Mission Faithwalk

                 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (Psalm 51:12) If you look in a regular dictionary, you’re likely to find joy defined as great pleasure, great happiness, or delight.  Prof. Dallas Willard defined joy as “a deep, abiding sense of satisfaction and delight that comes from being in right relationship with God, rooted in the presence of Christ and the practice of spiritual disciplines.” Rather than being an emotional high, it was a foundational feeling that didn’t change due to circumstances. In Desiring God , John Piper defined Christian hedonism as “the belief that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, meaning that the pursuit of joy and pleasure is fulfilled through delighting in God.” So what is the joy of our salvation and why might we need it restored? Salvation refers to being saved, either eternally (as it is usually used) or in...

              Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)                 I’ve written about this verse before. If you delight in the Lord, than the Lord is the desire of your heart. If you delight in the Lord, He will give you Himself. This isn’t a “sing a worship song” and get rich, powerful, and famous verse. But we’ve discussed all that before, so let’s change the approach.                 What does delight mean? According to the dictionary, it means to be pleased with or take pleasure in. To take delight in the Lord is to be pleased with Him. What does that mean? It means feeling or showing pleasure or satisfaction. It probably won’t help to go down that rabbit trail any farther. A picture might help. When I think of a delighted child, this is the pict...

                   Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. (Psalm 27:14)                 He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm . (Matthew 8:26)                 One way you might get a clue that God is trying to teach you something is to find yourself receiving the same message from different sources, at different times, and in different ways. Over the past several days, I’ve started a book that talks about trusting yourself and trusting your audience. The past couple of days of verses of the day on BibleGateway.com seem to me to focus on trusting God. It’s a recurring theme in my life, and a recurring theme in Scripture. The second verse above may be the most ...

                 The Lord confides in those who fear him; he makes his covenant known to them. My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare. (Psalm 25:14-15)                 A person can walk into a bank, get nodded at by the security guard and greeted by the tellers but not really make much of an impression. If the same person draws a gun and starts shouting orders, everyone will start paying attention. In the same way, it seems that when God “speaks” in a casual, relaxed tone, we don’t notice. If He makes it dramatic and forceful, people notice, and usually complain and turn away from Him. Who wants to be around a bully?                 But we tend to think of God as a bully. According to the definition, a bully is  a “one who is habitually cruel...

                   May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer (Psalm 19:14)                 There are few prayers that we should pray more often than we do this one. Too often, we seem to think more about what we are about to say than about what God would think of what we’re about to say.  Sadly, that’s part of human nature. To some extent, it is the result of our limitations. We can’t read God’s thoughts, except when He has them recorded for us. He can speak to our minds, our hearts, our souls, and even our bodies, but that is access limited to His choice. If we could read His mind, or the minds of those around us, we might not struggle so with seeing everything solely from our perspective, but as it is, the best we can do, most of the time, is play detective with what others t...

                 There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. (Proverbs 16:25) Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.                                                 Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken                 Most of us don’t intend to go wrong. The road we take is paved, is natural, is popular, is not popular, is narrow, is wide, is windy, is straight, is level, is hilly… whatever it looks like, it looks like the road we should take. We’ve even prayed about it. Everything says it’s better than the other road.  Aft...