A Devotional Study of the Living Word of God

Psalm 119:68 To be or not to be; that is the question! The palmist states that God is good he is using the Hebrew words – to^wb and towb, or tobe and tobe. There is this ^ mark over the “o” to make a slightly different sound on the root word. Emphatically “God is perfectly Good in all things.”

Good Morning

When someone is experiencing an emotional moment, it could be that they are allowing their capacity for thinking to be over loaded with thoughts that cannot solve the problem they seem to be facing. I once faced an emergency when a diesel generator in a building where I was working began speeding up. It kept going faster until the entire cement room that it was in began shaking violently. I made the mistake of going into the room thinking that I could turn the generator off. I could not and panic was setting in, then I looked for help from the LORD and I was reminded of Psalm 46:10. “Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” The noise of the generator did not go away, the ground under me did not stop shaking, but I was flooded with peace of mind and this gave me opportunity to think and control my emotional moment. The generator was consuming the oxygen in the air creating a tremendous vacuum in the room. Some how I was able to partly open the door and slip out. By this time the local fire company arrived and when they shut off all access to incoming air, the generator slow and then stopped. When our emotions are allowed to function in the problem solving area, these tend to overload our capacity for thinking clearly. Some of us believe that by getting emotional we can solve any problem, this is so untrue. God is good as Psalm 119:68 explains. When we are taught to rely on His goodness our problems are solved by His standards of grace and mercy. Grace and mercy are two of the many statutes of God our Savior.

Acts 20

Acts 20:17-19 As we travel with the apostle and his friends through this book we can gain a lot of information. We can gain even more if we adopt some of the principles and power provided in this book through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. As Paul exhorts the Ephesian elders and saints, so can we exhort one another to do spiritual good works. We are always troubled with people who take advantage of our faith in God, but we can always find sweet fellowship with those fellow saints that God has provided in our lives.

Acts 20:20-21 I wonder if we do not hold back from time to time, the apostle claims that he never did, but that he proclaimed the full gospel of God, going from house to house. We say that the process of sharing the gospel is to complicated or to time consuming. Then I am reminded of this verse of scripture that takes less than five seconds to read. “testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our LORD Jesus Christ.” That is the gospel.

Acts 20:22-24 First and foremost on the apostle mind is running a race in the joy of the LORD! Sometimes I think we do not understand the biblical definition of “joy” or the Greek “chara” it means to have a glad heart. I wonder how many of us experience a “glad heart?” We say we are happy, emotionally we put on the clothing of happiness, but inside where the heart hears the mind, there may be no joy at all. Let us be alert to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and proclaim the Grace of God, then we shall have joy enough to share with everyone, near and far.