Waist Deep 2018 - A Daily Dip in the Bible

Nehemiah 2: 4, 5 The king said to me, “What is it you want?” Then I prayed to the God of heaven and I answered the king, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.” (NIV) There is no way to learn to pray except by praying.* I used to have a job in which every telephone call was a potential land-mine. Every time my phone rang, as I placed my hand on the receiver, I would say, “Please help me, God,” before I answered. I have heard this kind of prayer referred to as an “arrow prayer.” You “shoot an arrow” to God, silently asking for help in a critical situation. We don’t always have time to present God with an itemized list of our needs before we must make an important decision. Like soldiers who drill and drill until the maneuver is as natural as breathing, Nehemiah had been praying and preparing for this meeting with the king, even though he d...

Ezra 10: 1 While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites – men, women and children – gathered around him. They too wept bitterly. (NIV) Good leaders know how to balance transparency with being an example. Good leaders feel secure enough to be vulnerable.* If you are going to make a spectacle of yourself in the expression of your anguish, it might be gratifying if the spectators are moved to join you in your weeping. When I see someone else crying, I usually get a little teary along with them, but these people, who had probably gathered more out of curiosity than genuine concern, were moved by more than mere sympathy. As someone has observed: “Ezra’s grief over Israel’s spiritual compromise was similar to that of many prophets. But the people’s response to Ezra was unprecedented.”* In this instance, Ezra demonstrates what John Maxwell calls the number one management principle in the world: ...

II Chronicles 15: 2-4 “The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law. But in their distress they turned to the Lord . . . and sought him, and he was found by them.” (NIV) Despite the technological changes from ancient civilization to our present time, the human condition has not changed.* “It goes without saying . . .” is always followed by saying what should go without saying. It seems un-necessary to point out that God is with you when you are with him and he’s not when you’re not. But the Israelites had a history of needing to hear the obvious. We see here a condensed version of Israel’s story – one that was repeated over and over. They turned their backs on God; they got into trouble; they turned back to God – and he took them back. For them, “it goes without saying” is just a saying. ...

I Chronicles 22: 8 “But this word of the Lord came to me: ‘You have shed much blood and have fought many wars! You are not to build a house for my Name.’” (NIV) God always writes the last chapter.* Life doesn’t always turn out the way we thought it would. I graduated from Bible college and thought I would spend my life in “full-time Christian ministry.” Didn’t happen. I took a few wrong turns along the way but most of my life has been lived according to God’s direction. I have been blessed beyond anything I could have dreamed up on my own - but it wasn’t the life I expected.   David probably didn’t expect to be a man of war. He was a shepherd, a poet and a musician. But life (and God) took him down a different path. He shed so much blood in his day that God would not allow him to build the temple. He had blood on his hands – and some of it was innocent blood - but David was following God’s direction when he led Israel into battle. Perhaps it wasn’t entirely ...

I Chronicles 12: 23, 32 These are the numbers of the men armed for battle who came to David at Hebron to turn Saul’s kingdom over to him, as the Lord had said: . . . men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do – 200 chiefs, with all their relatives under their command. (NIV) The leaders God appoints are not necessarily those seeking power.* The twelfth chapter of I Chronicles lists the number of men from each tribe who were prepared to fight with David against Saul. There is editorial comment about most of them: “carrying shield and spear,” “brave warriors,” “ready for battle.” Good stuff. But I would like to have been counted among the tribe of Issachar – “men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” The men of Issachar’s understanding of current events and the essence of their nation helped them to know that it was time to change allegiances from Saul to David. It is worthy of note that these savvy tribesmen were t...

II Kings 17: 15 They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless. (NIV) What a man devotes himself to, he becomes.* They became worthless ? These are harsh words! We like to believe that everyone has value. After all, we are all children of God, aren’t we? The Israelites, God’s chosen people, are the specific targets of this severe criticism, as well as the perpetrators of the list of offenses preceding this pronouncement. Before they arrived in Canaan, it is probable that the Jews had never met anyone else who worshipped only one God. Perhaps they found that they didn’t like being so different from their neighbors. Were they guilty of thinking that all religions had a little bit of truth in them? That the more religion you got, the better?* Is that so different from the philosophies of the modern church-goer?  “I don’t worship idols!” you say in your defense. Even if you don’t pray to an image of a god, you could still be guilty of idolatr...

I Kings 15: 5 For David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life – except in the case of Uriah the Hittite. (NIV) God has a habit of choosing flawed people to achieve great good.* Have you ever been told not to “throw out the baby with the bathwater”? Do you even know what that means? I have some friends who perfectly illustrate this adage. (In order to “protect the innocent,” I can’t be specific about how.) Each of them has some very good and valuable qualities; each one loves and serves the Lord with those qualities; and each one has some personality flaws which cause others to avoid them. I have had the occasional bad experience with each of these friends but I have chosen to continue to value them for what they have to offer to me personally and to the Kingdom as a whole. Tossing out the clean baby with the dirty bathwater is a waste of time, soap, water, and a perfectly good b...

I Kings 11: 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. (NIV) The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts.* Shame on Solomon! He had everything God could give him but still he turned to idol worship. His wisdom and wealth made him famous throughout the world and down through history. He warned others of the dangers of “strange” women but he didn’t heed his own advice. He worshipped God with his whole heart – until he didn’t. Tragically, he “failed to guard his heart.”* Shame on us! We let prosperity get in our way, too. We may not fall down before graven images but we worship other gods in other ways. When God gives good things and we start to love them , that is idolatry. Solomon stands as an example of a man “who chose a road on which he remained in constant need of forgiveness!”* And so, like us, he is ...

II Samuel 24: 24 “I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.” (NIV) He who has a religion that costs him nothing, has a religion that is worth nothing.* David wanted to bu y Araunah’s threshing floor so he could build an altar on which to offer sacrifices to God, but Araunah wanted to donate it to him. David insisted on paying for it. If Araunah’s offer had been accepted, it would have been his sacrifice, not David’s. It was David who had sinned, therefore it was David who must offer the sacrifice, and at his own expense.* We begin to see in this story why David was called a man after God’s own heart. We think of David as a big sinner because he committed some of the “big” sins and because his position made his sins more public. But for David, repentance was more than just being sorry that he got caught in sin. It was more than just doing and saying the right things. It was more than being “good enough.” For most people, it would...

II Samuel 7: 18, 19 Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said: “Who am I, O Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, O Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant. Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign Lord?” (NIV) David was a sinner, but he didn’t allow himself to be defined by sin but by faithfulness.* As in David’s case, it is possible to be both confident and humble at once. On his own, David would likely have remained a shepherd for the rest of his life, but David was no ordinary man. God chose him when he was just a boy who had no aspirations of greatness. God knew his potential – for good and for bad.  At the peak of his power, David reminds himself here of two things: his humble beginnings, and God’s hand in raising him up. While acknowledging that God is the one who has brought him this far, he do...