The House You're Building

Prepare Your Heart: Spend some time meditating on Psalm 131.   It is a short Psalm, one that is easy to recite.   Remember biblical meditation is filling your mind with God’s truth, not emptying it.   Repeat it slowly and thoughtfully, asking God to take away pride and rest your soul in preparation for today’s study.   This year it was my first year to host Thanksgiving.   It was a very nice time.   Simple.   No TV but a big puzzle.   Sitting around chatting and eating pie.   Ending the day cleaning the kitchen and drying the dishes with my husband was the perfect way to end the day.   I got on the internet later to check for an email via facebook and saw a lot of posts about people’s plans for shopping and all the stress they were anticipating.   My pastor commented on a mutual friend’s status that it’s too bad that Black Friday has to follow a holiday like Thanksgiving.   And he’s right…it’s almost like the celebr...

            Prepare Your Heart: Read Deuteronomy 7:9, Psalm 31:23, 101:6, Matthew 25:21, 1 Thessalonians 5:24.   As you read the following verses, meditate on how faithful you are to God and others, and how faithful God is to you. Recently our church started going through the 40 Days of Purpose, a spiritual growth campaign put together by Saddleback Church in California.   Though this program is dated, the spiritual truths contained in it are timeless, as how one grows closer to God never changes.   During a sermon on ministry, our pastor mentioned he would rather have faithful people serving than those that were very skilled.   I have thought a lot about that statement, as the skills and ways that I serve the church are varied. I take care of a lot of the photography needs, sing on the worship team, and in the past, have tried to help with the children’s ministry when the photography needs weren’t so...

Prepare You Heart: Read Matthew 23:23-28.   What does Jesus say of those who profess one thing and inside another is found.   Pray that in today’s study God will show you if you are allowing any hypocrisy in your life.   I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my sincerity and what things I do out of habit or self-discipline and which things I practice out of a changed heart.   When I committed myself to grow as a believer, I knew that there were things I must choose to do as God was sanctifying me, making me more like Christ.   The growth of the heart is a process.   Often feelings follow obedience.   Proverbs 16:2 describes a concept that we will study in this installment: All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD.   The Lord is the only one who can ever see us clearly.   A verse that has meant a lot to me the past several years is found in Romans 12:3: For through the grace given to me I say to ...

   Prepare Your Heart: Read Matthew 6:1-6.   Pray about the heart behind your service to God.   Is there any areas in your life where God wants to purify your desires to serve Him? Integrity is a quickly vanishing trait.   Not many people seem to value doing what is right, even when no one else knows.   As a parent this quality is something I want to develop in them, so it is important for me to first look at my integrity in light of God’s Word.   As I’ve studied the word and its meanings, the definition in full is not quite what I expected.   The word brings a sense of completeness, fullness, innocence, and simplicity alongside one whose heart is pure and whole before the Lord.   In many of this word’s use in the Bible, it is used to describe the heart (Gen 20:5, 1 Ki 9:4, Psa 78:72).   I would recommend reading Psalm 101 in its entirety before looking in Proverbs, as its theme is the godly man full of integrity. ...