In fact I didn’t get it to the point that I was able to disregard him without realising I was doing it.

 

Life is exciting and full of distractions, full of other relationships, full of experiences, but unlike my son I was created first and foremost for relationship with my father, and yet I sometimes leave him on the shelf to feel the twang of one way affection.  I am a father, but I am also a son to the most loving father I could ever wish or ask for, who makes my love for my own son seem like a leaf in the wind, and through being a loving father I hope to learn to be a more loving son.

 

Tim Holt

[Wednesday's Devotional] - Prepared hearts

In a few weeks’ time, in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars is set to return to our cinema screens, and as a rather large nerd I am understandably very excited.  Already my friends have been discussing how you prepare for such a momentous occasion, debates over how many times, and in what order you should re-watch the original films and if at all in Episode one’s case.  I am thoroughly enjoying all the excitement, and am eager to see the next stage of the saga on the big screen, but I found myself thinking about preparation for Christmas as much as thinking about how I personally plan to prepare for seeing the new film.

 

You see I love Christmas, I love the time of year, I love the feel of the season.  I love the food and friends and I love the chance to remember what a big deal it was that God entered our world for me all those years ago.  But pre-December or at least late November, I can be a bit of a Grinch, I always can’t believe how early the Christmas adverts start on TV, how quickly the shops jump on the bandwagon and wonder why on earth anyone needs to buy Christmas Crackers in late October. However, as I eagerly prepared for the nerd event of the year I realised I had started to prepare for Christmas, practically at least. I have bought my first gift and the budgeting is in place for the season as a whole and the holiday and family-sharing time has been decided.  

 

However my spiritual preparation for the season was seriously lacking, and I realised, was I seriously worried if I started too early I would run out of wonder for the son of God entering our world and my life.  I do this every year, in fact sometimes the spiritual component, the whole reason for Christmas is the last thing I start preparing for, so I decided it was time to start.

 

Time to start reading the prophecies and Gospel accounts, time to start incorporating wonder and worship into my prayer life, for what started over 2000 years ago.  Time to start being lost in wonder at and listening to carols, maybe not all the carols, but the ones that speak into the depth of my heart and awaken in me the wonder at the love of God shown through sending his son, the songs that make it a reality, not just a story.

 

So this is less of a thought and more of an invite, by now everyone is preparing for Christmas as a holiday, and while the rush does start early, as a church maybe we can start preparing our hearts early as well so Christmas is about more than the gifts, more than the family, more than the successful budgeting, more than the food or even more than the return of Star Wars (gasp) but to us is about our God and his willingness to enter into our world to save us for him.

 

Tim Holt

[Tuesday's Devotional] - Offerings

One of the things I love about scripture is how wide and varied it is, there are parts so simple and beautiful that when read they immediately take root, very little heart preparation is needed, very little pruning needed, and the words take root in any soil.  We will all know and probably cherish a lot of these, and share the joy and hope in a lot of them together.

Chapters like 1 Corinthians 13, verses from Jeremiah 29 “for I know the plans I have for you says the Lord..”.  

 

Then there are other areas, that are so full of beauty and grace, they become more complex, the soil needs a bit of preparation, pruning is good and the more time invested the more you receive, but the scripture so beautiful and so dense in God’s goodness, we make the effort to drink it in. Passages like Romans 8, where we see God in all his grace and beauty and we realise the enormity of what has been done for us.

I love it, I love the spectrum that scripture has, in complexity, in beauty, in purpose, in directness. I love how some verses are universally loved and cherished and some verses feel like they were written just for you. Yet there are some verses that are rarely beloved, rarely cherished, rarely spoken of daily, highlighted or book marked, yet we know are still all God breathed and useful for teaching and rebuking. One of these passages is the first portion of Leviticus, where at great length we are given details on the offering system that was in place for God’s chosen people at the time. We read about the grain offerings, the burn offerings, the peace offerings, the sin offerings. Then more detail is given governing specifics, edge cases, how it applies to different people at different times and while it can be an interesting read it is a lot of work and is not a commonly loved and cherished area of scripture but a few years ago, these passages grew in great value to me and I now return to them as needed rather than while passing.

Why? Because this passage challenged me deeply on our relational commitment to God, both personally and as a church. I found myself reading the passage thinking, “all these offerings and rules and edge cases, it just seems like hard work”, and then I realised, I was both right and irrelevant at the same time.  The system of offerings required for relationship with God was intense, page after page, back then tablet upon tablet, but with a little perspective, none of that should matter. And to the people of Israel it didn’t, it didn’t matter how many burn offerings, how many peace offerings, how many sin offerings, how many grain offerings were required, God was offering a relationship with him and they were going to take it. And why wouldn’t they?

 

We are so spoiled by grace, and I return to this passage to challenge me on commitment, whatever offering is required, the offer is relationship with God, and I never want to find myself skipping over the offer, because I lack the offering.

 

Tim Holt