Sunday, June 03, 2018

June 3, 2018 … Choices … Today and Tomorrow

Berry Patch Devotions in 2017 - Day 153 

Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK …  Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of images from one Mr Probz singing … Do It All Again … poignantly singing how many of us look back on how we’ve made choices and desire that we could have a “do over!”


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Highlight Verse[s]: Psalm 62:8 [NKJV] … 8  Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. … 
… Knowing that God is our refuge in times of trouble, David expresses his trust in God. 
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Highlight Passage [context]: Psalms 62 [NKJV] …USE THIS LINK
… King David, under extreme stress, being pursued by enemies, expresses his trust in his God. 
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Reference Passage : … Proverbs 3:5-6 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK
… In all things, doing all we can to honor God, we must trust in Him and not on our own feelings.

Reference Passage : … Ecclesiastes 3:1 [NKJV] … 1  To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. 
… Solomon, in times of great frustration, expresses the reality that time presents us.

Reference Passage : … Lamentations 3:22-23 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK
… God’s mercies and his uplifting grace are new every morning in His faithfulness to lead us thru life.

Reference Passage : … Ephesians 5:15-16 [NKJV] … 15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil. 
… God, thru Paul, warns Christians to do all we can to take advantage of the time we have to honor God with our choices.

My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Bill Crowder, uses a cute personal story about his dog to illustrate our need to “chew” and consume God’s word. The ODB author wrote: My father died at 58 years of age. Ever since then, I pause on the date he died to remember Dad and reflect on his influence in my life. When I realized I had lived more of life without my dad than with him, I began pondering the brevity of my own life. 
On reflection, we may wrestle with both an event in time and the feelings it stirs within us. Though we measure time with clocks and calendars, we remember times because of events. In the moments of life that trigger our deepest emotions, we can experience joy, loss, blessing, pain, success, failure. 

I don’t know who said it; … probably some “time management” guru; but I once heard it said, … “One cannot measure time. We can only measure events in time.” And a whole “time-management” industry has developed to help us plan our lives to manage what goes on within the clocks and calendars of life (see photo].

In Scripture, King David wrote a song (Psalm 62] when he was under great time pressure; and in this song we read of the king coming to trust in God even when events were seemingly out of control. Solomon, after he realized that he had blown off much of his life with vane choices, wrote (in Eccles. 3:1) that there was “a time for everything,” implying that we need to do all we can to maximize the time we have. And the Apostle Paul echoed that teaching in Eph. 5:15-16 when God used His writing to exhort Christians to think/act circumspectly in these evil times.

So, where does this leave us today? Well, many of us look back with regrets as to how we’ve lived our lives (see linked song). But in God’s admonition thru His word above, we’re exhorted to do all we can in managing the events of our lives - i.e., those things we can control - by doing all fo honor and glorify the Lord with our choices.

Good plan for our “to do list” today, wouldn’t you say? Yes, but we also see that we can’t drive thru life using only the rear-view mirror. No, we’ve got to look ahead and trust that God will lead us - and even help us - to make choices which will honor Him today … and tomorrow!!

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My THANKFULNESS: … Oh Lord, Jesus, … Abba Father … thank You for mercy which is new every morning.
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My Prayer Today: Abba Father, … King Jesus, … Precious Spirit … Help me, Lord, to use your mercies/grace today to honor You with my choices … and even more tomorrow. … Amen

Blogger Note:  Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled “Our Daily Bread,” distributed online via email by RBC Ministries.  If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.

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