Whately—Puritan, advocate for the poor—identifies a self-deception: resolving to avoid every evil while neglecting equal determination to perform every duty. Sins of omission; affirmative precepts. These count.
Some today make memes about the danger of complacency with sin. Omissions involving the poor rarely make that list.
When Grace Writes God’s Law on the Heart
As the Day Begins
I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.
Psalm 40:8
Psalm 40:8 gives us a beautiful picture of obedience that has moved from duty into delight. David does not say, “I endure Your will,” or “I tolerate Your law.” He says, “I delight to do thy will.” The Hebrew idea behind “delight” carries the sense of pleasure, desire, and willing affection. This is not cold religion. This is a heart so touched by God that obedience becomes more than compliance; it becomes worship.
In an age when grace is sometimes misunderstood as permission to ignore God’s moral will, this verse gently corrects us. Grace does not erase God’s law; grace writes God’s will deeper into the believer’s heart. The Ten Commandments still reveal God’s holy character, expose human sin, and point us toward our need for Christ. We are not saved by keeping the Law, but neither are we saved to despise what God calls good. As Paul wrote, “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12).
Dwight L. Moody once observed that the commandments still function like a mirror, showing us what we are before God. John Wesley understood that preaching the Law prepares the heart to receive the gospel. The Law shows the wound; Christ provides the healing. The Law reveals our guilt; grace reveals God’s mercy. The Law shows us the road; Christ gives us the power to walk it with love.
This morning, let your obedience begin not with fear, but with affection. Ask God to make His will precious to you. The Christian life is not about changing God’s standards to fit our desires, but about allowing God to change our desires until His will becomes our joy.
Heavenly Father, I thank You that Your will is not confusion, and Your law is not cruelty. Write Your truth upon my heart today so that I may love what You love, reject what wounds my soul, and walk in obedience with gladness.
Jesus the Son, I thank You for fulfilling the Law perfectly and offering me grace when I fall short. Teach me to see Your commands not as burdens, but as pathways of life, love, holiness, and freedom.
Holy Spirit, guide my thoughts, words, and decisions today. Convict me where I drift, strengthen me where I am weak, and shape my heart until obedience becomes delight rather than mere obligation.
Thought for the Day
I will not ask God to change His will for me; I will ask Him to change my heart until His will becomes my delight.
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Freethought Radio – June 4, 2026
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-june-4-2026/
Thomas More (1478-1535) English lawyer, social philosopher, statesman, humanist, Christian martyr
Utopia, Book 1, ch. 1 “Discourses of Raphael Hythloday” (1518 ed.) [tr. Adams (1992 ed.)]
More about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/more-thomas/84007/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #thomasmore #utopia #capitalpunishment #deathpenalty #Decalogue #divinejustice #divinewill #execution #God #killing #law #TenCommandments
God has said, "Thou shalt not kill"; shall we kill so readily for the theft of a bit of small change? Perhaps it will be argued that God's law against killing does not apply where human laws allow it. But then what prevents men from making other laws in the…
I place this here as the kookiest Shavuos article you will likely ever read. You're welcome in advance.
“This year, the #Jewish holiday of #Shavuot starts on 21 May. It commemorates the giving of the #TenCommandments at #MountSinai. The #revelation occurs in the desert at the foot of a mountain, far from civilisation, just as #Moses encountered the divine in the wilderness at the burning bush (#Exodus 3:1-22).
Why did the revelation not take place in Egypt, in a palace or in a temple? Why the wilderness?
Shavuot tries to preserve that original encounter. #Jews stay up all night studying, as if preparing again to receive the #Commandments. They are read with the congregation standing, and their language is unmistakably personal: You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not lie. The words are addressed to individuals before institutions."
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/eli-federman-shavuot-and-our-screen-addicted-society/106699030
The Jewish holiday of Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai — a revelation that occurs in the wilderness where Moses first encountered the divine at the burning bush. But why the wilderness?
#MAGA religious leaders erect a golden statue of #Trump at his #Doral golf club.
The cautionary tale of the golden calf from Exodus 32 is instructive here. The golden idol ends up ground to powder and the worshippers forced to eat it.
Trump's giant gold statue of himself at his Doral Golf Club in Miami was met with online disgust by people who couldn't believe that anyone would want or applaud such a vanity project. "What's wrong with people," wrote journalist James Surowiecki on X, reacting to video of the statue and a photo of ...
Attorney general announces investigation into #school districts for compliance with #TenCommandments law
https://www.tpr.org/government-politics/2026-05-07/attorney-general-announces-investigation-into-school-districts-for-compliance-with-ten-commandments-law
After an appeals court reversed an injunction prohibiting several districts from hanging the Ten Commandments posters in classrooms, Paxton announced he will investigate the districts previously protected by the injunction. The investigation includes six Houston-area school districts
Thought for today “Not learning to do according to the abominations of some nations” (May 01)
9 When thou comest to the land which Jehovah thy God gave to thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
10 There shall not be found in thee him causing his son or his daughter to pass through in fire, divining divinations, practicing magic, and taking omens and a sorcerer,
11 And charming a spell, and asking of a necromancer, and a wizard, and seeking to the dead.
12 For every one doing these things is an abomination to Jehovah and on account of these abominations, Jehovah thy God destroys them from thy face.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 18:9–12). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Before the people entered the land, Moses made it clear how they were not to hear from God.In the previous chapters, we have seen how God gave the Ten Words or Ten Commandments and how Moses warned them against paganism. Earlier, he had said to the people not to worship those gods of the people around them, because they had to worship only the One True God.
5 Thou shalt not worship to them, and thou shalt not serve them: for I am Jehovah thy God, a jealous God, striking the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and to the fourth, to them hating me;
6 And doing kindness to thousands to them loving me and to them watching my commands.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain: for Jehovah will not cleanse him who shall take his name in vain.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Ex 20:5–7). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Around them, they saw man-made gods of wood and how people bowed down to them, but how the people of God did find their God.
14 For thou shalt not worship another God: for Jehovah, his name is Jealous; he is a jealous God.
15 Lest thou shalt make a covenant to those dwelling in the land and they committed fornication after their gods, and sacrificed to their gods, and call to thee, and thou didst eat from his sacrifice;
16 And thou didst take from his daughters to thy sons, and they committed fornication after their gods, and they made thy sons commit fornication after their gods.
17 Thou shalt make to thee no molten gods.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Ex 34:14–17). (1876). American Publishing Company.
28 And ye served there gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which shall not see, and shall not hear, and shall not eat, and shall not breathe.
29 And thou sought from thence Jehovah thy God, and thou didst find, for ye shall seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 4:28–29). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Moses had asked the people who left Egypt with him to keep remembering their Saviour.
18 And remember Jehovah thy God; for he gave to thee strength to make wealth in order to set up his covenant, which he sware to our fathers, as this day.
19 And it was, if forgetting, thou shalt forget Jehovah thy God, and thou wentest after other gods, and served them and worshipped to them, I testified against you this day, that perishing, ye shall perish.
20 As the nations which Jehovah destroys before you, so shall ye be destroyed, because ye will not hear to the voice of Jehovah your God.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 8:18–20). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Here again, we find Moses issuing another stern warning against worshipping false gods. This time He is quite specific about child sacrifice and all aspects of the occult. Israel is to be a no-go area for the black arts of witchcraft and spiritism. On the contrary, the whole nation is to live in the light of God’s word.
They had to remember that anyone who practices divination, or tells fortunes or interprets omen, is not to be found among God’s people (v 10). In the ancient world, there were many ways to come to know what would happen. Many attempted to know the future, such as the outcome of a battle or of an illness.
Augury (deriving from the official Roman augur), belomancy or divination, was first systematised by the Chaldeans. The Greeks were addicted to it; and among the Romans no important action of state was undertaken without the advice of the augurs.
Belomancy attempted to interpret the way that arrows would fall when they were shaken out of a quiver. Hepatoscopy (only once mentioned in the Bible) was interpreting the configurations of the liver of a sacrificial animal. There was also a type of divination called oleomancy, the practice of divination by pouring oil into water and observing the resulting patterns. Some would attempt to discern divine messages by reading the flight patterns of birds or cloud formations.
Behind all these efforts at sorcery, divination, and communicating with the dead is the desire to know, and thereby control, the future. Interestingly, these practices are not forbidden because they do not work. Rather, the Bible records cases in which the magicians of Egypt were able to duplicate some of the plagues and in which King Saul learned the outcome of a battle by consulting Samuel’s ghost.
The issue is that the people are not looking to God for what they seek. God assigned prophets to communicate to his people clearly and unambiguously, in ways that did not require strange and esoteric methods. Today we have His completed Word in the Bible. When the people of God go to these other methods, they are trying to circumvent God, and it is another form of unfaithfulness to Him.
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