Today's DB/Lena's Journalin' to Psalm 141 ++

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

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Psalm 141:1-10
A psalm of David.
1 O LORD, I am calling to you. Please hurry! Listen when I cry to you for help!
2 Accept my prayer as incense offered to you, and my upraised hands as an evening offering.
3 Take control of what I say, O LORD, and keep my lips sealed.
4 Don't let me lust for evil things; don't let me participate in acts of wickedness. Don't let me share in the delicacies of those who do evil.
5 Let the godly strike me! It will be a kindness! If they reprove me, it is soothing medicine. Don't let me refuse it.
But I am in constant prayer against the wicked and their deeds.
6 When their leaders are thrown down from a cliff, they will listen to my words and find them pleasing.
7 Even as a farmer breaks up the soil and brings up rocks, so the bones of the wicked will be scattered without a decent burial.
8 I look to you for help, O Sovereign LORD. You are my refuge; don't let them kill me.
9 Keep me out of the traps they have set for me, out of the snares of those who do evil.
10 Let the wicked fall into their own snares, but let me escape.


Copyright Statement: Holy Bible, The New Living TranslationCopyright © 1996 by Tyndale Charitable Trust. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.

~Lena’s Journalin’~
To me this Psalm is about changing our relationship with God from being of the casual nature we start with to growing towards greater intimacy It’s where He goes from winning us by showing His love towards us and showering us with that love and it’s benefits, to bringing us to a place where we have the opportunity to reciprocate it by obedience. He started out as our Savior, rescuer, now He is our Master, our Lord, our everything
In growth comes discipleship or discipline. When one is disciplined what do they do and how do they respond? It is according to their understanding and guidance, it has to do with age and maturity. When we are children we may despise any offer for instruction from another, but when we get older we actually welcome it and ask for it. Isn’t that funny how that works? We become wise, desiring to be trained and taught. We want to grow and learn when we get older, it is a sign one is maturing, when they receive from other’s experiences. If we rise up in rebellion, saying to ourselves, “he can’t tell me what to do”, or “who do they think they are”, or “I can do it myself”, we miss out on the avoidance of misery and pain.
A more mature believer listens to instruction, goes through the changes of how hard it is to take someone else’s opinion and consider it and they adjust, they can strain out the flesh of the one giving the advise and take the rest before God with the intent of doing the word. They go as far as to discipline themselves into new behaviors.
I remember when I first started to grow up this way, I wanted to speak up and defend myself all of the time, but I clearly heard God’s spirit calling me to grow up and I almost had to glue my mouth shut at times. I was so opinionated and would speak my mind at any time, usually in conflict and debate of another’s opinions. I felt the Lord telling me to listen more and speak less. I always had something to say, so that was hard. Then to listen to another person who might be wrong was hard especially when I thought my way was better. The Lord was telling me it’s about honoring Him by honoring people. As I made room for another’s opinion to be expressed I’d learn to hear God’s voice when He spoke something foreign to me. It broke open my understanding, to be willing to hear other things than what was in my own head voice. The discipline was to become receptive to God’s voice that may at some point contradict my natural mind’s thoughts.
I love this guy’s prayers, “Lord, help me do this. Help me make You Lord”! It’s hard, I need help to not just be me, demand what I want and consider anyone else’s thoughts above my own.
If we are not continuously around other believers we are a child left to himself, Proverbs speaks of that child… being with the imperfect Body of Christ is good for all of us, we grow one another up in ways we’d never grow if left alone to our own ways and opinions.
The incense can only be made and burned in a situation where there’s more than just me involved. It is a compound of many fragrances mixed together, it is a mixture of sorts, where more than one individual fragrance is brought into the same place and their fragrances combine to make a new fragrance that cannot ever stand alone.
Have you ever gone into Bath & Body Works or a candle shop or something with good scents and been overcome with the scent of the store and asked the clerk which scent you are smelling? Then you buy one, go home and light it or whatever and it is NOT the same. Why is it not the same? The scent we so desired in the store was the combination of all of the scents in the store and unless we buy the store we cannot have that at home. This is the same with the body of Christ, we compliment one another and we can never duplicate the presence and scent of God’s spirit that is ignited as when we gather together. It is the enemy’s plan for people to be separated from God and His people, he likes when we just do church at home or whatever. He’s got a foothold on pride and complacency there and there’s never a challenge to self life, which was meant to be given into the mixture of the scents of the Body.
Why does God want to mix us all up together? Why does He do these things or request or require them? He is out to save the world and now that Jesus made the way, He needs the church to rise up as a many membered body, and appear. No one person can do this, a person left alone will be barely saved, and live enough to get by, but will barely have any treasure in heaven and will not have given the greatest gift in the whole world to God, the salvation of Souls!
Come, I was glad when they said to me – grow up, follow me, Jesus be Lord, let US go to the House of the Lord. Let’s GO. Let’s grow up. It is time, past time, but while we still have time we need to move on it.

Daily Repetitive Verses:

Proverbs 27:17-19
17 You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another. 18 If you care for your orchard, you'll enjoy its fruit; if you honor your boss, you'll be honored.
19 Just as water mirrors your face, so your face mirrors your heart.
Psalm 122:1
1 When they said, "Let's go to the house of God," my heart leaped for joy.