Paulson Post

What are the privileges of those who serve God? Psalm 16, most scholars agree is about a person who has become a priest of Yahweh. The psalm describes his resolve not to serve any other gods and declares his exclusive loyalty to the God of Israel (Psalm 16:1-2). One of the privileges of the priests in Israel was to eat part of what was offered to God. It could be portions of the sacrificial meat, or could be the Show Bread presented before Yahweh everyday (Lev. 22:7). The psalmist refers to this in verse 5: “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot” (KJV). Sometimes husbands and wives or lovers express their love by sipping the drink from the other partner’s cup. That’s one way of saying “I love you”. In some religious communities, during their feasts, they eat from the same plate to show their solidarity. In verse 5, Psalmist considers God as his partner, from whose cup he has the right to drink. That is the privilege of serving God. God is no...

Humility is to live our lives in such a way that our self-image does not stand in our way of serving others and God. Our motto should be “strong and quality inside, humble outside”. Christians need to be people with a soft-crust: approachable, loving and lovable. In Ephesians 4:2, the Bible exhorts those who believe in Christ to live a life worthy their calling. Those who believe in Christ are not just mere believers, but they are children of God and thus belong to the household of God. The call is thus to live lives in a manner fitting the values and ethos of the family of God. One of the shared values in the family of God where every believer in Christ is a member is “humility”. In Ephesians 4:2, Apostle Paul wrote: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” The word translated as “being humble” means, “having a humble opinion of one's self”. It is not having self-pity or having a low self-estimate. Rather it is having a proper self-estimate ...

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all that we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us...." (Eph 3:26) The new “health and wealth” gospel that is being preached to us actually making us put a cap on what God can do for us. We should leave it to God, to his will. The ultimate purpose of Christian life is to glorify God and not to limit God. The new gospel of prosperity that is being preached is one of “name it, claim it”. The argument is that human words have power to make things to happen. It follows from this reasoning that God will grant anything that we ask specifically. Promoters of this “gospel” say that we need to clear in our imagination and be specific about our prayer requests. For example, if you are praying for a car, don’t just pray for a car, they say. Pray for the specific model, specific color, etc. However, I find this teaching and all its reasoning contrary to the Word of ...

Thus, those who follow Christ have two awesome responsibilities as the Chosen People of God: to live their lives as acceptable to God and also to bring glory to God. God does not take delight in mediocrity and those who are watching our lives also does not appreciate mediocre lives. I live among believers. In my city of five million people (Pune, India) every one considers himself or herself to belong to one or other religion. Majority of them belong to one of the Hindu denominations, there are Muslims, a couple of thousand are Jews and we have Christians and Zoroastrians too. All have their own ways of explaining their relationship with their deities or spiritual leaders. Most of them may describe themselves as believers of their respective faiths; some may call themselves devotees or followers. This makes me take a look at what the Bible says about the believers in Jesus Christ. There are a number of images the Book of Ephesians use to describe those who are believers in Christ Jesus...

The corruption in our churches and in our communities deserves punishment severe than that of the ancient Israelites of Eli's time received. However, let us pray that God will be compassionate to us and hear our intercessions for our people. We may be people who fear God and honor God. However, there may be stages in our lives when we may be so helpless but just watch the judgment that falls on his people, unable to do something in the matter. Noah was a righteous man. God allowed him to do something in the situation of gross sinfulness. He could at least save his family and few animals. Abraham could save his nephew Lot and his daughters. However, Eli did not have that favor from God. Eli was not bad. He was a priest who served more than 40 years in the sanctuary of God in Shiloh. Though he did not have any revelations from God (at least in the near past) he knew how to respond when God speaks to his people. Young priest Samuel did not know how God speaks and did not know the form...

To have a mind of Jesus is to see the needs of the people and meet them, but not to ponder on their weaknesses and looking for ways to correct them. Last week in Pune a six-year-old girl over run by a car bled to death on the busy street of the city. She lay there for two hours bleeding while the mob gathered at the accident site was engaged in assaulting the driver. Nobody cared about taking the girl to the hospital because they were busy punishing the "sinner" driver. By the time the girls parents arrived at the scene, she was lying there dead in a pool of blood. The mob typifies the behavior of the contemporary world. Love and compassion are over taken by hatred and a false sense of justice. The crowd is more interested meting out justice by punishing the offender while the great need for that helpless girl was not justice but compassion. She needed a Good Samaritan who will rush her to the hospital and save her life. The crowd was keen on taking one more life than saving ...

Trusting in God, and delighting in God's work we overcome the possible fretting over the enemy. We need to commit our ways to god and just be still; leave it to God to do the rest. In sum, turn our attention from the enemy to God! Do not fret but focus on God! There are hundreds of reasons that make us fret. People whom we are dependent for our own performance and effectiveness fail us causing frustration and discouragement. There are people who are keen on frustrating us every turn of the road. These are people who are carriers of disappointments, anxiety, worries, discouragement, etc. They themselves may not be anxious, worried or discouraged. They carry it to others or cause others to be tormented. They are like mosquitoes that carry parasites that cause Malaria, but the mosquitoes themselves do not catch Malaria! A child of God may waste a lot of time unnecessarily fretting over things that these people do. The advise of the psalmist is not to fret! "Do not fret because ...

Can anyone sing when surrounded by hungry lions? We may have situations like this when we are surrounded by enemies and there is no time to sing or to think of singing. However, the psalmists will sing in such situations. In Psalm 57:7-8, the psalmist says, "My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music. Awake, my soul! Awake, harp and lyre! I will awaken the dawn." Here we see the psalmist excited to sing for the Lord. He resolves that he will make music for God. Then he goes on to invite his own soul to get up from the slumber it has fallen into so that a new song can issue forth from his inner being. His instruments that have been put aside for a while is also exhorted to wake up from their sleep and join him in the singing. Most amazing is the resolve to awaken the dawn! Usually dawn comes in its own time. People and animals awake at the dawn. It is the dawn that awakens world not the other way round. However, the psalmist who would l...

Jesus showed the "full extent of his love" by becoming a servant for his disciples. Sometimes out of false humility we refuse to be loved by Jesus. Life could be full of small and big things where Jesus shows his love for us. To love Jesus is one thing, but it is equally important to accept Jesus' love showed on the cross and also the love he shows everyday in our life. It is wonderful to have a loving relationship with Jesus. The act of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples is considered as part of his teaching on serving each other. I would not contend on that. however, there is still another side that we ignore in that incident. The Gospel of John chapter 13 verse 1 says, "having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love" (NIV). This sentence is the introduction to the feetwashing that follows. The act of washing the feet of his disciples was act of his love. If we go by the NIV translation "the full extent o...

For a believer in Christ the relationship with God is a living relationship because it is a relationship with a living God. This living relationship is possible because God and the worshipper are always in talking terms. The worshipper talks to God in worship, prayer and meditation. And God responds in various ways: sometimes by giving them great joy in his presence, sometimes by answering prayers and sometimes by endowing them with the "peace that transcends all understanding" (Phil 4:4) in order to pass through difficult patches in their life. NOW READ ON... God's word creates! That's what we learn from the first chapter of Genesis. Peter summarized the whole thing in just one verse: "But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water" (2 Peter 3:5). God speaks because he is the living God. He speaks to guide his people, to tell that what is going to happen, etc. False God...

"For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you," says the LORD your Redeemer" (Isa 54:7-8) God is a holy God. The earlier chapters of the Book of Isaiah present the awesome holiness of God (chapter 6). Since God is a God of wrath and justice he punishes sin and wickedness. God sometimes may use ungodly people to punish his own people who are disobedient. That was the role of Assyria, Israel's political enemy who brought the Northern Kingdom of Israel to destruction. God described Assyria as the rod of His anger (Isa 10:5). That's only one side of God. The other side is that of a merciful God. Years later, after he inflicted punishment upon his people at the hands of the pagans, he raised up another pagan emperor to show kindness to them. That is Cyrus the Persian Emperor whom God describes as His anointe...

To be led by God, first of all we must be willing to follow, or let God take the lead in our lives. Christian life is trekking on the wildest side, the thickest wood and scorching desert. God is willing to take the risk of being the leader in all such situations and making the way for us through the most difficult conditions and we just need to follow him. It is our hurry and impatience that gets us into trouble. Let 's wait for God and his time. The two accounts of David's victory over the Philistines found in 2 Samuel 5:22-25 and 1 Chron. 14:13-17 describe a decisive event in his life. This was his first victory over the Philistine as the King of Israel. The Philistines had come to battle determined to overthrow the newly elected king of Israel. Thus it was a battle that was decisive not only for David as an individual but for Israel as a nation. A defeat in this battle would mean a different course of history for the people of God. However, the day was David's and he re...

Let the wicked prosper but instead of getting frustrated at their prosperity let us leave it to God to deal with them. Let the righteous conserve their energies to do what is right and not expend it on dealing with the wickedness of the wicked! The presence of the wicked person in the society is destructive. The psalmist in Psalm 37 knows well that these are people who borrow but never pay back (Verse 21). The wicked are those who oppress the weak and the innocent (Verse 14). For reasons that we may never know it is true that the wicked has outnumbered the righteous in every generation. To expect to create a world where there is no wickedness could be a mere Utopia. The wickedness is there to stay. One wicked man goes but two will come in his place and the wickedness will always continue. By nature the righteous person cannot tolerate wrong. They burn with righteous anger. Especially when we see the wicked persons succeed in their wicked ways we become frustrated and sometimes may ques...

Jesus is available to be explored. A Christian's life of faith with Jesus involves this constant exploration of Jesus, getting to know him closer, and enriching ourselves with that knowledge of him. The Hymn writer is right is saying THE LONGER I SERVE HIM, THE SWEETER HE GROWS! We celebrate Easter because two thousand years ago, on the third morning of Jesus' crucifixion the tomb in which he was buried was found open. It was Mary who first found that the tomb was open (John 20:1). She was not sure if she will find someone to help her to roll the stone away so that she can visit the tomb of her dear Lord. To her relief she finds that the tomb was already open.* The stone was not rolled away so that the body can escape from the tomb. The resurrected body did not need an open door to pass through. John 20:19 tells us that the resurrected body could enter through closed doors. Jesus appeared to his scared disciples behind the closed doors. John 20.6ff also tells us that the resurr...

In contrast to his own vulnerability and the nothingness of his enemies, stands the tall, strong, stable rock: God himself. That vision of God, the source of our strength should be what keeps us moving forward. Life can be sometimes very cruel. The psalmists who penned the 150 psalms of the Old Testament expressed their pain and anguish in metaphorical language. How does one express the vulnerability and instability of ones life in times of opposition? The psalmist who composed Psalm 62 compares it with a leaning wall and a tottering fence. His life is like a wall that is about to collapse or a fence that is about to fall (Ps 62:3). He is unable to stand the winds and currents that are against his life. To add to his misery he has enemies who are trying to take advantage of his vulnerability. These are people who are trying to usurp him. Probably, the psalmist could be a ruler who is loosing popular support among his own people. His position is too vulnerable. The people close to him ...

None of us can promise those who are requesting prayers for them that we are praying for them constantly. In fact, people may not expect us to pray for them forever. However, the intercessory ministry of Jesus is very different. He is a priest for ever, thus he intercedes for us continually. His intercession is something that I can count on. For this I am grateful to him! In an earlier blog ( What happened to my unanswered prayers? ), we were talking about our prayers being carried to the presence of God and offered in golden bowls. God does not consider any of our prayers as spam; he has no spam filter. Even those prayers of us that do not make sense to us, God considers them valuable. In this devotion, I would like to focus another aspect of prayer: the continuing intercessory ministry of Jesus. The Book of Hebrews presents Jesus as an eternal high priest who continues his work beyond the cross in the heavenly realms. Chapter 7 verse 25 particularly focuses on the intercessory min...

Some time back, I sent an email to my friend’s Gmail account. However, for many weeks there was no response from my friend. Then I wrote another email to him to the other email ID of his that I had. He promptly replied. Later we discovered that the mail I sent was sitting in the Spam folder of his Gmail account. My mail was automatically filtered to the spam folder! This made me contemplate on the prayers. I have been praying ever since my childhood. From short bed-time prayers to long intercessory prayers, pastoral prayers, prayers for the sick, in desperate need, etc. God answered some prayers but many are yet to be answered. What is happening to those prayers of mine that are not answered? God did not get it, or are they sitting in his spam folder? I wish I could just visit heaven and see what is happening to those prayers of mine that are not ever attended to. For that, I will have to wait. However, God has specially favored John the Apostle with some special privileges. One such...

God expects us to be fully submitted to his will. Sometimes, we will have to go through difficult times. We cannot get out of this before God's time and by our own means. This is what we learn from the life of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah. Babylonians who defeated Judah in 597 BC had made him king. In fact he was their puppet king. Usually the reign of kings in the Bible mentions their achievements and failures, in the case of Zedekiah, there is no mention of anything that he did. The account in 2 Kings (Chapter 24-25) only mentions only one thing he did. "Now Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon" (2 Kings 24:20). Then there is a long description of how the Babylonians retaliated to this rebellion by their vassal kingdom, how they besieged the city of Jerusalem, Zedekiah's flight, capture, punishment, imprisonment, the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem and the city, second exile. This king could not anything for his people. Only complete the destru...

Maintaining a heart of gratitude Though they have to start their lives again from scratches they are happy that God has brought them back. Maintaining a heart of gratitude even in difficult times is important to please God. Psalm 126 illustrates the importance of maintaining a grateful heart even in difficult times. The psalmist(s) is excited about what God has done and hope that God will continue to be with them. Though what God has done for them actually has landed them in difficulties, they are still thankful; they believe that eventually everything will work out for their good. The God of Israel had done a great thing by bringing his people back to their land from where they were exiled. However, it took more than sixty-five years for the first exile to return. Leaders like Zerubabbel, Nehemiah, Ezra and others led people back in different waves of return. The man who was captured and sent to exile when he was thirty is now 95 years old at least. The baby who was just born is no...