Justin Davis
April 9, 2019
TREASURE IT
April 8, 2019
OBEY IT
April 7, 2019
AIM AT HEAVEN
April 6, 2019
PAPA
April 5, 2019
ENDLESS GRACE
April 9, 2019
Treasure It
The law of your mouth is better to me
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
Psalm 119:72
The psalmist delighted in God’s Word. To delight in God’s Word is to love it, to treasure it, to value it, to regard it as priceless.
The remarkable thing is that the psalmist’s Bible was Genesis through Deuteronomy. We’ve got so much more to delight in – Psalms, Isaiah, Proverbs, John, Acts, Romans, Ephesians and more!
In his extraordinary book,The Heavenly Man,Brother Yun tells this story:
After his conversion as a young man, he found out about the Bible. He did not have one. He did not know anyone who had one. Bibles were scarce in China in those days. He was so hungry for the Bible. His mother had heard of an old man in another village who had been a pastor. They went to visit him. The old man told him to pray for a Bible. So, day after day, he knelt down with one simple prayer, “Lord, please give me a Bible. Amen.”
After a month nothing happened, so he went back to the old man’s house and this time the pastor told him he needed to fast and weep for a Bible. So for the next 100 days, he fasted morning and noon and ate a little bit in the evening, weeping and praying for a Bible. Still no Bible.
Then one morning at 4 a.m., he received a vivid vision in which two men give him a Bible. The vision was so real that he got up in the middle of the night and began looking for a Bible in the house. Not finding it he began weeping loudly and woke his parents. His parents rushed in to see what was wrong and they wept with him. Just at that desperate moment, they hear a faint knock at the door. He answers it and there are two strangers at the door, the same two men that he had just seen in his vision. They give him a bag containing a Bible.
In his own words, he wrote: “My heart raced as I opened the bag and held in my hands my very own Bible! The two men quickly departed into the still darkness. I clutched my new Bible to my heart and fell down on my knees outside the door. I thanked God again and again! I promised Jesus that from that moment on I would devour his Word like a hungry child.”
That’s what it means to treasure God’s Word.
April 8, 2019
Obey It
Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord!
Psalm 119:1
Psalm 119 is a passionate love song in praise of Scripture. It is also a work of literary beauty. The first eight lines all begin with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The next eight lines begin with the second letter. And so on throughout the psalm. The 22 stanzas take us through the entire Hebrew alphabet, eight lines at a time. Furthermore, Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. This is one striking psalm!
Psalm 119 begins with a call to obey God’s Word. God will bless us, the Bible says, not if we have God’s Word or if we read God’s Word or if we study God’s Word. No, God will bless us if we obey God’s Word, if we walk according to God’s Word. "Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!"
Obedience is a major theme of Psalm 119. Just a few of the examples:
You have commanded your precepts
to be kept diligently. (vs. 4)
Oh that my ways may be steadfast
in keeping your statutes! (vs. 5)
I will keep your statutes;
do not utterly forsake me! (vs. 8)
If you want the blessing and favor and protection of God on your life, there’s no other way: Obey God’s Word.
Obey Scripture whether you like the command or not. Obey whether you agree with the command or not. Obey immediately and completely. Obey no matter what. Obey because God is God and you are not. Understanding can wait, but obedience cannot.
To read a passage and not obey is to defy God. This includes commands on lying, gossip, giving, divorce, sexual purity, giving thanks in all circumstances, loving your wife, respecting your husband.
The writer Flannery O’Connor observed: “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Obey it! Obey God’s holy Word. Obey God’s holy Word and God will bless you.
April 7, 2019
Aim at Heaven
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
Psalm 103:15-16
Life is brief! It is oh so brief!
When we are 20, it seems that we will live forever. At age 30: “Well, maybe not quite forever.” At age 40: “Whoa! I’m halfway there!” At age 50, “Time is racing by!” And it just speeds up from there.
Why do we humans, unlike the animals, never quite adjust to the brevity of life? Because we were made for eternity. God has put eternity in our hearts “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
How should we respond to life’s brevity? There is only one solution: Live for eternity. Accept the biblical truth that this world is not home. We were made for the next world not this world. Like Paul, long for the next world. “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
This means we decide that we will not live for things or money or stuff. We will live for Jesus Christ. We will surrender our life to him. We will love people, not things. We will invest our time and resources in reaching people and loving people. We will live our life for the next world.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote: “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you will get neither.”
April 6, 2019
Papa
As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
Psalm 103:13
God is Father. He is the perfect Father. Loving, kind, wise, gentle, fair, honest, dependable, strong. He is all that a father should be. Father is the Christian name for God.
But perhaps your earthly father was not a loving father. Maybe he was absent or preoccupied or angry or even abusive. The writer George MacDonald, who was such a big influence on C.S. Lewis, offered wise counsel in his book Unspoken Sermons:
In my own childhood and boyhood my father was the refuge from all the ills of life, even sharp pain itself. Therefore I say to son or daughter who has no pleasure in the name Father, “You must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life. All that human tenderness can give or desire in the nearness and readiness of love, all and infinitely more must be true of the perfect Father – of the maker of fatherhood.”
To see God as Father means so much. It means you see God as loving you deeply, tenderly and fiercely, committed to your highest welfare.
It means you see him as strong and powerful. He can take care of you, rescue you, protect you, provide for you.
It means you see him as wise. He knows what is best for you. He understands you completely. There is no wiser parent anywhere.
It means you are never confused about who you are. You are a child of Father, a child of Papa. Much loved. Joyfully adopted. Completely accepted. Delighted in.
That’s who you are!
April 5, 2019
Endless Grace
As far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:12
This is a promise to claim!
God is saying to you and me: All your sin is gone! Gone forever! Gone completely! Gone never to return! Gone!
David, who wrote this Psalm, had some big sins. But he believed that God’s grace was bigger than his sin. Even if the sin was adultery, God’s grace was bigger. Even if the sin was murder, God’s grace was bigger. Even if the sin was rampant pride, God’s grace was bigger.
David understood grace. And he lived before the cross, before he could see the full wonder of a Savior dying in our place and paying for all our sin.
Those of us who live after the cross, surely we too must grasp grace.
David would have loved John Newton, the former slave ship owner who discovered grace and penned the classic hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Newton had been responsible for ripping families apart, husbands from wives, parents from children. He had been responsible for unthinkable brutality on voyages across the Atlantic, when slaves suffered horribly and so many died, thrown overboard into the sea. Newton’s sin was so big! But he discovered grace. Amazing grace. Grace that’s bigger than all our sin. Grace that removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. All our sins. Past, present, future. Thoughts, words, deeds. All our sins.
Yes, David would have loved Newton.
The next time you wrestle with guilt and condemnation, turn to the great promise of grace, Psalm 103:12. Read it. Learn it. Revel in it. Believe it.
This is a promise to claim!
April 4, 2019
God's Great Love
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.
Psalm 103:11
God is saying to us,
My love for you is so great! It is as high as the heavens are above the earth. It is higher than you could ever imagine. There is no limit to my love for you. My love for you is inexhaustible. I will never stop loving you. Never. In fact, I will never love you one bit less than I love you right now, no matter how much you mess up, because my love for you is perfect and unconditional. This is my love for you: as high as the heavens are above the earth!
In a movie called The Bear, a young cub loses his mother to hunters. It has little chance of surviving in the wild. But an enormous papa bear takes the cub under his care and begins to look after the cub, showing the little bear how to forage for food and survive in the wilderness. One day, the cub is ready to venture out on his own. He is off on an adventure! But a mountain lion spots the cub and begins stalking it. The mountain lion creeps up and attacks the cub. The cub escapes but the mountain lion is stronger and faster. When things look the bleakest, when it looks like the cub is going to be killed, the little cub rears up on its hind legs like he had seen the papa bear do.
Just at that moment, the mountain lion, inexplicably, backs up and slinks away. What happened? A mountain lion is not frightened by a mere bear cub. The camera lens widens and you see what the cub couldn’t see, the giant papa bear was 20 yards behind the cub, reared up on its hind legs, ready to pulverize that mountain lion.
You realize that the papa bear had kept his eye on the cub the entire time. Yes he gave the cub space and freedom to depart, but the papa bear still cared and he kept his eyes upon the cub he loved. And when the mountain lion attacked, papa bear came running!
You are that cub. God is that papa bear. Yes, God will give you space and freedom to leave him. But he keeps right on loving you. And he never takes his eyes off of you. And when you are desperate, God will rescue you from the prowling lion who seeks to destroy you.
For your entire life, every single day, God has never, ever taken his eyes off you.
Time to go home, back to God.
April 3, 2019
God's Smile
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Psalm 103:8
Do you see God this way? In your heart of hearts, do you see him as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love?
So many people see God as stern, harsh, demanding, joyless, hard to please. A cosmic Scrooge. But that’s not the God of the Bible! That’s not the real God, who revealed himself in Jesus Christ!
The real God is merciful. He is bursting with tenderness and affection. He feels for you when you are hurting. All through the Bible we see God’s tender heart for the widow and the orphan. In Matthew 9:36, we read of Jesus: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” That’s God! Full of compassion and mercy! For you!
The real God is gracious. He extends grace to the guilty. He forgives all our sins. In fact, two verses later Psalm 103:10 says, “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” Four verses later, in verse 12, we read: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” God is so gracious to us!
The real God is slow to anger. Because we can be impatient and quick-tempered, we might feel that God is this way. But it is not so. God is so patient, so gentle, so slow to anger. God never loses his temper. He is easy to live with.
The real God is abounding in love. He is not just a little loving, but he abounds in love. He overflows with the most relentless love and affection. He is crazy about you! His love knows no bounds! Picture new parents tenderly gazing at their long-awaited baby, eyes brimming with love and compassion. That’s God gazing at you!
We have no idea of the tender heart of our God.
But if we did, would we not love him more? Would we not trust him more? Would we not obey him more? Would we not enjoy him more? Would we not rest in his love and care? Would it not transform our whole outlook on life?
A.W. Tozer once said of God: “He meant us to see him and live with him and draw our life from his smile.” Do you draw your life from God’s smile?
April 2, 2019
Forget Not
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
Psalm 103:2
It is so easy to forget all that God has done for us. It is so easy to focus on our problems and needs, rather than on all the good things God has given us. We are prone to forget.
Not surprisingly, throughout the Old Testament God calls his people to remember. Remember what God has done for you. Remember God’s provisions for you. Remember God’s gifts to you. Remember God’s rescues of you. Remember!
The whole purpose of Passover was for the Jews to remember what God had done in rescuing them out of slavery in Egypt. Similarly, Jesus gave us communion so that we would regularly remember what he did for us on the cross, in delivering us from our slavery to sin.
We humans can forget so quickly the things God has done for us. We must be deliberate and intentional in remembering how God has gifted us and rescued us and blessed us and protected us.
So, dear child of God, remember! Remember with a grateful heart. Remember with gratitude. Remember and give thanks.
Sometime soon, carve out an unhurried time with the Lord and make a list of all God’s gifts to you. Write down everything you can think of. Write down big things and little things, distant things and recent things. Routine things and exceptional things. Write down as many things as you can. Then get down on your knees and give thanks.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits.
April 1, 2019
The Power of Praise
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
Psalm 103:1
Psalm 103 is one of the greatest psalms in the Bible. I consider Psalms 23, 63 and 103 the richest psalms in the Psalter.
Psalm 103 includes some of the most exalted language in all the Bible for God’s love, God’s forgiveness and God’s goodness. If you have ever struggled to understand and feel how much God loves you, as I have, then Psalm 103 is a psalm to soak in over and over. This psalm is a “Mount Everest” in the Bible.
Psalm 103 begins with a charge to bless God or to praise God. Note carefully: David is telling himself to praise. He is talking to himself. Sometimes, we need to talk to ourselves, especially when we feel discouraged or lonely or depressed or guilty. Talk to yourself and remind yourself of the promises and commands in the Bible.
Why is it so vital that we praise God? Several reasons:
First of all, it is only right to praise God. He deserves our highest praise. He is worthy of our deepest adoration. Praise reflects reality. We live in a world ruled by a sovereign God who is unfathomably great and unutterably good. It simply would not be right for us to not praise God.
Second, praise is the language of love. Because we love God, we want to praise him and adore him. It is our privilege, our delight, our desire. We express our love for God when we praise him. Moreover praise not only expresses our love to God, but it also nurtures our love for God. Think about it: When we are praising God for his grace and goodness and mercy and faithfulness, we are moved to love our God all the more.
A third reason that praise is so vital is because in praise we gain perspective on our problems and needs. When we begin our praying with praise, we lift our gaze from a focus on our problems to a focus on our God. We see things from heaven’s perspective, not earth’s perspective. We are more likely to trust God. Praise is absolutely essential to a life of trusting God.
For each of these reasons, praise is vital to our praying. No wonder the pages of Scripture are peppered with praise!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
March 31, 2019
Zeal for God
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous works among all the peoples!
Psalm 96:3
From Genesis to Revelation we see that God is a missionary God. God’s concern was never only with Israel, but with all the nations of the earth.
Psalm 96 is one of the great missions passages in the entire Old Testament. With verse 3, we come to the very heart of God’s missionary purpose.
What is the driving motivation behind missions? It is not our love for people, as important as that is. It is not our concern for people’s salvation, as essential as that is. No, the highest motivation for missions is God-centered, not man-centered. Missions must be fueled by a burning desire to see God’s name exalted in all the world.
Missions, first and foremost, is about the glory of God, not the salvation of people. Missions is about the name and the honor and the glory of Jesus Christ among all the peoples of the world. Every tongue and tribe and nation and people must proclaim the glory of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords.
Pastor John Piper wrote:
The final goal of all things is that God might be worshiped with white-hot affection by a redeemed company of countless numbers from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Revelation 5:9 and 7:9). Missions exists because worship doesn’t. When the kingdom finally comes in glory, missions will cease. Missions is penultimate; worship is ultimate. If we forget this and reverse the roles, the passion and the power for both diminish.
Christian leader John Stott sounded a similar note:
We should be “jealous” for the honour of his name – troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honour and glory which are due to it. The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is), but rather zeal – burning and passionate zeal – for the glory of Jesus Christ. Before this supreme goal of the Christian mission, all unworthy motives wither and die.
March 30, 2019
A Shade and a Shelter
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
Psalm 91:1
Many Christians around the globe cannot read this verse without thinking of the life of Jim Elliot.
He was born in Oregon in 1927. Raised in a family devoted to Christ, early on he exuded a fearless resolve to follow Christ. A natural leader, he would not shrink back from speaking out for Christ.
He made it his practice to meet God daily in the Scriptures. He knew the Bible. He loved the Bible. He loved the God of the Bible. In fact, he had a most unusual hunger to know God.
He was also a gifted writer and he kept a journal. He once wrote, “He is no fool who gives that which he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” (He wrote this as a college student!)
As a young man, he went to Ecuador to reach people for Christ. He learned Spanish. Then he moved to the edge of the Amazon jungle to minister to Quichua Indians. There he married Elisabeth, a woman he had known since college.
But he and four other young missionaries were drawn to the Huaoranis, a small tribe that had never been reached for Christ. The tribe was also primitive and dangerous.
In 1956, Jim and his four friends were martyred by the Huaoranis. Jim was only 28. Fortunately, his wife Elisabeth compiled his letters and journal entries into a book about his life and convictions. She decided to title the book from Psalm 91:1, and called it Shadow of the Almighty. The book is powerful.
Jim Elliot epitomized Psalm 91:1. God was his shelter, his refuge. He lived his life, too brief by our standards, full out, resting in the shadow of the Almighty.
If I could choose one person in the last 100 years who best reflected the passion Paul had for Jesus, I would choose Jim Elliot. He is one of those few people who could say what Paul said and mean it just as much as Paul meant it: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).
March 29, 2019
Your True Home
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
Psalm 90:1
Sometimes a husband who has been married to his wife for a long time, and who is deeply in love with her, can truly say: “Home is wherever my wife is. I am home whenever I am with her. Wherever on the globe she happens to be, that’s home.” That’s the way I feel about my wife, Gayle.
But what this husband says of his wife is most true of God. For the deeply devoted believer, home is found in God. Home is found not in a place, but in a person. Home is being with God. He is my home.
Moses gives voice to this heart at the outset of Psalm 90: Lord, you are our dwelling place. You are our home. You are our place of refuge. Indeed, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.
Because God is God, because he is the everlasting God, because he was God before the Rocky Mountains were formed, because he was God before the creation of the universe, because he has been God from everlasting and will be God to everlasting, God is our true dwelling place.
Home is being with God.
He is your heart’s true home. He is what you’re looking for. He is what you’re longing for.
March 28, 2019
Desperate
Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
Psalm 86:1
With these words David expresses his deep dependence upon God. “Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.”
What? David is poor and needy? Isn’t David the king of Israel? Isn’t David wealthy and powerful beyond words? Is David not king over Israel at the height of Israel’s glory?
Yes, David is king. So how can he cry out, “I am poor and needy”?
David refers not to financial poverty, but spiritual poverty. This is poverty of spirit. This is the first beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
This is the first beatitude because it is the basic beatitude. This is where our relationship with God begins, with dependence, with humility, with our deep sense of need for God.
David is saying,Lord, how I need you. I’m totally dependent upon you. If you don’t deliver me, I have no chance. If you don’t rescue me, I’m sunk. O God, hear my prayer. Hear and answer. The word for this is desperate. David is desperate for God.
Do you feel this way? Do you feel desperate for God? Lord, if you don’t intervene, I’m sunk!
Jackson Senyonga is a pastor in Uganda who has seen revival and transformation in his country. On his trips to the U.S. he has commented: “You in America are not desperate enough. You are addicted to a spirit of ease and comfort.”
O Lord, help us in America to realize how desperate we really are.
March 27, 2019
Passion
My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food
and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.
Psalm 63:5
Worship satisfies your soul.
Worship satisfies your soul because God satisfies your soul. Just as delicious food satisfies the stomach, heartfelt worship satisfies the soul.
You are hungry for worship. You are hungry for worship because you are longing for God. In worship, you encounter God.
You are hungry for God because you are made in the image of God. You are an imagebearer. An immortal being. Only God can satisfy the soul of an immortal being made in God’s image.
Augustine gave expression to his passion for God when he wrote:
You flashed, you shone;
and you chased away my blindness.
You became fragrant;
and I inhaled and sighed for you.
I tasted,
and now hunger and thirst for you.
You touched me;
and I burned for your embrace.
Nothing else will satisfy your soul cravings. Not marriage. Not a child. Not riches. Not things. Not a new car. Not a vacation. Not a dream house. Not a sport or hobby. Not sexual pleasure. Not food. Not alcohol. Not a sleeker body. Not plastic surgery. Not retirement. Not a getaway. Not anything.
Only God.
God alone.
March 26, 2019
I Lift My Hands
So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
Psalm 63:4
Perhaps this idea of raising your hands in worship is foreign to you. It’s not your background. You’re not used to it. It doesn’t feel natural. You don’t want to feel pressured to raise your hands. It’s not you!
All of that is understandable, but there is more to be said. Down deep, there are times when you want to lift your hands to God. There are times when you want to raise your hands to God above because this is the natural expression of joy and worship in your heart.
You feel something, something deep in your heart. You feel something inside and you want to give expression to these feelings of joy and praise. You want to give expression with your voice and with your hands. Your hands want to fly up to heaven. Or you want to clap or stand or kneel or dance. Youwantto express with all you are – heart, voice and body – what you feel inside, the depths of your praise and joy.
Think of a football game. It’s the championship. It’s a close game, a nail biter. The score is tied. The final seconds are ticking off. Your team throws a desperation pass to the end zone. Your team scores! They win! The whole place erupts. Hands and arms fly up! People shout and holler, clap and roar!
This is no polite golf applause. No one is sitting on their hands. Of course not! We want to give expression to our hearts. It’s completely normal and appropriate. It’s the way God made us.
When I gather in worship with God’s people, there are times when I feel so deeply that I must lift my hands to God, just as I lift my voice to God. It feels right. It feels good. It feels the way God intended it to feel.
Don’t feel pressured. Do feel free.
Give full voice to the praise and joy that you feel in your heart.
March 24, 2019
A Private Sanctuary
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
Psalm 63:2
I find some of the psalms to be so rich. I think of psalms like Psalms 23, 27, 34, 46, 86, 103, 121 and 145. But of all psalms, my favorite would have to be Psalm 63. Where else in the Bible do you find such a passionate heart for God as you do in Psalm 63, especially in the first five or six verses?
Verse 2 is a bit surprising. What does David mean, “I have looked upon you in the sanctuary”? David is in the Judean desert, fleeing for his life from his own son. There is no sanctuary in the desert. Is David referring to the tabernacle back in Jerusalem?
I don’t think so. A sanctuary is a place to meet God and David would have to find a sanctuary in the desert, a private sanctuary beneath the stars, a place where he could meet with his God and worship.
Above all, David was a worshipper. He could not wait to worship. He could not not worship. He would have to find a sanctuary in the desert, a place where he would encounter God, a place to see the power and glory of God.
What about you? Are you a worshipper? Wherever you are, at home, in the car, in an airport, on a golf course, in a hotel room, do you find a sanctuary, a place to worship and pray and sing and listen? Do you seek a place to draw close in holy wonder and meet with your God?
March 23, 2019
Love Affair
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.
Psalm 63:1
Do you hear the heart for God? The passion, the longing, the desire for God? Does it stir you? Does it awaken something deep in your heart?
What makes this psalm especially remarkable is the life situation behind it. David is on the run, fleeing from his own son, fleeing for his own life. Can you imagine his broken, grief-stricken heart? His own son!
Yet here he is pursuing God with all his heart. “O God, you are my God.” David is saying,My whole world has unraveled, but you are still my God. You are the Almighty God. You are my Shepherd. You are my God and you will see me through!
“Earnestly I seek you.” Not casually. Not half-heartedly. But passionately, fervently, wholeheartedly. This is not religious ritual. This is not duty. This is a love affair. The whole kingdom is at stake, including David’s very life. And yet here he is, seeking God with all his heart. Is this not David’s greatness, this passionate heart for God?
“My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” There is no water in the dry, desolate Judean desert, where David is as he writes. David’s physical thirst for water is a picture of his spiritual thirst for God. He is saying,Lord, only you, only you, can satisfy the deepest longings of my soul.
I think of Mother Teresa, who was going through a dry period in her spiritual life and yet still had such a passion for Christ that she prayed this prayer: “I want to love you, Jesus, like you have never been loved before.”
What hearts for God!
Why do some people have such unusual passion for Christ? I don’t know. Ultimately, this kind of heart for God is a gift. Every good thing is a gift from God. But you can ask for the gift. Lord give me this kind of heart for you! This thirst for you! This love for you!
March 22, 2019
My Burdens
Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.
Psalm 55:22
There are times when the burdens of life are so heavy, so difficult, so onerous, that it feels like I just might suffocate. The burden is overwhelming. I don’t know if I will survive.
All I can do is cry out to God in desperation.
This promise in Psalm 55 has been a source of unending strength and encouragement over the years. For problems of all kinds, big and small, I have gone to this passage. How many times have I gone over this verse before the Lord!
“Cast your burden on the Lord.” Here it is, Lord! You take it! I cannot carry it! It’s too big for me!
And he will sustain you.” Yes, Lord,you will hold me up. You alone. Without you I’m sunk.
“He will never permit the righteous to be moved.” Lord, I have no righteousness of my own, but by your grace, I am righteous in Jesus. By your grace, you have made me righteous, right with you. I am one of your holy people and I want to live for you. This promise is for me, Lord. And what a promise it is! Never moved. You will hold me tight,you will hold me up,you will hold me steady.
Do you have a burden?
When burdens come, don’t carry them. Cast them upon the Lord. Let God carry your burdens.
This is a promise to memorize. This is a promise to claim. This is a promise to cling to.
March 21, 2019
Be Still
Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!
Psalm 46:10
Psalm 46 speaks to a time of turbulence and upheaval, a time of fear and uncertainty. The Psalm begins:
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
and the mountains tremble at its swelling.
(Psalm 46:1-3)
Perhaps this is a time of national calamity – a terrorist attack, a devastating hurricane, widespread financial collapse.
Or it might be a time of personal calamity – the loss of a job, betrayal by a spouse, the death of a loved one, a cancer diagnosis.
At all of those times, hear the voice of God to you: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
This is not a time for activity and noise. This is a time for stillness and silence. This is time to be quiet enough to hear the still, small voice.
At these times, be still and hear the voice of God:
Know that I am God.
Know that I am the Almighty.
Know that I am the infinite and eternal.
Know that I am God and I rule the universe.
Know that I am the sovereign God and nothing touches you that does not first pass through my hands.
Know that I am God and I am bigger than your disaster.
Know that I am God and I can see you through the valley.
Know that I am God and I will be with you, right there beside you.
Know that I am God and I will have the final word.
Know that I am God.
When the earth collapses, or your world falls apart, be still and know that God is an ever-present help in trouble. Be still and know that God is God.
March 20, 2019
Thirst
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.
Psalm 42:1
The deer is desperate for drink. In the dry, arid Middle East, perhaps with drought, the deer searches and searches for a stream. The thirsty deer is so desperate for water that it pants for water. Intense thirst!
The psalmist relies upon this vivid imagery: Lord, that’s the way I feel about you. Lord, I long for you. I thirst for you. I yearn for you. Lord, let me meet with you. Let me draw close to you.
The story of the Bible is a love story. It’s a story that begins in the heart of God with a deep, unbounded, unstoppable love for his people. It’s a love that pursues us and woos us and wins us. It’s a love that awakens a responsive love in our hearts.
Never forget: It’s not duty. It’s not discipline. It’s not philosophy. It’s love.
Writer David Bryant was once in Calcutta talking with Mother Teresa. There were great needs and pain and suffering everywhere. At one point, Bryant asked Mother Teresa, “With the crying needs of Calcutta, how do you keep going?” Mother Teresa replied, “I get up and spend four hours with the Lord every day because he is the deep well and I need to drop my bucket into the well every day.”
Four hours may be a bit intimidating for most of us, nearly all of us. But we too need time, unhurried time, with the Lord every morning. “Jesus is the deep well and I need to drop my bucket into the well every da
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