July 23, 2021
Friday
Fixing Our Thoughts
Hebrews 11: 32-40
“…consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus;
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Hebrews 3:1, 12:1-2
One day the church musician, Lowell Mason, met an exhausted man on the street. It was Ray Palmer, 24, who had been working a retail job while attending classes at Yale, teaching at a girl’s school, and preparing for future ministry. Mason asked Palmer to take on another task—writing hymn lyrics. Palmer, too tired to produce anything new, pulled from his billfold a little poem he had written two years earlier. It was a personal prayer for renewed zeal and courage, which he had written one night when very low. Lowell Mason composed music for the words, giving us the great hymn, “My Faith Looks Up to Thee.”
When circumstances get us down, we need to lift our eyes to Jesus in faith and fix our thoughts on Him. The challenge of the Christian life isn’t how to avoid fatigue and failure. It’s learning to move forward with faith, looking up to the Lord and His sovereign Word: “My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior Divine! / Now hear me while I pray; take all my guilt away; O let me from this day be wholly Thine!”
A point to ponder…
May Thy rich grace impart strength to my fainting heart, my zeal inspire. / As Thou hast died for me, O may my love for Thee / Pure, warm, and changeless be, a living fire!
Ray Palmer
Read the Bible through in a year
Proverbs 30-31
I love you!!!
© 2000-2021 B. Michael Goerlich