The Turning Of God’s Providence - Psalm 40:5

You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. - Psalm 40:5

Ever count your blessings? If not, you should sit down sometime and begin by writing, starting with your own birth, the parents you were given, and slowly and considerately working your way up to the present day, marking every blessing God has ever bestowed upon you. Trust me: you will neither remember them all nor list them all before your hand cramps from clutching that pen. “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 4:19.
It is truly incredible when one considers the blessings we receive daily. From rising in the morning to our meals for the day to our very health. In a single day, we might not be able to ‘count our blessings.’ Even when we think that things are not going well, we have His assurance that all things will turn out for the best. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” - Romans 8:28. And here begins the turning upon which all our blessings depend.
I recall from my own sordid past many were my inclinations and intentions, and just as many failed miserably. Had I given it any thought at the time I would have come to the conclusion that I was not very blessed. However, I was surely experiencing God’s providence, a ‘turning providence.’ God was using the tribulations and failures of my carnal life to turn me towards more blessed goals, to turn me towards Him. As the late Scottish theologian, John J. Murray said, “People are usually anxious to get rid of the problem than they are to find the purpose of God in it.” No matter what our circumstance, no matter our troubles, God’s purpose is to turn us to true faith in Him.
There is no situation in life that doesn’t have a lesson attached to it. The situation may be pleasant or it can be troublesome and even painful. But even the tribulations we are often exposed to are meant to benefit us in the long run because much of what God does is best seen in the long view of life. I can vouch for that. If we truly want to experience the greatest blessings available to us there is one thing we must do. “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” - Matthew 6:31-33. The answer to turning God’s providence our way is to seek Him!
This doesn’t mean that all we have to do is throw God’s holy name into a list of desires like it is some magical incantation. We need to understand first that everything we receive and obtain in this life is from God. “John answered, ‘A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.’” - John 3:27. To receive such blessings we must have faith in God for without faith we might as well just roll the dice. We must ask ourselves if that is really how we want to hedge the circumstances of our lives. Will we leave it to chance rather than trust in God?
The reality of the blessings we receive is clear - “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” - James 1:17. We must trust that God is seeking the best outcome for our lives. But without true faith in Him, all we will receive is what anyone else receives through the common blessings bestowed upon all men, good and evil. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” - Matthew 5:44-45.
Our only real hope is through trusting our very lives to God through true faith. This is the way God’s providence turns. “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” - Hebrews 11:6. The blessings and good providence of God are truly too many to count.

Deliverance From Evil - Mark 5:1-5

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. - Mark 5:1-5

A sad and truly terrifying commentary on today’s world can be seen daily in our news stories, whether in print or on the internet. Some of the reports are too sinister and disturbing to repeat here. Suffice to say that the psychopathy prowling our streets is not an aberration but a routine happenstance in our Godless society. We have been warned. “This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” - Ecclesiastes 9:3.
Evil, age-old evil, is a concept few today want to acknowledge. The  ‘enlightened minds’ mock the very notion and insist it reeks of superstition and medieval ignorance yet for the life of them, they cannot explain the malevolent acts of man. Evil in modern parlance is described as having been born of genetic defects, harsh environmental elements, abuse, and any number of mitigating issues. The idea is to support the humanist notion that man is born basically good.
It is true that adverse factors affect men differently. Not everyone who endures physical abuse as a child grows up to be a Charles Manson or a Jeffrey Dahmer. So what drives one man to become a serial murderer rather than a law enforcement officer? The answer is simple: evil.
There is a corruption that inhabits all men to varying degrees. We Christians refer to it as the sin nature of man. It prevails over our strongest attempts to curtail it, reroute it, or suppress it when we try to do so in our own human strength. It is only through regeneration by the Holy Spirit and the faith that blossoms thereof that we have any control at all. The evil that men do comes not from God but from our rejection of God. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” - Romans 1:21.
There is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum. Our souls will be filled with one of two things; either God or the devil. From birth, we have the original sin or ‘total depravity’ to deal with in our lives. Total depravity doesn’t mean that we are as sinful as we can possibly be. It means that there is no part of our humanity that has not been touched by sin. Just like all things in God’s universe, there are degrees of evil. For one person, it is lying to avoid having an embarrassing incident revealed. For another, it is kidnapping and murdering an innocent victim. But we should not make any mistakes: the devil is indeed alive and active in our lives unless we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. “. . .  because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” - Romans 10:9.  If we fail to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, we are as lost as the demoniac of Gerasenes.
Tethered to sinful humanity in our lives, we are entombed like unclean spirits, forever wandering in our transgressions. The evil that corrupts the murderer is the same evil that corrupts the thief, the liar, or the sexually immoral. The devil never rests and he is present at every Sunday service as he roams the world looking for souls to devour. He seeks the spiritually distracted. Even the devil’s nuances are specifically designed to divert, confuse, and reroute us, rather than allow us to turn to Christ. We must leave our corrupt tombs and seek Christ.
The evil that lies dormant in our hearts is only a breath away from manifesting itself in ways that no man has the strength to subdue. It is only by the common grace of God that we stay one step ahead of the devil. Let us seek God today, this very hour, now!

Mere Obedience - Luke 11:28

But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” - Luke 11:28

    There are many folks who gripe about their circumstances in life and quickly claim that they have prayed incessantly about their problem, receiving no relief from God. They seem to assume their prayers are some kind of magical incantation or sacrifice. They pray; God is supposed to answer their prayers. It seems, from their point of view, that they have fulfilled their part of a bargain. Now it is up to God to hold up His end.
    What they fail to understand is that for prayer to be acceptable to God it must meet some fairly solid criteria. For instance, God requires that pray matches His will. Prayer cannot generally be used in an imprecatory manner. In other words, we cannot call down curses upon people. But perhaps’ God’s greatest requirement for prayer is that it be done with an obedient heart rather that as some type of ritualistic sacrifice. “And Samuel said, ‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.’” - 1 Samuel 15:22.
    We will find that in many situations people pull out all the stops when praying for something they feel is a priority in their lives. There is no ritual or incantation they won’t turn to for the desired answer to their prayers when all God ever asks of us is that we obey His commands. “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God.” - Deuteronomy 28:1-2.
    On the other hand, God has also declared to us what the results of failing to obey Him result in. He minces no words when He tells us that there will be a grave and problematic price to pay for our disobedience. No one can possibly pick up a Bible and fail to see the warnings from Genesis to Revelation regarding impertinent disobedience and spiritual rebellion. “If you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring on you and your offspring extraordinary afflictions, afflictions severe and lasting, and sicknesses grievous and lasting.” - Deuteronomy 28:58-59. This particular passage assumes, of course, that our offspring are as rebellious as we have been. There are many passages in Holy Scripture that tell us the child will not be punished for the father’s sin and visa versa. “ The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself." - Ezekiel 18:19.
    The Gospel of Matthew speaks of the rewards of obedience. It is a common theme when teaching the relationship between Christ’s roles as Savior and Lord. Herein lies the problem for many who profess their Christianity: they're willing to accept Christ’s salvific atonement for their sins but refuse to ‘obey Him as Lord’. Scripture is redundant when it speaks to the Lordship of Jesus Christ: we cannot have Him as our Savior if we refuse to have Him as our Lord! In fact, Jesus tells us that those who do not obey Him are like a fool who builds his house upon sand. “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”- Matthew 7:26-27. Fools we are called when we fail to obey Christ’s words. And what of those who do heed His commands? “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’” - Matthew 25:23.
    We can only respond to the commands of Jesus in one of two ways: we can refuse to do as He has instructed us or we can surrender our egos and deliberate impertinence to His Lordship and receive the blessings awaiting us in God’s providence. Mere obedience to God can reap untold rewards for His children.