Project 5782 | Day 20

Teaching Well

Scripture Portion

Deuteronomy 6.4-9

⁴ Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. ⁵ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your might. ⁶ And these words that I charge you today shall be upon your heart. ⁷ And you shall rehearse them to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you go on the way and when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as circlets between your eyes. ⁹ And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and in your gates.

Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. Volume 1: The Five Books of Moses, Torah. N.p.: W. W. Norton & Company: New York, 2019, pgs. 641-642

Quote from Reading

“Our older children (Jasmine and Trey) were eleven and fourteen, respectively. I was right in the midst of the storm. This was a gut check for me. Was I on the path to being a sixty-seven-year-old pastor whose grown children looked on as I resigned from a high-demand ministry position citing my desire to ‘spend more time with my family’? Would my children be filled with resentment and regret as they wondered why I didn’t think about that when it mattered? I certainly hoped not.
“But hoping wasn’t going to make it so. I had to see myself first and foremost as Bridget’s husband, and as her partner in raising, training, and launching arrows into the next generation. And then I had to simply let the rest of the pieces fall into place.”  

Baucham, Voddie, Family Shepherds: Calling and Equipping Men to Lead Their Homes, Crossway: Wheaton, 2011, pg. 94

Provocative Language

“She was living for her family. She always sat up to ‘welcome’ you home if you were out late at night; two or three in the morning, it made no odds; you would always find that frail, pale, weary face awaiting you, like a silent accusation. Which meant of course that you couldn’t with any decency go out very often.”

Lewis, C.S., The Four Loves: An Exploration of the Nature of Love, Mariner Books: New York, 2012 edition, pg. 49

Project 5782 | Day 11

Dwelling Our Thoughts Aright

Scripture Portion

Deuteronomy 33.26-29

²⁶ “There is none like God, O Jeshurun,
     who rides through the heavens to your help,
     through the skies in his majesty.
²⁷ The eternal God is your dwelling place,
     and underneath are the everlasting arms.
And he thrust out the enemy before you
     and said, ‘Destroy.’
²⁸ So Israel lived in safety,
     Jacob lived alone,
in a land of grain and wine,
     whose heavens drop down dew.
²⁹ Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you,
     a people saved by the Lord,
the shield of your help,
     and the sword of your triumph!
Your enemies shall come fawning to you,
     and you shall tread upon their backs.”
– The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Quote from Reading

“On January 7, 1855, the minister of New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, England, opened his morning sermon as follows:

‘…No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God…

But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe. … The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the science of Christ, and Him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of a man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.

And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. It is to that subject that I invite you this morning.’

These words, spoken over a century ago by C.H. Spurgeon (at that time, incredibly, only twenty years old) were true then, and they are true now.”

Packer, J.I., Knowing God: 20^th-Anniversary Edition, InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, 1973:1993, pgs. 17-18

Provocative Language

Go, then, earthly fame and treasure
Come disaster, scorn and pain
In Thy service, pain is pleasure
With Thy favor, loss is gain
I have called Thee Abba Father
I have stayed my heart on Thee
Storms may howl, and clouds may gather
All must work for good to me

Soul, then know thy full salvation
Rise o’er sin and fear and care
Joy to find in every station
Something still to do or bear
Think what Spirit dwells within thee
Think what Father’s smiles are thine
Think that Jesus died to win thee
Child of heaven, canst thou repine
 – Francis, Lyte, Henry. Jesus, I my Cross have Taken.. Print

Project 5782 | Day 9

Beautiful Affection of the Father

Scripture Portion

Deuteronomy 32.1-4; 9-14

¹ Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak,
   and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
² May my teaching drop as the rain,
   my speech distill as the dew,
like gentle rain upon the tender grass,
   and like showers upon the herb.
³ For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;
   ascribe greatness to our God!
⁴ “The Rock, his work is perfect,
   for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
   just and upright is he.

⁹ But the Lord’s portion is his people,
   Jacob his allotted heritage.
¹⁰ “He found him in a desert land,
   and in the howling waste of the wilderness;
he encircled him, he cared for him,
   he kept him as the apple of his eye.
¹¹ Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
   that flutters over its young,
spreading out its wings, catching them,
   bearing them on its pinions,
¹² the Lord alone guided him,
   no foreign god was with him.
¹³ He made him ride on the high places of the land,
   and he ate the produce of the field,
and he suckled him with honey out of the rock,
   and oil out of the flinty rock.
¹⁴ Curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,
   with fat of lambs,
rams of Bashan and goats,
   with the very finest of the wheat—
   and you drank foaming wine made from the blood of the grape.

Quote from Reading

“But I must at once correct myself. I am talking of Affection as it is when it exists apart from the other loves. It often does so exist; often not. As gin is not only a drink in itself but also a base for many mixed drinks, so Affection, besides being a love itself, can enter into the other loves and colour them all through and become the very medium in which from day to day they operate. They would not perhaps wear very well without it. To make a friend is not the same as to become affectionate. But when your friend has become an old friend, all those things about him which had originally nothing to do with the friendship become familiar and dear with familiarity. As for erotic love, I can imagine nothing more disagreeable than to experience it from more than a very short time without this homespun clothing of affection. That would be a most uneasy condition, either too angelic or too animal or each by turn; never quite great enough or little enough for man. There is indeed a peculiar charm, both in friendship and in Eros, about those moments when Appreciative love lies, as it were, curled up asleep, and the mere ease and ordinariness of the relationship (free as solitude, yet neither is alone) wraps us round. No need to talk. No need to make love. No needs at all except perhaps to stir the fire.” Lewis, C.S., The Four Loves: An Exploration of the Nature of Love, Mariner Books: New York, 2012 edition, pgs. 34-35

Provocative Language

“They latching on the back of a tow truck for free rides,
Monty, I was calling Jehovah from knee high,
I was gone and you was sticking your nose up and we see why,
Just because the leaves are fallen don’t mean the tree died,

“When you talk it’s like the truth go missing,
Got me steady speaking now, but you don’t listen,
Y’all don’t talk about the Crucifixion,
Yet you out here wondering why your crew so fiction,”
     – from “More Than I Can Bear”, song by J. Monty