The Plumbline

How joyful are those who fear the Lord and delight in obeying his commands. Such people will not be overcome by evil. Those who are righteous will be long remembered. They do not fear bad news; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them. They are confident and fearless and can face their foes triumphantly. They share freely and give generously to those in need. Their good deeds will be remembered forever. They will have influence and honor. (Psalm 112:1, 5-9) Serve God and obey his commands. There is great reward in living according to the standards God lays out for us in his Word. Nothing outdoes the grace of God, no one outdoes his love. Evil abounds, but those who choose to walk with Jesus will never be overcome by that evil. How do we recognize evil? Is it always right 'out there and in our face'? No, certainly not - sometimes it is an undercurrent, an attitude, a cleverly disguised argument. The Word of God actually helps us recognize the undercurrent, avoiding the ...

Rules exist for our safety - at least that is what I have been told repeatedly. Can we really say we always play by the rules? Or that we actually "enjoy" the rules? Truth be told, most of us resist the rules on occasion, or think they are not really pertinent to our lives, so we don't embrace them as we should. If I didn't own a handgun, all laws (rules) applying to firearms wouldn't really apply to me. Yet, I could go out today and acquire one - making those rules ever so important for me to understand. I don't have to become acquainted with the rules until I need to use them within my life - convenient, huh? Most of us deal with most of God's rules in life in this manner - if there is not a clear-cut reason for them right now in the "here and now", then they are good to have, but we don't go out of our way to learn them. Even when these rules are God's rules, we don't need to know them fully to understand they still apply to u...

  The  Lord  is our God, the  Lord  alone.   And you must love the  Lord  your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.   And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.   Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. (Deuteronomy 6:5-7) The Lord alone... Is he the only one you serve? A tough question this morning, but one which I think we all need to consider. Is he really first and foremost in our lives? If we might know how to answer that one, then we must consider the next portion of our passage. Do we love him with ALL our heart, or is our heart divided? Do we commit all our mind, will, and emotions to him, are we carried away by all manner of folly? Is our commitment to his commandments (rules for living) 'whole-hearted'? If we are able to answer ...

Life Hack #4: Keep those boundaries - but you have to know them before you can keep them! Boundaries are really nothing more than a dividing line. We have all kinds of "dividing lines" in life, don't we? Some are quite real - like those drawn for the purposes of playing a sport on the field. Others are set up in our minds - not specifically clear to others, but definitely clear to us. The problem comes when someone wants to move one of those boundaries - stretching it or reducing it in some manner. We feel a little threatened, challenged, or overcome by this attempt to move the "markers", don't we?  Don’t stealthily move back the boundary lines staked out long ago by your ancestors. (Proverbs 22:28) In Old Testament times, they did not have surveyors with highly technical laser point imaging tools to assist in laying out boundary lines. They'd use landmarks or "markers" of sorts to indicate a boundary. They'd say the boundary limit w...

Do not snatch your word of truth from me, for your regulations are my only hope. I will keep on obeying your instructions forever and ever. I will walk in freedom, for I have devoted myself to your commandments. I will speak to kings about your laws, and I will not be ashamed. How I delight in your commands! How I love them! I honor and love your commands. I meditate on your decrees. (Psalm 119:43-48) As I have mentioned on other occasions, it can be hard to keep 'rules' - some believing that God's commandments are merely a set of 'rules' that must be kept or else. It is the 'or else' that keeps them constantly striving to 'do' as the commandments require, but if we live our lives with an 'or else' kind of faith, we are always going to be looking over our shoulders or fearing the hammer is about to fall. Yes, God is a God of justice. Yes, he has laid out his commandments or 'spiritual rules' for each of us to clearly understand. He h...

You have charged us to keep your commandments carefully. Oh, that my actions would consistently reflect your decrees! Then I will not be ashamed when I compare my life with your commands. As I learn your righteous regulations, I will thank you by living as I should! I will obey your decrees. (Psalm 119:4-8) To what or whom do your compare your life's actions? God charges us with the responsibility and "goal" of keeping his commands - with consistency and dogged determination. We are actually reminded that the 'comparison' we need to make is with his commands - how well are we measuring up to what he asks of us? How consistent are we in making right choices? How much does 'obedience' out-trump all the other choices we could make? Did you ever stop to consider that your life of obedience is actually an offering of 'thanksgiving' to God? Our passage reminds us that when we live as we should (obedience), we are actually lifting thanks to God with each...

  “The person who knows my commandments and keeps them, that’s who loves me. And the person who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and make myself plain to him.” (John 14:21) It is one thing to know something, but quite another thing to act upon what we know, isn't it? I just discovered a crack in my drywall that was repaired when they painted the house a year ago. I believed the repair to be solid and to the uninformed eye it was pretty much undetectable. I heard some settling the other night and now it is back again! I see it - know it is there - but I haven't taken any action to repair it yet. Why? I want to know the best way to act - not acting in haste, wasting time and resources on something that won't last. We all get the same information about God's commandments, don't we? We can read them in his Word and we can even talk them over with others who also know them. It is one thing to 'know' them - quite another to be willing to ta...

  I write this, dear children, to guide you out of sin. But if anyone does sin, we have a Priest-Friend in the presence of the Father: Jesus Christ, righteous Jesus. When he served as a sacrifice for our sins, he solved the sin problem for good—not only ours, but the whole world’s. Here’s how we can be sure that we know God in the right way: Keep his commandments. (I John 2:1) Ever break a commandment? I can honestly say I have broken more than one! No wonder God is so intent on 'guiding us out of sin' - he knows our propensity toward breaking those doggone things! We ALL sin - break commandments - but we don't have to try to find our way out of our sinful condition on our own.  Our attempts to get this 'sin problem' under control in our lives is a feeble attempt to get things 'right'.  God's plan was to 'solve the sin problem for good' - not just give us a temporary fix for the sin problem.  We get to know God and in turn, we get to understand h...