top seven verses of ele7en
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
i’ve thought a lot about the people of God this year and how it is to function and how it should look. i love the way this verse describes who we are as the people of God: a race. a priesthood (in all its good connotations). a nation. a possessed people. but we aren’t just these things statically…we are these things for a purpose: to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness into light. we are to declare the greatness of our God who has saved us! six | deuteronomy 6.7-9 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. the verses before this are known as the shema in hebrew. it means ‘hear’ and i’ve heard its the most memorized verse in the world. jesus calls it the greatest commandment: to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and might. as emily and i think about raising a child we are thinking a lot about the spiritual nature of our family. since we both didn’t grow up in the church we have great disdain for the cliche. we hate when people use religious platitudes and say words/verses that don’t really have meaning. but, recently we’ve realized that this has caused us to not speak almost any biblical truth to each other for fear of being insincere. we know this needs to change. we shouldn’t pendulum to the other extreme, but we want to teach the word of God to our children and we want to be people who speak words of truth to each other. five | psalm 32.1-2 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. every year our church in czech gives out verses to individuals at new year’s eve service. the verses have been prayed over and are supposed to be our verse for the year. i’m not sure how accurate they are, but i’m always thankful to have a specific verse to meditate on. last year emily and i didn’t receive them, so we made our own from a website that generated random verses! this verse was our verse for two-thousand eleven. forgiveness. in our two and a half years of marriage we have learned that it is the key to freedom. love. unity. we realize that it first has to start with our own relationship with God and the forgiveness He gives us. when we truly understand the limitless way our Savior has covered our sins, then we have the freedom to forgive each other. we’re still learning and i’m sure a child is going to introduce a new level of need for forgiveness. four | romans 1.16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. this is a verse that i really spent time meditating on and memorizing this year. i want to be a man who isn’t ashamed of the good news of Jesus Christ. i want to be someone who is so in love with Jesus and what He’s done for me that i’ll gladly talk about Him and share is goodness. three | proverbs 19.21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand. i love plans. i love my iCal. it brings freedom to me to have my calendar planned out. it allows me to be present where i’m at and really engage with people while i’m with them. but a season is coming with many unknowns and with less ability to plan. i want it to be a season in which i refocus on God’s plan for us as a family and focus less on my will. two | mark 12.41-44 And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” i often struggle with the feeling like i’m not giving enough. not financially, but of myself. i’m not exactly sure where it comes from, but i often feel like i could be giving more. especially this last year when i had three different large roles in ministry and didn’t feel like i was giving 100% to any of them. i want to give everything of myself at all times and there just wasn’t enough of me for each role. when my friend, mel, came back from israel he brought me a gift. it came packaged in a very small ziplock bag and was about half the size of a penny. i opened it up and found a slip of paper explaining that it was a widow’s mite. this small gift was exactly what i needed. at a time where i felt like i wasn’t giving enough, mel reminded me that i was giving everything i had and that is what Jesus celebrates. one | psalm 139 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. (v. 13) again, our son takes center stage. this entire passage is about God’s knowledge and care for us. i spent a good majority of the last couple of months memorizing this entire passage. meditating on God’s great care and love for us. how He knows everything about us and how He gently guides us. as our son has been knit together by his God, i’ve prayed that he would know his God and not just know Him, but also follow Him with his entire life.
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