Sunday Scripture

Boy, I haven’t done one of these in awhile.  As you may (or may not) recall I’m going through Beth Moore’s Fruit of the Spirit Bible study with my small group on Saturday morning’s.  I’ve been through that before and actually blogged about a few topics.  I don’t like to rehash lessons from others’ too much but there is a verse that has stayed with me for two weeks now and I feel like I must share.

In Acts we read of Stephen, a Christ follower who had false accusations thrown at him and who was eventually stoned to death.  The actual stoning is covered at the end of Acts 7

54When they heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56“Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”  57At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.

In her study Beth points out that Christ stood up for this occassion.  It was worthy of his effort, time,  attention, care and concern.  The questions I can not get out of my head…What caused Christ to stand?  Was it out of respect?  Worry?  Praise?  How often has Christ stood instead of sat at the right hand of God and most importantly…Have I ever done anything worthy of Christ standing to His feet? My immediate and unwavering answer is a resounding no.  But I want that.  We all look for God to say well done, my good and faithful child one day.  Call me selfish but I want that now.  I want to do something for the cause of Christ that makes Him get on His feet.  And the cause of His standing?  I hope it’s a standing ovation.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.

I’ve always loved this verse, but while reading through the entire chapter and now understanding the history of the Jews, it really brought on a whole new meaning.  This is at a time when they probably didn’t think God cared about them and God was just saying, I know what I’m doing and I love you!

1 I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;  From where shall my help come?
2 My help comes from the LORD,  Who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to slip;  He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel  Will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD is your keeper;  The LORD is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun will not smite you by day,  Nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will protect you from all evil;  He will keep your soul.
8 The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in  From this time forth and forever.

Matthew 5:41-42

If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

The Scripture from my Sunday School lesson couldn’t be more appropriate for this week. I really hope you are reading the posts from the people (Sophie, Heather, Anne, Chris and Keely) in Uganda with Compassion and have been touched like I have.  I’m so proud to be a sponsor with Compassion and I hope that you can go the extra mile and give $32 a month to sponsor a child in need.

Matthew 4:4

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”.

Proverbs 31:30

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

I believe I may have used this Scripture on a past Sunday Scripture and since I haven’t been doing this for very long, it’s probably too soon to post on it again but this particular verse convicts me every time.  This week it came up in our new youth pastor’s sermon Wednesday night.  He was talking on the subject of how we look and wrong motivations for wanting to look good.

The first wrong motivation is so that someone else notices you. Fine, I’ve heard that before.  Recently, in fact.  Every time you invite someone to look at you, you are asking someone to make an idol out of you, worship you instead of pointing your life to Christ.  Sounds a bit extreme, but I get that.  Look at our fascination with people in Hollywood.  We latch onto those people and in particular their looks in a heartbeat.  It’s not an odd concept.  And if we’re dressing and fixing ourselves up just for someone else to look at us, then we’re asking people to worship us.  Well, ouch, that hurts.

But his second point hurt even worse.  The second wrong motivation is so that WE notice ourselves.  We become our own idol.  Everyone likes to look good and when we do, it’s so easy to think highly of ourselves.  Pictures, glances in the mirror, time spent dieting, exercising, shopping, primping, planning…so much time on our own looks just so we can enjoy looking at ourselves.  Ouch, that really hurts.

It’s ok to want to be healthy and look good but when we are doing it for the wrong reasons…for attention from anyone including ourselves, it’s just not right.  Pride comes before the fall and oh how we can fall when our pride is in our looks.  Maybe it’s just me, but this verse hits home every time and I just have to remember being charming, it’s only deceptive.  Beauty…it’s gone in a moment.  But if we pour our lives and purpose into Christ, it is eternal.

So how about you? To participate, simply post a verse, a set of verses or even just a reference to a verse that means something to you now or maybe even in the past. Explain why it’s important or don’t. It’s up to you. Go now and post and then come back. Post your name and then a direct link to you blog entry. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave yours in the comments. Here is the code for the graphic above.

Wow, I missed a week and now I’m late.  Not great stats lately.  My Scripture for this week is Psalm 51:12-13

Restore to me the joy of your salvation
       and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
       and sinners will turn back to you.

Yesterday at church the pastor asked if we could dream big and do anything we wanted for God, what would we do?  No one answered out loud and when I thought of mine, for some reason I was embarrassed and thought number one, surely *I* couldn’t do that and number two, how silly and unimportant that would be? 

Wanna know what I thought of?  I would love to be a writer of some sort and a speaker.  Which is sort of weird because if you know me, I get embarrassed in crowds easily so it seems what I really wouldn’t want to do.  I’ve often said I’d like to like Beth Moore and while I don’t want to be her or take her spot in her ministry, I would love to do something like that. 

And then I read these Scriptures and realize, you know, some people’s great dream may be to win people for Christ cities and countries at a time but if I were to write a devotional or bible study type book and affected even one person.  If it brought someone in sin back to His ways, it would worth it.

I’ve screwed up enough in ways I don’t even want to admit.  But so has everyone.  And God has restored me each and every time and His salvation is my joy.  And if I can use my life to affect any number of people even if it’s just through posts on a personal blog–if that’s the only writing I’ll ever do, I’m good with that.

So how about you? To participate, simply post a verse, a set of verses or even just a reference to a verse that means something to you now or maybe even in the past. Explain why it’s important or don’t. It’s up to you. Go now and post and then come back. Post your name and then a direct link to you blog entry. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave yours in the comments. Here is the code for the graphic above.