Daily Verse

God’s Dinner Music

/ pastorpete51 / 14 Comments

I will sing of your love and justice; to you O Lord I will sing praise! Psalm 101:1 NIV

My saying with our family, is “Media and meals don’t mix.” That is with the exception of music. One of my most detailed childhood memories is of my step-dad playing, Beethoven’s Ninth symphony or Benny Goodman on the stereo at suppertime. After 60 years, I can still feel Bababa-boom through my feet and hear the high notes on Goodman’s clarinet.

God invented music long before heaven and earth were created. I believe that the first thing He taught the angels was how to sing Holy-Holy-Holy! Jesus Himself sang after the Last supper and in today’s verse David tells us that the song He sings is of God’s love and justice.

Music is special. Maybe that’s why so many generations, from ancient Hebrew festivals to 18th century English pubs have resonated with songs while they ate and drank. Music has the power to bring our minds and bodies into unity around its melodies and rhythms. We need to ask ourselves “What kind of music are we listening to at our dinner times?” Are we choosing the sounds of football, the boink-boink-boink of video games or the tapping out a reply to some text message, or are we listening to the symphony of heaven? When we do, our hearts our minds can be filled with God’s dinner music and our lips with His praise!

Rejoicing in God’s Mercy

/ pastorpete51 / 2 Comments

I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy, For You have considered my trouble; You have known my soul in adversities, Psalm 31:7 NKJV

Every month as the moon orbits around the earth it has an apogee and a perigee. At its perigee it is the closest to the earth and at its apogee the farthest. Every true Christian has come to orbit around Jesus and like the moon we have those times when, as one of my favorite songs goes – I’m…

"So close I believe You're holding me now," Reuben Morgan

But then there are those times when we reach the other side of that orbit. Even though we are still in our orbit around Jesus we feel distant – sometimes because of our own sins, but sometimes because of the sins of others against us.

That is when we can discover as David did, a time of rejoicing, when by the gravitational pull of God’s mercy, He pulls us close again. Jesus was a “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” Isaiah 53:3. In His orbit, He was once so far from God that He cried out, “My God – My God – Why have You forsaken me?” Matthew 27:47 That is why He, of all people, can know our soul in adversities. He understands what it means to feel far from the Father, but on the third day everything changed. The stone rolled away to disclose that He was no longer forsaken on a cross. He had risen from the dead and He brings for us a mercy, that can know our souls in the very depth of our adversities and our hearts when we feel the very furthest from God. That is when we can break out into the joyful words of this Psalm, “I will be glad and rejoice in Your mercy!”

How is your walk with Jesus Christ today? Whether you at your apogee, in sorrow, shadows and problems, or at your apogee, feeling the wonderful presence of Jesus, God still is holding you by the pull of His mercy and love. Trust Him, because You are His. He has bought you with a price. He has promised to never let you go!

Big Things for Little People

/ pastorpete51 / 8 Comments 
 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, 
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 
Matthew 18:4

Did you ever notice that Jesus always seemed to have small children close to Him? They must have felt comfortable just hanging out with Him, and today’s verse zeros in on one of those little ones. That day, the disciples, were arguing about who was the most important. Maybe Peter started it off by telling everyone how he had walked on water – at least a few steps.  Matthew could have mentioned that he had given Jesus the biggest party and of course John probably burst in by saying, “But he loves me the most!” While their debate raged on and they were trying to prove who was the best, they had not noticed a young boy who was listening – but Jesus did. Then Jesus took him by the hand and put him right into the middle of their circle and said, “This one (who you didn’t even notice) is the most important to God.“

Does that sound as familiar as your most recent family argument? Haven’t we all sometimes lost perspective on our attitude and the example we are setting? It is easy to get so worked up over the big important things we are doing for God, that we forget that what matters to Him the most is the “little people” around us. Often the little things we could do for them go undone because we are so busy trying to do “big things” for God. But to God there are no big or little things – no big or little people. What is big to God is whether we are doing the small things that He asks. Today people sometimes say, “Dream big!” with the focus on us. But God will never help us to do those “big things”, until we are willing to become like that child who simply wanted to be close to Jesus.