Psalms 51:1 (KJV) The Messenger's Spirit

Psalms 51:1 (KJV)

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. 

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

I recognize that the superscript that begins many of the Psalms is not God-breathed, inspired writing. But it's considered established that this superscript is accurate. The Psalm was written by David upon being confronted by the prophet for his sin with Bathsheba.

Psalm 51 is a lesson in repentance.

It's not my point to go through the Psalm, but it would be a good one for the one struggling over his sin to work through. This isn't academic; this is visceral, real, cutting to the quick of things.

My point is that it was the response to being confronted. We have a record of this confrontation in the Word of God, and it is worth noting that Nathan wasn't in the flesh when he approached the king. He demonstrated sense, restraint, compassion, and wisdom, but he did confront.

And David did respond. He responded with grief, burden, honesty, and genuine repentance.

Perhaps there is a lesson for both the offended and the offender here, the preacher and the congregant he must rebuke. Perhaps the sinner would be in a better place to repent if the "prophet" approached him with a little more of God Himself…

Matthew 7:5 (KJV)

"...first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

#Psalm51v1 #BiblicalRepentance #SpeakingTheTruthInLove #GodlyCorrection #DailyVisitWithGo

The Messenger's Spirit: Confrontation Leading to Repentance

The truth must be preached, but the spirit of the messenger matters!

Before confronting someone else's sin, examine your own heart. Are you seeking their restoration or simply pointing out their failure? And when God uses someone to confront you, will you respond with the humility and repentance David demonstrated?

Ask God to give you both the courage to speak the truth and the grace to speak it in the right spirit.

If this Daily Visit With God has challenged you, share it with someone who might benefit from its message.

Visit marvinmckenzie.org for more daily Bible encouragement, practical Christian teaching, and resources to strengthen your walk with the Lord.

To my readers:

Thank you! It is a great joy to me to know you read the thoughts and lessons God has given me in His word. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave comments.

For this and, more than 7300 earlier Daily Visits with God, visit https://mckenzie-visit-with-god.blogspot.com. There you will find daily visits going back to 2005.

If you have been blessed by this blog, please subscribe to my feed and share it with others.

Psalms 51:1 (KJV) The Messenger's Spirit

Here's a comic version of the lesson. 

https://youtube.com/post/Ugkx796wJB6gYxV9Tk9pQFrXTzkCEvS9vBa_?si=xjoDPVucJvyY1G4x

Psalms 50:5-6 (KJV) Christ Is Coming Again

Psalms 50:5-6 (KJV)

Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.

And the heavens shall declare his righteousness: for God is judge himself. Selah.

Whenever I read the word “gather” in the Word of God, I think of the rapture. It is represented in the New Testament often as a gathering of God’s people. The Old Testament, of course, has its own context, but the author of God’s Word, who is God Himself, knew where the book would end when He wrote the first word.

Considering that, I see:

• His coming (vs. 3)
• His presence on earth (vs. 4)
• His gathering of the saints (vs. 5)
• His Tribulation, Kingdom, and Great White Throne (vs. 6)

And then, in verse 7, the Word of God says, “Hear, O my people, and I will speak.”

How we need the one who will speak today!

The preacher, the witness, the one who declares the righteous truth, is the most meaningful and essential person in our world today. That is precisely because what is written in verses 1–6 is so very, very true.

I know these truths are mocked, scoffed at, and derided. They are often thought of as only secondary, even among professing believers.

But if these things were not true, then nothing about Christianity has purpose.

And if they are true, then nothing else even compares in importance.

#Psalms50v6 #JesusIsComingAgain #TheRapture #GodsFinalJudgment #PreachTheWord

Christ Is Coming Again: Nothing Else Compares

If God's Word is true, nothing matters more than proclaiming it!

Christ is coming! God will gather His saints, establish His kingdom, and judge the world in righteousness. These are not merely interesting Bible prophecies. They are eternal truths that demand our attention today!

The world desperately needs faithful men and women who will declare God's Word without compromise.

Will you be one of those voices?

📖 Read more in today's Daily Visit With God from Psalm 50:5–6.

Visit https://marvinmckenzie.org for daily Bible encouragement, sound doctrine, and practical teaching from God's Word.

Read it. Believe it. Share it. Someone needs to hear God's truth today!

To my readers:

Thank you! It is a great joy to me to know you read the thoughts and lessons God has given me in His word. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave comments.

For this and, more than 7300 earlier Daily Visits with God, visit https://mckenzie-visit-with-god.blogspot.com. There you will find daily visits going back to 2005.

If you have been blessed by this blog, please subscribe to my feed and share it with others.

Psalms 50:5-6 (KJV) Christ Is Coming Again

Here's a comic version of the lesson.

https://youtube.com/post/UgkxdmKNNDPGUWw3kCRZX2omgycxKRni3NSs?si=zI3OjX1Qsu571enS

Psalms 49:11 (KJV) Your Name and Eternity

Psalms 49:11 (KJV)

Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they call their lands after their own names.

What David observed in his day hasn’t changed at all. People still “call their lands after their own names.”

David did it too. It was “the city of David,” wasn’t it?

2 Samuel 5:9 (KJV)

So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. And David built round about from Millo and inward.

We actually call the place our house sits on McKenzie Mountain.

Many of the streets (and parks) in Republic are named after people whose life stories are completely unknown to me. There are cities, towns, and regions all over the U.S. named Lafayette or Fayetteville, and the majority of Americans have no knowledge of why.

Here’s the thing: while it may not be wrong to name something after a person or perhaps even after yourself, it is completely foolish to think such an act will make your memory last much longer than the generation in which you live.

But you personally—you can live much longer than your memory. You can live in the presence of God eternally.

I’d like to leave a work that outlasts me—perhaps by many generations. That’s one of the reasons I write.

But if my life on earth is completely forgotten once my grandchildren pass, it’s okay. I know my name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, and with Him I will not be forgotten.

#DailyVisitWithGod #Psalm49v11 #EternalLife #LambsBookOfLife #WhatReallyLasts

Your Name and Eternity: An Better Perspective on Life

 What are we passing on to the next generation?

Our love for the Lord should produce a love for His church, its biblical doctrines, and its faithful practices. These are treasures worth preserving!

If this Daily Visit with God encouraged you, share it with someone who loves the local church. Help the next generation understand why it matters!

📖 Visit https://marvinmckenzie.org for more daily Bible studies, practical teaching, and resources to strengthen your walk with the Lord.

To my readers:

Thank you! It is a great joy to me to know you read the thoughts and lessons God has given me in His word. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave comments.

For this and, more than 7300 earlier Daily Visits with God, visit https://mckenzie-visit-with-god.blogspot.com. There you will find daily visits going back to 2005.

If you have been blessed by this blog, please subscribe to my feed and share it with others.

Psalms 49:11 (KJV) Your Name and Eternity

Here's a comic version of the lesson.

https://youtube.com/post/UgkxH4MjTVy6Fz9vZjL48_Tgu2Cw8EJaZ92f?si=OEjAgb0m9-O4Uips

Psalms 48:13 (KJV) Doctrine, Faith, and Practice

Psalms 48:13 (KJV)

Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following.

I'm intrigued by the way the opening verses of this chapter weave together God and “the mountain of his holiness.”

A place is just a place unless it has been consecrated to the Lord or God has chosen it for Himself. I think of David and the threshing floor he purchased. He was not to be the one who built the temple, but he did purchase the site and collect a great deal of the materials and means necessary for its construction.

He did this out of love and devotion to the Lord, and through that love and devotion, he developed a great affection for the site and the temple that would eventually stand there.

And then he writes, “Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the generation following.”

May I say that love for the Lord creates in us a love for the place He has called His believers to assemble—the local church—and for the place that local assembly of believers has consecrated for that purpose.

The bulwarks, that which upholds this local assembly, are not the building or its construction but the doctrines, faith, and practice of that church. We are instructed to mark these well, to take good note of them. Consider them, learn them, and then speak of them so that future generations might learn to love the church as well.

#DailyVisitWithGod #Psalm48v13 #LoveYourLocalChurch #BiblicalDoctrine #FaithForTheNextGeneration

Doctrine, Faith, and Practice: The Foundation of Biblical Faith

What are we passing on to the next generation?

Our love for the Lord should produce a love for His church, its biblical doctrines, and its faithful practices. These are treasures worth preserving!

If this Daily Visit with God encouraged you, share it with someone who loves the local church. Help the next generation understand why it matters!

📖 Visit https://marvinmckenzie.org for more daily Bible studies, practical teaching, and resources to strengthen your walk with the Lord.

To my readers:

Thank you! It is a great joy to me to know you read the thoughts and lessons God has given me in His word. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave comments.

For this and, more than 7300 earlier Daily Visits with God, visit https://mckenzie-visit-with-god.blogspot.com. There you will find daily visits going back to 2005.

If you have been blessed by this blog, please subscribe to my feed and share it with others.

Psalms 48:13 (KJV) Doctrine, Faith, and Practice

Here's a comic version of the lesson.

https://youtube.com/post/UgkxuKH18CQCPqSzjFzEvv7C_8bFQWxJ0-7_?si=e2ux6UlKfb1e84yx

John 15:8 (KJV) Christ Living Through You

John 15:8 (KJV)

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

The picture of bearing fruit goes back at least to Psalm 1:3 (KJV):

“And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

I think also of Proverbs 11:30 (KJV):

“The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise.”

It seems obvious, then, that the Lord wants Christians to bear fruit. I think the question is, what does that mean?

Some would say it means the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22–23 (KJV) says:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

My crowd has always been quick to point out that this is the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of the Christian. My crowd would say the fruit of the Christian is souls won to the Saviour.

And I believe we ought to be soul winners. We ought at least to strive to be.

It is not my intent at this point to try to define the fruit. I believe a case may be made for both the fruit of the Spirit and soul winning.

True soul winning wouldn't come from us anyway. It would have to come from the source of all spiritual life flowing through us, which is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, without the fruit of the Spirit, we wouldn't be true soul winners anyway.

And then there is fruit itself. Think of the sorts of things we consider fruit. Some of it is really a berry. Some of it is sweet. Some of it is not—so much so that we think of it more as a vegetable.

Likely, because we are all created so uniquely by the Lord, the fruit we produce is equally unique. Perhaps so much so that some would judge our fruit as not being fruit at all.

I think the point is a genuine life with the Lord. Do we just exist, or can we honestly say, as Paul did in Galatians 2:20 (KJV):

“…but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”?

#John15v8 #BearingFruit #ChristianLiving #SoulWinning #DailyVisitWithGod

Christ Living Through You: More Than Just Existing

Are You Just Existing, or Is Christ Living Through You?

The Christian life was never meant to be merely a name we claim. God desires that our lives bear fruit that brings glory to Him!

Take a moment today to examine your walk with the Lord. Is His life being seen through yours?

Don't settle for simply existing as a Christian. Seek to live a life through which Christ can work!

📖 For more practical Bible teaching and encouragement from God's Word, visit https://marvinmckenzie.org and make Daily Visit with God part of your daily walk with the Lord.

To my readers:

Thank you! It is a great joy to me to know you read the thoughts and lessons God has given me in His word. I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave comments.

For this and, more than 7300 earlier Daily Visits with God, visit https://mckenzie-visit-with-god.blogspot.com. There you will find daily visits going back to 2005.

If you have been blessed by this blog, please subscribe to my feed and share it with others.

My books, and other resources, are available at:
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John 15:8 (KJV) Christ Living Through You

Here's a comic version of the lesson.

https://youtube.com/post/Ugkx0DUS9_jCGTJpNsYZvym2clBxjzL1ZKxQ?si=imeEKkucWJmUtz7k