How do we appreciate the Lord?

Psalm 40

February 11

Nathan's "God and Family" pizza box project
made a parable for his Boy Scouts' project

    What makes a person say, “I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.” (Ps. 40:7)? Look at the verses around this one and remember the word “appreciate”. Appreciation is a funny word. It can mean understand (“I do not believe you appreciate the danger you are in”) or it can mean increase in value (“my stocks appreciated”) but most typically it means to be grateful (“I appreciate your kindness”).

    First we need to understand that God is in charge of us (sovereignty). “In the scroll of the book it is written of me.” God opens our ears to His good news (Ps. 40:6). God writes the name of every true believer in the Book of Life (Phil. 4:3, Rev. 21:27), before the foundation of the world! Rev. 13:8 says unbelievers were never written in the book, but believers and unbelievers are written in the book of the living (Ps. 69:28, Exod. 32:32-33).

    Second we need to increase our value of what God has done. He delivers us (v. 2), gives joyful new songs (v. 3), innumerable blessings (v. 5), and has forgiven us (v. 11-13). We should “raise our praise” as we increase our value of our Lord. Again the phrase “the Lord be magnified” is used in verse 16 as it was in Ps. 34:3, 35:27, and will be again in 69:30, 70:4 (NKJV).

    Third, we need to appreciate or be grateful that “The Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God” (v. 17) By waiting for the Lord (v. 1) we are refined, tested. A 10-year-old Boy Scout named Nathan came to my office today and showed me his “God and Family” book, which describes our spiritual life together as being like a pizza. All the ingredients come together, but the pizza is only truly ready when we bake the pizza, by the testing of the fire and heat. The Psalmist David waited for the Lord but only after the fire could he truly appreciate the Lord.

Despite the drama, trauma and tragedy, make this short life count

Psalm 39

February 10

I don’t know if David suffered from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) but Psalm 39 seems to the broken words of a broken man. At a young age, this future warrior who will kill his tens of thousands, killed a giant, decapitated him and carried his bloody head around. So solemn of a psalm is this that it is often read at funerals.

David felt so oppressed and was so much in despair that he got silent. It kindled up like a fire and thought about what is the whole purpose of life, how short it is like the width of his hand, like a vapor or a shadow. He had seen his fellow soldiers fall and die, often due to his own commands, and yet he survived. Even though he was silent, thoughts swirled in his head but he didn’t share them with anyone, except for God.

Rich and poor; those who live long or die young; good and bad people alike; all of them are virtually nothing compared to God. In verse seven, David asks “what am I waiting for?” Why am I still here on earth? In all my crying, in all my sins, as God gazed and stared David down, he realized all his imperfections and how much of a traveler, a sojourner, he was through this world. Like Jeremiah, the fire of silence that was shut up in his bones could not be kept silent forever. Finally, through tears and the writing down of this song, he lets it all out; he asks God to give him the strength to go on. He ends the psalm by asking God to help him make a difference before he dies.

If you, like David, are going through or have gone through a hard time, recognize this: life is short! Before this beautiful life melts away like a moth eats away at clothes, before the vapor of life evaporates, before the breath of life is blown away, make a difference here on earth. Yes, life is tough. Yes, all of us have had drama, trauma and traumatic tragedies in our lives. But don’t waste the precious few days we have left, living and reliving the sins and pain from the past. Seek God for “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. Great is God’s faithfulness.”

With God, your past can never foil your future

Psalm 38

February 9

Today's psalm is wonderful for those who are going through it. Either their sins and guilt overwhelm them or their adversaries are overpowering them.

Confessing sin is very much personal, and so often hard to do. Confessing my sins to God is easier than to another person. Maybe because I know God will forgive and not hold it against me. Or use it against me. God is trustworthy. But people...well, that's a different story.

We need to find a trustworthy person who will hold our confidence. Keeps our secrets secret. Gives a empathizing nod, not a judgmental look. A listening ear rather than a lecturing word. We need someone to really pray and not just say they will pray. Maybe confession of sins to one another would happen more if the people of God were more like God; if we were willing to forgive and not bring to remembrance the sins of the past. If we would bury the sins others may share with us in the depths of the sea. Today I am convicted that I not only need someone like that...I need to be like that!

As I read today's psalm, I think about Jesus; I am thankful because, unlike David, my residence is A.D., not B.C. I live with the cross in history, not prophecy. I know that when I confess, He is faithful to forgive my sins and cleanse from all unrighteousness (1 John1:9).

⁹ Lord, all my desire is before You;
And my sighing is not hidden from You.
¹⁵ For in You, O Lord, I hope;
You will hear, O Lord my God.
²² Make haste to help me,
O Lord, my salvation!

With God, your past can never foil your future!

DO be so defensive, now!

Psalm 37:21-40

February 8

The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom, and his tongue talks of justice. The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide. Psalm 37:30-31

If you watched the Super Bowl last night, you heard a lot about two defenses. A good defense keeps the score low, almost to the point where it makes you think there is not a lot of action. But there is.

For Christians, a good defense is the Word of God, especially when it is on our hearts and not just on our minds. If you didn’t notice already, Psalm 37 is unlike many of the psalms which are mostly prayerful songs to God or about God. This psalm is more of a sermon, sharing the “battle plan” between the righteous and the wicked.

Have you ever thought that God giving you the “desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4) really means that He will place new desires in your heart when your ways are pleasing to Him, rather than He will give you whatever you want? In other words, by meditating on the Word of God, combined with walking in a manner that pleases God, your desires will change to be more like His.

The musical group Roxette sang a song in the late 1980s called “Listen to Your Heart.” However the Bible says the heart is desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9). A better defense to the enemy’s battle plan is to “talk to your heart” by meditating on the word of God.

Of delights and desires

Psalm 37:1-20

February 7

Parents, don’t you love to reward your children when they are trusting in you? How can we think that God is not also like that? Today’s reading is a passage that I’ve used a lot in helping people see God’s will in their lives.

I call it the headlight principle. When we drive down a dark road with our headlights on, we don’t have to see beyond our headlights. We don’t have to see the destination as long as we follow the little bit of light that we see for our path. The further we go, the further our lights shine. If we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart.

In Psalm 31 and all of the psalms in between there and Psalm 37, there has been the proclamations of "trust" and here again, like chapter 31, both words translated as trust are in Psalm 37, in verses 3 and 5 (Hebrew word batach, meaning confidence) and again in verse 40 (Hebrew: chacah, meaning take refuge).

What can we trust God to do?
1) Give us our hearts’ desires when we delight in Him (37:4);
2) Provide us rest when we are content in him (37:7);
3) Lay up a good inheritance for the meek, see also the Beatitudes, Matt. 5:5 (37:11);
4) Make more in our little than the unrighteous have with their abundance (37:17,19).

The psalmist assures us that God knows the days of the upright (37:17). He knows our destination and the time of our arrival. His word, Psalm 119 will tell us later, is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path.

Let us abide in His word and He will light our way.

As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings

Psalm 36

February 6

How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.

    We miss out a lot by not living on farms and being in tune with nature. Watch this video of a mother hen and her chicks. https://vimeo.com/10770397

    The psalmist contrasts God’s protection and provision for His children to the wicked who listen to sins’ whisperings (36:1), lying awake on their beds as they plot new evil. Righteousness versus wretchedness is starkly shown in this psalm.

    The other night we watched about Bernie Madoff who stole $50 billion from others and the anger and betrayal so many felt and the utter hatred for him. Not just for the loss of money, but his own son committed suicide, exactly two years to the very minute from the time he found out about his father’s betrayal.

     If we focus on the wicked, we will get discouraged. David pleads with the reader not to envy the wicked. Instead, imitate God’s goodness, seen in the protective care of a mother hen’s wings, in God’s care of animal and humanity alike, in the rivers of God’s pleasure (36:6-8).

The best way to get even!

Psalm 35:15-28

        February 5

Which would you rather be, vindictive or vindicated? When we are wronged, we have a desire to be vindictive and hurt those who have hurt us. That is understandable. It is what we see in the Old Testament. We not only want to get mad…we want to get even!

However, we Christians are under obligation to follow the New Testament. The call of Jesus is not for Him to get on our side, but rather for us to get on His side. The resurrection allows us to see things from a heavenly perspective. We don’t have to win every argument. We don’t have to retaliate against our enemies. We do not have to defend ourselves if we are on God’s side.

We were told to turn the other cheek by the very man whose beard was plucked out of his own cheeks. Jesus told us to give our shirt and cloak, and then stripped down barebacked to have his own flesh flailed. We are called to go the second mile, following the man who walked to his own execution, carrying his cross until he could carry it no more.

Paul shamed those who sued their fellow believers before unbelievers in court, saying, “Why do you not choose to be cheated?” (1 Cor. 6:7). When Jesus was reviled, he did not revile in return because He trusted God (1 Pet. 2:23). The psalmist ends no longer pointing to his wrongs but God’s righteousness.

The true follower of Christ finds that the best way to “get even” is to forgive as we have been forgiven.

It's me! Mr. Nice Guy!

Psalm 35:1-14

February 4

   I can’t imagine any of you reading this having enemies who hate, despise and wish evil upon you. “I’m Mr. (or Ms.) Nice Guy (or Gal).”

    But like it or not, we do have enemies. It may be in the form of a person we know, someone we have wronged in the past or someone who thinks we wronged them. It may be in the form of someone we don’t directly know, perhaps a thief, a terrorist or someone who succumbs to road rage due to our poor driving. 
 
    Or your enemy may not be a person, it could be an illness, a disease or a habitual sin. It could be your own inner demons, thoughts in your head that accuse and torment you mercilessly.

   Ultimately, your enemy and mine are the devil and his demons. “Yes, Virginia, there really is a Satan, and he’s not like the likeable Lucifer on the new television show.” As we read Psalm 35 today and tomorrow, remember that there is evil. There are mean people. There are very real enemies, personally, physically, medically and mentally. But the source of all evil is spiritual. And we must battle it first and foremost as a spiritual battle.

    So pray Psalm 35 as a battle plan against the enemy. Don’t pray your rote prayers like no one is listening because our heavenly Father is listening and willing to fight for you. And “your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Just remember in prayer, we are on the side of the ultimate lion of Judah, "Then my soul will rejoice in the Lord and delight in his salvation. My whole being will exclaim, ‘Who is like you, Lord?’” Ps. 35: 9-10

 

Fight fear with fear

Psalm 34

February 3

    We think of David as this unflappable young man who stared down a giant. What gave him such fearlessness?

    First of all, David had fear. He may not have shown it or voiced it, but we see in today’s psalm he had fears but were delivered from them. The word for fears in verse 4 is different than the fear of the Lord found in 7, 9, 11, and can be translated as “barn” or storehouse. I take that as saying his fears were as big as a barn! Acknowledge your fears in the world and don’t minimize them.  

    Second, magnify the Lord (verse 3 in the King James and New King James) means to enlarge our perception of God. “He's big but God's bigger,” Junior Asparagus sang in Veggietales, “and when I think of Him, that's when I figure with His help, little guys can do big things too.” Know that God has His angel to guard you. His eyes, ears and face are towards those with humble hearts. As a magnifying glass doesn’t enlarge the object, only our perception, so too does magnifying God help us see Him as bigger than our fears.

    Finally, maintain your moral integrity in the fear and reverence of the Lord. Several times in today's psalm David encourages us to righteous living. We should fight the fear of the world with the fear of the Lord.

    Another way to enlarge our perception and understanding of God is to draw closer to Him. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you, James 4:8 says.  The closer you get to God in your actions, the larger He will be in your life; the further you get from the fears of the world, the smaller they will appear.

Praise and sing, God is over the circumstances

Psalm 33

February 2

Although not mentioned until the last two verses, trust and hope figure prominently throughout this Psalm. Yesterday, Melissa and I made a new month’s resolution and it reminded me of how the new year offers such hope for the upcoming days and yet already many resolutions have fallen by the wayside.

Since today's devo is on joy here's something
that made me LOL.

Maybe for you it was exercise, eating better, being nicer, reading the Bible through in a year. Like the Psalms, our lives seem to go through times of hope and trust and times of despair, sometimes on alternating days. Happiness is fleeting, but placing our joy and faith in God will give us the most rest (33:8).

Unlike the previous psalms, this psalm is not ascribed to David, but the message is the same. The writer is happy and singing in his heart, but not because of the circumstances. Don’t let your failures in your resolve make you doubt God’s resolution for you!

 
I rarely greet people with “how are you doing?” in the hospital. Yesterday, I accidently greeted someone like that in the Scott and White elevator and as soon as I said it, I knew that her circumstances kept her from the typical reply. I followed up with “I can imagine you being here means that you have someone here in need of healing. I am a minister and I will pray for the person you are here to see and for you.” She smiled as we arrived and her floor, but she stopped and held the door open long enough to say, “People say ‘How are you?’ and I wonder if they really care. Thank you for caring and your prayers.”

God cares about your circumstances (Ps. 33:13-14). Don’t put your joy or faith in “the strength of a horse” (v. 15) or a king (16) or an election cycle (heaven help us!) Read verse 12 and then look around to see if that verse still describes our nation. Whether your team wins the Super Bowl or even gets in, and regardless of the direction of our nation, our society or our circumstances, God is over all.

Wait, hope and rejoice in the Lord.

Confidence in God’s hiding place

Psalm 32

February 1, Day 32

     When the young girl who would later be known around the world as Corrie Ten Boom heard her father read from Psalm 32 about a “hiding place,” she wondered what a hiding place was. 

     Years later, she saw her family make a hiding place in their small Dutch home in Haarlem, Holland, she saw a hiding place which would preserve the lives of more than 800 Jews who were being persecuted by the Nazis. Decades later, she would write a book by that same title but both the Biblical reference and her story explain that God’s hiding place is much more than deliverance from mortal enemies.

     David writes of the blessedness (32:1-2), gladness and joy (32:11) when we run into God’s hiding place from the unrighteousness of sin. Our sin cannot be hidden from the Lord, but the Lord can hide us from the penalty of our sin when we are forgiven. We can run unharnessed from the bit and bridle of the power of sin (32:9). And some day we will be forever separated from the presence of sin.

    God has forgiven our sins on the cross. God has given us the ability to forsake our sins with the Holy Spirit. A confessing, repentant, and obedient life brings singing to our hearts. That confident trust we saw in Psalm 31:6 and 31:14 is called upon again in Psalm 32:10. Receive that mercy which surrounds us in the hiding place of God’s forgiveness.

Forsaking All, I Trust Him

Psalm 31

January 31

Is there someone you really trust? Trust is a precious gift, given out with discretion. Trust, hope, faith and belief are common themes throughout the Bible. It is God’s gold standard, His benchmark by which all other things should be measured against. Few psalms speak more about trust than Psalm 31 and several psalms following this one.

We should be cautious on giving our trust but the person we should be the most leery of is the person we see in the mirror. We don’t want to let down our guard around others but how often have we let our own selves down?

A better place to anchor our hope is not with others and not within and but above. Be sure, others will let you down and you will let your own self down. And in all honesty, there are times when we feel God has let us down.

So what do we do? Go back to trusting yourself or your health or your wealth? Anchor all of your faith in your loved ones or your philosophy or your political party? How’s that working for you? Even if that works for a while, eventually everything EXCEPT the Lord will fade away.  David saw that self-reliance was futile, his body was weakening; his soul was tiring; those around him were falling. “But as for me I trust in You O Lord.”

This Psalm begins with trusting God, uses two different Hebrew words four different times to convey trust (verses 1 and 19 convey "protection"; verses 6 and 14 emphasize "confidence"). And it ends with a close cousin to trust: hope. A good way to remember in whom we should trust is to spell out the word FAITH this way: Forsaking All, I Trust Him.

Are you happy?

Psalm 30

January 30

When believers are down, it is so comforting to know God is there. But God is not only the God of the down and out. There are times of great elations for the believer and David had been through some tough times and now was at a point of jubilation: the prayerful dedication of his new home.

If unbelievers can rejoice at joyful times, what is the difference for believers? Much in every way, as David shows. While others at times of celebration can point to perhaps their own good fortune or to the results of their own hard work, or even in praise to others who help get them achieve success, a believer can do these but ultimately must direct the attention to God (see Psalm 30:1).

We remember from where we have come. Even the child of a millionaire who has perhaps never faced adversity or failure, if they truly have come to God, must acknowledge that our Lord has forgiven our sins and thus has lifted us up. Being saved by grace alone evaporates pride and "self-elevating bootstraps." A child of God knows that joy especially in the midst of prosperity (Psalm 30:6) is never external only but internally placed by divine implantation.

My good mentor, Pastor and Missionary Dwight Hendrick, would always say that as wonderful as going to heaven will be, there is something marvelous that we cannot do in heaven that we can do here on earth: Tell unbelievers of the amazing grace of God (see Ps. 30:9). He now has gone on to heaven, but in a sense, he is still telling the story…through me, through others whom he impacted.

James says, “Is there anyone among you cheerful? Let him sing psalms” (James 5:13). Don’t be like the pessimist who says light at the end of the tunnel is only an approaching train. Praise God for his blessings.