Post by Cindy on Jun 8, 2015 6:39:42 GMT -5
Notes on Psalm 103: Sometimes in our misguided reasoning we feel like we’ve been trying to do our part; not perfectly of course, but then we’re not God. We quietly think that He doesn’t seem to be holding up His end of the deal. In other words, “If the problem’s not me, it must be You.” When this happens we need to hit the brakes, back up, and get our thinking in line with the truth. Just as Satan accuses us before God, he also accuses God before us. The enemy lies. Here’s the truth as laid out from Genesis to Revelation: God is good, He loves you, and He is for you. He’s the One who’s working to help you get through the trouble. Anything less than the truth about Him is a lie. Don’t fall for the enemy's lies. We don’t know what David was feeling that day. However, we do know that he tells himself what to do: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits”. David tells his soul, “You will bless the Lord!” When we don’t know what to do, the best thing is to put our focus on God and tell our soul the right thing to do. It’s always right to remember how good God has been to us.
David establishes a pattern for us: go to God, tell Him the problem, & remember His greatness. We have a choice to bow to Him instead of to our problems & feelings. Remembering God’s goodness is fuel for the power of worship. All the benefits David writes about in Psalm 103 are the exact benefits that God has given you & me in Christ. They are spiritual benefits that are meant to become realities in our daily lives. They are for now & they are eternal. Circumstances come & go; however, God’s benefits to you & me are forever. He wants us to recognize & receive them. Every time I read Psalm 103, I’m struck by the practical goodness of God in our lives. Take the time to go back through the list and personalize each benefit. “God, You pardon all my iniquities. Thank You that You have forgiven all of my sins.” That one verse changes everything! God has so much good available for you. His love for you is so great that He doesn’t want you to leave anything He has given you on the table. He wants you to enjoy the full benefit of all His goodness. Everything on David’s list is on your list. Those benefits are a fact for you whether you feel them or not. Write your name in there, thank God, receive, and celebrate how good He is to you.
One Sunday as I was about to take communion, I came into a fresh awareness of what Jesus had done when He died for my sins and rose from the grave. It hit me like a spiritual freight train—the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of Jesus were for me. He had snatched me out of the pit of hell and given me His real life. Good news indeed! All of the things that I had ever done wrong had been wiped off the board—forgiven. I remember thinking, “God, if You never did another thing for me the rest of my life, that’s enough.” “But He didn’t stop there.” Jesus didn’t stop at just forgiving us and snatching our lives from the pit. Yes, that would have been enough, but He offers so much more than that. Jesus came to give us life and to give us life more abundantly. He took our sin, died as our substitute, rose from the dead, and sent His Holy Spirit to help us every day. He gave us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and He raised us up to sit at His right hand, in both the sweet now and later. Jesus opened up a whole new extraordinary way of living beyond our comprehension. Talk about the good life! It is found in Christ Jesus now—by faith.
“He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:10) Maybe you’ve heard well-meaning people say, “God caused this [insert something horrid] to teach me a lesson.” What kind of holy God would He be if He went around doing wrong? Evil and its consequences come from a lot of different avenues because we live in a broken world. However, God doesn’t broker evil in our lives. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 ). Run your circumstances through the grid of that verse. The thief is Satan. God is working in our lives to bring about life to the fullest—in, through, and even in spite of the destruction the enemy hurls against us. When evil happens, God can ultimately take what was meant for destruction and turn it for good. He doesn’t bring evil, but because of His power and redemptive work, He is not limited by it. He never wastes pain. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28). His goodness is not limited, except for where we limit Him in our lives.
Sometimes we’re unaware of all the good that is in our lives because we’re focusing on our smallness or we’re locked into the negative. Maybe we need to go out on a dark night, look up at the stars, and be reminded of God’s love. I heard it said somewhere, if you ever think there’s not much good happening in your life, consider what you would miss if everything good were suddenly gone tomorrow. Then start thanking God for each one of the things you would miss. God’s goodness and love extends to every area of our lives. God gives us a visual illustration of the vastness of His love: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him” . Look at the stars and the visual illustration of the depth and height of God’s love for us.
By God’s grace, good can be happening in us even when trouble is happening to us. God’s goodness is not limited by our feelings or our happenings. God can give us the help we need right where it’s needed. He doesn’t always intervene to change immediate circumstances, although sometimes He does change them. However, when everything in our lives is given over to Him, He will use even the bad for good. Recently a friend who was going through breast cancer told me how she's leaned into God like never before. She said that she’s experiencing Jesus in a whole new way. She was the most vibrant I’ve ever seen her & said, “For the first time in my life I’m seeing Jesus as my warrior. It seems at every turn that He has been making Himself known to me as the one who is fighting for me & being my champion in the battle.” I sat there amazed at the grace that was on her. She was powerfully experiencing God during the hardest time of her life. When we go through the fire, He's always right there with us to give us His strength, peace, & joy—to give us Himself.
If we have a true picture of God in our minds, it will expose the deception when we accuse Him of wrong motives & actions. When God created the world, He made it perfect with no evil. That was God’s design. When he looked at His work, He repeatedly said, “It is good.” He planned for us to live & enjoy paradise in perfect relationship with Him. Then the enemy deceived Eve into thinking maybe God wasn’t totally good, maybe there was something better, maybe He was keeping something good from her. Eve acted on that doubt & disobeyed God. Adam was close behind & willfully made the same choice. At that point, rebellion entered humanity, & Satan, the originator of evil, unleashed all manner of evil into this world. Jesus came to give us life to the fullest. However, He said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33 ). What we all wish He had said was, “If you trust Me all your troubles will be over.” Instead He told us that no one takes a pass on trouble in this broken world. Why? Because the whole world lies in the power of the devil and his mission is to steal, kill, and destroy. One day Jesus will not only deliver us from the penalty & the power of sin (which He’s already done), but eventually He will deliver us from the presence of sin. That stuck with me because there is a presence of sin all around us. However, a time is coming when Jesus will return, take His people to heaven, & make all things right. No more stress, anxiety, disappointment, pain, illness, or death. No more presence of evil . . . only all good, all the time. But until then the presence of evil is all around us.
When we don’t understand life, it helps to remember that the only one who has the words of eternal life is the same one who gives eternal life. The trouble we have now is temporary—it has an expiration date. We all get hit with the flying debris of a broken world. I’m convinced that God protects us far beyond our awareness of His intervention. He has angels who are dispatched to guard and deliver us (Psalm 91:11 ). His goodness shields us from so much every time we get in the car and drive down the interstate. However, there remains a nebulous trouble in this world that Jesus said would come to everyone. The psalmist got it right when he said, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13 ). God’s will is for us to see His goodness in this life.
Thriving: Trusting god for life to the fullest.
Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.
Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.
Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the LORD, O my soul.” (Psalm 103)
David establishes a pattern for us: go to God, tell Him the problem, & remember His greatness. We have a choice to bow to Him instead of to our problems & feelings. Remembering God’s goodness is fuel for the power of worship. All the benefits David writes about in Psalm 103 are the exact benefits that God has given you & me in Christ. They are spiritual benefits that are meant to become realities in our daily lives. They are for now & they are eternal. Circumstances come & go; however, God’s benefits to you & me are forever. He wants us to recognize & receive them. Every time I read Psalm 103, I’m struck by the practical goodness of God in our lives. Take the time to go back through the list and personalize each benefit. “God, You pardon all my iniquities. Thank You that You have forgiven all of my sins.” That one verse changes everything! God has so much good available for you. His love for you is so great that He doesn’t want you to leave anything He has given you on the table. He wants you to enjoy the full benefit of all His goodness. Everything on David’s list is on your list. Those benefits are a fact for you whether you feel them or not. Write your name in there, thank God, receive, and celebrate how good He is to you.
One Sunday as I was about to take communion, I came into a fresh awareness of what Jesus had done when He died for my sins and rose from the grave. It hit me like a spiritual freight train—the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of Jesus were for me. He had snatched me out of the pit of hell and given me His real life. Good news indeed! All of the things that I had ever done wrong had been wiped off the board—forgiven. I remember thinking, “God, if You never did another thing for me the rest of my life, that’s enough.” “But He didn’t stop there.” Jesus didn’t stop at just forgiving us and snatching our lives from the pit. Yes, that would have been enough, but He offers so much more than that. Jesus came to give us life and to give us life more abundantly. He took our sin, died as our substitute, rose from the dead, and sent His Holy Spirit to help us every day. He gave us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and He raised us up to sit at His right hand, in both the sweet now and later. Jesus opened up a whole new extraordinary way of living beyond our comprehension. Talk about the good life! It is found in Christ Jesus now—by faith.
“He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:10) Maybe you’ve heard well-meaning people say, “God caused this [insert something horrid] to teach me a lesson.” What kind of holy God would He be if He went around doing wrong? Evil and its consequences come from a lot of different avenues because we live in a broken world. However, God doesn’t broker evil in our lives. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10 ). Run your circumstances through the grid of that verse. The thief is Satan. God is working in our lives to bring about life to the fullest—in, through, and even in spite of the destruction the enemy hurls against us. When evil happens, God can ultimately take what was meant for destruction and turn it for good. He doesn’t bring evil, but because of His power and redemptive work, He is not limited by it. He never wastes pain. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28). His goodness is not limited, except for where we limit Him in our lives.
Sometimes we’re unaware of all the good that is in our lives because we’re focusing on our smallness or we’re locked into the negative. Maybe we need to go out on a dark night, look up at the stars, and be reminded of God’s love. I heard it said somewhere, if you ever think there’s not much good happening in your life, consider what you would miss if everything good were suddenly gone tomorrow. Then start thanking God for each one of the things you would miss. God’s goodness and love extends to every area of our lives. God gives us a visual illustration of the vastness of His love: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him” . Look at the stars and the visual illustration of the depth and height of God’s love for us.
By God’s grace, good can be happening in us even when trouble is happening to us. God’s goodness is not limited by our feelings or our happenings. God can give us the help we need right where it’s needed. He doesn’t always intervene to change immediate circumstances, although sometimes He does change them. However, when everything in our lives is given over to Him, He will use even the bad for good. Recently a friend who was going through breast cancer told me how she's leaned into God like never before. She said that she’s experiencing Jesus in a whole new way. She was the most vibrant I’ve ever seen her & said, “For the first time in my life I’m seeing Jesus as my warrior. It seems at every turn that He has been making Himself known to me as the one who is fighting for me & being my champion in the battle.” I sat there amazed at the grace that was on her. She was powerfully experiencing God during the hardest time of her life. When we go through the fire, He's always right there with us to give us His strength, peace, & joy—to give us Himself.
If we have a true picture of God in our minds, it will expose the deception when we accuse Him of wrong motives & actions. When God created the world, He made it perfect with no evil. That was God’s design. When he looked at His work, He repeatedly said, “It is good.” He planned for us to live & enjoy paradise in perfect relationship with Him. Then the enemy deceived Eve into thinking maybe God wasn’t totally good, maybe there was something better, maybe He was keeping something good from her. Eve acted on that doubt & disobeyed God. Adam was close behind & willfully made the same choice. At that point, rebellion entered humanity, & Satan, the originator of evil, unleashed all manner of evil into this world. Jesus came to give us life to the fullest. However, He said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33 ). What we all wish He had said was, “If you trust Me all your troubles will be over.” Instead He told us that no one takes a pass on trouble in this broken world. Why? Because the whole world lies in the power of the devil and his mission is to steal, kill, and destroy. One day Jesus will not only deliver us from the penalty & the power of sin (which He’s already done), but eventually He will deliver us from the presence of sin. That stuck with me because there is a presence of sin all around us. However, a time is coming when Jesus will return, take His people to heaven, & make all things right. No more stress, anxiety, disappointment, pain, illness, or death. No more presence of evil . . . only all good, all the time. But until then the presence of evil is all around us.
When we don’t understand life, it helps to remember that the only one who has the words of eternal life is the same one who gives eternal life. The trouble we have now is temporary—it has an expiration date. We all get hit with the flying debris of a broken world. I’m convinced that God protects us far beyond our awareness of His intervention. He has angels who are dispatched to guard and deliver us (Psalm 91:11 ). His goodness shields us from so much every time we get in the car and drive down the interstate. However, there remains a nebulous trouble in this world that Jesus said would come to everyone. The psalmist got it right when he said, “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13 ). God’s will is for us to see His goodness in this life.
Thriving: Trusting god for life to the fullest.
Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The LORD works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.
He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel:
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.
But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,
and his righteousness with their children’s children—
with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.
The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.
Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.
Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.
Praise the LORD, all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the LORD, O my soul.” (Psalm 103)
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