His Blessings, Our Curse :: A Guided Prayer

Deuteronomy 11.26-28
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.

Reflection: His Blessings, Our Curse :: A Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

The blessings and curses of the law were a consistent theme of Moses’s final messages to the people of Israel. Moses gave instructions for a gigantic visual demonstration as a community learning event that was eventually carried out by Joshua.

Half the tribes would stand on Mount Gerazim and half on Mount Ebal. The tribes on Gerazim would pronounce the blessings that could be theirs if they obeyed. The tribes on Ebal would pronounce the curses if they failed to follow the laws that Moses was leaving them.

May we hear in God’s Word, always the tender love of our father who wants blessings for us.

May we also give thanks for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who became a curse for us. He died to release the curse’s hold on us, then he rose to bring to us the full blessings of life that overflows with good things.

Praise and thank him this week using the prayer below that is based on our readings for today:

His Blessings, Our Curse
Oh, Lord, we are your people.
We are the sheep of your pasture and we need your provision.

Your care for us Lord goes deeper than
The superficial service of hired help.
You are our Good Shepherd who lays down his life for us.
You became a curse for us.
You became sin for us.

We have your blessings today, Lord,
Because you took our curse!
We stand on Gerazim and you stand on Ebal.

If only we would hear your voice today, Lord.
If only we would walk your path of service.
If only we would walk your path of grace.

May we proclaim your salvation day after day and
May we never cease telling of your wonderful deeds.

Let the heavens, the seas, the fields, and the trees resound with praise
As you come to judge the world with equity!

As Israel was to be your instrument in the world, Lord, make us instruments of your grace and truth to others.

Amen!

Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Bless our God, you peoples; make the voice of his praise to be heart;
Who holds our souls in life, and will not allow our feet to slip. — Psalm 66.7-8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 11 (Listen – 4:38) 
Psalm 95-96 (Listen – 2:37) 

This Weekend’s Readings
Deuteronomy 12 (Listen – 5:11) Psalm 97-98 (Listen – 2:19) 
Deuteronomy 13 (Listen – 3:05) Psalm 99-101 (Listen – 2:48) 

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Balaam’s Success
No matter what sins or idols we are tempted with, may we approach God humbly, seeking repentance and redemption through Christ.

Read more about The Value of Words
Our purpose at The Park Forum is to produce words that are filled with life, not death.
Words that spur, but do not abuse.
Words that challenge, but lovingly guide.
Words that bless and do not curse.

Quotations from the Desert

Deuteronomy 8.3
He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Psalm 91.11-13
For he will command his angels concerning you
   to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
   so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
   you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

Reflection: Quotations from the Desert
By John Tillman

Jesus and Satan both quote from our readings today during the temptation of Christ.

Satan quotes Psalm 91, telling Christ that the angels would hold him up and would shield him from harm. The words are accurately quoted, and the psalm does claim that God will miraculously aid those he loves. However, the meaning of the verse is twisted.

From the temptations in the garden to the temptations of Jesus and his followers, Satan encourages us to misapply and misinterpret God’s words. In the garden, he says, “Did God really…,” minimizing God’s provision. Standing on top of the Temple, he says God, “will command his angels,” exaggerating God’s provision.

Commenting on Satan’s use of scripture, John Piper wrote, “What makes Satan happy is when he can get Christians to believe that Proverbs 15:6 justifies the accumulation of wealth in a world of hunger; that 2 Thessalonians 3:10 abolishes charity; that Romans 9:16 makes evangelism superfluous.”

It is significant that Satan stops his quotation of the Psalm before the verse about himself: “You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.” He is, after all, speaking to the one destined to do the trampling.

That brings us to Christ’s quotation, in which Moses is reminding the Israelites of the purpose of the manna in the desert. Manna wasn’t a backup plan. Israel’s hunger and God’s provision was a divine plan teaching his children dependence upon God and not the wealth of the land.

Christ and the Israelites weren’t hungry in the desert for no reason. Nor are we.

Christ demonstrated that he mastered the lessons of the desert that Israel failed to learn. He demonstrated that he learned the lessons of the Garden that Adam failed to learn. He locked eyes with the serpent upon whose head his heel would soon step down with infinite crushing weight.

Connecting to God’s Word and relying on it for our sustenance, for our source of life, is a consistent theme of scripture and the purpose of spiritual disciplines. In our deserts, we must eat the Word of God and drink the Living Water of Christ. We will be fed with Honey from the Rock.

What we lost in the garden, Christ has regained.
What we failed in the desert, Christ has won.
What we cannot bear, Christ has carried.
What we cannot complete, Christ has finished.

“Lord God Almighty
Came as a preacher man
Fastin’ down in the wilderness
Quotin’ Deuteronomy to the Devil
And then He set His face like a flint
Toward Jerusalem…”

Quoting Deuteronomy to the Devil, Rich Mullins

Prayer: The Request for Presence
Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning, so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life.  — Psalm 90.14

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 8 (Listen – 2:58) 
Psalm 91 (Listen – 1:39)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Honey and Grace
Christ pours out, upon those who follow him, extravagant grace that goes beyond a dry court ruling of “not guilty.”

Read more about Our Opportunistic Opponent
Being led by the Spirit does not always lead to comfort. The Spirit will often lead us, as he did Christ, into deserts, alone, through times of testing.

Generational Faith Transfer

Deuteronomy 4.9
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

Deuteronomy 6.6-9
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Reflection: Generational Faith Transfer
By John Tillman

Moses, as he commissioned the Israelites to move in and begin to establish the nation, could see that the failure or success of the nation would depend on intergenerational transfer. In 1986, John Paul II, said, “As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.” I would, echo that in a smaller way. As the family goes, so goes the church in which we worship.

Whether you are a parent or not, a part of every Christian’s faithfulness is to ensure that intergenerational transfer is enabled and supported by the church.

The following tips are condensed from a blog by Jason Tilley that was written specifically to be shared with parents:

Take Your Own Faith Seriously
You cannot expect your kids to see the effects of the gospel in your life if you are not pursuing God in everything you do. Spend time in God’s word, make prayer an active part of your life. Apply what you are learning to your life. Talk about God and how he influences everything in your life often and out in the open. Your kids can tell if you believe what you say you do.

Have a Plan For Your Child
Be intentional with your child’s spiritual development. Set aside time during the day to engage your child. It could be Bible reading in the morning, prayers before bedtime, a weekly walk where you talk about how God made the world, how he loves us, how he gave his son for us. Make a plan and follow it through.

Make Church Participation A Priority
Active involvement in the church is a powerful force for shaping your child’s spiritual growth. So is not participating. Your child values what you value, so if soccer practice or lazy Sunday mornings always win over going to church, don’t be surprised when they value sports over God. Between the ages of 4 and 14 what a child learns, informs their thinking for the rest of their life.

Participation involves connecting with the living body (read: the people of the church) on a regular basis. This includes (in no particular order) attending services and other programs, serving somewhere in the church, spending time with other believers, and being generous.

*For Jason’s full post see the link above the condensed section. Jason is one of our ministry partners and board members and we work with him to aid and support children’s ministers and parents. You can find more information about Jason and Ministry Accelerator at Ministry Accelerator.org.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Everyone will stand in awe and declare God’s deeds; they will recognize his works. — Psalm 64.9

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 4 (Listen – 4:33) 
Psalm 86-87 (Listen – 2:26)

This Weekend’s Readings
Deuteronomy 5 (Listen – 4:25) Psalm 88 (Listen – 1:58)
Deuteronomy 6 (Listen – 3:13) Psalm 89 (Listen – 5:29)

Thank You!
Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to those who donate to our ministry, keeping The Park Forum ad-free and enabling us to continue to produce fresh content. Every year our donors help us produce over 100,000 words of free devotionals. Follow this link to support our readers.

Read more about Cultivation Must Be Learned
Spiritual wisdom and knowledge, like agricultural knowledge, must be passed on, with its seeds, from one generation to the next.

Read more about A Generational Lament
For many Millennials and those in Gen Z, prior generations of prosperity and ease have melted into a constant fear of scarcity.

The Object of Hope

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.

―Thomas Aquinas

Scripture: Psalm 119.166

I hope for your salvation, O Lord, and I do your commandments.

Reflection: The Object of Hope
By Thomas Aquinas

Petition is an expression of hope, since it is said in Ps. 37:5: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.” But it is plain from the Lord’s Prayer that one may pray to God not only for eternal blessedness, but also for the good things of this present life, both spiritual and temporal, and for deliverance from evils which will have no place in eternal blessedness. It follows that eternal blessedness is not the proper object of hope.

The good which we should properly and principally hope to receive from God is eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God. We ought indeed to hope for nothing less than himself from God, since the goodness by which he bestows good things on a creature is nothing less than his essence. The proper and principal object of hope is therefore eternal blessedness.

Eternal blessedness does not enter into the heart of man perfectly, in such a way that the wayfarer may know what it is, or of what kind it is. But a man can apprehend it under the universal idea of perfect good, and in this way the movement of hope arises. It is therefore with point that the apostle says in Hebrews: “we have hope… which enters into that within the veil,” since what we hope for is yet veiled, as it were.

We ought not to pray to God for any other good things unless they relate to eternal blessedness. Hope is therefore concerned principally with eternal blessedness, and secondarily with other things which are sought of God for the sake of it, just as faith also is concerned principally with such things as relate to God.

All other things seem small to one who sets his heart on something great. To one who hopes for eternal life, therefore, nothing else appears arduous in comparison with this hope. But some other things can yet be arduous in relation to the capacity of him who hopes. There can accordingly be hope in regard to them, as things subservient to the principal object of hope.

*Excerpted and language updated from Whether Eternal Blessedness is the Proper Object of Hope.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Protect my life and deliver me; let me not be put to shame, for I have trusted in you. —Psalm 25.19

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 33-34 (Listen – 6:35)
Psalm 119:145-176 (Listen – 15:14)

 

Finding Freedom

In all our own “freedom,” we actually seek one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.

― Søren Kierkegaard

Scripture: Ps 119.134

Redeem me from man’s oppression, that I may keep your precepts.

Reflection: Finding Freedom
By Søren Kierkegaard

People want to eliminate injunctions and constraints in order to play the game of being independent. But to eliminate every constraint, to loosen every bond, meant at best to make it as free and as convenient as possible for everyone to have no conscience while imagining that he had one.

All this talk about eliminating constraint comes either from the coddled or from those who perhaps once felt the power to fight but are now exhausted and find it nicer to have all constraints taken away.

In staring fixedly at freedom of choice instead of choosing, we lose both freedom and freedom of choice. The most tremendous thing given to a human being is choice—freedom. If you want to rescue and keep it, there is only one way–in the very same second unconditionally in full attachment give it back to God and yourself along with it.

If the sight of what is given to you tempts you, if you surrender to the temptation and look with selfish craving at freedom of choice, then you lose your freedom. And your punishment then is to go around in a kind of confusion and brag about having freedom of choice.

Woe to you, this is the judgment upon you. You have free­dom of choice, you say, and yet you have not chosen God. Then you become ill; freedom of choice becomes your fixed idea. Fi­nally you become like the rich man morbidly imagining that he has become impoverished and will die of want. You sigh that you have lost the freedom of choice, and the mistake is merely that you do not sorrow deeply enough so that you get it back again.

Who does not want to be free? Wishing to be free is an easy mat­ter, but wishing is the most paltry and unfree of all performances.

Prayer: The Greeting

With my whole heart I seek you; let me not stray from your commandments. —Psalm 119.10

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Deuteronomy 32 (Listen – 7:10)
Psalm 119:121-144 (Listen – 15:14)