Feed on God's faithfulness

You might be familiar with quite a few verses in Psalm 37. You might even have your favorites like verse 4

Delight yourself in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart

Today you might be looking around only to find other people flourish, whereas you've been waiting on the Lord and seemingly everything is at standstill from your vantage point. Psalm 37 encourages us to see the permanent and final work that God is doing in our lives and how we can bring them forth in our lives.

Lessons

1. Feed on God's faithfulness - v3 says "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness" . Here befriend also means to feed on or find safe pasture in God's faithfulness. In God our Loving Father we find stability. Change is good for growth, but we should be wary of inconsistency. Inconsistency is not growth, it breaks faith, causes worry because we never know what the outcome might be. However in God, Who is the same yesterday today and forever, we can find that rest (dwell in).

2. Commit your way to the Lord v4, 5 - "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act". When you focus and feed on God, Who is faithful, you can rest assured that when you've committed something in His hands, He WILL ACT! He takes His responsibility as your Heavenly Father, very very seriously. So much so that He gave His one and only begotten Son, for the world.(John 3:16) So then "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things" .

3. Stay in God's way, as you wait on Him - v34 "Wait for the Lord and keep his way" So what should we do as we wait, v7 onwards it says fret not. Fret means being constantly or visibly worried or anxious. Every time we look around and lose our focus, we begin to worry. Psalm 37 encourages us to not get angry(v8), turn away from evil and do good(v27). Just keep staying your course, for God is at work on your behalf.

4. God will exalt you to inherit the land - The phrase inherit the land occurs 5 times in this chapter, God must have been putting great emphasis on this.

1.  v9 those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. 
2.  v11 the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace,  
3. v22 for those blessed by the Lord[c] shall inherit the land
4. v29 The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell upon it forever. 
5. v34 Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land;

To me inherit the land means, we no longer have to wander or move. Not restless. No longer wondering where we may have to travel. It means settled. It speaks of permanence and stability. This reminds me of the verse in Ephesians 4:14 "so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes."  In the New Covenant God has given to us provided every means to enable us to be stable and grow in stature as a child of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

No matter what we are waiting on God to do on our behalf, let us feed on His faithfulness. God has not left one stone unturned to bring His Salvation to you. What makes you wonder He would do anything less for you in the circumstance you're in?
Let this verse encourage you as you wait upon the Lord and do good, that you may prosper as you feed on God's faithfulness Who cares about your physical well being as much as He does your spiritual well being!

Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. 3 John 1:2

 

Where is the Good?

In this world, now seemingly dominated by evil and hatred all around obviously nobody is out highlighting or making news of the good stuff people are doing. I am so disheartened with all the sights and sounds of the world!

I can almost feel what King David would have probably been going through. Where was anything good around him? He writes a comparison of how he felt when he was struggling for that ray of light when despair and trouble loomed.

Psalm 36:1-4 begins with David almost ranting about the twisted mind of a person who has completely pushed God out of his life. The clear repercussions of throwing God out of your life is that it makes you vulnerable to attacks from evil. Life can just become a black-hole that draws evil in every form. Where there is no light, darkness will take over.

When we invite God into our life, we are inviting Light (1 John 1:5) and Love (1 John 4:8). The two best things in life!

 Let us soak in the goodness of our Living God in the following verses that David declares in Psalm 36:5-9

5Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;
    your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
⁶ Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
    your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O Lord.
⁷     How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
    in the shadow of your wings.
⁸ You feed them from the abundance of your own house,
    letting them drink from your river of delights.
⁹ For you are the fountain of life,
    the light by which we see.

Crying Out For Justice

My little 6 year old came home crying after school the other day.

"...it is unfair mommy, I am deeply sad" she cried. Scooping her up in my arms, I asked her what had happened.

"I won it mommy but they said the other boy won, when clearly I reached first ..and these people know Jesus, why would they do that?"

I encouraged her to tell me more so I could understand.

The story was that, there was a race at Sunday School and my little girl said, she finished first but they did not see her and declared another boy a winner.

She felt betrayed, she was disappointed with the unfair treatment and was wondering, why the people who know Jesus would be unfair? This was a hard thing for her to understand and harder for me to explain.

David, in Psalm 35:12, pleads with God to do something on his behalf against his enemies "They reward me evil for good" and in Ps35:22, "You have seen this, O Lord; keep not silence! O Lord, be not far from me!"

All I could say to her was, "Honey, even if your Sunday School teacher didn't see, God has seen it and let Him reward you in a much greater way, than any man can. He is a Big God and His rewards are big." So we prayed for God to bless those who unknowingly hurt her and help us forgive them as God forgives us. It was hard but we did it anyway. I then asked her to compare who was bigger, man or God and whose reward would then be bigger? Of course she was delighted for being sure that God was indeed bigger and it was a good thing He sees us all the time.

Yes, whether anyone else watches your progress or not, God is always entirely aware of you!
 
Psalm 35:28 And my tongue shall talk of Your righteousness, rightness, and justice, and of [my reasons for] Your praise all the day long."

What Can You Get From God?

Now this Psalm is for those who are humble and brokenhearted. So, if you do not fall in these two categories, you may proceed onto the next blog on the web!

When life has you strapped onto a never ending roller-coaster that seems to ruthlessly rock your world and its not fun any more to be on the ride, you want to get off and run, right? David was in such a roller-coaster. Sometimes the people who are the closest are the ones that hurt you the most and that's what happened with David. Well the good thing for him was that he continued to look to the Face of God from where He always  received help from all his troubles.

Now I have read Psalm 34 many times but this thing I did not see...watch this

...if you hear from God - it'll make you glad

...if you seek the Lord - He will hear you

...if you require Him (out of necessity and authority of His Word) - He will deliver you from ALL your troubles

...if you look to Him - you will become radiant

...if you cry out to Him - the Lord hears you and saves you from ALL your troubles

...if you revere and worship Him with awe - His Angel encamps around you and delivers you

...if you taste Him - you will see He is good

...if you trust Him & take refuge in Him - you will be blessed (happy, fortunate and to be envied)

...if you inquire and require of the Lord according to His Word - you shall lack no beneficial thing

What have you got to lose? I see nothing but gain.

Psalms 34:22 "The Lord redeems the lives of His servants, and none of those who take refuge and trust in Him shall be condemned or held guilty."

It is written in  Colossians 2:14-15

¹⁴ Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the note (bond) with its legal decrees and demands which was in force and stood against us (hostile to us). This [note with its regulations, decrees, and demands] He set aside and cleared ^[j]completely out of our way by nailing it to [His] cross.¹⁵ [God] disarmed the principalities and powers that were ranged against us and made a bold display and public example of them, in triumphing over them in Him and in it [the cross].

God or Nothing!

What is it that is threatening or mocking you today? That which looms over you, seeking that it may devour you. Something that makes you feel like crying out "God, if You don't help me, its over."


This man David, he spent most of his young years running for his dear life. What a pain that would be to constantly live in fear for your life. It is worse when you know that you were specially anointed by the man of God himself - Samuel to be king over Israel! With that kind of an amazing history in your life, how weird it would be that you had to live like a mad man in another country!

Yet, in the midst of all this David wrote this amazing Psalm 34 when King Abimelech (also known as  Achish 1Sam 21:10-13) found out he was David and would have probably killed him. Remember Goliath? Yep David was hiding in Goliath's country, Gath, at the time he wrote this Psalm and this king Abimelech was king during that time.

David says in Psalm 34:4 " I sought (inquired of) the Lord and required Him [of necessity and on the authority of His Word], and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears."

What word did David have from the Lord that he was holding on to? David was anointed king as a little boy and since then the Spirit of God was mightily upon him (1 Samuel 16:13) I am sure he had the acute awareness of God's hand in every even in his life and he was sure that God is always true to His word and if God said he would be king, he would surely be king which means he would have to be alive and God would take care of it. That's the authority of God's Word David relied upon.

I am struggling with tooth problems and I hate it. It bothers me that in my belief, I can accept that God can heal big things like cancer and raise people from the dead but it is so hard to trust God for  pimples and tooth ache!!! Why would my faith / brain separate sicknesses into categories? Then perhaps I have believed a lie - would God do this for me? No its true, I believe God can heal our diseases but would He want to heal mine?

The Bible is clear about healing, Jesus heals us from all our sicknesses and forgives all our sins! He paid an extremely high price for mankind. His Word has authority! Believe His every Word!

Dear Lord, Help my unbelief and heal all our diseases. Help me comprehend your goodness and your mercy which you showed by sacrificing your own Son for a sinner like me, even when I did not deserve it. Help me to remember Romans 8:32 " ³² He who did not withhold or spare [even] His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all [other] things? " . May this be done for Your glory! Amen