The problem becomes very challenging when non-biblical issues are given biblical status, and as a result, people begin to respond in a decidedly unbiblical way.
In a recent talk that I gave to some ministry interns, I unpacked this idea in more depth.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
A father came home from work and noticed a note addressed to him taped to his teenage son’s door:
Dear Dad,
Jason and I borrowed Mom’s car to go to Taco Bell. I know I didn’t have permission, but I thought we’d be back before you and Mom got home. Unfortunately, I hit a pothole and blew out the front right tire.
We jacked up the car to put on a spare tire, but the jack slipped and the car rolled backward into the ditch.
Bill came with his pickup to pull us out, but the tow strap pulled off the front bumper and the car rolled further down the hill and sunk in the pond.
I bought a bus ticket to get out of town and go enlist in the Army. Give Mom a hug and I’ll see you both in about 2 years.
Love, your son
P.S. None of the above is true. Mom took her car to Aunt Jan’s house and I rode my bike to Jason’s house. However, I hope the fact that none of these bad things actually happened will help you put in perspective the D+ on my report card.
We like to manage expectations, don’t we? We frequently deliver bad news with the good news close by.
Psalms 88 and 89 are written by brothers: both of them are called Ezrahite, and both of them were worship leaders in the tabernacle. And until Solomon, these guys were considered the wisest in the land (1 Chronicles 2:6; 15:19; 1 Kings 4:29-34).
I believe these two psalms form a couplet. They make up the last two psalms of Book III in the Psalter, with Psalm 89 ending with, “Amen and Amen.” Both of them label their psalms a maskil which means “a poem of contemplation” (NKJV). And look how Psalm 88 leaves us in the dark, while Psalm 89 shines a light in the dark.
In Psalm 88, Heman soberly prepares us for his two-Selah psalm in his introductory remarks. He uses a phase mahalathleannoth which means someone who is so physically weak from emotional grief that they are now battling depression. The NLT calls it “the suffering of affliction.”
Heman is describing a reality: We will all experience pain in this life. Maybe even for our entire earthly life—from my youth I have been afflicted and close to death (v. 15). Heman’s reality is seen in his words in the first five verses of this psalm.
His first Selah is breathtaking because he wants us to pause to realize that God has allowed all of this (notice the pronoun You in vv. 6-8, 16-18). But still, Heman knows God saves because he has made a decision to continue to praise Him even in the dark times (vv. 1-2, 9, 13).
Heman’s second Selah comes in the middle of a series of five questions (vv. 10-14) that sound a lot like both questions Jesus asked in Gethsemane and from the Cross, and the reality of the temporary darkness He was facing (Psalm 22:1-2; Luke 22:53; John 19:11).
Even the way Heman closes his psalm foreshadows the darkness surrounding the death of Jesus: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Psalm 88 shows us the reality of temporary darkness (like Good Friday), but Psalm 89 points us to the certainty of eternal light (like Resurrection Sunday)!
So when you are battling your dark times, let me give you these assurances:
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This week we discuss the gifts of teaching and exhortation. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
[3:20] Leaders look for ways to honor those around them
[3:48] Can you honor too much?
[4:29] How can we honor our parents and grandparents?
[5:13] Greg has a book releasing soon called Sage Advice
[9:44] Greg explains that application is the real compliment
[10:36] Honor starts with noticing others and then expressing what was noticed
[11:49] Honoring calls out great potential in others
[12:32] What does it mean to “trust the person with a limp”?
[14:15] Honor is for people who gave, not for people who received
[15:28] Why is hard for leaders to acknowledge the success of others?
[16:27] Leaders need to looking around for opportunities to honor others
[17:11] Hand out compliments publicly for maximum effect
[17:55] Leaders receive honor by first honoring others
[19:45] Our leadership challenge to you
Check out this episode and subscribe on YouTube so you can watch all of the upcoming episodes. You can also listen to our podcast on Spotify and Apple.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
I had a great time teaching some emerging ministry interns. I shared with them part of my autobiography. There was a time when I heard God’s voice as clearly as I had ever heard it telling me to pursue a career in the medical field. Before I completed that degree, I just as clearly heard God’s voice telling me that medicine wasn’t going to be the career for me.
For a number of years, I struggled with this because I thought I had missed God’s voice the first time. “Perhaps,” I thought to myself, “I didn’t hear God clearly.”
But then the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to a story in the Book of Acts that I had completely missed before. The principles in this story helped me realize that God had put me on a particular path in order for my life to intersect with other people and places.
Here’s how I explained my story and the principles I learned from the life of Philip:
My friend, your journey may be different from mine, but we still share something so vital in common: God is using everything in your life to accomplish His plan. As you follow Jesus, you will intersect with the lives of others, and your life is making a difference in them.
Yes, I believe so IF we recognize why we have been blessed by God.
In God’s perfect timing, the next psalm in our series looking at the Selahs in the Psalms is one that addresses this topic.
Notice the very first word in Psalm 87 is the personal pronoun “He.” There is an assumption the sons of Korah make that their readers will know that “He” is The Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. In fact, they see God as the Prime Mover in this psalm, putting His words at the very middle of the psalm (v. 4).
Just before these quotation marks, we are invited to Selah—pause and carefully listen to God. He announces heavenly citizenship for age-old enemies of Israel: Rehab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, Cush. Peoples from all of these nations are identified as: “those who acknowledge Me” and three times He says they are “born in Zion” (vv. 4-6).
God desires that none should perish. He wants people from every nation, tribe, and language to enjoy His presence forever in the eternal Zion.
The sons of Korah remind us of just how blessed Zion truly is (vv. 1-3) and how God establishes all who have Zion citizenship (v. 5). God does this so that all people will see God’s blessing on those people who acknowledge Him as their Lord and King.
So let’s return to my earlier question: Is it right and biblical for Christians to pray for God to bless America?
Let me ask it another way: Has God blessed America? I believe He has and we should be eternally grateful. I believe this nation was founded on biblical principles, and recognized as a place where people could have the freedom to worship God.
Will God continue to bless America? Psalm 87 says the blessing will last only as long as we Americans acknowledge, “All my fountains are in You” (v. 7). This is a call for us to continually recognize God as our Foundation and Source. We also have to remember that the blessing is only to us so that it can flow through us to all peoples, languages, and tribes.
The blessing stops when we dig our own wells, or we try to hoard the blessing.
There are two phrases in this psalm that stand out to me as prophetic.
Selah (listen to this) and then “I will record” (vv. 3-4)
“The Lord will write in the register” (stop to celebrate) Selah (v. 6)
God keeps perfect records of those who are citizens of Zion because they have acknowledged Jesus as the One who paid the price for their sins to be forgiven. So when John gives us a glimpse of the eternal Zion, he tells us about the rejoicing over those who are there “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9-10, 7:9-10, 21:22-27).
Just as Revelation records spontaneous praise to God, the sons of Korah build in those Selah pauses to worship too:
Glorious things are said of God—praise Him!
He has blessed us by His presence in our midst—praise Him!
People from all tribes are entering Zion—praise Him!
May God continue to bless Americaso that we can use those blessings to tell the world about His love as we invite them into a personal relationship with Jesus!
According to Romans 12, all Christians have been given a unique gift package by God. We are to use these motivational gifts to make God’s Kingdom more visible and more desirable.
This week we discuss the gifts of prophecy and serving. You may download the participant’s notes and the gifts assessment I use in this lesson:
“…when it comes to following Jesus, life is never as good as it gets. There is always more righteousness, more peace, and more joy in the Spirit to know, and more love and truth to share, as long as we are willing to press on.” Read more of this post from T.M. Moore here.
J. Warner Wallace understands why the church is often confused about the role of apologetics in evangelism. In this video he does a marvelous job of explaining the value of apologetics—
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Although the Jews had been released from exile in Babylon to return to their homeland, things still were not going well for them. The prophet Haggai came on the scene and offered this solution from God to their national adversity.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
As we rejoin our series looking at the Selahs in the Psalms, let me remind you of the definition of Selah: (a) a pause to reflect—or “pause, and calmly think of that,” as the Amplified Bible says; (b) notice the contrasts; or (c) get ready for a crescendo.
Psalm 85 is a longing for revival. Not only longing for it but giving us the path to revival.
Many Christians say they want revival, but I’m not so certain they have the biblical definition in mind. When most people define revival, they use descriptions about exuberant worship, manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the church reenergized for ministry, and non-believers flocking to see what’s happening and then accepting Jesus into their hearts as a result.
But those are actually the results of revival, not the revival itself.
Take a look at this overview of Psalm 85:
a look back (vv. 1-3)
a look around (vv. 4-6)
a look ahead (vv. 8-13)
I am aware that I skipped verse 7 in that overview. That is the middle verse of this psalm, so it is presenting us with the main idea. It’s a longing to see the path forward, the path to revival. It’s not about “getting saved” again because verses 1-3 already thank God for His salvation.
But let’s notice the Selah. It seems to come mid-thought in the backward look. I think this is both a pause to consider deeply, and also a pause to look at the contrasts. It’s almost as if the sons of Korah, who wrote this psalm, have their breath taken away as they consider the immensity of God’s love that covers our sins!
That word “cover” means to cover our nakedness, conceal our shame, and hide us from our forgiven sins. The alternative is to live in fear of God’s righteous judgment on our unforgiven sin.
The sons of Korah long for this again. They long for a crescendo of righteousness, which is why in the “look around” section we see the phrases “restore us again” (v. 4) and “revive us again” (v. 6).
This Hebrew word for “restore” always means a turning:
men turning backfrom God (apostasy)
men turning away from God (backsliding)
men turning away from evil (repentance)
men turning back to God (revival)
The ball is in our court. God has remained faithful; we are the ones who have sinned and turned away from Him. God hasn’t gone anywhere; we have!
So revival begins with the recognition of our sin and profound repentance from that sin. Revival is a recognition that I have turned back from God, and now I need to turn away from evil and turn wholeheartedly back to God.
Immediately following thatmiddle verse notice the personal, singular pronoun “I” in verse 8. Revival starts with my recognition of my sin and then my repentance of that sin quickly follows.
The “show us the way” prayer of verse 7 is answered in verse 13: “Righteousness will go before Him, and shall make His footsteps our pathway” (NKJV). God Himself shows us the way! His footsteps mark the path for us to walk!
I have written before about the difference between terms that are biblical, unbiblical, and non-biblical. It is very important for us to keep these terms straight, especially so for those in leadership positions. 
