Turn My Eyes, Give Me Life

Psalm 119:37

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and give me life in your ways.

A verse that has quickly become one of my favorite passages in Scripture. I’m beginning to consider a side project centered around this verse. “Turn My Eyes, Give Me Life.” This verse is an anthem for Christians. We are to turn our eyes, our focus, from anything and everything that does not bring us eternal life in heaven. We are to turn from anything that will not matter in eternity. Your wealth will not matter, your success will not matter, your extensive traveling will not matter. Your love will matter. Your discipleship will matter. Your utilization of the gifts that God has blessed you with, will matter. That is turning our eyes. Turning our eyes is a lifestyle, not just an action. It is a mentality, not just a physical movement. The second part of this passage says “Give me life in your ways.” This needs to be our prayer as disciples of God. If we are finding life anywhere aside from God and God’s will for us, then we are finding it in the wrong places. In Christ alone do we find life! In Him alone can we find our true meaning and purpose. In Him we receive our name and calling.If we find it anywhere else, it is a waste and is not what God wants for us. Also, only by looking to God’s ways can we find true life. That means that we must be seeking His will for our lives and then follow that will. The verse means that we must know His ways before we can follow them. Only through prayer and the Word of God can one know the ways of God. 

TURN MY EYES GOD, AND GIVE ME LIFE

-Ryan Scott

Finding Answers

Psalm 119:26

When I told of my ways, you answered me;
teach me your statutes!

God listens to you when you talk to Him. God also answers you. He may not answer with the answer you are listening for or in the way that you expect Him to answer, but nonetheless, He answers. God works in ways that we can’t understand, but we are just people with limited knowledge. However, God will move, God will answer you. Throughout the Bible, God says to ask Him for whatever it may be. Sometimes He says yes, others He says no, many times it seems like the answer is wait. He has something better in store for us many times. We just can’t see it yet. However, regardless of the answer, we must be willing to conform our will to God’s. Why? Because that is the cost of discipleship. Replacing yourself with Christ. Following Him and His will for you. Jesus conformed His will to the Father’s and if we are called to be Christ-like, we must do the very same. When we seek God out for requests, we must also seek Him out in His word. We must dig into it because the Bible is what God spoke and continues to speak, we just have to listen. Many times, I’ve found that the most common way that God speaks to me is through His word. He reveals things to me, He displays His glory and His plan through His word. When we cry out to God in prayer, may we be seeking God and kneeling before Him in full surrender, when we do, we will grow closer to our King and His will shall become ours. May we seek His will and His ways in His word and on our knees.

-Ryan

Longing

Psalms 119:20

My soul is consumed with longing
for your rules at all times.

We often hunger for food. Especially in America, when we haven’t had food in the last 6 hours, we feel like we are dying. Our bodies ache, we are tired, maybe even get dizzy, are irritable, overall not good. My question is, do we long more for physical food to satisfy our bodily hunger, or do we hunger more for spiritual food? Our hunger for God’s word should be so immense that we are never satisfied. We should be thinking about it, searching through it, reading it all the time. In this Psalm, the writer says that his hunger for God’s law consumes his soul at all times. Is this a way that we could describe our walk? One that is consumed in God? I fully believe that if this was true, Christians would be under a new reputation in this world, not for blending in and condemning others, but for loving limitlessly and always being focused on God. I know which reputation I want. However, when we are blocking out God’s voice with TV, Facebook, our busy schedules, etc. We also are blocking out our hunger for Him. Those things are not bad at all. They can be used for God’s glory or simply for entertainment. But, when these things consume us more than God, we have an issue. When we “can’t find time” for God’s Word (as we spend 3 hours on Facebook, 1-4 watching tv, and the entire time that we are awake doing what WE need to do), there is a problem. When we hunger and long more for earthly food than we do for God’s Word, a change is needed. When we can go for days or weeks without being plugged into God’s word and aren’t striving to change that, there is a problem. What is a Christian without the message of Christ? They are nothing. We need to be CHRISTians. Seeking God with all that we are, longing for Him and His word, never being able to get enough of it. Plug in to His word daily. Crucify yourself daily and sacrifice for Him because He gave His life for you. 

Blessings,

-Ryan

The LORD is my shepherd, but do I let Him guide me through the reading of His Word?

Bending the Rules

You have commanded your precepts
to be kept diligently.
Oh that my ways may be steadfast
in keeping your statutes!

-Psalms 119:4-5

“Rules were made to be broken” is the theme of our generation basically.... We all know it’s true. We love to break or bend the rules; speeding rules, school rules, rules prohibiting phones, ignore common etiquette, whatever it may be, we love to bend the rules at some time or another (or all the time).  However, with God’s rules it should be different. God should be feared in our life. We picture Him as this cute and cuddly teddy bear so often without remembering that He is capable of enforcing His rules to any extent because He demands us to honor them. God is powerful. We need to remember that. He loves us beyond all comprehension, but He has sooooo much power that we can’t begin to even describe or imagine it.  However, the real point of this post is to say that if we don’t know God in true way, how can we know His rules? If we don’t understand the intentions behind each rule, what good does the rule do us? We would end up like the religious leaders of Jesus’ time, knowing and obeying the law, but missing the point. Let us not miss the point of the One who ought to be our Master. His words need to flow through us. We need to meditate on His law day and night (Psalms 1). We need to give Him all of us. We need to surrender to Him completely. However, if we don’t know what to live like, how can we do it? We need to dig into the Word all the time to know what God wants from us in order to bring glory to Him. This life is about Him. Time was created for His glory. Yet we so often live as if time was made for us to be glorified. We live to be immortal through fame and success. However, we forget that the biggest icon of immortality is our God and He created time. We live to be remembered, He gave you life to remember Him. His intentions were not wrong, so it must be ours. We need to seek His intentions out. We can start by making Him center of our life. We are lost without Him. We need His precepts (laws, direction) in our life. How else can we live as He calls us to? It starts in the heart. You have to want Him to take control and you need to seek Him out, crying out to Him to satisfy you. 

Let Him take control and cling to His precepts

-Ryan Scott

Whole Heartedly

Psalm 119:9-11

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!
I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.

the question is, do we seek God with our WHOLE HEART, or do we let anything and everything stand in the way? Only when we seek God with our entire life can we keep our ways pure. Only when we are seeking God completely does scripture truly become guarded in our hearts because it is treasured and is more than words to memorize or small sayings to attempt to validate our faith in the eyes of the world. This has been something that I have been seeing more and more in scripture. This theme of completely giving yourself over to God, yet how often do we actually do it? The Christian life needs to be more than a fad or a part time commitment to us, however, reality is that we often look to ourselves and the world more than God and his word. The Bible says "blessed is he that endures" many times through scripture but I have seen it frequently in revelation. The question is, do we seek God with our WHOLE HEART (as opposed to most or none of us) and do we FIGHT TILL THE END EVERYDAY (as opposed to a Sunday, Wednesday, or partial commitment)? Everyday and every part of your life matters to God, does it matter to you enough to give it to your King?

-Ryan Scott

Willing to Travel?

Matthew 2:1-2

Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.” 

In job applications, many times a question will be “are you willing to travel if needed?” The wise men, rich rulers that lived a great deal away, came to seek out Jesus. They did not have luxurious travel accommodations. They likely rode camels through the scorching hot desert. This was no easy trek. Often times, this passage is glanced over and only one part is remembered, the wise men saw Jesus and were almost tricked by Herod. However, when I read this, I thought about our willingness to seek God. I must ask myself, and hopefully you will do the same, “How far am I willing to go to find God?” I have to be willing to go through long spells through the desert, I have to be willing to go for lengthy periods of time, I have to be willing to give all of my effort in order to find Him at times. Life will throw every possible distraction towards us to prevent us looking for/to God, the question is, how do we compensate? Do we cave under the pressure, evaluating the costs and deciding that they are too great for our liking, or do we put more effort in, striving to find the Creator of the Universe in order to experience Him and His presence and to have the hope of being able to bless Him with our gifts, just like the wise men did. This question of one’s willingness to abandon all for God is what determines where we stand with Him. Do we pursue Him with reckless abandon and seek Him even though the cost may seem ridiculous to everyone around us at times? If not, what is holding us back, and why? Let’s bless Jesus by going to whatever lengths needed to find Him in our lives.

-Ryan

Accepting and Clinging to Forgiveness

Matthew 1:21

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Mary, a young woman, probably around 14-16 years old, becomes pregnant without ever having sex. She had been visited by an angel of God (Luke 1:26-38) telling her that she would be the mother of God incarnate (God in flesh). She was told that she would serve a great purpose for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom. She was destined by God to be the mother of His Son, the savior of the world. However I will address this in more detail in Luke. I want to focus on the second half of this passage stating that He (Jesus) would save His people from their sins. Immediately as I read this, I asked myself, “have I completely accepted this freedom from my sin? Have I turned from it and given it all over to Him and taken that passion that I had for sin and turned it into passion for Him? Have I given it up?” I think that these questions need to be asked in our lives frequently, especially for our generation. Our world raises us up to be impulsive, passionate, and ill-informed people. We give into our desires the second that they arise often. We get hungry and immediately search for a fast food joint. We want something and we seek how we can get it and the faster the better. We have the ability to find any information we want, but don’t access hardly any of it. Our greatest master has become our misplaced passion. We have a desire for Facebook, for food, for drink, for meaning, for acceptance, for ignorance of who we are at times, for love, for intimacy, for money, for maintaining a busy lifestyle. However, most of these are not inherently wrong. Facebook can be a great tool for Christians to spread the word of God and to be representatives of Him, however when we take time away from devotions and prayer in order to check our statuses and Facebook stalk people is when it becomes an idol. Nothing is wrong with being physically hungry, nor is there anything wrong with eating, but do we do it for God’s glory first of all, and has our hunger for physical food brought us more pain than our spiritual hunger that we continually ignore? We seek meaning, but where better to find meaning than the One who made us with a purpose? Why would a pencil ask another item that has no idea what it is, what the pencil’s purpose is? We do the same thing. We seek meaning from people that often don’t even know their own meaning in life. God created us with a purpose that we are to live out, but do we are we willing to give ourselves up in order to find it in Him? The list for these things goes on, but the purpose of it all is to say “what do you live for more, God or anyone or anything else?” If you live for God, you will cling to the freedom from sin because you will be freed from sin. I could not imagine what God’s reaction to people will be that rejected Him but I know He will be frank with them. I can picture that He will look at them in the eyes and say that He gave His beloved son for them, but to them, that was not good enough and now they should depart from Him.  That would be devastating to hear. I pray no one reading this hears that in the final day. I pray that none of us hear that we did not seek to embrace the forgiveness that God made avail to us because we were unwilling to give up our sin. A lightbulb cannot be partly darkness and partly lit (yes, I know there are dimmers, but a basic switch is my reference here) it is either lit or not. Which are you? We are called to be a light on a hill, demonstrating God and His love to the world (Matt 6:14). It starts with embracing His forgiveness.

May we take off our clothes of sinfulness and evil and heinous acts towards God and replace them with His grace each and every day. May we take our plans and wills and lay them aside for His. May we be His people.

-Ryan

Core Examination

Psalms 53:2-3

God looks down from heaven
on the children of man
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.

They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.

I read this passage today and my heart turned. I was distraught by the words that haunted my sight. The thought invaded my mind, is this true today or could God say this today? Though the world is corrupt and man is defiled, I wondered what God thinks of us. Is He pleased with our lives or is He disappointed? Do we strive to know Him a fraction of how well He knows us or are we content with a distant relationship at best? For those who are doing well in their walks and getting to know God in a real and passionate relationship, good job. If it is real, and I pray it is, then you are making your King proud because, though sin disappoints God greatly and breaks His heart, you are seeking Him and getting to know Him and that blesses His soul as it blesses yours. To you I say, keep up the work, cling to Him and become the man/woman He desires you to be. To others, is God proud of how you live? Do you put Him first? I will be the first to say that it’s tough. Life throws everything imaginable in your way so that God is not first in your life. Do you cling to the bait or to God? Can the last half of this verse be said about you? If you are abiding in Christ, your soul has been redeemed and you are pure in His sight. However, to abide in Christ, you must constantly and consistently be in His word and before His throne, you must love Him, you must put Him first in your life and live as He calls you to. This is no small calling. This is no calling to mediocrity. This is a radical calling for the Christian. There is no mediocre Christian. May we be a people that seek after God first and foremost with no limits and no hinderances, and seek to understanding from His word. May we abide in Christ and experience Him as we ought. May we live the John 15, Luke 14:25-33, 1 Cor 10:31, Deut 6:5, Exodus 20 (just to name a few) lifestyle to please our Lord. 

Theodoulos (servant of God)

-Ryan

Total Worship

Revelation 22:9b

Worship God

While reading this chapter, the closing passages of the Bible, these two words caught my eye more than anything else. One of the last messages of the Bible is not some grandiose theological theory. It is our mission statement. Do we worship God? Does our life bring Him glory in ALL the areas of our life? Or are we withholding parts of our life from God’s penetrating light? It is easy to say “I am giving God so much of my life, I can keep some for myself,” but God calls us to give Him all of it. He does not call us to give Him most of us, He calls us to give all of us like He gave Himself for us. Worship is a lifestyle, not solely a song. Worship is seeking to please God by coming before His throne, by following Him full-heartedly. Do we worship God or is our worship found elsewhere? Does something come before God in our life? Does our love or search for something come close to our love and search for God? Do we seek God with all of our life? It is what we are called to do. Nothing can be hidden from God. There can not be our own little corner of sin and hell in heaven and we cannot continue to seek that sin until we are in heaven without changing or doing our best to change. If we begin to refuse to desire to change from our sin, we are placing that sin between us and God, whether we want to admit to it or not. Do we truly worship God? 

Worship is a consuming lifestyle that must invade every aspect of our life. Live it out from the core of who you are. Worship is an essential concept and practice in the life of a Christian.

-Ryan

PS- This concludes our study through the New Testament. However, I plan on going back through it again soon to have fresh devotions. Now onto the Old testament and revisiting the gospels.

Change Your Clothes

Revelation 19:7-8

Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—

We are to bring God glory through our life. From our actions to our words to our thoughts, it all should bring Him glory. Though this task is impossible because we will fail, we will sin, we will love our fleshly desires, we have to strive to bring Him as much glory as possible. Not out of a requirement, but from desire. As we walk with Him, we become more like Him and fall more in love with Him. As this happens, we desire to please Him more and more. From this desire comes our passion and calling to bring Him glory. But, this cannot become confused with trying to earn salvation. It is a very fine line between serving God out of love and serving God to earn salvation as compensation. 

The last half of this verse stimulated my thoughts the most. “and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— Family, have we made ourselves ready for His return? If we truly know God, He gives us new, clean clothes instead of the heinous, torn up, shattered, and repugnant clothes that were our past, our sins, our rebellious acts of hatred towards God, our acts of self gratification and self exaltation. Have we put these new clothes on though? Have we put purity as our clothing? Have we grown closer to our King and Lover? Have we removed our old desires, old way of thought, old actions, etc and replaced it with God and His calling on our life? However, it is NECESSARY to take off the old

I pray that we take off the old and put on the new.

-Ryan