I am currently taking classes with Christian Leaders Institute . One of the classes I was looking at taking includes memorizing some key passages. I tend to go through these classes at a much faster pace than they are designed so I wanted to start memorizing these passages now and have them ready before I start the class. It also solves the dilemma of what to memorize next lol
But first, let's see how well I still know Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me down in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil for you are with me.
Your rod and your staff they comfort me.
You anoint my head with oil.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil.
My cup runs over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
I still have some verses in the memory app I have been neglecting so I will get back to that. Then for the class, I need to add these:
Exodus 20:1-17 (the ten commandments)
Matthew 22:37-40 (Jesus's statement of the two greatest commandments)
Galatians 5:22-23 (fruit of the spirit)
Ephesians 6:10-11 (armor of God). But this makes no sense to me. I think you should memorize the actual armor verses so I am making it verses 10-20.
Most of this Psalm feels like someone who is utterly defeated and in a place where they are feeling abandoned by God. But there are a couple verses that someone who is in this place can hold onto.
Psalm 44:4
Only by your power can we push back our enemies; only in your name can we trample our foes.
God is in control, even when we are defeated, He is in control. We may go through seasons where we feel that God is not with us or He is not hearing us, but we need to keep our focus on Him because He is there at all times. He does hear and see all. He is in control of every situation, no matter how desperate or horrible.
Who is our greatest "foe"? Satan! He is the father of lies and has this world wrapped up in misery and may seem defeated. But remember that he was defeated once and for all by Jesus. We can rejoice in our victory.
Psalm 44:26
Rise up! Help us! Ransom us because of your unfailing love.
When you are down in the dirt feeling completely defeated, the only thing you may be able to do is cry out to Him for help. We may not understand the circumstances or why we are in that place, but we can be confident that God is always there. His love is unfailing and he saved us from this world. Cry out to Him, this is how to rise from the dust.
Write the lesson learned
Cry out to God no matter what circumstance you are in. If you are not hearing from Him, He is still there and hears you. Cry out to Him, Praise Him. He will answer.
During the first read of this Psalm I thought it was very fascinating that it ended with the same repeated verse from Psalm 42:5 and 42:11. It is likely that these two Psalms were written as one.
The words used in the repeated verse 5 in the NLT are discouraged and sad. Some of the other translations use words like despair, disturbed, cast down, disquieted. The Message translation uses the terms down in the dumps and crying the blues. Clearly the writer is in a deep depression.
When there is such hopelessness the only way to find hope is in God. Verse 3 gives us the path to hope.
Psalm 43:3
Send out your light and your truth;
let them guide me.
When we are led out of the dark despair and into God's light then what do we do? This Psalm tells us that too, in verse 4 where we find joy!
Psalm 43:4
There I will go to the altar of God, to God—the source of all my joy. I will praise you with my harp, O God, my God!
Write the lesson learned
The Word of God is the source of discovering the paths we should take. When we find ourselves in a dark place then the path out is to go to God and ask Him to send the light. That path of light leads us to God who is the source of joy and our only response should be to praise Him.
After only a couple days I have discovered a flaw in my approach. I thought I would keep up my blog posts with the chapters I am listening to Jon Courson preach through Daniel. Well as it turns out, I am already behind on the listening side because I only listen to these sermons while driving and sometimes it takes more than a day or two to get through one chapter. To make up this difference I decided I would head back to Psalms. Several years ago before I even started this blog, I had been posting SOAP posts over on my other blog. I had completed the first section or book of Psalms, so I will start back with the GROW method at Psalm 42.
I also found my old NLT Study Bible that I had been using way back then, so I will be going back to that translation for these studies. Note that I have had this Bible since the late 90's so it will not be the same edition as the link.
The first thingto note is that this is the start of a new section of Psalms. Book 2 of Psalms is from Psalm 42 to Psalm 72. According to the notes in my study Bible these 30 Psalms "can help us retain a sense of wonder in our worship". Wonder in our worship! What a beautiful concept. If you are not sensing wonder during your worship, then dig deeper and GROW along with me through these Psalms.
The next thing to note is that when we think of Psalms we think of them being written by David. While he did write the majority of them, he did not write them all. Psalms 42-49 were written by the descendants of Korah who were Levites that served as choir leaders and temple musicians.
I have heard multiple times from many preachers and Bible teachers that whenever God repeats something that it is important and we should pay close attention to it. In this Psalm, the middle verse, verse 5, and the last verse, verse 11 are repeated word for word with the tiny exception of verse 5 that spills into verse 6. But this is a minor detail in my opinion because God didn't give us the verse and chapters, those were put in much later.
Psalm 42:5 and Psalm 42:11
Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!
The first two lines of this verse speak so clearly of depression which can be so very debilitating and soul crushing. But there is hope to get out from the darkness of depression - turn your focus to God. There is medical treatment for depression, and I fully believe that God gave us the knowledge to create medical treatments and they can be helpful. But they won't be helpful if we also don't change our attitude along with it.
For me the key words in these verses are "I will praise him again" How do we praise Him? There are many ways to praise - that is a study all on it's own, but the simplest way to praise is through worship music. When you are worshiping you are moving your focus away from yourself and to where it belongs.
One of the worship songs that came on while I was writing this post was "I Surrender All" which perfectly illustrates this point. What do you need to surrender to your savior? Everything! Surrender everything until you are no longer asking the questions "Why am I discouraged?" or "Why is my heart so sad?"
Write the lessons learned
When you are depressed you are focused on yourself. Get out of your pity party and get your focus on God. Put your hope in Him by starting to praise Him. Start with listening to some Worship music. Really listen to the lyrics and focus on what they are saying.
Typically when reading chapters such as Daniel 2 we are focused on the prophecy that is given. Today though, my mind was still on Daniel and his three friends who would not defile themselves with the Royal food in chapter 1. It is important to remember the they had been brought into the kings court to serve the king. Then in Daniel 1:17 we are told what kind of service they were in.
Daniel 1:17 To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
In Daniel 1:20 we are told he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.
Clearly the four of them were in the group that the king ordered to be executed in chapter 2. But what does Daniel do when finds out the king has ordered them to be executed? He asks for more time. This is a bold move that the king surely did not have to honor that request. But because the king held them in such high regard he did allow them more time.
In verse 18 Daniel directs them in what they should do and they immediately go to God in prayer.
Daniel 2:18 He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery,
In a quick read of the rest of the chapter it is easy to miss something else. We often think of Daniel as the leader of the group and he is the one to go back to the king with the answer to the mystery. But take note of the pronouns in these verses....
Daniel 2:30 As for me, this mystery has been revealed to me,
Daniel 2:36 This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king.
Based on the pronouns of these verses God gave Daniel the answer to the first part of the king's request - to tell him exactly what the dream was. Then God gave all of them the interpretation to be presented to the king. It may have been Daniel speaking, but think about what was happening in the time between when Daniel urged them to plead for the answers until they presented the answers to the king. The four of them would have prayed and talked to each other about what God was revealing to them as He was revealing it.
Then there is another element to this. If they had not refused the royal food in chapter 1 would they have been in a place or an appropriate mindset to even be able to hear God speaking to them? They were not taken up with the worldly temptations such as the royal food that would have defiled them. Instead they were so focused on God that they were ready and prepared for when He spoke to them.
Write the lesson - turning away from the world and turning to God allows you to be more open to hearing Him when he speaks to you. Surround yourself with other Godly people to remain focused on Him. We should all have a core group of believers to walk through life with.
ps..I have no idea why there is white highlighting. I tried to take it off and could not figure it out without making a bigger mess. So I am ignoring it and going to clean my kitchen lol
There are so many paths I could go down just by reading these first few verses in Daniel Chapter 1, but the verses that jumped out today are the ones about food. Maybe because I am so hungry right now and I can smell supper cooking away in the kitchen.
Observations...with those smells in the kitchen I can easily imagine the table set before Daniel and the others. In verse 5 it is described as the "food and wine from the king’s table". I recently read about a king who insisted on having hundreds of choices for every meal because he didn't know what item might capture his taste at that moment.
The table set before Daniel clearly would have the finest selections. Literally anything they wanted it was right there before them. Is your mouth watering yet imagining what would be before you if you were at the same table>
And yet they remain faithful to their customs and in order to not defile themselves they choose only water and vegetables. The result after 10 days is that "they looked healthier and better nourished"
Write the lessons learned today...
Maybe these verses stood out to me because I have been struggling to lose weight. Even though I have been going to the pool consistently I have not dropped more than a couple pounds. So when something isn't working, something needs to change.
I also have the book and the study guide on the Daniel Fast sitting on the stand next to my chair...collecting dust. Ok God, I hear you, time to dust that off and make some dietary changes.
GROW - remain faithful to God. When He is clearly speaking to you then you must remain faithful to Him. If you ignore His guidance you are defiling yourself.
Time to reset...again. I wonder how many times I have walked through this cycle. Too many to count. And who in the world would ever read this blog anyway. But if you do happen to stumble across it and you struggle with staying committed to regular Bible study, please know that you are not alone. I am back at it again.
As for an update (again I don't know who I am updating...I am just writing in an attempt to be accountable to myself I suppose)... My kids currently go to a school about an hour away, but thankfully there is a bus they catch that is close to half way there for us. After I drop them off I have been going to the nearby pool to workout. But I have discovered that endless laps of water jogging gets rather boring so today I started thinking about the memory verses I have done in the past. Of course I can hardly remember any of them, so I will be returning to posting Memory Mondays. I even thought about how I can take my verses into the pool. I need to go on a search and rescue mission for my laminator!
When I started commuting I began by listening to an Audio Bible and managed to listen to the entire Bible. That was quite an accomplishment. Then I started listening to Jon Courson preach through the Bible beginning at Genesis and today I started listening to him preach through Daniel. It gave me the idea to get back to a daily posting of my Bible Study. In the past I have used the SOAP method (Scripture, Observation, Application, Prayer) which is a great method. But then I stumbled across this post about the GROW method Of course with my blog being named But Grow I think this is perfect! Here is how I plan to apply this.
G - Go to God in Prayer (this will be my quiet time in prayer, I will not be sharing this here)
