Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father reveal our own pride to us. Father, may Your Word be a mirror in which you reveal us to ourselves, that we might be humbled and then filled by what you have to say to us, about yourself and what you desire. May Your Word, once a mirror, become then a window, through which we would see the world around us through your eyes. Help us to see ourselves. Help us to see the world. By Your Word and not our pride. In the powerful name of Jesus, help us. Amen.
Your Morning Song: "Less Like Me" by Zach Williams
Your Morning Scripture: Psalm 119:71
It was good for me to suffer,
so that I might learn your statutes.
...
God's Word is true, in all places, in all spaces, for all time. This is our Step 1 in reading the Bible correctly. It is true. We do not need rationalization or explanation or justification for any of it beyond this. God is either perfect and knows best, or He is not God.
But He is. Perfect. And He does. Know best.
I have to be honest, there is a part of me that doesn't like this. I want to be in charge. I wanted to know best. I want control.
But that isn't how life works. We do not know best, and we are not in control.
And so we come to God's Word humble, not proud. Eager to accept what He says to us, not without question, but without the corrupting rot of pride that says to God's Word (I'll listen, if I feel like it).
Do we come to the verse above eager to embrace it? Or do we read it with a skeptical heart longing for ease and convenience?
How valuable is God's Word? How important is it?
Psalm 1 speaks of reading the Bible like a tree being planted by a stream of fresh water. God's Child grows and flourishes and is filled with life because of eager, dedicated reading.
Jesus references Deuteronomy 8:3 in Matthew 4:4, when He calls God's Word more life-giving than physical food. The Child of God needs the Word of God even more than bread to be fully alive.
In the very beginning, in Genesis 1, our Heavenly Father creates in a very specific way, speaking words, and all of Creation explodes into beauty-full, wonder-full being. We live in a reality that came from God speaking.
God's Word is good.
Am I willing to see the hardships of life, both great and small, as opportunities to know God's Word better?
Or when life is hard, do I just get bitter? Do I dwell in the sickness of my own heart? Do I seek out those who will just tell me what I want to hear? Do I stray from the family of God into the arms of the world?
Or, when life is hard, do I rejoice at the destruction of my pride? For the daily death of my pride leaves me with the unexpected joy of my desperate dependence on Jesus, the Word Himself.
I have nothing to be proud of. And I have everything to be thankful for. I find life in God's Word when hardships strip away my pride and leave me open to embrace God's Will for my living, my speaking, and my feeling.
Accept the necessary humbling of hardship. Embrace God's Word.
And be filled to overflowing.
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