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November 13, 2016
A divided heart can have many forms. There is the insincere heart, in which what is said out loud is not matched by the inner attitude (Psalm 12:1).
David’s goal is not psychological healing for its own sake but to “fear” God—to give him joyful, awe-filled love with his entire being.
17 Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.
If someone is criticizing you and the criticism is mostly mistaken, identify the 20 percent of the indictment that is fair. Without excuse be willing to take it to heart. The strongest Christians are the ones most willing to repent.
Psalm 87. 1 He has founded his city on the holy mountain.
4 “I will record Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me—Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush—and will say, ‘This one was born in Zion.’” 5 Indeed, of Zion it will be said, “This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High himself will establish her.” 6 The LORD will write in the register of the peoples: “This one was born in Zion.” 7
Lord, these psalms teach that we can bring you our anger, fear, and despair and lay them before you unfiltered. You understand.
prayers in the dark are more victorious than they look. Satan told God that no one serves him unless they are getting something out of it, but
here we see a man praying and serving God for nothing (Job 1:9). So Satan is defeated.
1 I will sing of the LORD’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. 2 I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.
15 Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim you, who walk in the light of your presence, LORD.
19 Once you spoke in a vision, to your faithful people you said: “I have bestowed strength on a warrior; I have raised up a young man from among the people. 20 I have found David my servant; with my sacred oil I have anointed him.
We too listen to God’s promises and read our own expectations into them.
40 You have broken through all his walls and reduced his strongholds to ruins. 4
God always fulfills his promises but does so at a level of greater complexity than we can easily discern.
1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
11 If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. 12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Without this robust doctrine of sin, we will not be wise (verse 12). We will be constantly shocked by what people (and we) are capable of, by how life swiftly takes away everything we love.
16 May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.
Lord, I praise you for both your majesty and your meekness in Jesus Christ.
trials and troubles. They can harm my false self—the one built on appearance, social status, and human approval. But they can’t harm my true identity as your child. They can only make it stronger!
The esteem and worth we strive so hard to achieve and to get from others he bestows on us. It is beyond imagining: his high regard, his “Well done”—a gift of his grace.
I want applause, approval, and praise from others. But that enslaves me. At night I toss in bed at snubs, at being ignored. Criticism feels like death.
1 It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High, 2 proclaiming your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, 3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp. 4 For you make me glad by your deeds, LORD; I sing for joy at what your hands have done.
To us the word “rest” conveys mainly inactivity, but the main way the Biblical Sabbath day renews strength and joy is through worship. Praise is “good” (verse 1). Anything that we love or serve more than God becomes an idol that saps our strength. Idols of career or money or relationship are never satisfied. So the worship of the true God of perfect love restores and invigorates us.
The worship of God does not only make us rejoice; it also opens our minds and makes us think. We are all naturally as blind to spiritual realities as a physically blind person is to his or her surrounding environment.
Only through worship are we restored to vigor from the exhaustion and burnout of seeking our own glory.
9 Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see? 10 Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge?
Psalm 95:1–4. 1 Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. 3 For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him.
6 Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; 7 for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
the Hebrew word for “worship” here literally means to prostrate oneself.
In Christ we are offered not a physical promised land but the ultimate rest—rest from the crushing burden of self-salvation through effort and performance (Hebrews 4:10). Why wouldn’t everyone want to enter such rest? Because it is a freedom unknown to modern people—one that is on the far side of trusting God rather than ourselves.
Our worship is to be compelling to nonbelievers; that is “a corrective to static worship and shallow preaching alike.”
Lord, grow my understanding of your grace until it rids me of the self-consciousness, lethargy, and pessimism
If we love someone, we must hate whatever is ruining their lives, even if it is their own choices. Because God is perfect love, he cannot abide evil and sin.
you must let God’s love and regard for you be the new ground of your identity.
10 Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
1 Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.
1 The LORD reigns, let the nations tremble; he sits enthroned between the cherubim, let the earth shake. 2 Great is the LORD in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations. 3 Let them praise your great and awesome name—he is holy. 4 The King is mighty, he loves justice—you have established equity;
This self-offering is to be conducted with delight and joy (verses 1–2). Neither moralistic religion (which sees obedience as necessary drudgery in order to put God in our debt) nor modern self-determination (which sees the loss of independence as a kind of death) can grasp this.
My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; the one whose walk is blameless will minister to me.
Lord, the realism of your Word scares me. I don’t want to believe that I might go through pain like this. And I avoid people who are. That is wicked of me. Lord, you suffered infinitely, voluntarily for me.
12 But you, LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.
18 Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the LORD:
The church endures, rolling on while competing forms of religion and nonbelief rise, wane, and are forgotten.
Biblical meditation, unlike the popular varieties, is not a relaxation technique for emptying the mind but rather one that fills it with truth, using thought and memory to set your heart on fire.
Only the cross would reveal what it cost God to punish sin without punishing us.
Lord, my anger is indeed unlike yours. May your Spirit purify me so my anger is not triggered by my hurt ego as much as by real injustice and evil, and so that it does not remain in me to harden and poison my joy but readily gives way to compassion. Amen.
You have not received all God wants to give until you have gotten “the oil of joy instead of mourning” (Isaiah 61:3).
Believers rightly hear this as a summons to tell others around us what he has done in our own lives. Too often we stay silent about his saving actions in our own histories. We might think that keeping quiet about such things is modesty but its effect is the opposite. It allows others to believe that we have overcome our problems and lived our lives
