Devotion | Pedestrian God

My Year in the Old Testament

Feb 02 2016

When I think about my quiet times, I frequently break them into three categories: Bible reading, Scripture memorization, and prayer. In 2015, I had decided to spend more time in Bible reading than I had in 2014. I used my chronological Bible to read through the Old Testament. I’ve read through the Bible chronologically before, but I had a renewed appreciation for the Old Testament this year. As our pastor preaches through Matthew, I find myself connecting points to Old Testament passages I hadn’t noticed before. As my Sunday School girls asked questions and sought advice, I found myself encouraging them to read from the Old Testament.

Here’s a few lessons I learned or relearned from my year reading it:

The Old Testament prophecies we quote about Jesus are often located in the middle of very depressing passages.

Prayers for Fellow Believers

Oct 13 2015

When you pray for fellow believers, do your prayers feel deflated? So many times I want to sit down and pray for the girls in my Sunday School class, but my words feel empty and vague. One of the blessings of having Scripture is that we can use it in our prayer lives. Here’s a list of the top 5 prayers from the New Testament that we can pray for fellow believers.

1 Corinthians 15:58, “Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

Ephesians 1:17-19, “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the perception of your mind may be enlightened so you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the glorious riches of His inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His vast strength.”

Ephesians 3:16-19, “I pray that He may grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit, and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Philippians 1:9-11, “And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you can approve the things that are superior and can be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God.”

Colossians 1: 9b-12 , “We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience, with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light.”

Football & Marriage

Oct 01 2015

(This article appeared in the most recent edition of the Baptist & Reflector)

Fall has arrived, bringing with it football on all levels. We’re an NFL household, fans of the Minnesota Vikings. As I write these words, I want you to get a snapshot of my day. I wore a purple Vikings scarf to work to celebrate the fact that we are driving to Nashville this evening to watch the Vikings play the Titans. I also packed a change of clothes for the game and had to decide which of my two Vikings jerseys to wear. On social media, I not only follow the team, but also the individual players. Put it all together and you get a pretty good idea of how much I enjoy the Vikings.

But that wasn’t always the case for me. I grew up in a sports-neutral family. To be embrassingly honest, football was that activity on the field I endured until halftime. That’s when the marching band took the field. I went to almost every game to watch my brother march for four years until it was finally my turn.

In college, I started to date Kevin (my husband). As dating got “serious,” I realized that football had the potential of igniting a lifetime’s supply of arguments because I could care less about grown men chasing after an oblong ball.

As we entered premarital counseling, we read all the standard passages and books, many based on Ephesians 5. I spent time with married women who complained when football season began. And I spent time with married women who loved the sport as much as their husbands. I decided I needed to be the latter in order to look forward to the fall season rather than dread it.

Titus: We too were once

Sep 04 2015

For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another.

But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us— not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.He poured out this Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior,so that having been justified by His grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.
Titus 3:3-7

It’s easy to forget who we were without Christ. We peer out our window at “those lost people,” glad that we’ve got it all together. But Paul reminds Timothy before closing his letter that “we too” were like them.

Foolish
Disobedient
Deceived
Enslaved by passions and pleasures
Living in malice and envy
Hateful, detesting one another

But God. He saved us – not because of how great we are, but through His mercy. The Holy Spirit washed us clean by the grace of Jesus so that we “may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.”

And yet, the very next verse, Paul reminds us to “devote [ourselves] to good works.” This is a reminder that our good works cannot and do not save us. However, they are the fruit that the world sees. They are evidence of the change inside us. With these works, we do not proclaim how great we are but how amazing our God is.

This Labor Day weekend, let’s take time to reflect on who we are without God’s mercy and thank Him that we don’t have to live that way any more.

Titus: Rules for us all

Aug 07 2015

After a discussion on how elders (Titus 1:5-14), older men (Titus 2:2), older women (Titus 2:3-5), young men (Titus 2:6), and slaves (Titus 2:9-10) should act, Paul sums up the attributes that “all people” should exhibit in their lives.

For the grace of God has appeared with salvation for all people,instructing us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age, while we wait for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a people for His own possession, eager to do good works.
-Titus 2:11-14

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