Quiet Times (3) - Engage your brain with your heart!

We have shared two tips on quiet times already:
Tip#1 was: Always ask God to help you when you have your Quiet Time!
The Holy Spirit will help us to hear God’s message!

Tip#2 was: Always reflect.
Talk to your soul! Quiet down and ensure that God’s message reaches the control centre of your being.

And now Tip#3: Engage your brain with your heart !

Whoever is wise, let him heed these things and consider the great love of the LORD. Psalms 107:43

The fact that our Quiet Times are about fellowship with God, sharing our innermost questions, desires and needs with him and listening to his comforting, loving and directing voice, does not mean that we should leave our brains, our thought-processes, our learning abilities and our insight outside! As much as we fully commit our hearts, emotions and passions, we should also commit our ability to concentrate and understand to this process through which we enhance our intimate relationship with the Lord!

The ancient Church leaders called on us to contemplate God. If "contemplate" is not part of your regular vocabulary, use consider!
Consider is a word that the Scriptures uses!

Psalm 107 is a psalm that recounts the history of God's dealings with Israel. The call to consider God's love comes at the end of the psalm.
In Psalm 8 the psalmist considers the wonders of the heavens and everything God has made, thinking about God’s greatness and the strange truth that mankind is more important to God than any of the natural wonders.
In Psalm 119 we are called many times to consider God's Laws.
In Isaiah 41:20 we are called to consider God's greatness compared to the futility of idols.
Jeremiah calls people to consider their ways in the light of God's awesomeness (2:19).
Jesus reminds us to consider the beauty of the lilies and thus learn about God's provision.
In Romans 11:22 we are urged to consider the kindness and austerity of God.
In Hebrews 12:3 we are urged to consider the example of Christ in the face of hardship.

We are to think about God! We are to think about his remarkable works of creation and his sustenance of everything, including ourselves! Most of all we need to think about what the coming of God to us in Jesus Christ means: God’s anger about our sins that Jesus carried, God’s grace by which we are forgiven in Christ, God’s power by which we are enabled to win through the resurrection power of our Lord, who owns all authority in heaven and on earth. We are to think about the meaning of being filled with the Holy Spirit and that the Spirit enables us to follow the example of God’s Son.

We are to think about God with our brains awake and sharpened. We are to consider his revelations in nature, in Scripture and most of all in Jesus Christ, and conclude that God is good and that we are saved and safe!

Remember now Tip#3 on Quiet Times: Engage your brain with your heart!
Soul seeking worship, engaged with our intellectual considerations, results in complete surrender of heart and mind to Christ. And Worship plus Consideration equals Contemplation!

(Thanks to Theo Groeneveld whose devotions on this topic gave very specific direction to the thoughts in this series on Quiet Times).

Good company brings true happiness!!

(Ps 1:1) Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.

The message of this verse is that the company we choose to keep, can affect our happiness. The people we choose to hang around with, befriend, work with, or even marry can impact our happiness.

Be warned by God’s Word about the kind of company that you keep. Those that you choose to hang around with, even casually, can so easily start you down the wrong path. You see, it is a fact of life that the environment we find ourselves in always has an effect on our life. So, take a hard look at your friends.

Let's say your faith life and prayer life and church attendance are not what they should be. If you hang around with people who do not pray and do not go to church, people who make fun of God, or simply never think about Him, your faith life and prayer life and church attendance cannot improve; in fact, they can only get worse. Bad company will result in us disappointing God even more and we will be less joyful and meaningful.

Quoting a well-known proverb, the Apostle Paul tells us that "Bad company corrupts good character" (1 Cor 15:33). Bad friends result in anything other than blessing and happiness.

Blessed, yes happy, many, many times over, are the those who walk in the counsel of the holy, who stand in the way of the righteous, who sit in the seat of worshippers.

Let me also quote from Psalm 119: 63: I am a friend to all who fear you, to all who follow your precepts.

Today is Ascension Day!

Today is Ascension Day! May you be blessed and comforted by the faith knowledge that our Head and our King was enthroned in heaven and was given all authority in heaven and earth!

Here follow a few questions and answers, helping us to understand the significance of his glorious rule in heaven.

1. What does “He ascended into heaven” means?
That Christ, in the sight of his disciples, according to his human nature was taken up from the earth into heaven, and continues to be there in a position of divine authority and power until he shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

2. Is Christ then not with as he has promised?
Christ is true man and true God. According to his human nature he is now not on earth but in heaven, but as our God, Saviour and King he is never absent form us!

3. What benefits do we have because Jesus Christ ascended into heaven?
Firstly: He is our Advocate in the presence of his Father in heaven, always praying for us.
Secondly: because he is in heaven as a human being, we know that he as our Head will also take us there.
Thirdly: He sends his Spirit to us by whose power we seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God, and not the things on the earth. The glorious Christ, enthroned in heaven, pours heavenly gifts on us, defending us against all our enemies and protecting us from evil.

Praise the Lord, for He is glorious!
Never shall His promise fail.
Christ has made His saints victorious,
sin and death shall not prevail.
Praise the God of our salvation!
Hosts on high, His power proclaim;
Heaven and earth and all creation,
laud and magnify His Name.

Worship, honour, glory, blessing,
Lord, we offer to Your Name.
Young and old, Your praise expressing,
join their Saviour to proclaim.
As the saints in heaven adore You,
we would bow before Your throne,
As Your angels serve before You,
so on earth Your will be done.

Quiet Times (2) - Reflect!

Before I went on leave, I started a new series on practical tips for Quiet Times or personal devotions. While most of us know that we should have them, we often simply don't know how. We also know that we need them and that we need the impact it will have on our lives – yet we struggle to keep up the habit. We do not also see the fruit of personal devotions, because we rush through them and do not have any expectations around them.

Tip#1 was: Always ask God to help you as you have your Quiet Time!

And now Tip#2,today: After we've quieted our soul, praised God, and read His Word, we should always reflect.

Psalms 42:5: Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.

The psalmist, suffering from a “soul that is downcast” in other words “depressed”, has a “talk with his depressed, sad soul”.

My contemplation of what God has to say to me today, always should include a “talk with my soul”, reflection time, – even if I do not feel sad. Whatever the day or the week requires of me, God needs to speak to my soul through his Word in one way or another and I need to make sure that I don't restrain the message by storing it only in my mind, in other words, only dealing with it on an intellectual level. It needs to reach my innermost self – the control centre of my emotions, values, dreams, plans. I ( my thought processes) have to facilitate God speaking to my soul!

The danger is that it can become ego-centric: all about me and what I want and need.
This is why the Psalmist’s talking to "his soul" is helpful. It's a discussion that takes place about my-life-in-the-third-person, in the context of God's Greatness, his Word, his will, his plan and his feelings about me. I should talk to my soul in such a way that I ensure that the Lord is really talking to my soul, and therefore is truly talking to ME!!

Tip#1: Always ask God to help you as you have your Quiet Time!
Tip#2 : After we've quieted our souls, praised God, and read His Word, we should always reflect.

Set your mind on heavenly goals!

Col 3:1-2) ... set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. (2) Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Notice, the Bible tells us we have a choice: setting our hearts on things above or on earthly things. There's always an alternative. Every time you have the opportunity to rid yourself of sin, to receive God's forgiveness and to find strength and renewal in Christ, there is also an opportunity to remain in your sin and misery.

It’s a matter of focus, of priority and most of all, a matter of love – do I love God with all my heart and mind.

We can set our minds on earthly things or on heavenly things. We can pursue treasure on earth or treasure in heaven. We can first seek the things of this world - or the kingdom of God and its righteousness.

We have to make a choice between living for God and living to satisfy our sinful nature.
If I am saved, I now live for Jesus. Then we set our hearts and minds “on things above, not on earthly things."