Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires.
Psalm 37:4 (Life Application Study Bible)
Jesus Tells Us…I am right here with you, peeking over your shoulder, reading your every thought. Some people say that it doesn’t matter what you think, because no one can read your mind. But I can. And your thoughts are precious to Me. When you think about Me and how you love Me, I smile. When you think about others, and how you should treat them, I am proud of you. Commercials, billboards, and magazines all try to tell you what you should think about, the big game, being famous, or getting that new, must-have pair of jeans. These things will make you happy, they say. But that is a lie.
Jesus Concludes…I created you, and I alone can bring you true Joy.
Psalm 37:4; Matthew 1:23
Footnotes Psalm 37:4-5 David calls us to take delight in the Lord and to commit everything we have and do to him. But how do we do this? To Delight in someone means to experience great pleasure and joy in his or her presence. This happens only when we know that person well and when we have been a faithful friend. Thus, to delight in the Lord, we must get to know him better and be faithful in our relationship with him. The certainty of God’s great love for us will indeed give us delight. To commit ourselves to the Lord, means to trust in him (37:5), believing that he can care for us better than we can ourselves. We should wait patiently (37:7) for him to work out what is best for us.
Passage Matthew 1:23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)
Footnotes Matthew 1:20-23 Matthew refers to Jesus in three ways: (1) He calls Jesus the Messiah (1:18). This establishes him as the royal King promised from David’s line, who would restore Israel and rule justly. (2) The angel named him Jesus. This name means “the LORD saves.” Jesus came to earth to save us because we can’t save ourselves from sin and its consequences. No matter how good we are, we can’t eliminate the sinful nature present in us. Only Jesus can do that. Jesus came to deliver people not only from their oppression, but also from themselves. Thank him for his death on the cross for your sin. Then ask him to take control of your life. At that moment, your new life begins. (3) Jesus would fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, for he would be Immanuel (a name meaning “God with us”, see Isaiah 7:14). Jesus was God in the flesh; thus, God was literally among us, “with us.” God didn’t just tell us what to do, he sent help. Through the Holy Spirit, Christ lives with each of his followers every day. He stands with us in every trial and every joy. Isaiah must have wondered how far-reaching the meaning of Immanuel would be.
Footnotes Matthew 1:20-23 The angel declared to Joseph, that Mary’s child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit, and would be a son. This reveals an important truth about Jesus, he is both God and human. The infinite, unlimited God took on the limitations of humanity so he could live and die for the salvation of all who would believe in him.
Jesus Tells Us is from the Jesus Calling 365 devotions for kids.
THE WORLD…we see history
JOHN ELLIOTT
You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 2:3
John Eliot was born in England, attended Cambridge, came to Christ under the ministry of Thomas Hooker, and emigrated to Boston, where the church of Roxbury hired him as a Pastor in 1632. He kept the job fifty-seven years. In 1646m when he was forty-two-years old, Eliot grew burdened for nearby Native Americans and began studying one of the Algonquin languages (Wopanaak). It was a daunting task, especially because of the length of the words. For example, the phrase “our lusts” was expressed:
NUMMATCHEKODTANTAMOONGANUNNONASH
Eliot persevered until he could speak the language well enough to preach with the help of an interpreter. Speaking of himself in the third person, Eliot later wrote of his first attempt: He then preached Jesus Christ unto them, as the only means of recovery from sin and wrath and eternal death, he explained to them who Christ was, and whither he was gone, and how he will one day come again to judge the world. He spake to them of the blessed state of all those who believe in Christ and know Him feelingly. In a short time, a number of Native Americans confessed Christ as Savior. The converts established their own village and named it Noonanetum, or Rejoicing. As time went by, other villages arose, and Eliot traveled up and down the coast, all the time maintaining his primary ministry as a pastor in Roxbury. In a letter dated December 29th 1649, he wrote:
I was not dry night nor day from the third day of the week unto the sixth, but so travelled, and at night pull off my boots, wring my stockings, and on with them again, and so continued, yet God stept in and helped: I considered 2 Timothy 2:3, “Endure hardness as a good soldier of Christ.”
The WORD…we see Jesus, His Story!
We all should consider that verse. There’s nothing easy about life or about serving God in a hostile age or resistant environment. Paul was facing execution for his faith in Christ when he wrote those words to Timothy, and he wanted to impart tenacity and toughness into his young disciple. Men and women who, like John Eliot, helped establish the gospel in America, faced miserable conditions and great hardships. But they considered 2 Timothy 2:3 and persevered. Under Eliot’s ministry, Native American churches were planted in Natick, Plymouth, Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. Eliot lived to see his ministry found fourteen praying villages, each with between twenty-five hundred and four thousand people, and twenty-four Native American preachers, all while serving his church n Roxbury. The school he founded, Roxbury Latin School, is today the oldest school in continuous existence in North America. Eliot’s most prodigious feat was the production of the first Bible published in America, which was also the first Bible translation into a Native American Language. The New Testament came out in 1661, and the Old Testament three years later. It’s hard to imagine how Eliot accomplished such a thing, reducing a near impossible language to writing, training Native Americans to read, then translating the entire Bible for them. That is itself is “a work which excited the wonder and admiration of both hemispheres, and has rendered his name ever memorable in the annals of literature and Piety.” In his eighties, Eliot grew too weak to preach at his church in Roxbury, and he asked the church to seek another pastor. “I wonder for what the Lord Jesus Christ lets me live,” he said. “He knows that now I can do nothing for him!” as he sought some final work to do for Christ, he heard of a youth who had fallen into a fire and been blinded. Eliot invited the child to live with him, devoting many hours to helping him memorize chapters of Scripture and learning to pray. Eliot was a man of prayer. When confronted with distressing news, he would say, “Brethren, let us turn all this into prayer.” John Eliot passed away on May 21st, 1690, in his eighty-sixth year. His last words were: “Welcome Joy! Pray, Pray, Pray!”
Source: https://www.robertjmorgan.com/shop/100-bible-verses-that-made-america/ Page 25.