Passage, Paragraph, and Prayer

In Psalm 119:123, the psalmist literally says his eyes are languishing for the saying or utterance of God’s righteousness. Sometimes “of righteousness” can just be a fancy way of saying that the subj…

Many fear tactics, like the threat of global flooding due to the melting polar ice caps, are used today in an effort to persuade humans to take better care of the earth. We *should* be good stewards …

In Psalm 119:122, the psalmist pictures himself going with the Lord to the bank, only instead of going to obtain a loan for money, they are going to obtain the psalmist’s well-being, with the Lord se…

After Noah and his family left the ark, he killed animals and then put each entire animal on an altar and burned the whole thing to the Lord. Why was this a soothing smell to the Lord, and why did it…

The psalmist begins the sixteenth stanza of Psalm 119 with the statement, “I have done what is just and right”—a bold claim, especially after having just talked about his dread of God’s judgments at …

Can you imagine all the thoughts, concerns, and questions that Noah would have had on his mind after disembarking from the ark (after more than a year) onto a completely new and reshaped earth? Yet o…

No one has higher standards, no one is more strict, no one issues worse punishments than God. If we don’t come to grips with this truth, we will never truly come to grips with God’s grace.

Music Credi…

Many of us have experienced how, when humans given more power than usual over other humans in a vulnerable position, they are typically very reluctant to give it back up. They like have despotic cont…

Dross is undesirable material or junk that floats to the top when you are melting metal. The psalmist says that God discards all the wicked of the earth as dross, and that is why he loves God’s testi…

By the time God finally commanded Noah and his family to come out of the ark, they had been on the ark together, along with the animals, for a year and ten days. We can only imagine what an eternity …

In Psalm 119:118, the psalmist says that God tosses aside, as if they were junk mail, those who stray from God’s Word and deceive others with their lies.

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from…

“Doves are not considerate birds who bring men tokens of the state of affairs upon the earth. That this dove brought a leaf in its beak [to Noah] is to be attributed alone to an impulse divinely dire…

In Psalm 119:117, the psalmist says that God’s sustaining and saving merits our constant attention to his Word. When we give constant attention to other things, it is usually called an unhealthy obse…

Moses definitely wants to draw our attention to the two birds Noah released from the ark. So we give a little more thought to them in this devotion—the unclean black raven that feeds on death and kee…

Do you remember the first time you encountered someone who tried to make you feel stupid and ashamed for having your Christian hope? Sometimes this is a turning point for the worse in the lives of Ch…

Since it had taken forty days to flood the earth, Noah waited forty days after the ark came to rest to conduct some experiments to gauge the living conditions out of the ark. For his first experiment…

Too often we’re eager to go along with the suggestions and plans of evildoers, because what they want to do seems more cool and fun and exciting than what God wants. The psalmist teaches us the corre…

Delayed gratification, when people are willing to wait for a bigger payoff down the road instead of gratifying their desires right now, has been called “the most effective trait of successful people.…

In Psalm 119:114, the psalmist calls God his shelter and shield. What is the difference? And what do those names or descriptions means for us?

Music Credit: Johann Sebastian Bach, Trio from Brandenbur…

When the wind began to blow on the one hundred and fiftieth day of the Flood, initially Noah and his family may have thought that things were getting even worse. But God had a twofold plan with that …