Are You Ready For A Healthier And Happier 2021?
Good Morning Friends,
Most people are ready to say goodbye and good night to 2021, glad it is over. It started out with such hope and then turned into something the history books will be evaluating for decades. On
Palm Sunday our choir sang at church and we have not sung as a choir since. Thankfully, our Bell Choirs and quartets and others have praised God with music during 2020. This is good for my soul and perhaps yours to. Perhaps we will find a silver lining in the experience of not singing in worship. But I would guess that things have definitely changed, and maybe even transformed in the way we worship. It is hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Certainly, our climate, law enforcement, and the way we shop and are entertained too have changed. But I wonder if it all is preparing us for a spiritual transformation. Maybe it has been preparing us to suffer well. Time will tell if we have learned to embrace the future with love or not…whether we again will sing collectively as a means of understanding and worshiping.
The basic problem is that we deceive ourselves to the truth. But whether we are equipped or not the preparation is over. For the last weeks we have been preparing for Christmas like we prepare for a hurricane and the day has come and gone but the experience lingers. So now the preparing is over for we are on the eve of a new day and a new beginning and maybe a vaccine to bring us some sanity in the months ahead as well as the hope of singing again. So today we consider a Maskil to the Choir, Are You Ready For A Healthier And Happier 2021?
Scripture: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
Psalm 42:1-8 (NRSV)
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NRSV)
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6 (NRSV)
Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32 (NRSV)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
John 1:1-18 (NRSV)
Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth.
1 John 2:18-21 (NRSV)
Message: Sanctification is a slow process of transformation, but it seems to be getting faster all the time. Psalm 42 can help us and was written for the choir to sing in times like these. It begins with a poetic description of David’s soul longing for God’s presence. He asks why he is so depressed and anxious, and then with hope he encourages, instructs, teaches, and urges his soul to understand. It is as if David is a pastor to his own soul. He listens to its needs and desires and then points it toward God. David has become skilled in the art of caring for his soul.
He found strength in relating to his soul and so should we. Psalm 42 is evidence that David suffered emotional challenges and gives a little Biblical advice when read in its entirety for dealing with how our senses and feelings are different from our spiritual state. Here are David’s symptoms: He is crying incessantly, he is not eating well, his sleep is interrupted, his feelings are overwhelmed, he fears God has abandoned him, his inner pain is drowning everything else out and he is in physical pain. Maybe you suffered similar torments and stresses during 2020. So, friends, learn from what David did to nurture his soul. Press on into God in the hope that we will again sing the praises of God in worship. From a scientific perspective, these actions have a way of helping to increase our serotonin levels. From a spiritual perspective, they bring us closer to God. So, when faced with challenges during 2020 we have accepted it, we have gotten rest, and improved our diet and exercised. I wonder if we would have done that if the year had not been so challenging. Pray about it while in praise of God. Friends, we have been in the wilderness for nine months not singing in worship. We need to know there is a way home to collectively praising God. Know that the world would shape human behavior, but Christ can Transform human behavior from the inside out during times such as these. Through hope, holiness, wisdom and love, God has given us the way to receive the power to change and the way to have victory in 2021.
And So, we are to feel and think with God in the Scriptures expressed aloud especially when we are in turmoil. Friends, living as redeemed Christians helps us to deal with turmoil of life. We can get so stressed out that we get on the edge and so beat down like the experience of all the waves pushing us down. But God has not abandoned us. We still fight for hope and truth. And love. That is why we need to praise God even in the discouragement of 2020. Let us face it, there is a central difficulty involved in grasping the nature of the soul and in caring for it. Logic of its deep empathy is at odds with our reasoning mind. Still our soul’s desires exist and will not be repressed. Sometimes creative work is a way of finding one’s passion in the shadows, for the experience can be filled with failures and anxieties as well as inspiring and exciting art. But it can also be about ideas and religious practices of worship. The thing is that what this life is all about is the making of our souls and we must be creative about the work. And that takes faith, for we are to love God and our neighbors but also love ourselves. Friends, we seek spiritual transcendence, but we struggle not realizing that the goal is to feel and share a divine love. So, commit to share the truth in the new year. Share that the ongoing grace of the Father through the Son permits us to be sanctified recognizing that the way of Jesus allows us into the presence of the Father. Have the joy of life revealed in the truth of the Word made flesh. And in the truth of Christ experience in the love of the Holy Spirit. For in Christ’s Spirit, we can learn to love and to live right now. Share the message that when we accept Christ, we are ushered into the reality that we are part of Christ’s family and have been given permission to join in the heavenly celebration of beginnings and endings. On this New Year’s Eve day somehow let the incomprehensible God becomes intelligible, somehow let all the preparation bring meaning into this celebration of the beginnings and endings in our lives with truth, grace, and power that transforms our understanding of how to nurture our soul. Friends, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can learn to sing again.
Pray we develop an inner relationship with our soul. Pray we watch the Spirit. Pray our actions bring Peace to our own lives as well as in the lives of others. Pray we have memories and habits that help us to survive the problems of life but also experience the joy that connects us and helps us accept who we are. Pray
we have passion, perspective, and praise. Pray we thank God for helping us through the battles of life. Pray that because such a high price has been paid that we strive to make the declarations of freedom real. Pray we take greater responsibility for the health of our body, soul, and spirit. Pray that when events press us down that we respond by pressing into God. Pray we find strength in the Lord. Pray our souls are cultivated in the sacredness of the everyday. Pray the seed planted in us grow and produce fruit. Pray we be bearers of the fruit of love and truth. Pray that we continually be filled with the Holy Spirit… replenished with the truth.
Pray we embrace the truth as love. Pray that we know the truth. Pray that we accept the truth. Pray that we believe the truth. Pray that God implement each of His truths into our lives. Pray we fight for the truth to be in us. Pray the truth of love overflow in our lives and surrounds, protects, and preserves us with the hope of new life. Pray that the truth transforms us. Pray we rejoice in the truth.
Pray we realize that Jesus is the truth.
Pray we know just how special it is that we remove any obstacles in our life that hinders others from knowing the truth. Pray we realize the truth of grace but also the consequences of trying to live above God’s law of love.
Pray we point to the light of Jesus. Pray we prepare our hearts for salvation. Pray we sing again to the praises of God.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 