Don’t Give Up

Posted on by korgrocker

“I pray to you, O Lord, My rock. Do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if You are silent, I might as well give up and die. Listen to my prayer for mercy as I cry out to You for help, as I lift my hands toward Your holy sanctuary.” Psalms‬ ‭28:1-2‬ ‭NLT‬‬

To David, his relationship with God was so important, so profound, that if God was to ever withdraw from that relationship, David said he might as well stop living. We don’t know what David was praying about, though we get a few clues later in the Psalm, but at this critical moment in his life, he felt as though the heavens were made of brass and his petitions were falling on deaf ears. But as we read down this Psalm, we find that God did answer him. He writes in verses 6 and 7, “Praise the Lord! For He has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord is my strength and shield. I trust Him with all my heart. He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.”

So the question is, how important is my relationship with God? If the heavens were closed to my prayers and petitions, what would I think and do? Would I give up, spiritually speaking? It’s a sobering thought, but, like David, I can praise Him this morning because a theme of God’s love for me runs through the Bible, like letters through a stick of seaside rock. He says that I am His child (1 John 3:1). He says He cares for me (1 Peter 5:7). He reassures me that there is nothing I should be anxious about (Philippians 4:6-7). And so on. There are many such reassuring verses throughout the Bible. So this morning, I can praise and worship my Father, my Saviour God with a grateful heart. Can you?

The Land of the Living

Posted on by korgrocker

“Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness while I am here in the land of the living. Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.” Psalms‬ ‭27:13-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

In spite of all his trials and attacks from people who were out to get him, David, the psalmist, continued to have confidence in the Lord, his God. You see, he had made the connection between life here on planet earth, and his life secured and assured for him with God Himself. And more, David had confidence in his expectation that the Lord’s goodness would extend from the Heavenly realm into his earthly bubble. All he had to do was wait patiently, something that he apparently needed courage to do.

Once again I am in a place of intersection between the the land of the living and the land of the dead. My aunt, the sole remaining member of my mother’s generation, passed over “the great divide” a few days ago. Her spirit has now taken up residence somewhere else, where her options for eternity are limited. Her spirit is dependent now on the Lord’s mercy and decisions she made “in the land of the living”. Her options for experiencing the “Lord’s goodness” in this life have ceased. She had heard the Gospel many times during her long life, but did she know Jesus?

So what lessons can I learn from these final two verses in Psalm 27? For me, I see the necessity of keeping close to God, being in His presence, making right choices, being confident that He loves me and wants to bless me “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 1:3). My pilgrimage through “the land of the living” involves looking out expectantly for the “Lord’s goodness” to me with patience and courage. Fending off all the enemy’s attacks in the knowledge that I don’t have to listen to his lifeless message from the land of the dead. Father God I am so grateful for Your presence in “the land of the living”, enabling You to be accessible to all.

Sanctuary

Posted on by korgrocker

“I love Your sanctuary, Lord, the place where Your glorious presence dwells.” Psalms‬ ‭26:8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

There’s an old film I saw in my childhood where Quasimodo cried out, “Sanctuary, Sanctuary” in a scene from the film depiction of Victor Hugo’s book. The hunchback was claiming his right to being in a safe place, free from abuse. Or so I remember. A sanctuary is a place or state where we feel secure, and to the Psalmist, David, his sanctuary was the place where God lived. And having been brought up in an era when churches were revered, I still get a sense of peace and tranquility in a church building with stained glass windows and an altar. Perhaps I was brought up to think that God lived there.

But where does God really live? Where is His glorious presence? We are informed in 1 Corinthians 6:19 that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. So God lives within us. And one of Jesus’ titles was “Immanuel” which means “God with us”. And so it is. Through Jesus, God came to live on this earth, offering us the opportunity to live with Him for ever, in His “sanctuary”, eternal life. And it is in and through Jesus that we will see and experience the “glorious presence” of God. Make sure you don’t miss it, Folks.

The Right Path

Posted on by korgrocker

“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.” Psalms‬ ‭25:4-5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Just for the asking, God will show us what road we should take in our pilgrimage through life. And how does He do that? According to the Psalmist David, He leads us in the right way through His truth. We have many choices in life and each one will equate in some way to “the right path”. Our choice of spouse, what career to follow, where to live – the choices before us seem endless. Sadly, sometimes a wrong choice leads to a limitation being placed on future choices. But coming back to our question about God showing us the right path, we often have a problem because, as it says in Judges 17:6, “…all the people [do] whatever [seems] right in their own eyes”. Often the strident calls of sin, of hedonistic ways, seem preferable to the “right path”.

So where do we find this “truth” that David writes about? The main source has to be God’s Word, the Bible. For it is here that the thoughts and ways of God are laid out before us. But sometimes a prophetic word from a brother or sister in our communities of faith will start the personal process of mining Biblical treasures to develop or research what God is saying to us about the choices before us.

At the end of verse 5 in today’s Psalm, David declares that his hope is in God – “all day long”. And that is the bottom line, because regardless what we come up against in our pilgrimages through life, our hope in God must prevail. This hope is the final seal on our choice to follow the “God who saves”.