A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself. Proverbs 11:17
It’s not about manipulation. It has to do with your character. If you are someone who is kind by nature, your actions tend to benefit yourself. On the other hand, if you are someone who likes to be cruel, your actions will hurt you in the end.
This should motivate us to foster a spirit of genuine kindness toward others.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Paul compares the Christian life to a game; a race and a boxing match to be specific. Of course the Christian life is not like a game in its triviality. Also, we are not competing against each other in a winner-take-all way. So how are they alike.
Risk – There is a risk that we, after spending lifetimes working to follow Christ, show in the end that we never really had faith in Him. We can let our focus slip from Him onto the things of this world. We can start following the idols of the heart again, and lose it all. This risk even applies to the Apostle Paul. He talks about the need to run in order to win and not lose, and about how he works hard to avoid being ‘disqualified.’
Training – Paul speaks of exercise, self-control, and discipline. This is training. The Christian life takes hard work. But here is the amazing thing about training – it is actually the most hopeful thing in the world. When you train hard at a game, or when you exercise your body, you don’t do it perfectly. You don’t run with perfect form or speed. You don’t measure up to the standard of the best runner in the world. You don’t even measure up (if you are like me) to your own standards of what you could do in the past! When you do something wrong in training, you make a note of it, and continue to train. Continue to make small adjustments over time as you consistently practice. This is the difference grace makes. It gives us room to train ourselves in the righteousness that we could never measure up to under the law. How wonderful an opportunity that is!
Goal – Finally, the Christian life is like a game or a race or a boxing match because it has a goal – an aim. The difference is that the competitions of this world yield trophies that grow old, fall apart, fade away into obscurity and mean nothing in the end. The rewards of the Christian life, however, are eternal. They never fade in glory or magnificence. They will last forever, for we will live forever with our Lord Jesus, who is our final reward and the goal of everything.
In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23
The hard, sometimes boring, work we do each day leads to profit. It produces a result. It leads to life for our families, for our friends and communities.
Even if you are working on the wrong thing, or not working as intelligently as you could be, there is still some profit. For you will probably learn where you are making a mistake, and improve your process.
This is contrasted with ‘mere talk.’ Stop talking about what you want to do. Work at it. Toil away. What you want may not happen exactly. But something profitable will.
If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 1 Corinthians 8:2
There is a kind of knowing that is not self conscious. It causes us to act in service of others. It is an aid of love.
Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. 1 Corinthians 8:1
There is a kind of knowledge that looks at itself, like someone obsessed with his own reflection. It ponders its own qualities. It congratulates itself on its brilliance, depth, and breadth.
The first kind of knowledge is real knowledge, because it produces real actions of love toward other people. In the Bible, knowledge is never far from the actions of love. Love and knowledge go hand in hand.
The second kind of knowledge, the one that thinks about itself, is false knowledge, because it prevents loving action from happening. It “puffs up” because it is full of air. It looks impressive, but there is nothing real behind it. There is no love there.
The person who thinks about how much he knows “does not yet know as he ought to know.” There is a way of knowing, then, that we ought to follow. And that is the way that supports and aids loving action. It is outward knowledge, focused on how to better love others.
Sleep is so strange. Why is it that we need to be unconscious every day in order to function when we are conscious?
Being awake is inherently stressful. Our daily activities demand resources from our bodies that we can’t pay continuously.
There is so much variety in God’s creatures; birds that fly, horses that gallop and run, giant elephants and swimming fish. Among humans there is staggering variety in culture, language, and appearance.
But we all need sleep. We cannot continue living the stressful, wonderful life we have without paying the price of sleep. It is a universal activity among living creatures.
The Bible talks about sleep as God’s gift in Psalm 127:2: It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
It is vain because the work we do while on a sleep deficit is low quality. Sleep actually makes our work more productive and better. God gives it to us to help us, not hinder us.
Why didn’t God just make us to not need sleep?
I have heard people ask this. But the question is a little strange when you think about it. Why did God make day, a time to work and see what we do and be productive, and night, a time to sleep? Why did God make food to replenish our bodies and give us energy? Why did he make beautiful sunsets and trees and the sky?
All of these things fit together and are connected as part of God’s creation. God could have made us sleepless, but then he wouldn’t have made us. He would have made something completely different. But God made this world not a different one (that we know of). And this world is a sleeping world, at least half of the time. And it is good.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:31
With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. Psalm 119:13
The writer further describes his response to God’s word. His own lips echo back the very words that come from God’s own mouth.
When God speak, he speaks the same thing.
Are we ready to listen to God’s word, but hesitant to speak it back to others? Or are we, like the writer, so convinced in our hearts that God’s words are right, that we feel no shame in repeating them, risking the mocking of other people?
Today I woke up and, as part of my normal routine, put coffee grounds into the coffee machine and turned it on. Then, I started doing something else while waiting for it to finish.
I felt a prickle on the back of my neck like something might be wrong with the coffee machine. Though I wasn’t sure what it was. I gave a quick glance over but shook my head. Everything was fine.
But that nagging sensation wouldn’t go away. I paid more attention this time, and walked over to the pot. I instantly realized what was bothering me. I could hear none of the usual sounds of coffee production. There were no drips or blorps. There was also no smell of freshly brewing coffee.
And I also discovered why. I had forgot to put the water in! So, I laughed, got some water in the pitcher and began to pour it into the now well heated water receptical in the coffee machine.
The moment the cool water touched the hot surface, it vapourized. My coffee maker let out a dragon like growl and sent steam roaring into my face. I stumbled back, stunned at the vicious attack. My arms jerked causing water to splash out of the pitcher and land on the counter and the coffee maker.
I paused for a moment to gather my wits. The coffee machine was putting up a fight this morning. But I was determined to come out the victor. So, I laughed again and poured the rest of the water in (the machine was cooled off by now). I cleaned up the mess and turned it on.
I was sure I had won. I waited in satisfaction as the machine brewed the coffee.
The moment came, the little beep sounded letting me know that my coffee was finally done. I smuggly poured my first cup, lifted the liquid goodness to my lips, and took a sip.
Disgusting! It was weak, watery, bland coffee! I was horrified. Just when I thought I had won, the coffee machine dealt yet another savage blow. I now had to go through the entire process again, giving the machine more opportunities to toy with me.
But I was deterimined, and began to carefully go through the coffee making steps again. In the process of reseting the coffee machine, I noticed that I didn’t put in enough coffee grounds. Of course. That was why it was watery and aweful. This time, I put it the right amount of grounds, double checked the water situation, and pushed the brew button.
Finally, I was victorious – albeit humbled after a narrow victory in a close match with a diabolical coffee machine. I also learned a lesson. When doing something that has multiple steps, the order of the steps matters a great deal.
Psalm 119:12
Because the LORD is blessed, we want to learn from Him.
Because the LORD is blessed, He wants to teach us.
God’s commands, principles for living, and words come from who he is. And He is blessed. He is everything we need.
I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11
The entirety of Psalm 119 is written as an acrostic in Hebrew. There are twenty-two stanzas in the huge poem. Each stanza is eight lines. Each line starts with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It was written, in other words, to be memorized.
The purpose of the memorizing is written in this verse – that I might not sin against you. First, he realizes his potential for sin. He knows that without some external force or influence in his heart, he would sin. He knows that his heart is fallen. Do we know this about ourselves?
The action he takes in response to this self-knowledge is to store the words of God within him. His sick heart needs a medication. And the medication is God’s word. When he reads it, he doesn’t allow it to pass through his brain. He latches onto it. He thinks hard about it. He remembers the actual words.
And look at where he is storing them up – his heart. This word means the mind, the will, the inner-man. It means the real you on the inside. He isn’t trying to impress anyone with how much Bible he knows. He isn’t aiming at mere recitation knowledge. If you have tried memorizing before, you know it is entirely possible to recite perfectly thirty verses of the Bible, without one of them actually registering anything meaningful in your heart.
What hope this offers to sinners like us. There is a medication for our sick hearts. The Word of God stored up, loved, treasured, hidden away inside of us, does not change us the way a witch turns someone into a toad. Instead it is like Vaseline applied to dry skin. It changes us, because it heals us. It changes us, because it binds up the festering wounds caused by our sin. It allows us to transform into who God made us to be. This transformation, is what keeps us from future sin.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
Psalm 42:11
The writer of this psalm is conflicted. In his soul he is ‘cast down,’ despairing, sorrowful. And yet his mind is active, working to persuade his soul back into hope.
For those who are depressed, disappointed, or lonely, the call to hope in anything is often rejected. Hope that is then disappointed is an even greater blow and sends the person into renewed and deeper sorrow.
That is why it is interesting to see the reason the writer of this verse gives for hoping in God. He says “Hope in God.” Why? “For I shall again praise him.” He doesn’t say that God will get him out of his current bad situation. He doesn’t say that God will make him feel better or make his life better. He says that he will praise God again, and that is the reason to hope.
Am I the only one who finds that strange?
Praise is connected with worship. You talk a lot and excitedly about the things you worship. You tell yourself and other people about how great, amazing, wonderful they are. And as I think about praise, thinking back in my life, the times I was very happy, were the times I was in the middle of praising something.
In fact, perhaps the very reason our souls get downcast in the first place, is that we hope in and praise the wrong things. And those things turn out to be empty and disappointing. We hope in our new job, only to discover it isn’t all that we thought. We hope in the comforts of this world like food, games, friends and family. But those things are temporary, and don’t last.
We hope in a new budding romance. We spend years building the relationship and feel emotions we have never felt. We think this is it. We have found love. But then the years pass and the romance fades. And the marriage ends. What was it all for?
And our souls are tumultuous things. They writhe in grief, anger, hopelessness. We put our hope in what we praised, what we worshiped, and those things were not God. So they did not meet our hopes.
Maybe we have trouble hoping in God because we have not praised Him enough. We have not sat in a chair, or on a bench in the park, thinking about Him. We have not spent time with other Christians who really love God and talked with them about Him and how amazing and wonderful He really is. Instead, we talk with each other about sports, or politics, or even the weather (“How nice it is today!”). We praise so many things. Is our hope in those things?
Let us resolve to place our hope in God. He is the only one who is worthy of praise. When we praise God with our words, it is because we have truly seen part of who He is. And when we see God for who He is, our hope is validated, strengthened and can never disappoint us.