Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Psalm 111:2-4


2 God’s works are so great, worth a lifetime of study—endless enjoyment!
3 Splendor and beauty mark his craft; His rightness over all things never gives out.
4 His miracles are his memorial—This God of Grace, this God of Compassion.

My Personal Reflection:
As I was reading this Psalm at the breakfast table this morning, verse 2 caught my attention. I like new things. I like to sample, investigate and gain some knowledge about many things. During these times of learning and exploring, I will search the internet, talk to informed friends and even contact strangers to tap their knowledge. My family sometimes thinks I am weird. Why do I do it? I enjoy it. I love doing it. These things are intensely fun for me— understanding people very different from me, rewiring a house, building a 360 sq.ft. addition to our house, having a carpentry and painting business in seminary, climbing mountains, mountain biking, road biking, competing in triathlons, backpacking, rock climbing, studying Japanese/ Spanish/ Russian(I have a lot of language CD’s), building a rock wall in the garage, buying and riding a motorcycle, tweeting, etc. However, there is only one thing I have studied consistently since I was 19—the great works of God. I only wish I would pour more energy into this great fun.

Prayer:
God of all creation, God of holiness, God of unfathomable plans and purposes, God of grace and compassion, I want endless enjoyment. My heart seems so dull at times to Your greatness, the beauty of the work of Your hands, the sheer genius of Your plans. Open the eyes of my heart LORD! Give me the necessary discipline to push further in my study of You that is born of devotion to You. I want to love You with my whole heart, mind, soul and strength. Wow, I really feel far from that. Help me, Holy Spirit. In Jesus Name. Amen.

I invite you to pray this prayer for me, yourself, our body and some friends.

May God be glorified,
Neil
P.S. I have put all the past months’ prayers on my blog at http://neiltomba.blogspot.com. I am also sharing my thoughts on twitter. The link is http://twitter.com/neiltomba.
Posted by at
Labels:

5 comments:

Mama4Real said...

I think this thought a lot. If only I were as excited about Jesus as I am about this episode of *pick your tv show* or this *pick your author*'s newest book.

I'm in process.

10:04 AM
Unknown said...

TOMBA - NeilTomba : Why is it so easy to get caught up in the many things we explore and do and learn, losing focus of the one thing we should be inclined to study harder, deeper and with more passion -GOD. Your words are so true - the prayer so right. Thanks for sharing and helping me see into myself through the Tomba lense. Thanks for sharing through technology. Some days it seems to be my only connection to the world.

Tad Perryman [Tadvertising]

7:03 PM
Neil said...

Thanks for the comments. I sometimes wonder if we could all help each other with this if we had our eyes open for God in all things. I wonder if when I am hiking or eating or watching a movie how much God study we could do if we were more willing to go there with each other. I hate to say it, but sometimes as a pastor I don't because of my own self consciousness and fear of forcing something. Yet I long for more of this with God's people, especially face to face. Jesus, help me.

10:52 PM
Anonymous said...

Dear Neil,

I wanted to write to let you know how much I have enjoyed these emails for prayer.

The first two weeks, I believe I was praying more for NBC as a church than for myself. Yet my plan all spring for the summer was to focus on prayer for the future of the Center for Christian Leadership in Albania and what my role is to be/will be/should be. It is very much “Jesus, I want what You want”. These devotions of prayer have been my catalyst for my praying.

Jan 2nd, my church here challenged us to take 2 hrs to pray and ask God for a verse for this year. God gave me Is 30:18 – Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you. And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him. vs 20b – He, your teacher, will no longer hide HImself but your eyes will behold your Teacher. vs 22 And your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. It goes hand in hand with “Jesus, I want what You want”, because He will direct us as we long for Him and listen.

8:14 AM
dallasite said...

I try to pray as much as I can and lift these things to Jesus. Though I don't do this as much as I think I should, I clearly do see His actions in my life. That said, it's hard to figure out where to draw the line on how/when to give it over to Him...if I don't work hard, it does seem that control is lost, and my entrepreneurial work doesn't get done. This leads to disaster for my family. SImply put, it is hard to figure out how to pull back, when to pull back, whether to pull back, etc. and my prayers don't result in obvious answers.

8:32 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)