Open Wide!

I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.--Psalms 81:10 (ESV)

Why do we do devotions? Why do we read our Bibles, pray, go to church, and sometimes even fast? The Bible says that we are not saved by these duties, so what's the point of doing them?

The point is: Spiritual disciplines are "opening our mouth" in God's direction. Duties like meditating on Scripture and fasting are means which God uses to give us joy. He promises in this psalm that when we look to Him for satisfaction, He will fill our hungry souls and satisfy us with "honey from the rock" (verse 16).

The exciting promise in this verse is "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it." No matter how wide we open your mouths, he will always more than satisfy us. No matter how much we read our Bible, there will always be more truth to ignite our hearts. No matter how much we pray, we cannot exhaust God's blessings. In fact, the greatest hindrance to our happiness and satisfaction is not our circumstances but our own laziness in spiritual disciplines.

Look at your spiritual duties not as a way to earn God's favor but as a way to open our mouths toward God for joy--He will satisfy you.

The Book of Jude

I just finished reading the book of Jude. This book for remarkable for its conciseness; in one chapter it teaches us almost everything we need to know about false teachers. Jude begins by greeting "those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ." He then speaks of people who have "crept in unnoticed." He gives three examples of groups of sinners being punished: the unbelieving Israelites who fled Egypt with Moses, the fallen angels, and Sodom and Gomorrah. In all three cases, God destroyed or eternally bound them. Next, Jude denounces false teachers as being blasphemers of the same degree as the three previously mentioned groups of sinners. He then compares the false teachers to three infamous sinners. Jude writes, "Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion." However, the greatest part of Jude is not for another eight verses, when Jude writes, "And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh." This is our commission from Jude. As Christians, our job is showing mercy and spreading the good news to the lost and blasphemous world.