Dahhh…

This morning I went to a Korean Salvation Army church.  I did not know such places existed.  Anyways there’s kind of a long story about how I ended up at this church, but I won’t go into it here.

The message today was from 1 Samuel 13.  The one thing that stood out from the sermon was the pastor’s quote on courage.  Courage is not the absence of fear, courage is moving forward despite fear. Faith is moving forward despite not knowing the outcome.  Faith and courage are somewhat similar.  A lot of times we think faith and courage are something that people posess intrinsically, that is some people are born with strong courage and faith while some are not.  But actually, both faith and courage are built up over time.  They both require practice and discipline to improve and perfect.

Yesterday at prayer meeting we sang this song as our closing song.

Jesus loves me! This I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong;
they are weak, but he is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! This I know,
as he loved so long ago,
taking children on his knee,
saying, “Let them come to me.”

It’s beautiful because it’s such a simple song.  It speaks of the simple faith of children.  Difficult concepts such as faith and love come so easily to them.  They don’t need to understand Jesus’s love, they simply know because the bible tells them so.  It’s no wonder that Jesus welcomes them with open arms.  I think as I get older I get more and more cynical.  Sometimes I wish I can go back to having that simple faith, to a point where it’s easy to believe and not have doubts and be cynical.

Psalms 34:8

Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

Have you ever noticed that it’s pretty easy to tell your friends about a restaurant you enjoy?  Palace, Mizu, Fresh Choice…. most people know what my favorite buffets are.  When you enjoy a good meal, it’s natural to tell all your friends about it…. nowadays, through the magic of Yelp, we even tell complete strangers throughout the world what our favorite restaurants are.

How come we don’t tell people about the Lord with the same fervor?  I guess part of the reason why is because we really don’t taste and see how good he is.  How can we taste and see that He’s good, these are tangible senses when we are talking about?  Yet we do see and taste he is good in our fellowship.  I saw and tasted a glimpse of it at our fellowship small group meeting last night.  I could taste it in the way we shared our meal and our lives together, and I could see it in the way that we all were there enjoying the fellowship.  It reminds me of the church in Acts 2.  If we enjoy and praise God, through tasting and seeing that he is good and enjoying the fellowship with other believers we’d naturally want to share about our experiences, in the same way we naturally share about our favorite restaurants.

Acts 2:46-47

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

DT’s, QT’s, devos… whatever you want to call it, we should be doing them consistently right?  We also should be exercising consistently right?  I used to force myself to run every once in a while.  I hated it.  Then I discovered biking.  I ended up loving it.  It used to be a chore getting enough exercise, but now it’s easy because I enjoy biking so much.  I don’t need to force myself to do it, because I’ll naturally want to go out biking if I haven’t gone in a while.

Our DT’s, QT’s, devos… whatever, should also be the same way.  Just like with exercise, we can try to force ourselves to do it becaues of the benefits, but it will come naturally if we can find a way to take joy in it.  It even says so in the beginning of Psalms.

Psalm 1:1-3

¹ Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

So we can do it for the benefits– yielding fruit, not whithering, prospering; but like it says in verse 2, if we delight in it, we would naturally meditate on it day and night.  For me, although it doesn’t really show, I like to think, and I like to apply my thoughts to daily life.  A lot of times I’ll remember a verse, or more likely the gist of a verse, and look it up and think about how it applies to my life.  I also like to write occasionally, so naturally that’s why this thing exists.  Posting in here actually gives some measure of delight, so I naturally end up doing it without having to force myself.  So I guess for those struggling to be consistent in devos, you just need to find a way to make it a delight.

1 Timothy 4:8

For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

As I weighed myself this morning I thought of this verse.  I’ve been trying to get into better shape for the two century rides I have in August, but has it been at the expense of my devotional time?

The other training verse I remember from our recent studies is 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I guess in my mind I equate training in godliness and training in righteousness.  So to do both we need to read scripture diligently.  I guess I’ve been lacking in that area lately.  I need to remind myself that physical training, while useful, will only have temporary significance.