Seven

Psalms 91-108 All of you, set free by God, tell the world! Tell how He freed you from oppression. He led you out of your dark, dark cell, broke open the jail and led you out. So, thank God for His marvelous love!

Psalms 109-135 O God, here I am; Your servant, Your faithful servant: set me free for Your service! …..I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do.

Psalm 119 You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God. You’re blessed when you follow His directions, doing your best to find Him. That’s right, you don’t go off on your own; you walk straight along the road He set.---I’m single-minded in pursuit of You; don’t let me miss the road signs You’ve posted. I’ll run the course You lay out for me if You’ll just show me how!—God, teach me lessons for living so I can stay the course. Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets, invigorate me on the pilgrim way! You’re my place of quiet retreat; I wait for Your Word to renew me. I’m Your servant—help me understand what that means, the inner meaning of Your instructions.

I’ve kept my feet on the ground, I’ve cultivated a quiet heart. He does as He pleases----however, wherever, whenever.

Psalms 136 – Proverbs 6 Thank the miracle-working God, His love never changes. Finish what You started in me, God. Your love is eternal—don’t quit on me now! The days of my life are all prepared before I’d ever lived one day.

Teach me how to live to please You, because You’re my God. Lead me by Your blessed Spirit into the cleared & level pastureland. Lord, I believe You are leading us to “cleared and level pastureland” as You go before us to PA & prepare the people and site for Your ministry.From the Proverbs Intro: Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves.

Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen to God’s voice in EVERYTHING you do, EVERYWHERE you go; He’s the one who will keep you on track.

Keep your eyes straight ahead; ignore all the sideshow distractions. Watch your step & the road will stretch out smooth before you.

Proverbs 7-20 Mark a life of discipline & live wisely; don’t squander your precious life! Are you confused about life, don’t know what’s going on? Leave your impoverished confusion and live!

…..love pulls a quilt over bickering.

The world of the generous gets larger and larger, the world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller.

….the prudent quietly shrug off insults.

A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.

Put God in charge of your work, then what you’ve planned will take place. This is another way of saying that if I daily surrender everything to the Lord, His plan will be advanced.

Proverbs 21- Ecclesiastes 2 Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you further behind.

Simpletons only learn the hard way, but the wise learn by listening.—While experience (both mine and others) is a teacher, if I am wise, I don’t have to make all the mistakes of others.

Give yourselves to disciplined instruction; open your ears to tested knowledge. If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn’t much to you in the first place.

God has no use for the prayers of the people who won’t listen to Him.

A good woman…always faces tomorrow (& today) with a smile. When she speaks, she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.

Ecclesiastes 3- Song of Songs 8 Wisdom energizes its owner. A person who fears God deals responsibly with all of reality, not just a piece of it.

God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated.

Remember: The duller the ax, the harder the work. (When I rush and begin my day without quality time with the Lord, I am a dull ax, and make my own life harder than God intends.)

The Final Word: Fear God. Do what He tells you.

Isaiah 1-13 From the Intro: Everyone more or less believes in God. But most of us do our best to keep God on the margins of our lives, or we refashion Him to suit our convenience. Prophets insist that God is the sovereign center, not off in the wings, awaiting our beck and call. And prophets insist that we deal with God as He reveals Himself, not as we imagine Him to be.

This reminds me of JI Packer teaching about our immutable God, whom we should come to know not as we ‘like to think of Him as_____(fill in the blank)' but as He truly is, as revealed in the Bible.

If you don’t take your stand in faith, you won’t have a leg to stand on. Without a growing, vibrant faith in God, I won’t have the foundation required of me to do what God has called me to do.