Oh what joy an eraser brings! I’m always glad when I’m using a pencil when writing because I can use the eraser to remove my mistakes. If written in pen, it’s pretty permanent. In the same way, God uses an eraser and forgives our sin. Our sins are forgiven and forgotten, erased like our mistakes on paper. We can rejoice! We get a do-over!
But, if we refuse to confess our sins, think it’s not necessary to do so, and keep them hidden inside, they will only make us miserable. The psalmist warms us of this very thing. Guilt is ugly but forgiveness is freedom. And there’s more! God promises he will guide us, watch over us, advise us. That is totally comforting, isn’t it? God is our hiding place, our protector. That is reason to rejoice!
I see this psalm as a foreshadow of the one to come. The Lord has “cleared our record” and he does that through the blood of Jesus Christ. What sins are you holding on to and not confessing to God? Ask, “why am I doing that?” Think of the spiritual cleansing and showering of joy that will result by confessing and purging that sin.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for taking my sins far from me, those that I freely confess. I know I harbor bad feelings, regret, the need for approval, lack of empathy for some, pride, envy, procrastinating spirit. Lord help me to hand those over to you as well. You are my refuge and my strength! In Jesus’ name. Amen.
It’s time to delve back into the Psalms and reflect on the messages found there. I’ll take another diversion at some point. Leave a comment if you have a particular book of the Bible you’re interested in investigating.
Today we have Paul’s final instructions to Timothy, but let’s read them as if they are to us today. What do we see? We see action. As followers of Christ we need to:
I’m not sure what version of the Bible you read from, and if you follow the link above it takes you to New Living Translation, one of my favorites. In fact, it’s the version in my study Bible. So, today, as I was reading from my Bible, I noticed a very distinct difference in how this passage begins. In my Bible it says, “Christians who are slaves…” where in the NLT version on Biblegateway.com (source of the link above) it says “All slaves”. Interesting. I won’t spend a lot of time on this, but from a context perspective, it is my understanding that in the times Paul is writing, there was a huge gap between slaves and their masters. However, if a slave and master were both Christians, they became spiritual equals, or as we might say, brothers and sisters in Christ. To me, it is then that the rest of the verse makes sense.
There are some challenging things in this passage, aren’t there? Again, Paul is helping Timothy with issues that are either happening in the young congregation, are bound to happen. You can probably relate to some of these in your own experience, I know I can.
