O Blessed Sinner

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September 21, 2018

IBS Application for Jeremiah 15:16 “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” Honestly, I needed to do a study on something for my spiritual health. It’s been a hard week, and today has been no exception. I need to know who my God is, and that He loves me. This was a portion of a complaint that Jeremiah had made to God in the midst of the great persecution he faced at the hands of his own people and at the hands of the Babylonians who were attacking Israel at the time. In the midst of all of this madness, he recalls to the Lord his faith, and how he tries to take comfort in God’s calling, while also reminding the Lord that He called Jeremiah to a purpose in the first place. It’s hard for me to not be able to relate with Jeremiah on some level. Although I am not being threatened with death on a regular basis, I do know what it’s like to have the people you ca

September 14, 2018

IBS Application for Jeremiah 4:27 “For thus says the Lord, ‘The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end’.” This is perhaps the oddest choice for and IBS I’ve ever made. I haven’t had anything speak to me quite as much as this has within the past week, though. The Lord is just telling me about His goodness in a new way, one which I have seen before. Before I get into that however, some context. This is, as many of us already know, a piece of one of the prophecies of judgement that God had Jeremiah preach against Judah. This was all at a time when Judah had completely turned their backs on God and had started worshipping the gods of the pagans, engaging in all manners of filthy unrighteousness. In order to discipline His people, the Lord foretold of the destruction He would bring upon them using the Babylonians in an attempt to get them to feel the fear of the Lord again and turn back to Him. What is interesting about all of this is that God spea

September 07, 2018

IBS Application for Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” I wanted to do this study with a bit of a broader emphasis than my more recent studies have been. It’s been kind of hard to come up with a broader, more practical application than the more recent ones have been because they’ve been more akin to coming to understand what a Scripture is saying by coming to see it in a new light, then realizing that God is asking me to walk in those truths. So, I will attempt to make use of the discernment that the Lord has given me and come up with a more practical application for this verse. To start, this is from a section of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, towards the end of the letter. In this specific section he is trying to encourage these Romans to accept the comfort of the truths of the gospel. Having explained and espoused the essential doctrine that Paul desires fo

August 31, 2018

IBS Application for Genesis 15:6 “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” It’s a bit of a jump for me to go from originally studying Scripture in the New Testament to all the way back in Genesis, but truth be told, I found this verse referenced by Paul in Romans. It spoke to me so much that I had to do an IBS on it. Firstly, this is a bit of text written about Abraham’s life. Specifically, this is speaking about how the Lord spoke to Abraham concerning the promise that God would bless Abraham with numerous descendants, with as many as the stars in the night sky. To put it just as simply as God puts it in Genesis, Abraham believed this promise, and God counted his faith concerning this promise as righteousness to Abraham. The expected application and lesson one would typically get out of this verse, and one that I still need to hear, is that this shows us that it is by faith, and not by works, that we are brought into the assurance of salv

August 24, 2018

IBS Application for Romans 3:3-4 “What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, ‘That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.’" I will be honest, these past couple of weeks have not been easy for me. I’ve struggled to hold on to God’s promises and trust that He speaks to me. I do not always do everything the way I know that I ought to, nor with the right heart, and I question whether or not God is with me in what I’m doing or not because of how often I mess up. I question whether He *wants* to stand with me, seeing as how I seem to be a servant that keeps folding when the day-to-day battles stay hard and who continuously struggles to keep his feelings in check. However, this short passage captures a truth in my walk with the Lord that He is eager to make sure I know everyday: That He is ever faithful in His words and deeds, ev

August 19, 2018

IBS Application for Psalms 144:3 “O Lord, what is man that you regard him, or the son of man that you think of him?” “What am I, Lord, that You would even bother to concern Yourself with a messy, evil person like me? Why give me a thought, let alone obsess over me? Why?” I have asked myself those questions a lot lately. I have repeatedly sinned in the same ways lately, and all have been related to a lack of willingness to move past myself in order to just have joy in the Lord. While He has ever been so willing to just be there for me, I slapped His hand away every time. I still have trouble trusting Him, clearly. But the miracle that is His love still stands in the face of all my selfishness. Why does He still come after me so fiercely? Why pay heed to this wretch of a man who simply grieves Him when He tries to show me love and grace? And most perplexingly of all, why would He love me with such a love as to obsess over me? His love is indeed wondrous. I do not underst