Category: Psalms

I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.” But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.  Psalm 131:22

A big blowup in a relationship is not what usually kills it. People argue. Some fight passionately. But if both are committed to the each other and also committed to truth, there is understanding and restoration. What is deadly to any relationship, however, is a gradual deadening of the heart. A slow death is much more difficult to turn around.

You’ve heard the phrase, “I feel like I don’t know you anymore.” A ‘foreigner’ is a good description. It is saying, ‘You are acting so strangely that I don’t even recognize you. You may as well have come from a foreign land.’

 Amazing that what can be intimate can grow so deeply estranged. In a spiritual sense, this is what happens, more than not, to the children of God toward their Heavenly Father. No wonder there are so many songs about returning to your first love, about stirring the cold embers of your heart. Erosion can happen so slowly that the gradual decline is inconspicuous.

To make sure that it doesn’t happen to me, I want to think about this more intently this morning. What would happen that might show I’ve turned my face away from God to tiptoe in the other direction?

• I fail to take the sins of my heart seriously.
• I keep the reading of the Word technically and intellectually.
• I lose the lump in my throat when I talk about Jesus.
• The mercy He showed to me becomes a casual thought.
• God’s wooing is easily ignored.
• I play it safe to live in unbelief instead of by faith.

 I used to believe that some ‘thing’ would happen that would kill my faith. I guess I was wrong. Nothing can do that for me. Isaiah says that God’s children have turned themselves back into foreigners. Circumstances don’t make or break a relationship. It’s whether two people choose to walk together or not. It’s commitment. It’s nurturing the love that exists and never allowing any other priority to eclipse it.

Oh, that I might always say that we are intimate. Amen

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.  Psalm 20:7

David compels the people of God to turn away from counterfeit powers.  Horses and chariots were plentiful both inside the kingdom and outside.  Kingdoms of the east were also very wealthy and gold and silver abounded. Satan often rewarded idolatry with temporary abundance but David was adamant that true power begins and ends with God.

Most people are drawn to the light. That’s the good news. But there are two kinds of light and one is fake. That’s the bad news. Satan masquerades himself as a god of light because he knows that if he shows us his true identity, we will be seized with fear. He must disguise himself into whatever he knows will appeal to his victims.

This is why I often encourage true believers to address this problem in prayer when praying for their families. They can restrict the enemy, with the spiritual authority they have in Christ, from putting on a demonic glitter that makes his way addicting. Oh, the stories associated with this kind of praying! Sons have, all of a sudden, seen a girlfriend for who she is and broken up with her. Middle school children have, all of a sudden, seen the true nature of their ‘bad’ friends, and walked away from danger. A husband has, all of a sudden, seen the kind of woman he’s having an affair with and ended it. Once the demonic glitter was removed, loved ones stepped back, gasped, and came to their senses. None of us need be under the spell of false light.

Continue reading “Demonic Glitter” →

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in You. In God, whose word I praise, In God I have put my trust; I shall not be afraid. What can mere man do to me? Psalm 56:3 

How long can you keep going under pressure before giving up? How many losses would you sustain before you find that a particular one seems too much to bear? The threshold of abdication is different for each of us. So, also, is the particular issue that defeats us. I’ve known parents who lost one child to cancer and they never recovered. They live in a perpetual suspension of emotions and they are internally numb.

But, I also know a woman who lost one child in childbirth; another in a custody battle. She lived childless. Both of her parents died when she was young and she was raised by surrogate parents who severely mistreated her. Though she visited the valley of hopelessness many times and flirted with total despair, she leaned on God for the grace and grit to get up. Now in her later years, she is a wise old soul who gives the gifts of compassion, advocacy, and wisdom to those who have no one to understand their pain. Her eyes search for those lost in themselves. She’s able to look deeply into their eyes, see their soul and call them out.

Continue reading “When There’s One Loss Too Many” →

Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him!  Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity.  PSALM 68:4-6

God wants me to know something about the nature of His love.  I had a loving, attentive father in the first days of my development.  Though my memory may be fuzzy and my recollection of Him absent, if I could go back in time and roll the video tape in the spiritual realms, I would see how active God was.  I would see how He preserved me.

Oh, the heartbreak of a Father who has loved well, how deep the pain of a tender parent who has invested Himself yet I did not acknowledge Him for a long time.  Instead, though I knew Him to be Father, I ignored Him while playing with toy gods.   The pain He must have felt went beyond a mild sting.  It was a blow to His heart.

Have you ever poured out your soul on another only to have your love spurned?

• Perhaps you’ve done it as a parent.  You’ve sacrificed to give when there was little left for yourself.  The one who drank of your affection didn’t know that you expended the last drop in your well of resources.  They tossed your gift aside with disgust.  God knows.
• Perhaps you’ve done it as a friend.  You watched the promise of friendship unfold like a beautiful flower.  You took it slowly and prayerfully.  Yet, with all your caution, in time the friendship eroded and your heart was tossed aside like a worthless thing.  God knows.
• Perhaps you’ve done it as a spouse.  You dreamed the dream of intimacy.  You modeled what ‘oneness’ would look like from the way you invested your trust.  While you walked through the years with integrity, his heart grew cold and for a while He hid it well.  One day, there was a pronouncement that the love was gone.  God knows.

God knows!  When our love is tossed aside, the wounds often run so deep that we withdraw and stop extending our heart.  God does not.  He keeps hoping, keeps the ache alive for the purpose of future reconciliation.  Have you ever known such a faithful love as this?   And may I not miss the bigger message in all of this ~ that when I was indifferent, He was not.  When I was faithless, He was not.  When I accused Him of being absent, He was not.

You have loved me with an everlasting love, past, present, and future.  Whatever trust issues I had should be healed in the truth of our history.  Thank you.  In Jesus name, Amen

HOW AUTHENTIC AM I?

How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit!  Psalm 32:2

Genuine.  Sincere.  These should be the last words I see on a 3×5 card before getting out of my car and going out in public.  The world is often a stage and ‘nice’ is the mask I wear as a Christian.  Do others experience me as sincere?

Sincere is based on Latin words meaning ‘without wax’.  There was an ancient practice of using wax to hide cracks in inferior pottery so that it could be disguised as more valuable and sold for a higher price.  A high-end piece of pottery had a stamp on it that said, “Without wax” to show that it had not been doctored.  As a person, I want to be sincere, not just hiding my true nature and true feelings.

Continue reading “How Authentic Am I?” →