Thursday

Psalm 18:1 - January 14, 2010

Ps 18:1 "For the director of music. Of David the servant of the LORD. He sang to the LORD the words of this song when the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul.

“He said: I love you, O LORD, my strength. 2 The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." NIV

This psalm is powerful in its impartation of life to us in a special way because we have the context in which it is written. David had been pursued by his enemies and harassed by a jealous king! He had been running for his life and in the midst of that desperate time David called upon the Lord. He looked to God as his strength and God delivered him. This passage is a declaration of what God has done; a praise for his deliverance from this dark time in David’s life. This next set of devotionals will be a journey through this psalm of deliverance and praise.

David is celebrating the goodness of God for protecting him in the mist of trouble. “I love you Lord, my strength!” What a powerful praise! The simple statements of our heart anchor us. When we praise the Lord it is not the eloquence of our words but the confession of our hearts that manifest true praise! This confession of David’s heart is both a celebration of David’s passion and confidence, and a bold statement of faith to anchor his own convictions. It was David’s habit to war against the voice of his own soul, against the power of discouraging thoughts by his declarations of praise and his confession of the Lord’s goodness and provision. In Ps. 42 David is speaking to his own soul declaring, “Why so downcast Oh, my soul? Put your hope in God!”.

“Lord you are my fortress and my deliverer, my rock in whom I take refuge!” David continues, rejoicing in what God has been to him in the past, and reminding himself of who God will be to him in the future. David knew the hiding place that he had in the Lord. He knew God as his source of safety and the place of refuge that he could run to in times of trouble. “You are my Fortress!” This is faith talking! “You are my deliverer!” David placed his trust in the Lord, not the help of man. In the midst of trouble his eyes were fixed on God. David did not hide in the things that God would do for him. He knew that his hiding place was in God himself! What a revelation of the truth that Paul later declared more clearly in Col 3:3 “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” David’s confidence was in his relationship with God, not in some act that God would perform for him. This is why his foundational statement is one of love for the Lord. He is not looking to God to provide strength. Instead, David is declaring that the Lord himself is David’s strength! This worshipper of God understood that strength flowed out of his intimacy with God. This was again a precursor of what Paul would later pray over the church in Eph 3:16-17 “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Strength for life flows out of encountering the Spirit of God in our inner most being as we grow in our relationship to him!

Wednesday

Psalm 150:6 - January 13, 2010

Ps 150:6 "Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD." NIV

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the angels praise Him. Let the peoples praise Him. Let the animals praise Him! Let the heavens and the earth sing to Him with thanksgiving! The Lord alone is worthy of the allegiance of all created things. There is no one and there is nothing that does not owe its existence to the pleasure of God. Therefore let us sing songs of praise!

The Pharisees were offended when the people praised Christ and yet Jesus declared to them Luke 19:40 “I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” KJV Even the stones are moved to praise. The creation sings its silent praise with the voice of its beauty. David declares in Ps 19:1-4 “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. 3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” Every tongue and tribe has heard the praise of God’s glory through the testimony of God’s awesome creation. In every nation the witness of God is present.

Many times I have heard someone ponder the question of why God would go to such lengths to create such beauty in the earth. To me the answer is a simple one: because He wants to be known. The awe of creation is an introduction to the greatness of God! The wonder of the world is an insight into the mind of the creator. He values beauty. He esteems creativity! And most of all He chooses to make Himself known! God displays His power and majesty through the beauty and magnificence of what He created. The creation is but a fraction of the whole of the one who created it and yet so many of the beautiful depictions of God’s universe each defy our comprehension of how they could be arranged in such glory.

Scientists examine the stars through the wonder of scientific advancement and yet they can only glimpse a fraction of all that God is and has done. They see the ever expanding universe and say if there was a creator why is the universe continually seen as expanding? What is its purpose? For me the answer comes in the form of another question. Why does the painter paint? Why does the sculptor sculpt? There is no function in the painting nor the statue other than to convey beauty or display the creative mind or possibly to pose a question or even simply just to demonstrate creative genius. In the same way this would be reason enough for the creator’s work! God chooses to demonstrate the extent of His person through the beauty and wonder of His creation and for this we stand in awe. For this we marvel, not just creatures here below but even the heavenly beings behold God and are compelled to sing His praise. Take time today to reflect upon the wonder of the Lord and join your voice to the rest of creation with songs of praise!

Tuesday

Psalm 149:2-5 - January 12, 2010

Ps 149:2-5 "Let Israel rejoice in their Maker; let the people of Zion be glad in their King. 3 Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with tambourine and harp. 4 For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation. 5 Let the saints rejoice in this honor and sing for joy on their beds." NIV

Do you rejoice in your Maker? DO you live with a sense of gratitude to the one who has created you? Most people live as if they were the one to thank for all of the good things that have come into their lives and yet God is the one to blame for all of the bad things. Psalm 149:2-5 is a call to celebrate the God who created us and from whom all blessings flow! “Praise his name with dancing and make music to him…” This is a statement of God’s worth and a celebration of His love! He has given us all that we have and made us all that we are. James exalts in his generosity in James 1:16-17 by saying “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights…” There is nothing good that we possess that did not find its inception in God. He may have chosen human channels to deliver it but He is the source! For this we give thanks. Because this is true we can celebrate!

The Psalmist continues his praise in verse four with one of the primary foundations of why we praise the Lord. There are many attributes in the person of God that can move the heart to praise Him and yet there are a few that stand above the rest. Verse four points to one of these. Why do we praise the Lord? “The Lord takes delight in His people!” Praise is a celebration of God’s pleasure! He delights in you! What a wonderful truth to build your life upon. He delights in you! This is reason for praise. He delights in you! We do not have to live in fear any more. Rejection cannot hold us down any more! We are God’s delight! The heart can sing for joy, knowing that God is smiling upon it! A son finds security in confidence for living when he looks into the face of his father and finds delight waiting for him! When my son looks my way and sees a joyful countenance he knows that he can do anything!!!!!!!! Paul lived in the power of this truth. He stated in Phil 4:13 “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Boldness for life comes through the strength that God provides through His Son Jesus Christ. When we look to Him and see his delight smiling over us the joy of God strengthens our hearts and we can do the impossible! Again Paul reflects this boldness in Rom 8:31 where he cries out in words of faith “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

God has given us the crown of his salvation. We are deserving of death and yet He chooses life. We are deserving of judgment and yet He chooses mercy. We are deserving of rejection and yet He chooses acceptance and forgiveness! This is God’s crowning glory. He has chosen love! He has chosen life! He has chosen us!!!! This is why we praise Him. This is why we celebrate Him! He has placed upon our lives the crowning glory of his name through the death of Christ on the cross. Jesus told his disciples John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” And then he demonstrated this love towards each one of us by laying down his life in death on the cross. This is the crown that has been given us, the crown of God’s friendship, the crown of God’s love! Wear that crown today with joy, knowing that you are the delight of God and that His is reaching out to you to empower you to live confidently in His glorious presence!

Psalm 16:11 - January 12, 2010

Ps 16:11 "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand." NIV

With God is revelation for life! What a hope, what a promise. Those who live in relationship with God have the knowledge of the path of life. To know and embrace the truths of God’s word is to know the way of life. In Mt. 7:14 Jesus taught his disciples that “small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” If this is indeed true, and it is: then what a privilege to have received the revelation of the truth from the Lord. David continues on to express the impact that this knowledge has had upon his soul.

The result of a life lived in the path of life is a joyful experience of

the presence of God!

It is God who gives us the ability to enjoy him! He. 11:6 shares with us that God rewards those who diligently seek him. The good news is that the reward is God himself. To those who choose the right path the fruit is a joyful encounter with God flowing out of a clean heart that can have confidence before him because we have not embraced wickedness in our hearts. An additional source of this abiding joy is the knowledge of the eternal pleasures that we will share

with our heavenly Father.
David’s joy flowed not only from security in the path of life, nor an intimate enjoyment of God. David was also filled with joy because of the knowledge of eternity. David had a pre-Christ understanding by the Spirit, of the reality of the eternal kingdom of God. His joy and contentment flowed out of the knowledge that eternity was waiting for him. In much the same way Hebrews tells us that Christ embraced the cross, despising its shame, because of his confident expectation of a joyful reward in the eternal realms of God. We have a two-fold blessing before us: Joyful experience of God now and eternal pleasures at his right hand in the life that it is to come.

Monday

Psalm 148:13-14 - January 11, 2010

Ps 148:13-14 "Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. 14 He has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his saints, of Israel, the people close to his heart." NIV

There is a people close to the heart of the Lord! Psalm 148:13-14 is a celebration of the Lord’s faithful provision for this people that He loves. Verse 14 passionately proclaims Israel as the people that have captured a special place in His heart. From earliest times the Lord set apart the children of Abraham to be a people who enjoyed a special revelation of God in their midst! Out of all the nations, the Lord found a man named Abram, and led him upon a discovery of God that would prepare the world for a restoration of intimacy with our creator.

Given a new name in the midst of a deep mystical encounter with God, Abram, now Abraham was set apart because of his faith to become the father of all those who would believe. God made Himself known to Abraham and then to the proceeding generations, as a means of unveiling his love for the people that he has created. In the Garden of Eden intimacy with God was forfeited by man’s willful sin and yet the love of God compelled Him to prepare a means of restoration. Throughout the next 4,000 years God pursued a people that He could call His own. He raised up the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to become a nation through which He could demonstrate His intimate affection and through which He could display the nature of this relationship with all mankind. The nation of Israel was born out of 400 years of slavery as God raised up a new generation of followers through which He could display His glory.

Birthed in a miraculous climate of global confrontation and supernatural manifestation, the people of Israel followed the Lord into the land of promise. Their hearts were tested, and their faith matured as they learned how to walk with God in a level of partnership and purpose that the world had never seen. Since that time the purpose of God has continued to expand throughout the generations as the purpose of God through Christ has been made known and all men have been invited to share this life of intimacy. And yet there is still a people close to the Lord’s heart. God is not a respecter of persons but still the scriptures tell us that Israel is precious in His sight. Now separated from God by their unbelief, Paul tells us that this people have experienced a temporary hardening of heart for the sake of the rest of mankind being given a window of time through which to enter into a grace relationship with God. But Israel is not replaced in God’s affections! He is the same yesterday, today and forever, and this “peculiar” people is still precious in His sight.

Paul shared the Lord’s heart in this way with such passion that he declared in Rom 11:25-26 “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26 And so all Israel will be saved,” The nation of Israel s still in the plan of God and we are reminded to cry out for her salvation. Let your heart be open to the purpose of God in the land of promise and cry out for the spirit of revival to sweep from north to south, east to west throughout all of Israel that the glory of God may be revealed. Let the words of the Lord through Isaiah stir your heart today as you pray: Isa 62:6-7 “You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, 7 and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”