Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.  Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep (Psalm 36:5-6).

Yesterday, Shelly talked about praying the Psalms.  Similarly, when I got to verse 5 of today’s passage in Psalm 36, I started signing the words of this Psalm as put to music by Third Day in 1999.  If you are familiar with this song, can you read this passage or listen to the song without lifting your voice in worship to God?  I certainly cannot.

Psalm 36 begins by describing the sinfulness of wicked people.

• There is no fear of God in their eyes
• They think too much of themselves to recognize, or care about their sin
• Their words are wicked and deceitful
• They don’t act wisely or do what is good
• They plot evil and don’t reject what is wrong

Do you see the pattern here?  A sin of commission (doing something wrong), then a sin of omission (failing to do something right).  Both are sins.  Both are contrary to God’s will.

In the next section, David contrasts the sins of the wicked with the attributes of God.  They couldn’t be more different.  The vastness of God’s love, faithfulness and righteousness are completely opposite of sin.  Justice, however, is where the sins of the wicked and the character of God intersect.  Our perfect God will eventually put an end to sin; an end to arrogance, apathy, deceitfulness, and wickedness.

As Christfollowers, we need not fear wicked people because we know God loves us, he hates sin, and he judges evildoers.  Like David, we can ask for his protection.

May the foot of the proud not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away (Psalm 36:11).

Oh lord, your love and faithfulness are beyond measure.  Thank you for loving me in spite of my sinful ways.  Today, will you protect me and my family from wicked people who seek to bring us down destroy us?  Today, will you help me recognize my own wicked ways and give me the power to make choices that honor you?

I will lift my voice to worship you my king, I will find my strength in the shadow of your wings.  Amen.

Two weeks ago I wrote about using the Psalms as my own personal prayers.  My favorites are Psalm 23 and Psalm 139. I can identify with the words and I feel connected to God as I read them. Today’s Psalm is not so encouraging or soothing. Psalm 35 is one of the many “imprecatory” Psalms. The word imprecatory means “to invoke evil on” or “curse”. David may have written this when he was being hunted by Saul and was looking to God for justice and vengeance. He was not praying for their souls, or asking God to help him love them more. Instead he prayed that God would “humiliate and disgrace them”, “blow them away like chaff in the wind”, and “make their path dark and slippery”. From a human standpoint it makes sense. He was angry, bitter, fearful, and wanted justice to be served! David walked closely with God and he knew that God was powerful enough to do all that he asked. But we know that God doesn’t always answer our prayers or requests the way we ask. David was human and did not have the full knowledge of the whole truth that would come with Jesus and his death on the cross in the New Testament. The Psalms are the middle of the story.

There is a lot going on in our world that may leave us angry, bitter, fearful, and wanting justice to be served. There may be things in your life that have been unheard of atrocities that deserve vengeance. Maybe the words in this Psalm did speak to your soul because there has been injustice in your life. God can handle any words that we give him but he doesn’t want us to stay in that space. He came into the world so that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). He was the true example of loving our enemies as He prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified Him. Apart from Jesus, it is impossible to love our enemies. But with Him, we know that we are not responsible for judgement and revenge.

Matthew 5:43-48 “You have heard that the law of Moses says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. for he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too. If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

You are my hiding place;  you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.

Psalm 32:7

I know I have written this in a previous post, but I am so thankful for growing up in a church and home that taught me praise songs!  I was reading through our reading of Psalm 32 and once I got to verse 7 this melody started playing in my head!

You are my hiding place.  You always fill my heart with songs of deliverance whenever I am afraid.  I will trust in You.

I will trust in You.  Let the weak say I am strong in the strength of the Lord.

You are my hiding place.  You always fill my heart with songs of deliverance whenever I am afraid.  I will trust in You.

Iwill trust in You.  Let the weak say I am strong in the strength of  the Lord.  I will trust in You.

Are you singing it now???

Psalm 32:7 identifies God as our hiding place:  ”For you are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble.  You surround me with songs of victory.”  The Hebrew word seter, translated here as “hiding place,” can refer literally to a secret location in which to conceal oneself.  In 1 Samuel 19, for example, when King Saul saught to kill David, Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s friend, warned him, saying, “You must find a hiding place (seter) out in the fields”(19:2)

In Psalm 32:7, God is a hiding place in that he protects us from trouble.  He surrounds us with “songs of victory” or “songs of deliverance”.     Because of this, when we trust in the Lord, we can be assured that our lives are safe in his hands.

As we know, this does not mean that we will not experience troubles.  I, in fact, have had my fair share recently.  But it does mean that when we do face the hard times we can have confidence that God is on our side.  No matter what happens in this life, no matter how it seems that God has abandoned us, he is there nonetheless.  

I believe that the more we turn to Him, the more we trust Him, the more we live securely.  He is the best hiding place of all.  When we hide all our troubles in Him, we find joy.

Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Psalm 32:11

In times of distress, what does your faith look like? When things really take a turn for the worse and the headaches pile on, what do you turn to for reprieve? When earthly things take their toll on our mental states, it can be easy to turn to things of this world to befittingly distract ourselves. From escapism in media and stories, to enjoyment of the arts and the outdoors, to our physiques and checkbooks, it can be scarily easy to throw our worries at frivolous things. Reading it now, what Psalm 31 tells me is David’s commitment in difficult times to giving his ordeals to God. Verse 5 is a good summary – “Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a talk about how being stressed and dealing with it is bad. Stress is physically draining, and coping with our stress through healthy means and positive action is totally necessary. But these things can’t be our cornerstone. I’ve had a lot of experience with healthy ways of blowing off some steam, like exercise, writing, practicing instruments, cooking elaborate healthy meals, and playing board games with my wife. In worse times of my life amidst sadness and depression, I’ve definitely had some much crummier ways of dealing with it. But these things only offer a little relief – they can’t shoulder your burden when it gets too much. They won’t shield you from your afflicters, from the evils of the world, and those who seek to do wrong against you. Only the Lord ever offered me true respite and healing against these torrential downpours of trouble; not just simply respite of the body, but much more importantly, of the spirit.

Think about the wildly stressful times David endured along the road to writing this psalm – fleeing for his life, armies gathered against him, cities of people slaughtered for unwittingly helping him out, bunkered in fortresses under siege amidst war. It is through these incredible trials David finds his faith tested, and discovers how the Lord preserves and saves, time after time, those who turn to Him – but it requires total commitment in your surrender to God’s will. Even if the things of this world help deal with physical stress, David must have seen that earthly remedies have their limits. When he says he despises idols in verse 6 (alongside his hate of actual idol worship, of course), I can’t help but see this as his warning against the idols we make for ourselves in our lives getting in the way of connectedness during our own time. In this context of describing his agony, I feel especially convicted in what has been an extremely stressful period in time for many of us, that nothing but Christ and our conviction in His word will get us through times like these.

Even in Psalm 31:22, David feels fear: “I had said in my alarm, ’I am cut off from your sight,’” he says. David, of all people! Even the guy who whooped Goliath can be afraid. But his message is clear: we are all human, with all the downside of humanity, like fear, anguish, anger, pride, and all that. But the Lord is always there to offer hope, no matter how hopeless our times can seem. It requires dedication, immersion, devotion to the Lord though – the kind built up through a lifestyle centered around Christ, through daily time with God in prayer and scripture. Through seeking and being part of Christ-centric community, pursuing and growing in our faith alongside others. The Lord appropriately pays those who pridefully cling to the things of this world for deliverance, but we know our continual devotion to Christ is the greatest reward in itself. This year has been both a practice in, and testament to, coming to Christ for provision – for me, and many of you as well, I’m sure. Pray that the recent lessons in committing your spirit to God’s hand last year serve you well in the coming years, and reflect on how you’ve learned to place your trust in Christ when things go haywire, so you may better reflect David’s words every new day.

Psalm 29

I have believed that God is who he says he is for many years. I decided as a young girl that God’s word was true, that God loved me and cared about me, and that he made a way for me to spend eternity with him. I don’t know why that decision was “easy” for me to make and some others spend their lives wrestling with what they learn, never really choosing to allow God to be their Father. I will probably never understand why it makes sense to some and not to others, but I am grateful that I started my relationship with God so many years ago. God has steadied me, protected me, held me firm in “storms”, loved me creatively and personally, taught me, comforted me, never left me, taken the weight of things too heavy for me to carry, and the list goes on. I cannot write a comprehensive account of all the times I have watched God act in my stead or love me unconditionally. His “personhood” or character is too big for me to document accurately or completely encompass here.

After many years of relationship with him, I am still awed and enlightened by experiencing his creativity, character and might in nature. Yesterday when I opened my blind and looked out the window, my yard was transformed to a white wonderland. Who else can blanket a state, town or even a yard in white frozen water? …and if that isn’t amazing enough, each of those miniscule flakes of snow was designed with originality, creativity and beauty. This is only one facet of his splendor that only portions of the earth ever see. His vastness, ability and attention to detail can make my head explode with wonder.

Nature forces us to look outside of ourselves. It is bigger than we can comprehend. We are powerless to create any one component of it, and it’s organization and harmony point to higher power than we posses. How can we possibly not seek to find the actual creator when we stop to look at the earth, our solar system or even our own bodies? We are powerless to pull oxygen out of the air in our lungs and force it into our own blood. We can’t make our hearts beat. We cannot make our fingernails grow or reproduce one hair on our own heads. God has created all of the systems that repeatedly do these tasks in each of us without one conscious thought from us. He is the one who carved the mountains, stops the ocean on the sand, brings the sun up every morning, changes the seasons, swirls the wind across the desert sand, teaches the birds to fly, feeds the amoeba, …the list is endless. David spends about eight verses in this chapter listing the forces in nature that shout out God’s voice and display his might. It is obvious from David’s words that he believes wholeheartedly that God created the earth and manages every facet of its function. David sees and hears God all throughout the earth and cries out to the heavenly beings to honor the Lord for his glory and strength.