Posts with the tag “week-27”

Psalm 98-100, 102, 104. “The Power of the Spoken Word”          “The tongue is mightier than the blade” – Euripides, Greek poet ca. 5th century B.C.         The power of the spoken word is often underappreciated.  The tongue, or our speech, can do much damage, oftentimes without our planning it or even our awareness of it at the time.  James compares the potential for damage by the tongue to a sm...  Read More

Psalm 92-97.  “Thanksgiving”          “Gratitude is a vaccine, an antitoxin, and an antiseptic.” – John Henry Jowett         Yesterday we thought about boasting and pride.  One way to approach reducing our tendency towards boasting is to respond with gratitude.   As Pastor Jowett so aptly noted, gratitude is good medicine especially towards pride which leads to boastfulness.         We have all se...  Read More

Psalm 1-2, 10, 33, 71, 91. “Boasting”          “As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Because of that cross, my interest in this world died long ago, and the world’s interest in me is also long dead.” – Galatians 6:14         In making the above statement, the Apostle Paul sets the standard regarding boasting quite high.  This stands ...  Read More

Psalm 47-49; 84-85, 87.  “Listening”          “My dear brothers and sisters, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” (James 1:19)         A while back, I watched a TV program about how children learn the grammatical structures of language by listening to the people speaking around them.  This got me thinking, because, before we can ever learn to speak, we can already listen.  In...  Read More

Psalm 42-46. “Silence”          “He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet He never said a word.  He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, He did not open his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7)         Why was Jesus able to be silent in the midst of the mistreatment and accusations He faced?  Confidence.  Jesus was confident in the fact that His Father was working o...  Read More

Proverbs 30-31.  “Pinocchio”          Sometimes I wish that we could all be a little more like Pinocchio.  Not because of the strings or being made out of wood, but because of his nose.  If you recall, Pinocchio’s nose gets him into all sorts of trouble because it grows when he tells a lie.  In many ways, it would make life far easier if there was some easy way to tell if someone were lying.      ...  Read More

2 Kings 16:19-20; 2 Chronicles 28:26-27; Isaiah 13-16.  “Faithful Prophecies” It is amazing to read through the passage in Isaiah as it describes the fall of Babylon and to remember that this was written a century before Babylon even became a world power.  Assyria was the world power in the time of Isaiah, and Babylon is just a small part of that empire.  Isaiah predicts that it will not only beco...  Read More

The theme this week is communication.  The wisdom literature of the Proverbs and the poetry of the Psalms have much to say about how we communicate.  Sometimes this communication happens internally, sometimes it happens with other people, and sometimes it happens between us and God.  So much of life involves communication, so I hope that you are able to glean much from the devotionals this week.  Read More