DAY 259 - I Wish I Were …

--> Psalm 84:1-10 (NRSV)  How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! ² My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. ³ Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young—a place near your altar, Lord Almighty, my King and my God. ⁴ Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you. ⁵ Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. ⁶ As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. ¹⁰ Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

Do you have a place that is the epitome of peace, beauty, calm and relaxation? Some place that you dream about when life is hard and hectic? The Psalmist had such a place and his longings were running strong. Perhaps he was in exile and unable to return to Jerusalem. He may have been an early prodigal who had cut himself off from the worshiping ways of his parents and now longs to return but fears that his wayward life has taken him too far from the roots of his religion.

The Psalmist longed to be in those surrounding that reminded him of God’s majestic power and providential care; to experience the specialness of being favored by God; to receive that spirit of hope and newness that the sacrifices gave. In the midst of his longing the Psalmist also dimly realizes that it is not just a building or place that he longs to be. Rather, it is to be with the One whom he met in that place, to have a sense of coming home to God Himself.

And so the Psalmist shifts his sights from being in the Temple to the joy of even traveling to the Temple. When the people traveled through the dry, desolate region of Baca, their joy of the trip seemed to change the desert to an Oasis. They not only survived the hard trip, but thrived in spirit because of their goal. A new step has been taken in the Psalmist’s quest. He did not have to be in the Temple itself to have his longing fulfilled. Even in the valley of Baca he could still sense the presence, power, and goodness of God who was like the sun dispelling gloom and like a shield giving protection.

Then the light comes on - the deep longing of the Psalmist’s heart can be satisfied before he gets to the Temple; it can be satisfied even before he begins a journey to Jerusalem. The longing is satisfied by the trust he has already found at the Temple; by the trust he experiences on the journey.

Here is the magnificent wisdom that the Psalmist gives: no longing can be fully satisfied without the foundation of trust in God. He would rather live in trust and do without than dwell in a place with all longing met in rebellion against God. The trust that the Psalmist has found is not simply an environment where everything happens to please him. This trust is a soil in which grows his desire to give obedience to God.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope July 13, 1986

© Rhonda H. Mitchell

DAY 258 - What Does God Want From Me?

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Psalm 103 (NRSV)  Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. ² Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— ³ who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, ⁴ who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, ⁵ who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

To bless the Lord is to give Him something He decidedly wants from you. The Hebrew word for bless literally means “knee,” and “to bless the Lord” is to kneel before Him in acknowledgement that He is God.

The word bless is the opposite of the word “pride,” which literally means “to rise up.” Pride is usually seen as standing up against God, a rising up in a spirit of independence from God, in defiance of His will, and in a determination to disregard His rightful place in our world and in our life.

To bless the Lord is to kneel before Him in the brokenness of our pride. It is to lay at His feet the driving push to have our own way. It is to recover the jubilant freedom from the demand that everything always goes to please us.

It is from the kneeling position we can best distinguish genuine issues from those of stubborn self-will. From the kneeling position, we gain confidence in God’s power to be at work and to hear His call of responsibility to our life. Freed from the rigidity of self-determination we begin to recover our ability to live naturally and spontaneously to be our best selves, wallowing not in our failures nor bathing ourselves in the glory of our successes.

What then can bend our risen pride to this kneeling position before God? Bless the Lord, O my Soul, and forget none of His benefits. We kneel before Him when we remember His forgiveness that erases regret over past failure, when we remember His compassion that has spared us paying for our mistakes, His power that has brought us hope, His healing that has brought wholeness to our hurts, His providence that has brought us to the right place at the right time with the right person or people.

And if our memory still fails us, then we need only to look to God’s Son, where all of these ways are found and focused. In His Cross is power to heal our worst disease, which is death. And, in His Cross is the power and the hope that draws us up out of the pits of hell we make for ourselves and that others try to make for us. The desire to bless the Lord, to kneel before Him grows through repeated awareness of all His benefits to us.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope July 20, 1986

© Rhonda H. Mitchell

DAY 257 - The Right Stuff

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Deuteronomy 34:1-4, 7  (NIV) ¹ Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the LORD showed him the whole land—from Gilead to Dan, ² all of Naphtali, the territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, ³ the Negev and the whole region from the Valley of Jericho, the City of Palms, as far as Zoar. ⁴ Then the LORD said to him, “This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” ⁷ Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.

II Corinthians 4:16-18 (NIV) ¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

“Moses, Moses.” This time the call is not heard from a burning bush. It comes from a deep yearning, and a man aged in years and older in wisdom begins a last journey to the top of Mt. Pisgah where God completes His commitment to Moses. It is as if God has taken a parent and lifted him or her above the limitations of time and shown the future that their children will enjoy, and it is very good. Then, with the glory of God in his heart, the life of Moses and God’s plan for him come to an end.

Moses had aged like everyone else. He experienced the limitations that age often puts upon us. Yet, there was something apparently special about Moses both in old age and in death. “His eyes were not weak,” meaning something like “he was still a man of vision. He still viewed life with the eyes of faith.” The vision of faith ignited in the burning bush still shone brightly in the eyes of Moses.

It is possible for that to be said of us, as well, and it happens this way: we receive from God. We receive His spirit and His life, from His word and His people. We receive God in times of quiet and of prayer. And what we receive is the raw material out of which He fashions our life. We receive the right stuff.

His sovereignty, His commitment to us, is a shaping force always at work in the midst of the events and experiences of our life. Sometimes that shaping makes us swell with joy and sometimes we bristle with resistance. But, as God has given us the right stuff in the life of His Son, so He intends to shape us according to His will. As we prepare to receive the raw material with which God will work in our lives, the bottom line questions is this: “do I want God to have His way with my life?”

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 9, 1986

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 256 - Once and For All

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Hebrews 10:9-14, 17-18 (NASB) ⁹ then He said, “behold I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. ¹⁰ By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. ¹¹ Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; ¹² but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, ¹³ waiting from that time onward until his enemies be made a footstool for his feet. ¹⁴ For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. ¹⁷ “and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” ¹⁸ Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.

When we think of guilt today we usually think of “guilty feelings.” In the Scripture, forgiveness is not so much release from feelings as it is from a fact. Guilt comes from the damage we have done to ourselves, to others, to our world. Guilt is God’s verdict on the darkness and distortions of our thinking and behaving. Guilt is real, but so is God’s forgiveness and that forgiveness is made real and effective in our life by the death of Jesus Christ. That is what the writer of Hebrews claims has happened for us.

“Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” Put in modern terms the writer of Hebrews is saying that in many and various ways we seek our self-worth – by our achievements, by the standards we set for ourselves, by our own inner efforts of self-assurance. But all of our efforts, no matter how hard we try and even to a degree succeed, only serve to remind us of our failure by the very fact that it requires continued effort.

Christ offered one sacrifice for our sins, an offering that is effective forever, and then sat down at the right hand of God. The death of Jesus was the permanent cure for the fact of our guilt. The forgiveness we need, desire, and often seek becomes “effective forever,” because of the death of Jesus. The effectiveness of the Cross does not depend on our having a complete understanding of how it works. The effectiveness of the Cross depends on the fact that it does “Make perfect forever those who are purified from sin.”

Faith is our response to this fact. Faith is believing that God’s forgiveness removes the reality of our guilt. Faith is not wishful thinking. Faith is believing the truth, and that act of believing is like a hinge on a door that opens the way for life, love, and forgiveness to become a reality for us, meeting us at the point of our need. The echo of past sins ceases to interfere with the present acoustics of hearing God’s new words of command, and peace. Forgiveness continues to erase our sin so that God can speak and write anew His will for our life.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope, April 27, 1986

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 255 - The Stone

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Isaiah 8:9-14 (NIV)  ¹³ The LORD Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread. ¹⁴ He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah he will be a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.

Isaiah 28:16 (NIV)  So this is what the Sovereign LORD says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic.

Luke 2:25 (NIV)  ³⁴ Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, ³⁵ so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

Ephesians 2:19-22   (NIV) ¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Jesus fulfills all the predictions in the Old Testament; one that emerges to the surface is Jesus as both a stumbling stone and a building block. Mary Magdalene falls at His feet and is raised a new person. Nicodemus comes down from his lofty position and is raised a true leader. Peter stumbles over his pride and is raised a humble and pliable person. On the road to Damascus, Paul stumbles over his self-righteousness and is raised a forgiven and whole person.

All of us fall at some time or another. But by God’s grace we fall into discovery and delight. When we are brought down as low as a vulnerable baby born in a barn we are in the right place and the right position to discover that the stone we trip on is solid and secure and a sure foundation on which to re-build our life.

Jesus said we are to rebuild our life on the new foundation of hearing and obeying God’s word. We rebuild on what He says about what our true needs are. We rebuild according to His standards and specifications. We rebuild our beliefs about God according to what He reveals to us to be the truth.

God has not abandoned us to our self-determined, heedless, pushy ways. He places in our path a rock of stumbling. Sometimes it is also a stone of offense that makes us angry and frustrated. But a closer look soon reveals it is a precious stone, a tested stone, and secure foundation on which we can build our life.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope December 9 , 1984

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 254 - The Seed

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Genesis 22:15-18 (NRSV) ¹⁵ Then the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, ¹⁶ and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, ¹⁷ indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. ¹⁸ In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

Mark 4:30-32  (NIV) ³⁰ Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. ³² Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”  

What strikes me in the promise to Abraham is the power of the seed. This is a unique picture of power to conquer and to bless at the same time. The seed conquers the barren land and blesses it with life. This is our hope, whether we are a teenager entangled in the process of growing up, or a young adult who has discovered there are some thorns in the rose garden of life, or a middle aged adult who is too wise to believe any significant change can come to them, or an older adult who believes they are past producing anything. The seed conquers the barren land and brings it to life.

And that is exactly what we see and experience in the person of Jesus. The picture of the Messiah as a seed, small but growing, almost imperceptively slowly, yet conquering, taking over more and more barren land and giving it life is one that offers us hope. The seed is growing and producing the life of Christ in us, opening us to an awareness of God, conforming us to His plan and pattern, enabling us to fulfill His purpose. And Paul says that the life of this seed is our hope when we face the final barrenness of death. The seed has the unique power to survive death, even to bring life out of dying.

Jesus pictured His work as being like a mustard seed. Every person who was healed, every resistant heart broken to belief, every person laden with sin who was forgiven and cleansed was evidence of a new power that had broken into the world and would grow. The mustard seed depicts the exciting reality that the insignificant and unexpected can silently change the world. Small acts of kindness, small projects of hope, small struggles for peace and justice are seeds that will grow because God has given them the power to grow.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope December 2, 1984

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell

DAY 253 - Still Changing the World

John 13:34-35 (NIV) ³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

When it comes to love, confusion abounds. Pick up most any magazine in any given month and invariably there will be an article giving the scoop of what real love is and isn’t. Modern psychology has also entered the fray, speaking to how we confuse possessiveness, dependency, and people pleasing with love.

Jesus also entered the fray. He had some definite notions of what love was and what love wasn’t. He said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  Jesus claimed to be the source for real love, and was unique in claiming that His love actually invaded life and was expressed through us. Other religions had believed that love was a gift of the gods or that love somehow emanated from God. But Jesus gave us both the power to love and an understanding of how we ought to love. And that was new.

Jesus also claimed that love is our one and only command. Love was not one of many responsibilities we had, but the one and only. In any given situation, I may not know exactly what to do. I might be churning inside with anger, or cringing with guilt or filled with worry, but nevertheless my responsibility is to discover how I ought to love. In this all the law and the prophets are fulfilled. And that was new.

Jesus also claimed that love meant sacrifice. When He later repeated the command to love, He said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13 NIV). Love means sacrifice, and that was new.

Jesus also believed that love was the most powerful force in the world. He staked His ministry and His life on this belief. Love was the power that softened and changed hearts, strengthened hearts, and steadied hearts. Jesus believed in the power of love to change the world, and this was new.

The love Jesus offers combines head and heart and might be called answering the call of Christ to compassion, to yearn from the innermost being for the well-being of others. Compassion is a call to act based on deep felt concern and conviction. Compassion is the emotion most frequently attributed to Jesus. It is the word He used to describe that master who forgives His servant, the Samaritan who stops to help a stranger, and the father who welcomes home his son.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope March 17, 1985

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell