Verse of the month meditations

I've recently begun selecting one or two verses from my Bible reading, and meditating on them for a month. I write down things that occur to me about the passage each day, and, admittedly, there is some repetition, but by the end of the month I feel I've really absorbed a lot more from that verse than I would've thought possible.

Just to show you what I mean, here is my verse of the month for June 2026 and my meditations. 

June 2026 verse of the month

God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.

‭‭-  Ephesians‬ ‭1‬:‭22‬-‭23‬ ‭NLT‬‬

God loves us so much that he makes all things, through Christ, benefit us. Hallelujah!

Lord, as I am a part of your body, let me be responsive to your commands, as you are the head of the body, forever and ever. Amen.

We shall always be with Christ because the body is always with itself. He is the head and we are the rest of the body.

He has made us full. We are satisfied in him, our needs are all met, our joy is filled up to the brim. And we are complete. Like a machine with all its parts in place and working together for his glory.

Christ has Authority. That means nothing can touch me without I t’s being approved by him, and because he wants the best for his church, even painful things are used by him for our blessing.

As Christ, though he was coequal with the Father, showed humility by submitting himself to God the Father, so we should be humble and submit to our God and Christ.

Lord Jesus, continue to work in me as part of your body to make me full and complete. Thank you, Lord!

So often we, before we believed in Christ, felt empty; empty of something we couldn’t find. It was Jesus we needed, and when we believe we are filled with Jesus, with joy, with peace.

We are Christ’s body. We are joyfully united with him both for this life and for eternity. Hallelujah!

There is nowhere I can go where Jesus isn’t there. He’s even been in the grave.

Lord, since you are everywhere within me, work in every atom and particle of my being, both physical and spiritual, to make me the man you want me to be.

We are Christ’s body. We are to do the things he wants done in this world. The body obeys the head. Lord, let us always be faithful to obey you!

Thank you, Lord, that as you fill all things, you fill me. Let me be thankful and rejoice in that.

It is Christ who is making us full and complete, not ourselves.

We are only made full and complete in Christ. He makes us who we need to be, and fills us with himself.

Christ is in all and fills all to direct all to benefit his body, the church.

All things are filled with Christ, which says he is omnipresent.

All things are subordinate to Christ. And he is using them for our benefit. 

Jesus, though coequal with God, the Father, puts himself in a subordinate position. Such humility. Let us imitate him in humility.

We are Christ’s body. It is unthinkable that he would abuse his body. He may exercise it in ways that make it hurt, or have it operated on in a scary way, but it is all for our good.

The church is made full and complete by Christ. It is not our doing. Jesus will do it in our lives. Bless you Jesus!

Although he is the son of God, he is in charge of all things everywhere, and he fills all things everywhere. He is God incarnate.

All things. The painful things? Yes! The happy things? Yes! All things.

We are Christ’s body. How much closer a relationship could God indicate then by this description. How wonderful to be so closely connected to Christ. Praise God.

Because all things are under Christ’s authority, that means all things are working for our good, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

How comforting to know that all things are under the authority, under the control, of our loving Jesus.

If Christ fills all things everywhere with himself, then we can bless the Lord for everything we encounter for he loves us.

Though he is God himself, the Son puts himself under the authority of the Father. Is this to show us that we should be humble even when we are equal to someone else?

Christ's authority is for the benefit of his body, the church, us!

We are Christ’s body; if his work is to be done on earth, we must, by his power, do it.

Reliving God’s Blessings

A friend and I are reading a devotional together long distance - we are about 2,000 miles apart - and are having a good time.

Today, we read a passage that talked about looking for the little blessings that God gives us, and it reminded me of a passage I read in a Puritan book that said something like this: You can’t thank God for mercies you don’t remember.

That really struck me, and as a result I began keeping a list of God‘s blessings, big ones and little ones, and review about five of them each day. It is a blessing all over again to review these blessings and to thank God for them again. 

Suggestion: if you decide to do this, try to be as specific as you can. “A cottontail rabbit hopping along the trail ahead of me near the stream in the wilderness preserve.” Being specific brings the incident back to your mind like a good video.

Verse of the Month

For the last several months I’ve been selecting a verse from the Bible, just based on where I happen to be reading at the moment, and putting it in a text file. Then, every day of the month, I go look at that verse and below it write some observation about it. It amazes me that, though the verses are short and I’ve been doing it for several months, that new thoughts come to my mind every time I look at the verse. It makes me realize how deep and rich the word of God is.

Explanation for the Trinity

There is an old explanation for the Trinity that compares it to water. Just as water can be in three forms, liquid, solid, or vapor, so can God be in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, water cannot be in these three forms at the same time, which is a weakness in this analogy. However, God created time; he is beyond time, outside of time, therefore this objection is not valid in the case of God. He can be all three at the same time.

Spiritual Lessons from the Genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1-9

I happened upon chapters 1 through 9 of 1 Chronicles during my regular Bible reading, and wondered what possible spiritual significance eight and a half chapters of names could have, so I decided to look at it more carefully.

It is certainly not like John 3:16, one little pithy and powerful verse. This is very different, much more spread out and not so obvious.

In a way, I think it more closely resembles Colossians 3:18-22, rules for various members of the household (wives, husbands, children, slaves). Just as the Colossians passage applies primarily to specific members of a family, so these chapters appear to have been addressed primarily to one group of humanity - the Jews returning from exile in Babylon, probably to reconnect them with their spiritual heritage. They could read this and say, “Hey! That’s my uncle Penuel,” or “my grandmother Naarah.” They could connect with their ancestors and really grasp that they too were among the chosen people. For them these chapters said: You are not starting over; you are linked to generations of God’s people before you.

But just as we may learn something from rules that primarily apply to one member of a family, so I think we can learn from these chapters even though they were mainly for Jews returning from exile.

Here are some of the things I saw:

1 Chron 1:1 starts all the way back with Adam. God is the God of history; he has been here from our very beginning.

In 1:4 Japheth, Ham, Shem, and their offspring represent the major tribes of humanity, the Japhethites, Hamites and Semites. So God is interested in all mankind.

Families are important to God: “The sons of Shem,” “The sons or Aram,” “Arphaxad was the father of,” “Two sons were born to Eber,” and so forth. We should value our families.

God continues to be there, faithful for generation after generation. That's comforting.

God is eternal. People live and die - generation after generation - but God remains constant.

I look at these ages and ages of humanity and think how patient and deliberate God is, never hurrying.

Believers are part of God’s people stretching back through the ages. I find it inspiring that we are part of something so grand, but also humbling; we are all little players in the ages-long plan of God.

We should give thanks for our spiritual ancestors - parents, pastors, friends - those who led us to Christ. We owe gratitude to those believers who went before us. Think of those who have been most helpful in your spiritual walk. Maybe send them a thank you note.

Good and bad people are listed here, though very little is said here about their moral character. Character matters a lot to God, but in these chapters we are shown that God can work through anyone, and human sin and failure doesn’t thwart His plans. God is in control.

Still, there is enough on moral character to remind us that it is important in God’s eyes. In 2:3 it says that Er was wicked so God put him to death (also Genesis 38:6–7), and in 4:9-10 it calls Jabez “more honorable than his brothers.” Interesting that both the wicked Er and the honorable Jabez are almost completely unknown.

God uses - and remembers - people others might think are insignificant. The most obscure people are listed right alongside the most notable. God uses both. Do we treat seemingly unimportant people with the respect we give to notable people? Can we live happily being obscure?

Many of these obscure probably led quiet godly lives - perhaps some of them would have been great if there had been the need for them to be so, but perhaps by living in quiet times it was not necessary. To us they are virtually unknown, but God remembers and honors them, placing them side by side with the great.

So, in these chapters great men are brought down and the obscure are raised up. For example, let’s look at Moses, one of the most famous people in the Old Testament.

I Chronicles 6:3 says, “The children of Amram were Aaron, Moses, and Miriam.”

That’s it! There he is, the great lawgiver, with not a word about him except his name.

We also see that God chooses some people as his special instruments, just as Jesus chose 12 to be his special inner team, so here God chose the people of Israel. In chapter 1 we see that the scope narrow from all of humanity to Abraham and his children, then in chapter 2 through chapter 9, to Israel proper, with each tribe getting its genealogy. But the main focus is on Judah (for about two-and-a-half chapters, and specifically on David’s royal line), then on the priestly tribe of Levi for all of the long chapter 6.

So the focus here is not on the law (As I mentioned, Moses, the great lawgiver, is almost ignored); it is on the people of God, the tribes of Israel, and particularly on David’s kingly line, and on the priesthood. All of this foreshadows the church and its king and priest, Jesus.

But while God has chosen Israel that doesn’t mean he has excluded others. Just as in the New Testament, where gentiles were woven in to the church, so here gentiles are woven into the body of God’s people (e.g., A Canaanite woman in 2:3; one of David’s wives, who was the daughter of the king of Geshur; an Egyptian slave who married a Jewish woman in 2:34–35; a daughter of Pharaoh marrying a Jewish man in 4:18; an Ishmaelite married to a Jewish woman in 2:17). So, even though God chose Israel, his plan always included the nations.

Jesus in our midst

19 Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them. - ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭18‬:‭19‬-‭20‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

It almost seems verse 19 promises too much - that if two or more agree on something it will be done, but perhaps verse 20 gives the solution, that Jesus is in their midst and that any agreement must be in agreement with him, who is one of the group. 

Naming of Fathers in the Bible

“Now the bronze altar that Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made, he put before the tabernacle of the Lord.” 2 Chronicles 1:5a

I wonder if the reason the names of the father and grandfather of Bezalel are given is because they raised Bezalel and thus indirectly share in the credit for what he did. 

Perhaps this is true in other cases where fathers are named. It is a testimony God wants to give of their wisdom in raising their children, or, in cases of disreputable children, it is an admonition.

Not true, of course, in all cases, as some sons of good parents may go bad.