Easter Monday
Psalm 49:13-20
Job 17,18; Romans 16:21-1 Corinthians 1:1-9
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Psalm 27:13
Our Lord Jesus Christ died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may
live with him. 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10
Loving God, do we see your goodness in our daily lives? Open our eyes that we
may see your love demonstrated in those who feed the hungry, shelter the
homeless, assist the destitute, and share your life-giving message. Amen.
I share my readings of today with you in the Message translation found on biblegateway. I start loving it more and more...It will not take long i will have a Message bible at home i guess.
Psalm 49:13-20
13-15 This is what happens to those who
live for the moment,
who only look out for themselves:
Death herds them
like sheep straight to hell;
they disappear down the gullet of the grave;
They waste away to nothing—
nothing left but a marker in a cemetery.
But me? God snatches me from the clutch of death,
he reaches down and
grabs me.
16-19 So don't be impressed with those who get rich
and
pile up fame and fortune.
They can't take it with them;
fame and fortune
all get left behind.
Just when they think they've arrived
and folks
praise them because they've made good,
They enter the family burial plot
where they'll never see sunshine again.
20 We aren't immortal. We
don't last long.
Like our dogs, we age and weaken. And die.
Praise
God for this verse..." God snatches me from the clutch of death,
he reaches
down and grabs me."
He does it in our Life now...." snath our spirit.....and
renews it....."
After death..dead has no hold on us anymore Halleluya......
A letter also to us......It was written for...." God's church
at Corinth, believers cleaned up by Jesus and set apart for a God-filled life. I include in my greeting all who call out to Jesus, wherever they live. He's their
Master as well as ours! "
1 Corinthians 1
3May all the gifts and benefits that come from God our Father, and the Master,
Jesus Christ, be yours.
4-6Every time I think of you—and I think of you
often!—I thank God for your lives of free and open access to God, given by
Jesus. There's no end to what has happened in you—it's beyond speech, beyond
knowledge. The evidence of Christ has been clearly verified in your lives.
7-9Just think—you don't need a thing, you've got it all! All God's gifts
are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive
on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right
alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by
Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the
life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you Never forget
that.
The Cross: The Irony of God's Wisdom
10I have a serious
concern to bring up with you, my friends, using the authority of Jesus, our
Master. I'll put it as urgently as I can: You must get along with each other.
You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating a life in common.
11-12I bring this up because some from Chloe's family brought a most
disturbing report to my attention—that you're fighting among yourselves! I'll
tell you exactly what I was told: You're all picking sides, going around saying,
"I'm on Paul's side," or "I'm for Apollos," or "Peter is my man," or "I'm in the
Messiah group."
13-16I ask you, "Has the Messiah been chopped up in
little pieces so we can each have a relic all our own? Was Paul crucified for
you? Was a single one of you baptized in Paul's name?" I was not involved with
any of your baptisms—except for Crispus and Gaius—and on getting this report,
I'm sure glad I wasn't. At least no one can go around saying he was baptized in
my name. (Come to think of it, I also baptized Stephanas's family, but as far as
I can recall, that's it.)
17God didn't send me out to collect a
following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting
a following for him. And he didn't send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric
of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be
trivialized into mere words.
18-21The Message that points to Christ on
the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for
those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works,
and most powerfully as it turns out. It's written,
I'll turn
conventional wisdom on its head,
I'll expose so-called experts as crackpots.
So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent
in this day and age? Hasn't God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since
the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God,
God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered
dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of
salvation.
22-25While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and
Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the
Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as
absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and
Greeks—Christ is God's ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human
wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human
strength can't begin to compete with God's "weakness."
26-31Take a good
look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see
many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many
from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and
women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies"
to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear
that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything
that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh
start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If
you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."Yes let's blow a trumpet for God ..is this letter to us not AMAZING!!
Job 17
1-2 "My spirit is broken,
my days used up,
my grave dug
and waiting.
See how these mockers close in on me?
How long do I have to
put up with their insolence?
3-5 "O God, pledge your support for me.
Give it to me in writing, with your signature.
You're the only one who
can do it!
These people are so useless!
You know firsthand how stupid
they can be.
You wouldn't let them have the last word, would you?
Those
who betray their own friends
leave a legacy of abuse to their children.
6-8 "God, you've made me the talk of the town—
people spit in my
face;
I can hardly see from crying so much;
I'm nothing but skin and
bones.
Decent people can't believe what they're seeing;
the good-hearted
wake up and insist I've given up on God.
9 "But principled people hold
tight, keep a firm grip on life,
sure that their clean, pure hands will get
stronger and stronger!
10-16 "Maybe you'd all like to start over,
to
try it again, the bunch of you.
So far I haven't come across one scrap
of wisdom in anything you've said.
My life's about over. All my plans
are smashed,
all my hopes are snuffed out—
My hope that night would turn
into day,
my hope that dawn was about to break.
If all I have to look
forward to is a home in the graveyard,
if my only hope for comfort is a
well-built coffin,
If a family reunion means going six feet under,
and
the only family that shows up is worms,
Do you call that hope?
Who on
earth could find any hope in that?
No. If hope and I are to be buried
together,
I suppose you'll all come to the double funeral!"What a wisdom and strong believe had Job!!
Job 18
Bildad's Second Attack
Plunged from Light into Darkness
1-4
Bildad from Shuhah chimed in: "How monotonous these word games are getting!
Get serious! We need to get down to business.
Why do you treat your
friends like slow-witted animals?
You look down on us as if we don't know
anything.
Why are you working yourself up like this?
Do you want the
world redesigned to suit you?
Should reality be suspended to accommodate
you?
5-21 "Here's the rule: The light of the wicked is put out.
Their flame dies down and is extinguished.
Their house goes dark—
every lamp in the place goes out.
Their strong strides weaken, falter;
they stumble into their own traps.
They get all tangled up
in their
own red tape,
Their feet are grabbed and caught,
their necks in a noose.
They trip on ropes they've hidden,
and fall into pits they've dug
themselves.
Terrors come at them from all sides.
They run
helter-skelter.
The hungry grave is ready
to gobble them up for supper,
To lay them out for a gourmet meal,
a treat for ravenous Death.
They
are snatched from their home sweet home
and marched straight to the death
house.
Their lives go up in smoke;
acid rain soaks their ruins.
Their roots rot
and their branches wither.
They'll never again be
remembered—
nameless in unmarked graves.
They are plunged from light
into darkness,
banished from the world.
And they leave empty-handed—not
one single child—
nothing to show for their life on this earth.
Westerners are aghast at their fate,
easterners are horrified:
'Oh
no! So this is what happens to perverse people.
This is how the God-ignorant
end up!'"God please shine your light in our life that Darkness is banned out ...that we can CLEARLY see THE WAY Your way in this life.......
Let our trust and believe in You God be like Job.....Let we hold tight and have a grip unto Life like him and keep our hands clean and make them stronger and stronger!
Thank you Lord for Your Word who speaks life into us.For Jesus who gave us new life in Him who works out everything in our Life with His Spirit!
Thank You Lord Amen
Romans 12!