Rescue Me From My Slumber

In You, O LORD, I put my trust; Let me never be put to shame.
Deliver me in Your righteousness, and cause me to escape; Incline Your ear to me, and save me.
Be my strong refuge, To which I may resort continually;
You have given the commandment to save me, For You are my rock and my fortress.

Deliver me, O my God, out of the hand of the wicked, Out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man.
For You are my hope, O Lord GOD; You are my trust from my youth.
By You I have been upheld from birth; You are He who took me out of my mother’s womb. My praise shall be continually of You.

(Psalm 71:1-6, New King James Version [NKJV])

It’s hard to trust God when you can’t see what He’s doing, or He doesn’t seem to give you answers. That’s how I’ve been feeling on and off for the past few months. All I’ve seen is doors slammed shut, and haven’t seen any open. Am I missing them? Are they not there? Have I missed the point entirely?

Today was one of those bad, unconstructive days of wondering what I’m doing and what my purpose is. It was a struggle to get out of bed. I felt I had nothing to get up for. My lack of purpose is virtually killing me at times, in a physical and mental sense. I have days when my entire being just halts, shuts down. Nothing works. I hibernate. I avoid people. The world passes me by. I sit at my chair and I mull. I despair. I am paralysed.

My life doesn’t make sense. But somehow, I muster the faith to believe that God will bring me through. I look at how He has pulled me through before and I choose to believe He will again. I trust that He knows what He’s doing, even though I am lost and miserable.

Give me hope, Lord. Give me strength for tomorrow. Give me purpose. Save me from my slumber. I beg thee – show me the path forward, and your plans for me. My accuser prods me, tells me you don’t care for your people. Demonstrate your power, Lord. Vindicate me – or show me where I’ve gone wrong.

 

Living For Your Glory

I love to sing songs. I can’t sing, and I don’t particularly want other people to be able to hear me, but singing songs is great. Sung worship to God can be a liberating experience and reminds us of the One to whom we are singing. If it doesn’t, it should, because it’s certainly not meant to be about us, except for us praising God, whatever that entails.

These lyrics are from a song by Matt Redman called “Living For Your Glory”:

What good is it to gain the whole world, but lose your soul?
What good is it to make a sweet sound, but remain proud?
In view of God’s mercy, I offer my all

And take my life, let it be everything, all of me
Here I am, use me for Your glory
In everything I say and do, let my life honor You
Here I am living for Your glory

The road I’m on that leads nowhere without You
And the life I live that finds meaning and surrender
In view of God’s mercy, I offer my all

Seeking first the Kingdom
Seeking first the Kingdom of my Lord

What good is it to gain the whole world, but lose your soul? We can have the whole world, but without a relationship with our Creator, it’s all for nothing, it’s all temporal, it’s all going to disappear. Just look at Jesus, when He went in to the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days and 40 nights. Satan offers Jesus the whole world, but He doesn’t take it. He first refuses to turn a stone to bread in order to demonstrate His divine power. Then He refuses to throw Himself from the pinnacle of the temple. So Satan offers Him everything He can, with a snag, of course:

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”

The the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

(Matthew 4:8-11, New King James Version [NKJV])

What good is it for me to gain the whole world, yet lose my soul because I have not acknowledged God and have been led astray by the tempter? What good is it for me to make a sweet soun, but remain proud? God loves the humble. Scripture is full of references to the humble. The most obvious reference is probably from James, but James actually bases his passage on scripture from the Old Testament:

Surely He scorns the scornful,
But gives grace to the humble.

(Proverbs 3:34, NKJV)

James is not a book for a quick-fix, feel-good factor. The Bible really shouldn’t be used for a feel-good factor anyway, but James is a very direct, clear rebuke to our lives:

Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:

“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

(James 4:1-10, NKJV)

Why would we even want the whole world? It comes out of our selfish desire, for a desire for gain, to be better than others. But that serves us no purpose. Our purpose is fulfilled in submitting to God. Scripture promises that God, our faithful God, will not allow us to be tempted more than we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13), and so He makes it possible for us to submit to Him and to resist the devil. He promises that the devil will flee from us when we resist him. If we choose to draw near to God, He will draw near to us. He will be our refuge and our stronghold – our very present help in our times of trouble (Psalm 46:1).

What a faithful God I have. What a good God I have. And if He’s not yours, He can be yours too!

 

Psalm 40

I love the Psalms. They are wonderful accounts of praise, lament, celebration and anguish. They deal with the raw emotion going through their writers’ lives. They bring a human perspective on God and can be a great encouragement in times of trial – or when we want to praise God but don’t know where to start.

Psalm 40 is an amazing Psalm, one that I love. Here’s a piece of it:

I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog,
And set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

Happy are those who make the Lord their trust,
Who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.
You have multiplied, O my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts towards us;
None can compare with You.
Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.

Sacrifice and offering You do not desire, but You have given me an open ear.
Burnt-offering and sin-offering You have not required.
Then I said, ‘Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.
I delight to do Your will, O my God;
Your law is within my heart.’

(Psalm 40:1-8, New Revised Standard Version, [NRSV])

I’ve been going through a bit of a hard time recently. There’s been substantial change in my life over the past year. I’ve been convinced of what I was going on to do, only to find myself 200 miles away from that place. I’m going to face even more uprooting over the coming year. I don’t know what much of that is going to look like. It’s an uncomfortable time. I’m struggling to hear God about these things – or I’m not recognising His voice. One or the other.

But I long to come out on the other side. I long to see a glimpse of my life as it will be in two years. I long to see where I will be, what I will be doing and how God has moved through my life. I long to praise God for bringing me out of my pit, my bog, my feelings of hopelessness, restlessness and insecurities about my worth. I wait patiently for my Lord to move me on in my journey with Him, on to the next step, safe in the knowledge that my steps are secure in the Rock of my saviour Jesus. I long for that new song of praise to flow from my lips, a song of praise to my God on high, telling all of His great hand over my life. I long to tell of how, though I didn’t understand what He was doing at the time, I can look back and say with confidence that He is good, that He is trustworthy, that He took me places I couldn’t imagine in my tiny mind.

I long to know His plans and His will, so I can follow His lead. I live in faith that this day of revelation in my life is near.

How long, to sing this song?