The counsel in this passage is pretty simple.  Right at the beginning of this rich passage, we are told to prepare your minds.  Again, it is a call of us to be proactive in the world of our thoughts and intentional.  Prepare your mind.

To me, it simply begins by meditating on the truth- what we believe!

This is why it is so important to identify what you believe about what you are worried about…  Too often, our minds are fixed on anything but grace.  Our minds are driven towards the things of this world- consumed with whatever seems to cause the most pressure.  We need a new perspective and we must prepare our minds to see this.

We are challenged to prepare our minds and keep sober in spirit.  This is a call for perspective.  Prepare your mind in light of what is to come…  keep your eyes set on the life we have in Christ.  And don’t resort to the old way of life!  But you now have a new identity and a new way of life.  Your life has been hidden in Christ and is declared set apart for the purposes of our heavenly Father.

And this should change our behavior… because our mind is set on the things above…  But we will not drift in this direction.  We must prepare…

So mediate on the grace you’ve been given.  Set your mind on the One who has called you.  Reflect on the identity that you’ve been given in Christ.  And this will begin to help you define what you believe about what you worry about– and allow God’s peace to reign as you walk in Truth!

Lord, I bow again and receive Your grace anew.  I am thankful that You have brought me out of the darkness and into the Light.  You have called me and set me apart for Your purposes.  Help me not walk in the ignorance of my former self, but walk in the life of Holiness I am designed for!  I will prepare my mind to walk in this truth and never allow myself to believe lesser things about the things my mind tends to think.  I will keep my sights on You today!  Amen.

Throughout the Bible, we are commanded to deal with our mindset.  Pay attention to what your mind is focused on.  That is usually the issue.  We don’t set our minds on anything so it is free to drift on whatever seems to deserve the most attention.

And what usually gets the attention is not the things above where Christ reigns.  Our minds tend to lock onto the places right here where we want to reign and can’t.  This sends us reeling.  Our minds revolt and our hearts shrink and grow hard.

Again, in Colossians, we are invited to SEE!  Set your minds on the things above- the place where Jesus rules everything.  And keep seeking after this perspective.

We are invited to believe an incredible truth.  Your old self has died and your life is now hidden with Him.  And guess what?  He reigns.

We must learn to set our minds on this underestimated reality and walk in this extraordinary truth.  The gospel seals this for us.  Our lives are hidden in Him.  Nothing gets to us without going through Him.

This begins to wage war on the idea that God doesn’t care or worse- that we live as though He doesn’t exist!  That is all old life thinking.  And if you are in Christ, your old life is dead.

Keep seeking this.  Set your mind on this.  Think on these things!

Your life, today, is hidden with Him!

Lord, let me set my eyes on You.  You reign supreme over everything.  And that includes all the things that my mind tends to be set upon.  I confess my futile thinking and ask for Your help to believe that You reign over all my worries.  Amen.

We want to continue to explore this connection to our view– particularly, our world view.  The way we see the world affects every aspect of our lives.

In this passage, we see again the call for us to position ourselves to see God.  We must allow Him access to those troubled areas of our soul.  The places where worry and stress and pressure can destroy.

Take this verse to heart.  Allow God to test your motives and your beliefs– especially what you believe about what you are worried about!  Mind and heart- both of these need to be brought into submission before God… and His truth (this is found in verse 3).

As you wrestle through this process, it is the first line of verse 3 that drives the point home.  His lovingkindness is before our eyes.  It is not just a matter of agreeing with the fact that God’s lovingkindness is true- but seeing it for ourselves, as a matter of experience.  Taste and see, so to speak.

And it is also not theoretical.  We are to walk in this truth.

This prevent us from thinking of God as either IRRELEVANT or INDIFFERENT.  Because we SEE that He is with us searching our hearts and testing our motives.  And we SEE that He is for us because of His great love towards us.  (The Bible teaches that this is once and for all demonstrated in the sacrifice of His Son).

We must position ourselves to SEE.  This is critical to walking in the Truth.  When we begin to see what we believe about what we worry about- we will be looking at what we believe alongside of the Truth established by God.

So let Him examine your beliefs and test Your heart and Your mind.  Set His lovingkindness before you as you walk with Him today!

Lord, test me.  Search me.  I want you to explore the places where I worry the most.  Help me to be honest about what I tend to believe about my world.  But most of all help me to see You above it all.  And Lord, I pray that seeing you will change everything about the way I see my world.  Amen.

To often when we think about faith or trust…  especially when it comes to God, we tend to wait and see if God will do something.  And then we will respond to the thing that He has done.  We think of faith as Observe and Decide.

This is why we are so frustrated and paralyzed in our walk with God.  He doesn’t invite you to observe and decide, but rather to taste and see.  It is an interesting connection.  You don’t see with your tongue and you don’t taste with your eyes.  But I believe this gets to the heart of the matter.

Taste and see is an invitation to experience.  You see… not with your eyes but with your being.  You see because you have experienced.  This is what God is drawing us towards.  And this whole way of life is described in the same way…

2 Corinthians 5:7
for we walk by faith, not by sight

Do you notice anything?  We are called to walk by faith- at the expense of what.  Sight- seeing with your eyes.  You are not going to be able to sit and observe.  You are going to have to step out and taste– then you will see.  Faith operates as the way you perceive the world around you and sense God’s work in that world.

We also, see that when we walk with Him, we find Him to be a blessing to us as we take our refuge in Him.  So walk by faith– taste and see.

After all, we need new perspective.  Don ‘t forget to write down the things that you tend to worry about or feel pressure from.  Then answer the question:  What do you believe about what you worry about?

Lord, help me to see You.  Everything hinges upon my seeing.  But help me to see you with my faith and not my eyes.  Let me look deeper and taste.  And as I taste, I will see more clearly.  Then help me to move according to what I see.  Thank you for drawing me and calling me to walk by faith.  Amen.

How is it being formed?

Is there anything that you can tell that is shifting or changing- no matter how subtle?

Remember, the heart is the place from which the wellsprings of life flow. It is to be guarded. You must pay attention to your heart and its condition. It affects your life.

In the course of life so much happens to us and in us. In today’s passage you will see how we are to process the circumstances. THe first verse says to “tremble, and do not sin.”

This has to do with being angry or agitated with what is going on around you. So understanding that, let’s read this:

Psalm 4:4-8

Tremble, and do not sin;
Meditate in your heart upon your bed, and be still.. 
5 Offer the sacrifices of righteousness,
And trust in the LORD.

6 Many are saying, “Who will show us any good?”
Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O LORD! 
7 You have put gladness in my heart,
More than when their grain and new wine abound. 
8 In peace I will both lie down and sleep,
For You alone, O LORD, make me to dwell in safety.

What is implied from verse 4? Meditate in your heart and be still. How does this instruct you to process your days? 

Then, the Bible tells you to offer the sacrifices of the righteous. Remember, this is you. What would the sacrifices be? What would you give to the Lord?

Just reflect on what the Lord is asking of you right now. Cling to the fact that His goodness shines down on you. You are the object of His attention. Focus on the truth of verse 7-8. You alone are the source of my peace and my safety. If this type of gratitude and thought are yours- celebrate for the Lord is forming your heart like his.

Lord, today is a gift. Let me treat it as such. I ask for forgiveness when I feel that I am entitled to good days or smooth circumstances. Instead, I want to live under your grace and your provision, trusting you for everything- including my sleep. Let me see even this as an act of trusting you and depending on you to keep everything going while I rest. It is quite refreshing to know that the world does not revolve around me. Make my world revolve around you. Help me to deal with the things that frustrate me before you. And here are a few…

Make you list and be still- let God carry that so you can live with Him today. Finish your prayer.

Psalm 40:1-5

I waited patiently for the LORD;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry. 
2 He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. 
3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the LORD.

4 How blessed is the man who has made the LORD his trust,
 And has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood. 
5 Many, O LORD my God, are the wonders which You have done,
And Your thoughts toward us;
There is none to compare with You.
If I would declare and speak of them,
They would be too numerous to count.

Notice the first thing about the passage. What key phrase in verse 1? What is it like to wait patiently? How are you going to pray in order to see this idea that God “inclined to me” and heard what I was asking for?

Note the results of this. Firm foundation. This is what we have been after is this place of security from which we can live from. Here it is. So read through the rest again and reflect on the blessings that are promised. Let the description guide you in an encounter to see who God is… Again notice where he thoughts are directed. That may be a good place to land on today. His thoughts are of you…

Lord, already I feel like I need to move fast. So I will pause and reflect on the wonders which you have done. You have redeemed me. You have given me your righteousness. You have paid for my sin. You have loved me. I have an entire week ahead of me. A week which will either leave me feeling close to you and finding my fulfillment in you. Or one that will leave me hoping to find you close again next week. I want to walk with you this entire week, so I pledge that. I trust your firm foundation and your word tells me that blessed is the one who trusts in you. So guide me and help me to know that I am thought of and watched out for as I move throughout this day with all that it holds… Amen.

This passage is one of the driving visions of Port City Community Church.  The reason is the description of what it means to walk with God found in verse 10-12.

We live to please God, to bear fruit, to increase in the knowledge of the son of God.  We are strengthened with His power that will give us the resolve and patience to endure and to persevere with gratitude-thanksgiving is the natural overflow of walking with God.

But what is interesting, is the way the passage begins.  “For this reason… we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may” find all of these things true and increasing.  The reason is because he noticed that those around him wear “bearing fruit.”  He noticed the work of God in the life of another.

This is so important for us and in fact, it fuels how we pray for each other.  We pray for what we see in the life of those around us and ask God to increase His strength and power for the sake of a growing heart of thanks.

Use this list to check yourself and see how you are growing in the knowledge of God and bearing His fruit in your life.

But also, look for God’s work in the life of those around You.  So you will know how to respond, but also so you will know how to pray.

Lord, I can be consumed with my own walk and my relationship with You.  But Your love for me and the ministry You have trusted me with is for the benefit of others– So help me to notice what You are doing all around me in the lives of those I influence.  And cause what I see to fuel the way I pray that Your life will be seen in the life of others.  Until we all grow into the full image You have created us to be…  Amen.

This passage shows us that sometimes our perception of God collides with God.  We love God because He makes us happy- because that is what He is supposed to do.  Or so we think.

And here, we that God takes away the vine that He provided.  Then He adds a scorching wind to add salt to the wound.  This is clear from these verses that God is given credit for the worm and the wind- both which make Jonah miserable.

We must be very careful, however, not to think of God as being mean.  He is not playing games with Jonah.  In fact, what God is doing is no game at all.  There is probably nothing that God is more serious about than His grace.  And He is teaching Jonah a lesson in grace.

Here is the key.  If God takes away Jonah’s comfort just for fun, God is mean.  But if God takes away the vine to show Him grace- he removes His shallow comfort in fleeting pleasures to give Him the infinite joy and security of His love- then He is gracious beyond words.  This is what we are taught.

God does not want us to settle.  Don’t trust in the comforts we create for ourselves, but live head long in grace of our great God.  Bask in His goodness.  This is where we really learn to trust His heart!

Lord, this is a tough lesson.  It really challenges what I trust.  It challenges what I believe about You.  But I trust in Your grace.  It is part of my journey to surrender.  I am prone to trust in things that bring me temporary comfort, but I must be careful not to make them the object of my faith or the my affection.  I will rejoice in You!  Amen.

Here we see our tendency as humans.  We continue to project our will and bank on the fact that it will come to pass.  If we have learned anything from Jonah- it is that surrender comes slowly!  Jonah is still counting on getting his way.

So he heads up on the mountain, set up camp, and waits for God to do things his way.

God doesn’t and Jonah is angry.  This is what we know from yesterday.

Just a couple of things to reflect on.

First, when Jonah arranges his life to embrace his will.  He builds his own shelter and waits for his own will.  No thought as to what God wants to do or in fact, what God will do.  This is something we must pay attention to in our own battle to surrender.

We want to arrange our lives to embrace God’s will- not our own.

Second, when we project our will as God’s, we like Him because He makes us comfortable, not because He’s God.  Because when God fulfills our will- we make ourselves out to be god.

And when God does what we want- make us happy- we are very happy.  After all, Jonah was very happy about the vine.

We are more prone to this kind of thinking than we are aware of.  And so we must continually test our motives.  We worship God because He is worthy.  He is faithful and good.  His ways are always higher than ours and His purposes greater.

Even we can’t see and we desperately want God to do things our way- the way of life is surrender.  Because it is in our surrender that our trust is fully realized.

Lord, forgive me for demanding you to do my will.  I am so prone to arranging my life for my will.  Give me the faith to trust You and the trust to depend on you.  In order that my trust in You will be realized in the life I live.  Amen.

This is an insightful look at what happens when our will violently collides with God’s.  Jonah’s intentions were good- his motives were bad.

They were not bad because of some moral issue, but they were not consistent with God’s heart.  God has not made us for morality, as though He should wind us up and send us off to execute a life consistent with this moral code.

Now I am not suggesting that morality is not important, because it is.  I am saying that our morality should not be an exercise in obedience, but an expression of God’s heart.

When we project our will onto God, it is arrogant.  God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  It is an incredible insight.  What we need is grace.  And our efforts to control God and get Him to do what we want keep us from the very thing we need- His grace.

In the closing chapter of Jonah, we will see that Jonah comes face to face with God’s grace.  It will be personal and individual.  This is the encounter we all need.

Have you any right to be angry?  The continuation of this question may read like this:  Have you any right to be angry because I (God) didn’t do things the way you would?

The answer is no, I have no right!  You are God and You are good.  And I need to see the same goodness and grace that You gave to the Ninevites.

Lord, forgive me for demanding my will and worse, projecting my will on You.  Let me embrace the Gospel in a fresh way- to come face to face with Your grace.  I was made to be righteous.  I am made for You.  You made Your Son, who knew no sin, to be sin on my behalf.  So I could be what I was made to be- the very righteousness that You are- given to me.  I receive this.  No promise to pay back, but rather embracing Your grace as grace.  Amen.

(See Also Romans 11:6)