Mem

How I love Your Law!  Psalm 119:97a  NASB 97 How I love Your Law! It is my meditation all the day. 98 Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, For they are ever mine. 99 I have more insight than all my teachers, For Your testimonies are my meditation. 100 I understand more than those who are old, Because I have complied with Your precepts. 101 I…

Wholehearted

Blessed are those who comply with His [b]testimonies, And seek Him with all their heart.  Psalm 119:2 NASB With all – It’s the last bit that counts.  bechol-lev yidreshoohoo—“with all their heart.”  “All their heart” is interesting in itself because we would expect the plural “with all their hearts” but we get the singular bechol-lev.  It’s a common heart, that is,…

Symptomatic

For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,  Romans 8:6  NASB Life and peace – Returning to Paul’s great exposition of life in the Messiah, we have learned that “the mind set on” is really the single Greek word phrónēma, a word that encompasses…

An Incomplete Life

Now Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan-aram, and camped before the city.  Genesis 33:18  NASB Safely – In Hebrew there are really only two verb tenses; complete actions and incomplete actions. That’s because Hebrew sees the world with a completely different framework than…

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Babylon (7)

“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce.   Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease.   Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you…

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Babylon (6)

“Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce.   Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease.   Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you…

Excavation Plans

“For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11 NASB Know – Why don’t we dig a little deeper here? Let’s take a bit longer today to examine most of this verse. It starts…

Serenity

saying, “If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. Luke 19:42 NASB Make for peace – Not much has changed in the twenty centuries since Yeshua addressed these words to his accusers. We still seem to have no idea…

What should I do?

Then Yeshua said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they shall see me.” Matthew 28:10 (my translation) Do not be afraid – Don’t we just want God to tell us what to do next? Don’t we really want a Bible GPS? “Turn…

Three Dog Night

You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever. Psalm 16:11 NASB Joy – We are often taught that joy cannot be manufactured, that it is a passionate, subjective experience that overcomes us. At the same time, we learn…