O Blessed Sinner

IBS Application for Jeremiah 23:23-24 “Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.” There is something comforting and humbling about this truth. God is a God who is always close. He is immanent in our lives, meaning He is everywhere. There are some other places in Scripture where the idea is expressed that the heavens cannot contain Him. He is never not present; there is no place in the universe where He is not. As such, there is nothing we can do to escape from God. David, in Psalm 139, mentions this idea: “Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence?” God is everywhere. It logically follows that He is intimately aware of all that we are doing and what is happening to us. I know that in this case God was addressing the faithlessness of Israel’s prophets, who were prophesying falsely i...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

IBS Application for Jeremiah 31:2-3 “Thus says the Lord: ‘The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the Lord appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.’” I know that this is perhaps a little different from my typical choice of passage, but it is nonetheless the passage that has spoken the most to me recently. I will do my best to communicate why. I am a bit fuzzy on the details of which specific instance of people being in the wilderness God is referring to in the first verse here, but for the purposes of what I got out of it, it makes little difference. The point is that God is saying to Israel that being in the wilderness was grace to them. I believe that a similar point can be made in regards to our lives; the spiritual deserts in our lives are not always bad for us. God can do amazing things through dry seasons and times that we spend in...

IBS Application for 1 Timothy 2:1 “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people...” This verse came to me a couple of days ago, and it came twice. Once in listening to a Focht study, and again in reading “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by Jim Cymbala. And seeing as how a good portion of the first part of that book is about prayer, I think that God wants me to start praying more. This verse is the start of an exhortation given to Timothy to give to the other members of the  church in Ephesus. It starts with an exhortation to pray more, and to offer more types of prayer up to God. Paul says that we should offer up supplications, which are prayers made to God requesting something of Him, prayers as direct conversation with Him, intercessory prayers, and prayers of thanksgiving to Him. I find that of these types of prayer, I pray many  prayers of supplication and intercession, but I do not focus so much...

IBS Application for Psalms 91:14-16 "Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation." It is a refreshing and life-giving thing to know that God is on our side like this. Honestly, I’ve been struggling lately with knowing whether or not God speaks to me through Scripture like this. But today, He showed me that He does, and this particular passage took on an entirely new meaning for me. To hear that the Father cares like this for me, after being delivered from a struggle such as the one I’ve been facing this week is just further confirmation of His work in my life. He has shown me through my studies before that He desires to show me more of His grace and His love, so that I can know Him better than I do now, and this is one such way. I’ve been wonde...

IBS Application for John 4:36-38 “Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” I find that God has been doing a lot to try to reveal more and more of His grace to me lately. And in this case, this passage came to me at a time when I needed to start understanding that grace cannot be earned. To know that I get to reap the benefits without taking part in any of the required labor needed to have salvation and receive God’s blessings is both humbling and frustrating. It’s frustrating because I don’t like feeling like I haven’t earned it. But that’s just the thing. I haven’t earned it, nor could I ever earn it. In that way, it’s a humbling truth. But beyond this, it ought to be a source of joy for me to know t...

IBS Application for Psalms 77 “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. Selah You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, "Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart." Then my spirit made a diligent search: "Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has His steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up his compassion?" Selah Then I said, "I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High." I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your wonders of old. I will ponder all Your work, and meditate on Your mighty de...

IBS Application for Colossians 1:13-15 “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” I have been seeking to deepen my relationship with Jesus this past week, because that is what He is leading me to really focus on, above all the other things I’ve been given stewardship over in this time. In seeking Him, I’ve been lead to study Colossians for the time being. And in studying the first chapter, this section struck me as a great indicator of God’s character, and as a reason as to why Christ’s incarnation is such a miraculous truth. I think that this section, and verse 15 in particular, sticks out to me particularly because of what God has been showing me in the stories of the Old Testament. I cannot help but look at the history of Israel in particular and wonder why they did not seem to understand t...

IBS Application for Hebrews 11:1-4 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.” Having a foundation for the things that we hope for in Christ and knowing that by faith alone we have evidence of the things in the heavenly places that we cannot see is unbelievably encouraging to me. In this life it is so easy to get lost in doubt and fear, particularly about God’s promises. The things that He promises to us seem so far off from us at times that it becomes a temptation to want to expedite the process of obtaining these promises. Essentially...