Tag: devotion

Psalm 121- Part II

~ Mom Morsels
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God our Watchman

Psalm 121 provides so much comfort to me. I just love this psalm! Let’s look at Psalm 121 together in the New American Standard Bible (italics mine):

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

We’re going to look at each verse in this psalm together through this series, but first, there is something very important that I want to point out. Throughout this psalm a single Hebrew word is used no less than six times- each use of this word is italicized in the verses above. I have said this before, that if I want to make a point to our children, I might say the same thing twice. If they aren’t listening, I might say it a third time. If something is said to us SIX TIMES, I think we should notice what God is highlighting to us! Don’t you agree?

The Hebrew word that appears six times in this psalm is H8104. This word H8104 is translated several ways in this psalm and in the Hebrew it means “to hedge about (as with thorns), that is guard; generally to protect, attend to, take heed (to self), keep, preserve, regard, watch(-man), keep watch, take care.” There is a lot of meaning in that word! It’s clear that our GOOD SHEPHERD is pointing out the importance to us that HE IS OUR WATCHMAN. I know at times it doesn’t feel that way, though. Perhaps you are going through some difficulty or trial. When we are passing through those hard times, it can make us doubt that God is our watchman, but you will see through our study that He truly is!

In the New American Standard Bible version, in verses 3, 4, 5 and 7b of Psalm 121, this word for watchman is translated KEEP or KEEPER. Yes, God is also our KEEPER. You can be reassured that He will not let you go. As we see in Isaiah 41:10 NASB:

Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.

God is keeping you; He is upholding you with His righteous right hand. That word “uphold” H8551 gives us even more insight into just how God holds onto us. It means ” to grasp, keep fast, help, follow close, retain, lay hold of, to be seized.” Seizing is forceful! It sounds like He holds onto us pretty tightly!

He keeps us, but we also must make a choice to faithfully hold onto Him. Despite your circumstances, HOLD ONTO JESUS AND DON’T LET GO! In Jesus’ love song to the church and to us, Song of Solomon 3:4 NASB, the bride (the church and us) speaks to the Bridegroom (Jesus), encouraging us to hold on like she does:

When I found him whom my soul loves;
I held on to him and would not let him go.

Going back to that Hebrew word “to keep” H8104, farther down in our psalm, it is interpreted in verse 7a as “protect” and verse 8 as “guard”. Doesn’t it provide so much comfort to know that God is protecting and guarding you? And as we saw above, that He is your watchman? Watchmen in the Bible times, stood on the wall that surrounded the city to protect it. They warned the people of approaching danger and could see trouble coming from far off. God does this for us also, if we choose to listen to Him. To us, it may seem that at times, He is not watching over us, but we will see as we study further that He truly is our WATCHMAN and we can trust Him. We do have to choose to believe Him, though.

So moms, you can rest in the knowledge that

GOD IS OUR WATCHMAN, WATCHING OVER US, UPHOLDING US AND KEEPING US CLOSE TO HIM.

In His Love,

Suzanne

Perfectly Imperfect Devotions

~ Mom Morsels
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

Simple Devotions with Children

I am sharing my journey through devotions with our children in the hope that it will encourage you. I did make some mistakes along the way. Does everyone struggle with doing regular devotions with their children? I know I did. I did what I would call bus-stop devotions. I read a devotion book with Bible verses and a lesson to our children while we waited for the bus. It was very hard for me to be consistent and I did not do devotions every day. Working against me was the fact that I am a perfectionist (God is working on curing me of this!). At one point, because I couldn’t do the devotions every day, I gave up and stopped doing them at all.

About two weeks later, I heard a little whisper from the Lord saying, “Who won that battle?” … the battle for devotions. Well, I stopped doing them, so I realized that satan totally won that battle! And I realized that even if I wasn’t perfect at doing devotions with our children, if I just did devotions a few days a week, that was better than none! So I went back to trying again.

I used to use devotion books with our children, but I learned a lesson here also. One time I picked up a cute little purple devotion book from the grocery store that was on a Christian book turnstile. It had pretty pink flip flops on it and since I was doing devotions with our girls (our son is the oldest and was in high school), I thought it would be just what we needed. We began to do the devotions but the book was talking about parents who got drunk, lied or left home. Finally, my little girls said, “Mama! This book may be for some little girls who have parents like this, but this book is not for us!” Out of the mouths of babes. Around this time, a woman came to our church and taught us on how to teach the Bible to our children. She said all we needed was the Bible! Imagine that! She taught us to go through the book of Proverbs or Psalms with our children, so that is what I began to do. I have to say that kids have the best insight into scripture, if you just give them a chance to think about it! Our girls thought of insights I had never thought of! And so went our devotions.

Here are some practicals for having devotions with your kids:

  • You have a commission to teach your children the Word (I will post more on this commission soon!), so go ahead and teach them.
  • Don’t nag your husband to do it, if he doesn’t feel led to. Do it yourself.
  • Pick a regular time and try to stick to it.
  • Start with going through Proverbs, just a verse at a time.
  • Ask your kids what they think about the verse and listen to their answers. You will LOVE this part!
  • Realize that your kids will fight you on devotions-they’ll say they don’t want to do it, that it is boring, they’ll get distracted, wiggle around… DO IT ANYWAY
  • Let yourself not do it perfectly!

I do believe in SEED STUFFING. Get as much of the Word in your kids as you can when they are little. There will come a point where they will not listen as well anymore (this is a natural process of childhood as they turn into teenagers, don’t panic), so get the Word in them while they are listening still. The Bible promises that any Word you get in your kids hearts will not return void without doing what God intended it to do in them (Isaiah 55:11). What a promise! Doesn’t that just make you want to get even more of the Word in their hearts? It did me.

God may lead you a totally different way to do devotions with your children, and that is ok. This was just our little journey with devotions. You do what God leads you to do. But if you are struggling to find time to do this, then ask the Lord to help you. He will show you practical ways to work the Bible into your daily life with your kids (I’ll also give you more ways to do that in future posts!)

So when it comes to devotions, my best is advice is:

JUST DO IT! START DOING DEVOTIONS AND GOD WILL HELP YOU!

In His Love,

Suzanne