altogether lovely

my Jesus my saviour
there is none like you
you are altogether holy
altogether lovely
so wonderful to me.

Only Jesus Is Altogether Lovely 

Leviticus 2:1 ‘When anyone offers a grain offering to the Lord, his offering shall be of fine flour...

I love the symbolism of Jesus as fine flour. Fine, even flour comes from wheat that has been pounded and beaten again and again, and sifted several times. Doesn’t that remind you of Jesus’ sufferings and sacrifice for you?

And like fine flour, there is nothing coarse about the person of Jesus. Everything about Him is in even proportions. Every word that He spoke when He was in this world, every thought of His, every action of His, was so fine! When He was kind, He was not soft. When He was assertive, He was not overbearing. He is steel and velvet, meekness and majesty. Like a perfect diamond, every which way you turn Him, you see flawlessness, beauty and brilliance. There is no one altogether lovely like Jesus!

What about Bible greats like Moses and Abraham, or Peter, John and Paul?

Moses, whom the Bible says was more humble than any man on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3), was once so furious with his people that he struck a rock twice, something he was not supposed to do. (Numbers 20:1–12) His temper got the better of him on that occasion.

Abraham, whom Christians regard as a man of faith (Hebrews 11:8–10), lied about his wife being his sister when a king coveted her. He endangered her life just to save his own skin. (Genesis 20:1–18)

Peter, who was deeply zealous for Jesus, denied Him three times. (Matthew 26:33–34) John, the beloved disciple who leaned on Jesus’ bosom, was all ready to call down fire from heaven to destroy the inhabitants of Samaria who had rejected Jesus. (Luke 9:52–54)

What about Paul, the apostle of grace, who blazed the missionary trail which future missionaries would follow? Even Paul went to Jerusalem when he was told not to by the Holy Spirit through some disciples and the prophet Agabus. (Acts 21:4, 10–11)

Beloved, the best of us can miss the mark. The only one who is faultless, flawless and altogether lovely is Jesus. And because He never misses the mark, you can look to Him. He will never disappoint you!

Thought For The Day
Look to Jesus who never misses the mark. He will never disappoint you!

desire for the WORD

The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple.  The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes.
Psalm 19:7‭-‬8 NIV

 The point of these verses is this: Because the Scriptures are the Word of God — the communication and revelation of the living God — they have effects on us that are better than the effects of anything else we can read or study or watch or listen to.

God understands you better than anyone else. He knows how people get to be the way they are and how they are affected by their surroundings.                            God understands society perfectly. God knows all facts about how the world works. God knows the future and how everything will come out in the end.   God is wiser than any wise writer. God is more caring than any counselor. God is more creative than any artist. It simply stands to reason that what God says will be more useful to us than what anyone else in the universe has to say. Not to sit at his feet and soak our minds with his wisdom is sheer craziness   

May God increase your confidence that the Bible is his very word! And may that persuade you that by meditating on it and following it there is great reward — greater than much fine gold. And may you discover every day the benefits of life and wisdom and joy!        

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation,
1 Peter 2:2 NIV

In this text God commands us not to be spiritual fatalists. The word for long here is very simply the word desire — it’s a command to desire.

What this means is that if you feel stuck because you don’t have the kind of spiritual desires that you should, this text says, You do not need to be stuck! It says, Get them! Get the desires you don’t have. If you don’t desire the milk of the Word, start desiring it!

Now, that is amazing. A command to desire! A command to feel longings we do not feel. A command to feel desires we do not have. Is anything more contrary to spiritual fatalism than that? Fatalism says, I can’t just create desires. If they’re not there, they’re not there. If I don’t feel things the way the psalmists seem to feel things when they say, “;As a deer pants for the flowing streams so my soul pants for you, O God’ (Psalm 42:1) — if I don’t feel that way toward God, then that’s that. I just don’t. I'm not like the psalmists. That’s the dangerous voice of spiritual fatalism.

But God says, Desire the pure milk of the word! Now before you raise all kinds of objections, like, How can you command me to have a desire? What can I do to obey a command like that?How do I just produce a desire? You may as well tell a lame man to walk.

Can you imagine such a thing — commanding a lame man to walk? Who could do such a thing? We know. Let us ask God to create in us the miracle of longing for his word.

delight in the WORD

How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Psalm 139:17 NIV


Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.
Psalm 119:97 NIV

Never reduce Christianity to a matter of demands and resolutions and willpower. It is a matter of what we love, what we delight in, what tastes good to us.

When Jesus came into the world humanity was split according to what they loved. The light came into the world and men loved darkness rather than light (John 3:19). The righteous and the wicked are separated by what they delight in—the revelation of God or the way of the world.

But someone may ask: How can I come to delight in the Word of God? My answer would be twofold:

 1) pray for new taste buds on the tongue of your heart; 

2) meditate on the staggering promises of God to his people.

The same psalmist who said How sweet are your words to my taste (Psalm 119:103), said earlier, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of your law (Psalm 119:18). He prayed because to have holy taste buds on the tongue of the heart is a gift of God. No man naturally hungers for and delights in Gods wisdom. Ask God to work this miracle in your life.

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
Romans 15:4 NIV

All of us who have been born again are hungry to be encouraged by the Scriptures. Therefore we are often impatient with the need to be instructed by them. We would often rather have the fruit without laboring in the vineyard.

So the first lesson in this passage is that the Bible is for instruction. Literally: for teaching. We must be willing to learn what the Scriptures teach if we expect to be encouraged by its truth rather than reflections of our own ideas and desires.

When the teaching of the Scriptures is properly understood, it produces steadfastness and encouragement. Steadfastness means endurance. It’s what you have to have to keep on going in a path of obedience when you feel miserable and when you meet all kinds of opposition.

Where does endurance come from? It comes from the Scriptures.

This is exceedingly practical! Again and again the Scriptures gives you God’s perspective on things, and that biblical perspective will make a hard situation endurable. The Scriptures are given to us for our encouragement and our endurance in hard times.

If you want to have staying power, if you want to endure to the end in the path of costly obedience, then turn off the distractions and meditate on the word of God.