Daily Devotion for November 16, 2015
(The text read, "Peace on earth, good will to men.")
Prayers
Scripture
Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.
There is no mountain too tall He cannot move it.
And there is no storm too dark God cannot calm it.
There is no sorrow too deep He cannot soothe it.
And if He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulders,
I know my brother that He will carry you.
And if He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulders,
I know my sister that He will carry you.
He said, "Come unto Me all who are weary, and I will give you rest."
I know my brother and I know my sister,
That He, He’s going to carry you.
Oh yes, He will,
He’s going to carry you.
Music and Lyrics by Scott Wesley Brown
To Live in the Knowledge of Christ
Dear Jesus, I can open up my heart to you. I can tell you everything that troubles me. I know you care about all the concerns in my life.
Teach me to live in the knowledge that you who care for me today, will care for me tomorrow and all the days of my life.
I Take Your Hand Sweet Jesus
When my world falls down around me
And the ground is sinking sand,
When peace can't be found on this earth,
I reach out for Your hand.
When Your hand wraps 'round my own
A strength pours from Your Spirit;
It brings to me a quiet calm
Til once again I'm whole
A peace beyond all reason,
A rest there in Your touch,
Something in Your quiet words
My heart yearns for so much...
If I but rest my worries
Upon Your shoulder there,
Strength that pours forth from Your Spirit
Will wash away each care.
Like a cool sweet taste of water
For a tired thirsty man,
My heart finds peace, my soul is calm,
When I reach out for Your hand.
Meditation
[Putting all my trust in Christ.]
Community of Prayer
I pray to you, dearest Jesus, for all the graces I need to know you, to love you and serve you faithfully unto death, and to save my soul. Give me a tender and fervent devotion to your sacred passion by which I was redeemed, venerating you each day in prayer, and teach me how to unite sorrows and sufferings of my life with your own.
Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.
Psalm 43:1-4 (NKJV)
Vindicate me, O God,
And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;
Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!
For You are the God of my strength;
Why do You cast me off?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!
Let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your tabernacle.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And on the harp I will praise You,
O God, my God.
Exodus 20:7 (NKJV)
The Third Commandment
“You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”
Notes on the Scripture
This is one place where older translations serve us badly. Who knows what "in vain" means? It is not a term we use or understand today. The Voice does a good job of translating this imprecisely, but in a way that gives us the full impact: " You are not to use My name for your own idle purposes, for the Eternal will punish anyone who treats His name as anything less than sacred."
There is, in every language, words or expressions that are considered coarse, vulgar, unmentionable in polite speech; they are reserved for sailors and criminals. (And, it seems, college students.) But this is just a means of distinguishing class. It's basically a socioeconomic device.
Abusing God's name — blasphemy — is an entirely different matter. If we believe in God and fear Him, we do not speak His name idly. Of course, we no longer use the "name" of God the Father at all: we simply refer to Him as "God" or "the Lord". But idle use of this term is covered by the injunction of the commandment.
A word representing God is a symbol. Think of it as a statue; it signifies God Himself. It's proper use is only to address the deity or to discuss, to teach and learn, about Him.
What practices does this proscribe? First, certainly, the use of God as part of a curse. We don't want to say "Holy Jesus!" as an indication of shock, or "Goddamn you" as a light curse. Do we really expect that God is going to take our wishes into account when He decides the eternal fate of another person's soul? No. What these expressions do is to cheapen the name of God. We might say "I'll kill you if you take my cookie," and we know it is a joke, because the person does not fear that we will kill him. But do we live in fear of God? Or is eternal life, and the possibility of eternal judgment, a joke?
But there is a use of God's name even more serious, and that is using God's name to assist in fraud: that is, swearing a false oath and invoking God to strengthen the fraud. God has never offered to act as the guarantor of our truthfulness.
Christ taught us that we should not swear an oath at all, much less using God's name, for we do not have dominion over God to make Him our guarantor. (Matthew 5:33-37) To swear an oath at all is a presumption that we have dominion over that which we swear upon. If we swear an oath on God's name, we arrogate God's righteousness to ourselves, which is an enormous sin of pride. We do not somehow magically become righteous in our lives by Christ's mercy; rather, we are made righteous by forgiveness. Shall we presume to have God's righteousness in what we say?
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