The Word To Live By; 3-20-26
Phil Waggoner
Praise the Lord! Praise God in His sanctuary; Praise Him in His mighty expanse. Praise Him for His mighty deeds; Praise Him according to His excellent greatness; Psalm 150:1-2
The Word To Live By: I’ll continue with the prayer of thanksgiving, supplication, faith, forgiveness and worship through Matthew 6:9-13 tomorrow, but this came to me yesterday as I was riding my bike. Back to worship and how we learned that worshiping God stills our mind and the attacks of the enemy. Psalm 8:2, “From the mouths of infants and nursing babes You have ordained praise, because of your foes, to still the enemy and make the vengeful cease,” and how we learned the importance of the words of our mouth and that what we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouth will happen; that when something surprisingly bad happens, we change our confession from “Oh sh#..!” or “He# no!” (which in thinking about it in the right attitude may not be a bad thing to say) or any number of cursing/cuss/slang words that have become part of our everyday vocabulary (you get the picture) and train our brains and get into our heart the phrase, Praise the Lord! It is just as easy to form the words, “Praise the Lord,” as it is to drop an F-bomb. Two quick stories. I was coming home from work in town (15 miles) one day around Easter to attend a funeral. Easter was in early April that year and we had a sudden snowstorm that made the roads slick. I was coming down a long hill on a busy two-lane highway when I lost control of the car and began to do 360s down the road. An 18-wheel truck was coming at me in the opposite direction, with no shoulder to pull over on, and I was about to be broad-sided by it. Out of my mouth came, “Praise the Lord!” The car spun around the entire length of the truck like a point guard coming dribbling down the basketball court spinning around the person guarding them. It may not sound like it, but I was there, and it was supernatural. Another time I was going west on I-80 just over the Missouri River, in similar road conditions in my four-wheel drive pickup during morning rush hour. As we came to a bend in the road, an 18-wheel truck in front of me lost control of his trailer. I shouted, “Praise the Lord!” and suddenly there was an opening in the traffic on the outside shoulder of the truck that I shot through. I made my delivery and, on the way back, going east, the traffic going west was standing still all the way from 13 Street to 60th Street. The first thing out of your mouth when those kinds of things happen determines the outcome more than you know. How much more if you start your day with a confession of praise and worship. That was my thought life while riding my bike yesterday. Back to our regularly scheduled program tomorrow. 😊
Read through the Bible in a year: Matthew 19:1-15; Numbers 9-10; Ecclesiastes 7;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 20, Mark 12:1-22, Galatians 6
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160