Your Turn for 1/28-29/2023 - Psalm 25:8-15
Welcome to the weekend, Seeds of Faith community!
Because this is a reflection on scripture using the SOAP method (Scripture-Observation-Application-Prayer), part of the purpose is sharing an example of what you might practice in your own scripture reading. So, the weekend invitation is to practice your own SOAP reflection.
Each weekend, I share a passage of scripture to work from. If you’re up for sharing in the comments, I’d love to see what you come up with. This week the prompt is Psalm 25:8-15, which you’ll find below. If you share, please copy and paste the sentence or phrase you are reflecting on.
Brief guidelines for a good practice:
The Basic Method. Pick one sentence or phrase in the scripture passage that stands out to you. Write down one thing you observe going on in that sentence or phrase. Reflect on how that observation gives insight that might apply to your faith and life. Write a short prayer about that.
Observe Well. Think about what the sentences and phrases are saying and not saying. Take care also not to extrapolate more than is there.
Stay Balanced. Focus on the particular scripture while keeping the whole witness of scripture (as well as you know it) in mind. Isolating a verse or passage from the whole can lead us to heresies, but reading each verse or passage deeply and well makes for a robust understanding of the whole. This is one purpose of the early creeds (Apostles’ and Nicene)—they summarize the major points of Christian scripture and doctrine so as to help us read individual biblical passages faithfully.
Psalm 25:8-15
8 Good and upright is the Lord;
therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.
9 He guides the humble in what is right
and teaches them his way.
10 All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful
toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.
11 For the sake of your name, Lord,
forgive my iniquity, though it is great.
12 Who, then, are those who fear the Lord?
He will instruct them in the ways they should choose.[b]
13 They will spend their days in prosperity,
and their descendants will inherit the land.
14 The Lord confides in those who fear him;
he makes his covenant known to them.
15 My eyes are ever on the Lord,
for only he will release my feet from the snare.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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Thanks Linda and Mike for these. Recognizing that the fullness of salvation is not only reconciliation of relationship but also restoration of the image of God within the believer is critical. In Jesus, we see both aspects fused together--a relationship unbroken and fully aligned and a man perfectly living out the image of God.
As for sanctification (the process by which we grow in full maturity and devotion to God), it is participation with grace. Dallas Willard put it best: Grace is opposed to earning, not opposed to effort.
Our effort--dying to self, surrender to God, trusting obedience--is participation in (and never augmentation of) Christ's work for us and is integral to what biblical salvation is about. Yet, all that appropriate effort is enabled by, and a response to, God's grace. So it doesn't earn our righteousness before God, or even maintain it. What it does is receive it into every part of who we are.
Sanctification is part of the deal and involves effort. We are expected to grow in faithfulness, but this doesn't slip into earning because faithfulness is the fruit of deeper surrender and trust, and is manifested in inward character and outward deeds.
My comment involves the same scripture Linda J noted, below. This verse, along with several others, seems to teach there is a contract requiring keeping the commands to stay in God’s favor as well as moving on to sanctification. The book of James can be interpreted the same way, IMO. The scripture from Colossians 1:23 that Guy used on Friday infers the same thing. My Baptist friends would refer to countless “assurance” scriptures and ask how we Methodists can ever rest assured in our faith.
In my own walk, I find blessings rain down when I walk with the Lord but I also know the paths to legalism and prosperity gospels are slippery slopes.
Thanks for the scripture studies and the attention to details within God’s magnificent Word.