H Times 3

June 26, 2017

H Times 3

I will sing of your love and justice, Lord.

    I will praise you with songs.

I will be careful to live a blameless life—

Psalm 101:1-2a

I am thankful to my friend, Rev. Dick Brown, for teaching me the acrostic H³. It is so helpful in remembering the basic qualities of a follower of Jesus: Hunger for God; Heart for people; and Hatred of sin. Elements of all three of these are used by King David in Psalm 101.

When God’s people were preparing to enter into the Promised Land, Moses gave them final instructions. As the Covenant people of God, they were promised God’s blessings “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.” “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you” (Deuteronomy 28:1, 15).

As the King of Israel, David was responsible for modeling Covenant life for his people. In this psalm, he is taking responsibility to lead the people in faithfully obeying God’s commands.

Jesus fulfilled Psalm 101, and Jesus makes it possible for us to fulfill Psalm 101: “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I believe Psalm 101 can serve as a reminder of the importance of modeling before those in our circle of influence the life of a fully-devoted follower of Jesus. While there may be nuances to the life in Christ, depending on our own Christian maturity and our environment, we’ll always be close to the heart of Christ if we remember H³.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2017 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.