Thrills

“You thrill me, Lord, with all you have done for me! 
I sing for joy because of what you have done. 
O Lord, what great works you do! 
And how deep are your thoughts. 
Only a simpleton would not know, 
and only a fool would not understand this: 
Though the wicked sprout like weeds 
and evildoers flourish, 
they will be destroyed forever.”
Psalms‬ ‭92:4-7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

That’s a great word describing the impact God has on us – “thrill”. So I start by asking two questions this morning – what has God done for us, and has the impact thrilled us? Personally, I can remember life events that I refer back to time and time again, with a thankful heart. With a deep gratitude to God for His provision in a dire time of need. And I can remember, particularly after one event, an emotional surge of thankfulness that fell into the “thrill” category. But we can’t go through life looking for the thrills, sudden bursts of fairground-like emotions – day by day He constantly watches over us and the Holy Spirit nudges us when we need to change direction or change a decision. We cannot fail to be thrilled by a God, the Creator of everything, who so intimately cares for each one of us, even to the extent of counting and numbering all the hairs on our heads! And the Psalmist continues with a song of joy, spontaneously bursting out from a thrilling experience. It is a good exercise to sit down with a paper and pencil and list all the “great works” God has done, not just for us, but for our families and friends as well. And we can rejoice and be thrilled by them too. The Psalmist also refers to God’s thoughts – now there’s a whole new dimension. How can we know God’s thoughts? The Apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, finished the second chapter with this verse, “For, “Who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.” So through our relationship with Jesus we can know His thoughts – not completely of course, but we can gain a glimpse  of what God is thinking, in the knowledge too that all His thoughts will line up with what He has said in His Word.

The Psalmist ends these verses today with a reference to a “simpleton” and a “fool”. Strong words describing someone who rejects God by behaving in an unacceptable way, not realising that one day, in spite of their apparent earthly successes, they will be destroyed. Sometimes that will happen in this life, but it will surely happen in the life to come. One day the “wicked” will stand before His throne of judgement.

So where do these verses leave us. I would say in the knowledge of the stark and even extreme dichotomy between God’s way and a godless way. There is no middle ground.