6/2/2011 8:01:45 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time
Focus: Israel did not
learn her lesson
Bible Reading
& Meditation Reference: 2Kings 17:34-41
Message of the verses: “34 To
this day they do according to the earlier customs: they do not fear the LORD,
nor do they follow their statutes or their ordinances or the law, or the
commandments which the LORD commanded the sons of Jacob, whom He named Israel;
35 with whom the LORD made a covenant
and commanded them, saying, "You shall not fear other gods, nor bow down
yourselves to them nor serve them nor sacrifice to them. 36 "But the LORD, who brought you up from
the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm, Him you shall
fear, and to Him you shall bow yourselves down, and to Him you shall sacrifice.
37 "The statutes and the ordinances
and the law and the commandment which He wrote for you, you shall observe to do
forever; and you shall not fear other gods. 38
"The covenant that I have made with you, you shall not forget, nor
shall you fear other gods. 39 "But
the LORD your God you shall fear; and He will deliver you from the hand of all
your enemies." 40 However,
they did not listen, but they did according to their earlier custom.
41 So while these nations feared the
LORD, they also served their idols; their children likewise and their
grandchildren, as their fathers did, so they do to this day.”
This
section of Scripture is one of the saddest in all of the Bible for it tells of
a people who had so much when it came to the good things of the Lord and they
through it all away to serve idols, and even when some of them returned to the
land of Israel they had not learned their lesson.
I
know a similar story but not as heartbreaking as this story for it had to do
with a work place and not with not learning their lesson about true worship as
the story of Israel did. A few years
back when I was working at Ford they decided to shut a foundry down because
they had built a newer one. That foundry
was in Windsor, Ontario Canada. It
remained shut down for a number of years until Ford came upon hard times and
because of tax reasons and because their new foundry was not working like they
thought it would be the decided to shut the new foundry down and start up again
the foundry in Winsor. I visited that
foundry some years later and the people who were working there must have had
short memories for they were not doing their jobs like they had lost them a few
years back, for they were again lazy and believed that they could not lose
their jobs like before, but eventually they did.
People
have short memories and are quick to back into the same pattern they were in
before their crisis. Jesus spoke of this
when he gave the parable of the person sowing seeds.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: My life has seen some crises since I retired
from Ford almost twelve years ago and by the grace of God I don’t think that
these different crisis have taken me away from the Lord but have actually
brought me closer to the Lord and hopefully after they were over I continued a
closer walk with the Lord, although I am sure that is not the case all of the
time even though I want it to be true.
Ever
since first reading the book “The Bumps are what you Climb On” my life goal has
been to learn contentment and I would suppose that the best way to learn
contentment is to have a few crises in it.
Contentment is described in the dictionary as “a circumstance, or a
feature or characteristic of something that gives rise to satisfaction.” In the case in which Paul speaks of in
Philippians 4:11 it is the Lord that has given him the satisfaction, and that
is whom my contentment comes from knowing that the Lord is in charge and know
more about my situation than I do and has promised to work it out for my good
and for His glory.
My Steps of
Faith for Today:
1.
Continue to learn contentment.
2.
Not to worship idols.
3.
Remember the battle is hard, but the Lord has
already won the victory, and all I am to do is stand, and I can do this by
putting on the spiritual armor.
4.
Give myself to the Lord today for worship and for
service.
6/2/2011 8:39:02 AM
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