Tag Archives: Psalm 101

Making good investments..

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I will sing of your love and justice; to you, Lord, I will sing praise. I will be careful to lead a blameless life – when will you come to me? I will conduct the affairs of my house with a blameless heart.  I will not look with approval on anything that is vile. I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it…. I will have nothing to do with what is evil.

(Ps 101 1-4)

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.. rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

(Col 3.1-3,8-10,12-14)

As those who have put their faith in Jesus for salvation, and the hope of eternal life, we are now citizens of a new kingdom – the kingdom of Christ – and our loyalty is to a higher throne than any this world has known. We also belong to a people whose morality is radically other than those around us – it is grounded in the nature of God and as those who now live under his rule, we seek to honour his kingship by the way that we live.

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul explores for his readers just what it should look like for believers to live as citizens of God’s kingdom in a fallen world. The crucial thing is to remember that our behaviour is not modified in order to earn our salvation, but rather the fact of Christ’s sacrificial death and the power of his forgiveness motivate us to love him so much that we long to emulate and model ourselves on him. As the note in my bible commentary says: “you are…. now be!” In other words, live as though you really are God’s beloved, redeemed and holy children, those who delight to be holy as He is holy, and to love as He loves.

This week, I just want us to notice that nowhere in Paul’s words does he refer to how we might feel on any given day, or how hard it might be to pursue godliness in any given circumstances. In the same way as the psalmist pledges his commitment to daily choices to pursue holiness, so also Paul expects us as believers to commit to pursuing lives which express the character of Christ who now lives in us and whose power is at work to shape us in that way. This is a matter of developing habits which will shape our thinking and behaviour in such a permanent way that when a crisis hits, we react in godly ways quite instinctively. Does my love for Jesus motivate this kind of commitment? Am I deliberately choosing to cherish those virtues which reflect him, or am I lazily drifting along and assuming that God will sort me out in the end?

The reality is that unless we are actively pursuing habits of virtue, and deliberately rejecting or avoiding habits of vice, then we will inevitably drift toward the latter. Our fallen nature, the world around us, and the devil who seeks our injury will all conspire to entice and entrap us by our own undisciplined natures.

O God, who in Christ saved us from our sins, and by the Holy spirit lives in us day to day: have mercy on our frailty and strengthen us in godliness, that we might worthily present you to the world around us. As we consider Christ in all his glory, and the work of salvation in all its indescribable love and generosity, may our hearts and minds be ever more committed to rejecting all ungodliness, and to embracing and cherishing all those things which reflect his goodness. 

To daily choose virtue, and to reject vice; to depend on your power at work in us to strengthen every feeble effort; to rejoice that we need not earn our salvation but rest in Christ’s finished work: O God, hear our prayer, in his name, Amen.

The fruit of the spirit is….self-control

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When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid.

(Ps 56.3&4)

I will sing of your love and justice; to you, O Lord, I will sing praise. I will be careful to lead a blameless life – when will you come to me? I will walk in my house with blameless heart. I will set before my eyes no vile thing..My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me.

(Ps 101.1-3,6)

You are my portion, O Lord; I have promised to obey your words. I have sought your face with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise. I have considered my ways and have turned my steps to your statutes. I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands. though the wicked bind me with ropes, I will not forget your law. 

(Ps 119.57-61)

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me…

(Jn 14.1)

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit

(Rom 15.13)

It is easy to think of self-control as a quality of restraint, of holding back and NOT doing those things which might be harmful or otherwise ungodly – for us and for others. But there is also a proactive quality, the ability to steel oneself to do right things – even if they are hard, making us apprehensive of rejection and conflict.

In his final address which is recorded by John, Jesus commands his disciples not to let their hearts be troubled – and they go on to express profound uneasiness and trouble in the following verses! But when I read the words recently, I was struck by this element of command – do not ‘let’ your hearts be troubled…and the subsequent ‘trust in God’

Jesus speaks as though by actively pursuing trust, we can also actively obey the command to keep our hearts untroubled, no matter what we are facing. This can only be achieved by the power of the Spirit in us, reminding us of the promises of Jesus, of the riches of God’s love and provision for us, and above all, showing us that we are part of a great and glorious plan which is fully under God’s sovereign control. When we can trust that God is working all things together for his glory and our blessing, then our heart-troubles subside and we find peace.

This isn’t about some supreme teeth-gritted, fist-clenched effort which we have to make, but rather a steady cultivation of our thoughts and attitudes; a learning to trust first. When the spirit of Jesus within us is active, when we are working with him to feed our minds with the word of God, we are choosing to believe that word is doing us good. When we exercise self-control to make sure that our spiritual nourishment is not neglected, by meeting to pray with others, by worshipping together and hearing from the word, then we are giving ourselves the equipment we need to trust God, in all that may come to us.

We will undoubtedly face circumstances every day which will challenge the tranquility of our hearts – we live in a world which is so broken by sin and evil that it is impossible to avoid trouble, whether from within or without. But we can choose what we do with those troublings…either we put up no defence, and allow them to take up residence in our hearts and minds, dictating that we are driven by fear and anxiety; or we exercise the self-control which the spirit enables within us.

We choose to remember God’s promises; we choose to trust that he is good, and true and loving, and powerful; we bring our fears and troubles to him, and choose not to dwell on them. This is not self-hypnosis, but faith in action. By actively pursuing trust in the God who has revealed himself as supremely loving, and intimately caring towards us, we learn to stand secure amidst troubling circumstances – not because nothing bad may happen, but because God is in control of everything for his glory and our blessing