SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/19/2019
9:52 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Intro to Eph. 5:18b-21
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 5:18b-21
Message of the verses: “but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always
giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even
the Father; 21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.”
On
my other blog I was looking again at Psalm 137, a Psalm of remembering and in
the first part of the Psalm we read about some of the children of Israel who
were captive in Babylon at that time they were asked to play their harps and
sing songs about Israel. They refused to
do so. We look at verse 19 see that as
believers we are to sing psalms and hymns making melody with our hearts to the
Lord. We can do this because we have
been forgiven all of our sins, and we can do this because our home is in heaven
as we are just spending our time here on earth for a very short time in order
to do what the Lord has planned for us to do for His glory, and that is worth
singing about.
After
the Lord’s command to be “filled with the Spirit”, Paul gave a summary of the
consequences of obedience to that command.
The consequences are given in verses 19-21 which is what we will be
looking at as me move through the outline from John MacArthur’s 20th
chapter of his commentary in which he names this chapter “Be Filled with the
Spirit—part 2.
MacArthur
writes “Consequences of the Spirit-filled life (which greatly enrich our
understanding of its nature) are mentioned throughout the remainder of the
epistle, and in these verses we are given three of the most significant
ones: singing, giving thanks, and
submission. When God’s Spirit controls
us he will put a song in our own hearts and on our lips, give us thankfulness
to God, and make us submissive to others.
The first initially inward, the second upward, and the third outward. The filling of the Holy Spirit makes us
rightly related to ourselves, to God, and to others.”
The Consequence with ourselves: Singing.
“Speaking to one another in psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the
lord” (Eph. 5:19).
I
may have mentioned in an earlier SD that my wife and I attended a conference
for about three days back in October of 1980 in which I made some decisions
that have affected my walk with the Lord.
The speaker desired for believers to read their Bible each and every day
and asked those who wanted to, to make a vow to the Lord to read their Bible at
least five minutes a day. I did this and
then after that I made a vow to pray at least five minutes a day. I realize that this was a rather short time
period, yet it did get me into the Word of God and in prayer each and every
day. Another thing that the speaker
wanted us to do was to memorize Scripture and to meditate on that Scripture some
much that the Lord would give us a song from that portion of Scripture that we
put to memory. I began to memorize the
first Psalm and true to the speakers word the Lord gave me a song, and then
later on after I gave the tune to a lady in our church she wrote music to it
and actually played it one Sunday evening.
I believe that this is what Paul might have been writing about in this
verse.
It
seems like the Spirit-filled life’s first consequence would be more than making
music as this is not a really big mountain-moving showing of faith, or an
ecstatic spiritual experience, a dynamic speaking ability, or any other thing
like that, but first He wants us to simply have a heart that sings. MacArthur writes, “When a believer walks in
the Spirit, he has an inside joy that manifests itself in music. God puts music in the souls and then on the
lips of His children who walk in obedience.”
I
will close with the following. A couple
of weeks ago our church celebrated our senior Pastor and his wives (pastor to
the seniors) 50 years of ministry to the Lord.
Our senior pastor is rather short but one can always know when he is
around for he constantly whistles, and he does this because he is happy. I have to believe that Pastor Golden is
filled with the Holy Spirit.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Those earlier days of being a believer in
Christ were very special, especially composing a short little song to Psalm
one.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord to continue to teach me to be
humble, and to rely on Him, and to fill me with His Spirit.
Today’s quotation is from David Jeremiah
who states “Wisdom is development wisdom is discipline wisdom is discernment
wisdom is discretion wisdom is depth of understanding wisdom is devotion to
God.”
7/19/2019 10:29 AM
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