“Hated by others and hating one another.” This sounds like the media today decrying the state of our country. Maybe we have strayed so far that this is true. But, it is not true for me, because I was saved by mercy and live in hope.

Titus 3:3-7 - 

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:3-7 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

So controversial! Regardless, I took this advice long ago. Being self-controlled, kind and submissive to my husband has made my life full of mutual love, admiration and respect. Try it, a good marriage is one of God’s great blessings.

Titus 2:3 

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity,

Titus 2:3-7 (ESV) Bible Gateway link.

As I age, I am so forgetful and fragile, and my sin is so insidious. This verse is precisely why I need my God. Left to my own devices I would not even recognize my sin, but when my foot slips, He is there to hold me up. He cheers my soul.

 Psalm 94:17-19

If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.

When I thought, “My foot slips,” your steadfast love, O Lord, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.

Psalm 94:17-19 - Bible Gateway Link (ESV)

I’m not down with the view that ‘fear of God’ in the Holy Bible really means ‘respect.’ He has put fear in our hearts so we don’t turn away from him. Then he makes us an everlasting covenant. I don’t think doing it our own way, with respect, and then hoping for the best, makes any sense at all.

Jeremiah 32:39-41 - 

 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.

I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul.

Jeremiah 32:39-41 Bible Gateway link (ESV)

Perfect patience is precisely what I need and have needed all my life. When I hit bottom and salvation hit me, nothing but the “perfect patience” of Christ could have kept me on the right path. He is in my heart, growing there every day. I am grateful beyond measure.

 1 Timothy 1:16-17 -  

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

1 Timothy 1:16-17 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

Jeremiah 29:11-13 -  

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage?search=Jeremiah%2029:11-13&version=ESV

Marriage is fraught with what I call the spouse frequency. Even if we hear perfectly well, when the spouse talks it sounds like “wha-wha-wah.” I think our world is suffering from the God frequency, we listen to everyone except Him. Of all people, I should listen to my husband, as a country and a people we would do well to listen to God.

 Jeremiah 25:4-7 - 

You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although
the Lord  persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying,

‘Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that the Lord has given to you and your fathers from of old and forever. Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.’ Yet you have not listened to me, declares the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm.

Jeremiah 25:4-7 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

We have a country full of people with false gods, or we would not be behaving as we are. I’m not a prophet, but if we keep this up, I can imagine the horror and hear the hissing.

 Jeremiah 18:15-16  

But my people have forgotten me; they make offerings to false gods; they made them stumble in their ways, in the ancient roads, and to walk into side roads, not the highway, making their land a horror, a thing to be hissed at forever. Everyone who passes by it is horrified and shakes his head.

Jeremiah 18:15-16 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

At a dark point in my in my early life, I was headed backwards. I abused nearly every substance and many, many people. Then I took this to heart: “Obey my voice and I will be your God...” I read God’s word, I listen to him now. I’m not perfect but all is well with me as long as I don’t try to run my own life.

Jeremiah 7:23-24 - 

But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.

Jeremiah 7:23-24 (ESV) Bible Gateway link 

“The Covid” is making us all crazy, fear reigns. This verse helps me. It reminds me what the goal is and what the prize is.

 Philippians 3:12-16 

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Philippians 3:12-16 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

I can’t wait! This fills me with hope.

 “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

Isaiah 65:17-21 Bible Gateway link (ESV)