SPIRITUAL DIARY
FOR 11/23/2012 11:08:05 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Psalm 139
PT-2
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Psalm 139:7-18
Message of
the verses: We will continue looking at the 139th
Psalm in Today’s Spiritual Diary.
God Is with Us Constantly—We Cannot
Escape Him (vv. 7-12): “7 Where can I go
from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8 If I ascend to
heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. 9 If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell
in the remotest part of the sea, 10 Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your
right hand will lay hold of me. 11 If I say, "Surely the darkness will
overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night," 12 Even the darkness
is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light
are alike to You.”
We begin this section by seeing that
God’s omnipresence is seen in this section, which of course is one of the
attributes of God.
I can’t help but think that the prophet
Jonah should have read this psalm before he decided that he could run away from
God, but if he did read it he surely forgot it and tried to run away from God
anyway. He went from a bad situation to
a worse situation, and then back to a bad situation.
God does not want us to try and run
from Him, but he wants us to have His best, and running away is not what we
should do. Dr. Wiersbe writes “We need
God’s presence with us if we want to enjoy His love and fulfill His purposes.”
God Made Us Wonderfully—We Cannot
Ignore Him (vv. 13-18): “13 For You
formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will give thanks
to You, for I am fearfully
and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it
very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made
in secret, And
skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16 Your eyes have seen my
unformed substance; And in
Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet
there was not one of them. 17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me,
O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would
outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.”
Dr. Wiersbe points out that this is one of the
greatest passages in literature about the miracle of human conception and
birth. A friend of mine has just
welcomed another grand-child into the world earlier this week and he told me
that you can never get over the wonderful miracle of birth. Eugene Petersen states “In the presence of
birth we don’t calculate—we marvel.” I
think this is what my friend was doing.
We have a huge problem in our world
and that is abortion, I have heard that there are around 50 million abortions a
year that happen around the world. When
one looks at this passage and thinks about the great marvel of conception and
then the way that the baby is formed inside the mother’s womb and then to think
that someone could stop that life because of convenience sake is unthinkable
for abortion stops a beating heart.
In
verse 13 we see the word “woven” and this word means woven together, for the
Lord causes all to be woven together in the exact way that He desires for
them. David stated that God is
everywhere, and that is because He is Spirit and so it should be no surprise to
us to see that He is involved in all processes of forming our bodies while in
our mother’s womb.
God
did more than design our bodies for He also planed out and He determined our
days. This is an interesting subject for
us to look at, one that I am sure has different opinions, but I surely agree
with Dr. Wiersbe, and that should come at no great surprise. He states, “This probably includes the length
of life (Job. 14:5), ‘Since
his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits
You have set so that he cannot pass.’
And the tasks He wants us to perform (Eph. 2:10; Phil 2:12-13), “10 For
we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.’ ‘12 So then, my beloved, just as you have
always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence,
work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at
work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.’ This is not some form of fatalism or
heartless predestination, for what we are and what He plans for us come from
God’s loving heart (Psalm 33:11) and are the very best He has for us (Rom. 12:2)
“2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the
will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.’ –How can we
ignore God when He has given us such a marvelous body and planned for us a
wonderful life? Life is not a prison, it
is an exciting pilgrimage, and the Lord has prepared us for what He prepared for us.”
Spiritual meaning for my life
today: Much to think about
from these two sections, and much to praise the Lord about from these two
sections too. To think that God formed
me in my mother’s womb, and to think that He planned all my days with things to
do that will bring glory to Him is overwhelming to me. I have said before that Ephesians 2:10 is a
verse with great meaning to me because in it I see that God has planned in
eternity past works for me to do, and I desire to do all those works. Sin can hinder my path, but there is
forgiveness with the Lord as seen in my memory verses for this week. I think that God can cause some of His
children to leave this earth before they finish their course as evidenced from
the story in Acts chapter 5, and what Paul wrote to the Corinthians in first
Cor. 11, but as Dr. Wiersbe states “If we live foolishly, we might die before
the time God has ordained, but God’s faithful children are immortal until their
work is done.”
My Steps of Faith for Today: Continue to
learn contentment, and continue to be transformed by the renewing of my
mind.
Memory verses for the
week: Psalm 130:1-5
1 Out of the debts I cried to You, O
LORD. 2 O Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my
supplications. 3 If You, Lord should
mark iniquities, O Lord who, could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with You, That You may be feared.
5 I wait for the Lord, my soul does
wait, and in His Word do I hope.
11/23/2012 12:39:52
PM
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