Watching Daily At Wisdom's Gates

 Revelation 3:20 ESV Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.  This verse is often applied to unbelievers. They need to 'open the doors of their hearts' to Jesus, we're told. The Holy Spirit had a different application in the original context. This verse was applied to a church, a group of professing believers. They thought they were the bee's knees, but Jesus was absent. However great we may think we are, if the Lord is absent, we are nothing.  Jesus doesn't wash his hands of us, even if we're blind to the fact he's absent and we're all self-congratulatory. He's knocking on the door of his people's hearts, calling us to open up to him. If we do, we will enjoy sweet fellowship with him. William Holman Hunt famously illustrated this verse. Jesus, the Light of the world, knocked on a door without an outside handle. He wasn't going to batter down t...

 Psalm 34:14 ESV   Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. It's not enough to pay God lip service. We must actually turn away from evil. If we profess faith in God but persist in evil, we betray the fact that our profession isn't genuine. Of course, we don't live in a vacuum. We can't just not do evil. We must actively do good. The fact we're told to seek peace suggests it doesn't come naturally to us. In fact, peace is supernatural. We need Almighty God to bestow it upon us. Peace is to be pursued, like a dove on the wing. To shoot it down as it were requires speed and skill. It's all to easy to find conflict; peace requires more effort. 'God of peace, may we find in you the reconciliation we need. Help us to forsake evil and to embrace goodness. For the glory of Christ, amen'.

 1 Timothy 6:12 ESV  Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.  The Christian faith is a fight. It's not a crusade. It's spiritual warfare. Every Christian is called to receive eternal life. Timothy was also commissioned as a pastor though. The implication is that when he was called as a pastor he gave his testimony of faith to many witnesses. Even if we're not called to pastor, we're all called to make a good confession of our faith. There's no such thing as a 'secret believer'. We have to go public with our trust in Jesus. We shouldn't take eternal life for granted. We need to take hold of it. God wants us to be wholehearted in our devotion to him. 'Heavenly Father, please help us to be wholehearted in our pursuit of you and our witness of you to the world. For your glory, amen'.

 Matthew 19:26 ESV But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  Jesus said that it's humanly impossible for a rich person to enter God's Kingdom. Riches tend to come with pride, greed, and stinginess. God isn't anti rich, but he is anti pride, greed and stinginess. The disciples were men of the world who had imbibed the assumption that riches are good. Jesus challenged the status quo and asserted that it isn't necessarily so. Thankfully, it isn't impossible for God to save rich people.  If God saves rich people, he will empower them to become less proud, greedy and stingy. He will encourage them to become humble, meek and generous. We have no divine right to riches. Even though believers are adopted into the family of the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills as it were, that doesn't mean to say we necessarily own countless cattle. Children serve their parents. We only inherit glory in the new cre...

 Hebrews 12:14 ESV  Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.  Peace doesn't come naturally. We live in a conflicted, wartorn world. We have to strive for peace. We're not just to strive for peace with Christians, or people we get on with. We're to strive for peace with everyone. 'When a man's ways are pleasing to God, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him'. Holiness might seem incompatible with peace. We can't make others holy, so there's no point disturbing the peace in an attempt to do so. We can only ultimately work on ourselves. Thankfully, we can be made holy through faith in the Holy One, his death and resurrection for us. We are to strive to become like him, and not to settle for our shoddy ways. We're not to rest on our laurels. 'Holy God, please help us to be holy, as you are holy. May we also strive for peace with others. For we ask in Jesus' name, amen'.

 Isaiah 26:4 ESV Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock. God doesn't want part time lovers. He doesn't want us to trust in him only when the sun shines. He doesn't want us to doubt him when the storms come. We're to trust in the Lord forever, come rain or shine. He is everlastingly trustworthy. He'll never let us down, even though it sometimes feels like he might. We do well to remember that this life is temporary. When God momentarily might feel untrustworthy, we need to make sure we're 'in it for the long game'. Jesus might have been murdered for example, but ultimately he defeated death, and so shall we, through trusting him. 'Rock of ages, cleft for me/ Let me hide myself in thee/ May the water and the blood/ From thy riven side which flowed/ Be for sin the double cure/ Cleanse me from its guilt and power' 'Lord our Rock, may we take refuge in you from the storms of life. Help us build our lives on you and endu...

 Romans 12:12 ESV Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Joy and hope go together like strawberries and cream! It's hard, if not impossible, to be hopeful and miserable at the same time. Christ's resurrection fuels our hope and joy. Patience and tribulation are more like chalk and cheese than fish and chips! Yet if we respond well to troubles, God will develop patience within us. After all, another name for patience is longsuffering- having the strength to suffer long and to bear up under it. How can we have forbearance in the face of suffering? Through the hope of the Gospel. Tribulations aren't the end of the story; resurrection life is. Prayer isn't so much natural as supernatural. Naturally we like to do things in our own strength. Prayer is an acknowledgement of our need of God's strength constantly. 'God of hope, may we rejoice in you as we ought, persevere through troubles, and cry out to you at all times, for we ask in Jesus...

 Luke 6:28 ESV bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  Our gut reaction when someone curses us is to curse them back. If anything, we like to give at least as good as we got. Jesus commands the opposite. Thankfully, an undeserved curse is like a flitting bird: it doesn't alight. It's still unpleasant. Nevertheless, we should respond with grace. When we're abused, we're tempted to abuse our abusers in return. 'Hurt people hurt'. Yet 'healed people heal'. If we know God's blessing and Christ's intercession for us, we will seek to respond in kind. As God has been good to us, we will seek to be good to others. By the Holy Spirit we can do this. 'Blessed God, may we follow in your footsteps and be blessings in this cursed world. For the honour of your name we ask this, amen'.

 Psalm 4:8 ESV  In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. Taken in isolation, we might think this verse is telling us that God guarantees a good night's sleep! Elsewhere, Solomon says that managers struggle to sleep well compared to labourers because of all their concerns that keep them up at night. Even though David was king of Israel, he was happy to 'let God be God' and to leave his concerns at the bedroom door and sleep. I don't think we should let this verse guilt trip us if we struggle to sleep. It is true however that we don't need to let worry keep us up at night. Anxiety is pointless, it does nothing good for us. David's circumstances weren't always particularly peaceful. Yet he knew that his spiritual peace with God wasn't dependant on what was going on in his life. He had a conflicted life humanly speaking, but he was secure in God's love. We don't have to become monks or nuns to enjoy pea...