Category: Psalms

I proclaim your saving acts in the great assembly; I do not seal my lips, Lord, as you know. I do not hide your righteousness in my heart; I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help. I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness from the great assembly. Psalm 40:9-10

What do you do when the person you’re counting on lets you down?  Just when you need them most, they aren’t there for you.  Perhaps the first thing you do is cry out in protest. “Where has your heart gone?  I thought you loved me?” But when your words do not move them to draw closer, you might stop talking and turn the other way.

Such can be the case when I perceive that God is failing me. I’ve prayed for things I believe I need right now. I reason that anyone who loves me wouldn’t withhold it. I try to muster up some faith so I can pray harder, and longer. I may make excuses for God to others but the first signs of disillusionment have already been manifested in the core of my soul. My testimony sounds hollow, even to me. Eventually, armed with the lies of the evil one, I turn away from God’s face and stop talking.

Did you see today’s scripture? David is speaking in glowing terms about God’s faithfulness. If I had to guess, I’d say that God just came through for David in some huge way. David is fresh off of some kind of mountaintop experience. But that would be the danger of taking these two verses out of context. David is, in fact, in turmoil and waiting on God. His soul is ragged and desperate. Yet, in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that his eyes have yet to see the saving help he ascribes to God, he is still talking.

This is the essence of faith; faith that I cannot manufacture on my own. In my need, in my disappointment, in my wilderness, and in my waiting, I brag on God’s love and faithfulness to others. Not only that, but I encourage them to put their lives in His hands. How can this be? Because the foundation of my life rests on the pillars of God’s promises! I know in my spirit that God has not abandoned nor forgotten me. I can, simultaneously, pour out my complaint in prayer and speak of His glory ~ whether in private or in public assemblies.

For all the years I thought repeatedly of shutting You out, forgive me. Amen

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Every day, we have more reasons to fear.  This morning, a well respected psychologist was interviewed and he advised us to keep our exposure to the news to no more than one hour a day.  After that, it becomes difficult to keep a perspective.

Such advice reinforced again that without God there is no comfort, no peace, and no hope for the future.  Many were kept awake last night by the sound of their own crying.  Comfort was needed.  Comfort was sought.  Prayers for God’s presence were whispered through their tears.

You may be asking, how does God comfort me?  He reveals Himself in scripture as a Father.  He says that he hovers over me, as a mother hovers over the young in her nest.  He dries my tears and He shares my tears over the things which hurt me.  He sings over me as a mother or father sings a lullaby over their young child.  He quiets me with His love when I’m beside myself.  He often sends a dream that will convey a specific message of comfort.  He will send someone with human arms to enfold me and give me a taste of what it’s like to be hugged by God.

Each nurturing way comes by way of scriptural promises.  I must search for them and own them, memorize them and use them as swords when doubts and fears would take me into the shadows. Through them, God is whispering ~ “I’m here.  Don’t be afraid.”  “I’ll never leave you.”  “You can trust me.”  “Come to me, lay down your burden, and find the rest you’re seeking.”

More than two decades ago, I traded the inspirational idea of God’s comfort for experiential reality.  One feeds my intellect; the other feeds my heart.  God’s comfort is meant to be experienced and it’s there today for any of us who are overcome by current events.  Not one bad headline can eclipse the good news that God has the last word on this broken world.  He grieves with us, He comforts us, but He is working in power to redeem it all.  What we see now is not what will be.  PARADISE RESTORED will be the final headline.

 I’m living in Your promises.  Amen

Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the LORD with reverence and rejoice with trembling.  Psalm 2:10-11

Worship and trembling go together.  I’ve been so moved during worship that I could no longer stand up.  It’s a beautiful thing to be overcome by the Spirit.  He may be my home but I never get so used to Him that I fail to be affected by His glory.

 In Hosea, God calls His children silly doves.  They fail to know where their true home is and their heart has grown too cold to pursue it.  “There will come a day,” God foretells, “when they will come trembling again to their houses.”  “Trembling” means to “flutter with haste”.

A woman ceases to make God her home when she no longer believes He can offer her what she needs.  The promise of the abundant life no longer appears abundant.  There can be many reasons for this.  1.) She has experienced too much pain in this world and God is blamed for it.  She runs from the One she believes is responsible instead of understanding that He is her healing.  2.) There has been no instruction on how to make God her home so she sojourns in distant lands, looking for anyone who will offer her temporary shelter.  3.) Satan has taken advantage of her in her time of vulnerability and offered her some counterfeit ways out of distress.  Whatever the reason, leaving home is rarely a short trip.  It can often span the first half of someone’s lifetime.

There comes a day when God begins to clarify.  The fog of misunderstanding of who He is begins to clear and a woman shakes her head and realizes her folly.  God’s true character materializes in full-blown pictures in her spirit.  Hunger for His presence is awakened.  She prepares for her trip back home, back to her roots.  “Before the foundation of the world, I knew you.”  Ah yes, she remembers the verse now.  She realizes that the only place she can find the person, the Love, she’s been looking for is at home with God.  She comes trembling, with awe and excitement, to the land that has always been hers.  She comes to claim it with joy.  The theme of her life is finally summed up in one phrase ~ LOST LOVE FOUND.

Home is sweetest to the one who has been homeless.  Seeing the lights of home makes her hasten her steps.  Walking over the threshold brings waves of contentment.  It’s home.  Everything is just like she needs it to be.  Never is she more at peace than when resting with God.  Any who loses her life in Him will find it.

It took me over forty years to find my home in You.  I lived many places, emotionally, even though I called You, “Father.”  I’ve never gotten used to the wonder of living with You.  With time, ‘home’ means more, not less.  Thank you. Amen

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Make me to know your way, O Lord; teach me your paths.  Psalm 25:4

I can judge nothing with my senses correctly without consulting God.  Nothing!  What looks lush one day can be a wasteland tomorrow.  What looks barren today can become lush once the hand of a miracle-working God touches it.  I can never judge a book by its cover.  I just never know enough to run my life successfully!

May I learn from those who have walked before me.  Does history not teach me that God chooses the least?  The ones others pass over?  He chooses the uneducated, the spurned, the unpopular.  When people choose leaders, they choose with their senses.  They go for charisma and good looks.  God’s man, as with Jesus, may be someone others walk by and never give a second thought.

God might call me to embrace a place, a calling, a companion, a direction in life that appears to be wrong.  It may not glitter.  It may have little earthly appeal.  I should not second-guess God’s voice.  Jesus was born in a stable, not a palace.  What seems so common is transformed by the wind of the Spirit into something heavenly.  That principle of the kingdom applies to people, to land masses, and in fact, to anything that waits to be touched by a God who turns deserts into gardens.

Are you facing a crossroads today?  Does one way appeal more to your senses because it seems more fertile?  Be careful.  Commit yourself to prayer.  It would be a tragedy to suffer a bias caused by a feast for the eyes.  We risk settling, working, and marrying in Sodom.  Remember Lot?  Abram let him choose his future home.  Lot chose a city in a lush valley, pitched his tent there, and it ended up being Sodom.

I shut the eyes of my flesh and journey with You through the back door of blessing.  In Jesus name, Amen

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary. Psalm 63:1-2

If someone told me that I would be taking someone into my home for the next twenty-five years, I would pause. Who are they? What are they like? Can this person be trusted? Will our personalities clash? Setting out to find the answers, I’ll research him well. Then, if possible, I’ll ask for several face to face meetings to see if what I’ve heard bears true when in this person’s presence

If I would do this much for someone who would live with me for two decades, shouldn’t I do far more for someone with whom I’ll live for an eternity? Especially knowing that this person gave up everything so that I could eventually be with Him. I was banned from this possibility because of my sin, He knew that, and made a way for me to come home to Him. Very costly to Him personally, I might add.

Yet, I can be full of excuses when it comes time to invest in the relationship. God remains very much a stranger if I don’t take the time to know Him and spend time with Him. Unless I do love-driven research and ask Him to draw me close in prayer, I won’t have any experience of Him. Knowing that He is merciful and knowing how He is merciful to me are two different things. By the time I get to heaven, I should have had thousands of encounters and a myriad of shared experiences.

Wouldn’t it be a bit embarrassing to get to heaven, meet Jesus, and know almost nothing about Him?   Wouldn’t it be sad to have nothing to review? “Lord, remember when….” should encompass the first hundred years of eternity.

“Lord, remember when you rescued me in 1997?”

He nods and then asks, “And remember when I asked You to trust me when it looked like you couldn’t? I was so proud of you.”

I’ll nod ~ ever grateful that, in this life, I didn’t miss out on making memories.

“Oh Jesus, and My Father, and Holy Spirit inside ~ let me know You and take part in Your slow dance. Amen

Show me the right path, O Lord; point out the road for me to follow.  Lead me by your truth and teach me,  for you are the God who saves me.  All day long I put my hope in you.  Psalm 25:4-5

A woman who takes the time to listen to and obey the voice of God is never stuck.  Every step she takes is leading somewhere.  No gesture is ever inconsequential.  No task performed is ever hollow.  No pain is ever senseless. Everywhere she places her foot is strategic even though she may be unaware of the significance.  Solomon said so.  “The upright one is on a path that makes up a highway.”

Satan’s urgent agenda for us as God’s children is to cause us to distrust God.  If he can alienate our affections, he knows we will lose heart and abandon the way of faith.  One of his biggest lies is the one that says, “This is a dead end.  You’re trapped.”  Oh, how well I know.  I believed that and was crippled by a severe depression in the early nineties.  Everywhere I looked, I saw traps instead of doorways.  I didn’t know that they were a mirage, a smokescreen.  If only someone had told me to call Satan’s bluff with a well-fashioned arrow of the word of God.

Now, two decades later, I’m still on a soapbox to declare that each ‘trap’ was really a doorway into glory. I was delivered from my wordlessness when I decided to embrace the truth that God is never cornered, and since He lives in me and orders my steps, I’m not trapped either.  Facing the conflict of my core beliefs and then choosing to believe God over my own thoughts, I was freed to move again.  Slowly, I began to see that every pro-active step I took by faith was profitable. It proved that there were indeed invisible doorways I couldn’t see before.  Everywhere I placed my foot led me to another stepping-stone related to my destiny.

It’s still true for each of us today.  The best of life awaits us even in these difficult times if I define the ‘best’ as opportunities to showcase God’s glory. I intend, until Jesus returns, to become an spirited older lady who teaches others how to pray strategically, embrace the scriptures passionately, and love God wholeheartedly.  I don’t know how well I will sing in another decade or two but I will always play the piano, my flute and wooden recorders.  My dream is that God will continue to anoint me to be a ‘pied piper’ who marches on the kingdom’s highway, calling out to others on the sidelines to step onto the path behind me.   My once compromised faith-walk has become a banner-waving parade for the glory of God.

The destiny You write for every daughter is beautiful. Show me today’s stepping stones.  In Jesus’ name, Amen

Great peace have those who love your law, nothing can make them stumble.  Psalm 119:165

When the Spirit of God inspired these words, He used the word ‘nothing’ in the last phrase. What a promise that absolutely the worst thing imaginable can not make me stumble if I am grounded in the word.

I have been showered with emails since sharing the news of Ryan’s death yesterday.  Every single note was just right ~ so comforting and void of cliches and sermons.  Our devotional family is just amazing.  I’m so impressed by the depth of your faith and your wisdom.  You reached out in such powerful ways.

Our family, like your family, is being presented with situations every day that, if navigated without the Word and the Spirit, will end badly.  Today, my friends, we can each exhale in relief because nothing can shake loose our tranquility.  Not death, disease, persecution, and tribulation.  The love of God is not a wimpy thing because the One who offers it is the great I AM.  His arms keep us steady and surefooted in the fury of the storm.

Tormenting things happen.  But when I stand in the cement of ‘You’, nothing can make my feet slip.  Amen

Return to your rest, O my soul. The Lord has dealt bountifully with you. Psalm 116:7

The next time you’re part of a group, introduce the topic of ‘the yoke of an oxen’ and there probably won’t be much interest, even among Christians. However, the topic is unavoidable because we’re all yoked to someone. Satan yokes us to him whether we want it or not. “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Isaiah 58:6 Jesus, if we’re willing, breaks the yoke of our oppression and invites us to take on His yoke instead.

He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Who wants to be in a yoke? That’s the opposite of freedom. Jesus’ promise that this way of living is good for me makes me skeptical. Once I’m freed from the enemy’s cords, can’t I just do my own thing?

Let’s consider the context of Jesus’ words. Two oxen are chosen to share a yoke. The first is an older seasoned ox. He is trained and rugged from years of routine. The second is a new young ox. He has potential but is inexperienced. By sharing the same yoke with a seasoned workhorse, the mature trains the young.

Not only that, but the experienced one pulls harder to bear the majority of the load. Since the older one leads, the younger ox does not have to wonder what to do. He leans on his mentor and copies everything his he does.

Sounds like discipleship, doesn’t it? Jesus invites me to ‘learn of Him’ which is another way of saying ‘be my disciple.’ There’s rest in not having to figure life out on my own. There’s security as I follow His lead.

Jesus also reveals that His yoke is easy. The word ‘easy’ doesn’t mean ‘simple’, but ‘good’. If I’m yoked to Jesus, there’s rest in being yoked to someone good, loving, and patient.

The paraphrase? “Get in the yoke with me. Let me disciple You. I’ll bear the weight of your burden. My yoke is good and you will find rest and companionship in our labor together.”

You were yoked to Your Father and that’s how You survived. Your life was the slow dance of the trinity. I want that. Amen