Tag Archives: Psalm 116

Full to overflowing!

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And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.

(Eph 3.17&18)

Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.

I say to the Lord, “you are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”… Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

(Ps 16.1,2,5-11)

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

(Ps 23.5&6)

What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

(Ps 116.12-14)

Sometimes we ask if a person is a “glass half-full or half-empty” type, meaning to learn if they look on the positive or negative side of life.. but in one sense surely all those who believe in Jesus as Saviour must be neither of those things! We are those for whom our glass is continually full to overflowing, because we have been delivered from darkness into light, forgiven and cleansed, and set on the path to eternal glory – and all by the abundant goodness of God in Jesus. And absolutely nothing can ever separate us from Jesus again, no matter how grievous or inexplicable.

Our ‘salvation cup’ is completely full, because Jesus has done everything on our behalf and holds it out to us so that we might accept his priceless gift and come home to God our Father. There is no room in that cup for our good works, our piety, our bible knowledge and habits of devotion – Jesus’ perfection has filled it. All we are able to do is to lift the cup in grateful worship, and praise to the one who gives it to us, exalting his name and doing all in our power to honour and make him known!

Our ‘love cup’ is completely full, because God has chosen us to be his beloved children – chosen and saved, adopted and assured eternally of our place in his kingdom. While we live in a sin-sick and darkened world, we may meet with rejection by others, our relationships will be flawed, and death will come to wound our hearts. But, the love of God is greater than all other loves combined, and has no interruption, no corruption, nothing to diminish its power in our lives to nourish, sustain and transform.

How marvellous, how wonderful, to be the object of divine love; to be the recipient of grace and to know as my Father, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. How astonishing, to have personal communion with the immortal, invisible and only wise God, and to find as I approach the great I AM, that I am met not with the deserved devouring fire of judgement, but with the voice of love, the outstretched arms, and the eternally-patient, forgiving heart. And this is all through Jesus, my pioneer, my elder brother, my shepherd, my champion, my master and my friend.

Heavenly Father, author of the plan of salvation and creator of all that is, I praise and worship you today today; make me glad to overflowing so that guilt and shame are washed out, since there is no room for anything but the joy of being thus beloved, saved, secured and cherished. All through Jesus my Lord, your Son, Amen.

Since these things are true…

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The Lord is my strength and my defence; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

(Ex 15.2)

Truly I am your servant, Lord; I serve you just as my mother did; you have freed me from my chains. I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord.

(Ps 116.16&17)

Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol him, all you peoples. For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures for ever.

(Ps 117)

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God – or rather are known by God – how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?… It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

(Gal 4.8&9; 5.1)

I have recently been led to think a great deal about the great theme of Exodus which runs through our whole biblical story – of being led out (of slavery)… led through (the wilderness)… and led into(the promised inheritance). The folk at the wonderful Bible Project have released a video exploring this theme, and also the conversations which informed that video, and I cannot recommend them highly enough. 

The whole point of the Exodus narrative in its original context is that there was nothing that the people of Israel could do to make it happen – everything was God’s initiative, the Almighty power-at-work, and it was ultimately all so that every nation under the sun might be blessed in knowing and glorifying God, the great deliverer. You may recall that Jesus, during his conversation with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration is talking about his ‘exodus, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem'[Lk 9.31]. The image of divine love responding to the oppression of his children by the enemy of God, coming down in power to meet them in their need, and to do for them what they could not do for themselves, should ring so many bells in our minds as believers! 

Our slavery was not to some human power, but something much worse – sin and death – but our God is greater than these, and the death and resurrection of Jesus marked a once-for-all-time victory. The great oppressor no longer holds sway, and nor do the lesser oppressors which the enemy of our souls loves to use, rendering us inactive in God’s service, keeping us fearful, timid, or hopeless. The gospel is our deliverance from slavery, and we have already received the Spirit as guarantee of our inheritance which is to live hereafter in the near presence of God. We are called to live in the place of rest which is accepting God’s inexplicable (apart from grace) acceptance of us as his children.

Heavenly Father, Almighty and Everlasting God, I praise you today for your great lovingkindness and faithfulness. There is no end to your goodness, and you are utterly trustworthy. I am no longer a slave to sin; the power of death over me has been broken. Thank you that today I live in your love, and that your Spirit is within me to direct all that I do and say and think according to your will. 

Thank you that you have given, and are giving my soul rest – a spacious place of blessing. Let me dwell in that place and cease my anxious questings. You have won the victory for me, over all that would enslave, disable and discourage me – let me live in the reality of that triumphant rest for you, my Lord, have been and always are good to me.

Let me truly accept my own condition, neither wallowing despairingly nor deceiving myself into a false conceit. I am, as all believers are, a sinner who has fallen short; and a redeemed, born-again child of God. No more, no less.

I am no less a recipient of your grace than any other believer; I am no less susceptible to your power of transformation; I am the object of your persevering love and the apple of your eye. O Lord, lead me into the rest which is my inheritance as your child. Deliver me from vain striving to prove myself worthy of that adoption, from the pride which detests failure and short-comings, from the foolishness which expects more from myself than you, my Maker and Redeemer, expect. In the name of my mighty and marvellous Saviour, Jesus Christ your Son I pray, Amen.

That faith might not fail

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I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.. the Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the unwary; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you…. I trusted in the Lord when I said “I am greatly afflicted”.. What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of his people.

(Ps 116.1&2,5-7,10,12-14)

.. we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.. the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans..

(Rom 8.23&26)

.. ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms..

(Eph 1.15-20)

“How may I be praying for you?” – is one of the kindest questions we can be asking one another as God’s children and fellow pilgrims on this journey. How would you answer that one today? Although our various individual circumstances will vary enormously, each of us is walking by faith, and I believe that one of the greatest ways we can encourage one another is by praying for that faith to grow stronger, and not fade or fail. If faith grows weak, then our walk is imperilled, and we may stray from God’s path, or fall prey to sore temptations and injure ourselves and others. We can see that happening time and again in the story of God’s people down through history, as they stopped relying on God and took matters into their own hands.

But that story is also the tale of God’s redemption, deliverance and transformation of those same flawed human beings. Because of his loyal love and faithfulness to his own promises, we are offered salvation as a gift, not a reward – we are not earning anything, but are invited to set aside all claims to power, righteousness, strength or endurance, and to lean hard on God. In our weakness, He is strong. In Psalm 116, the word ‘unwary’ refers to a person who has a deep and childlike trust – they walk without being troubled because they are confident in their Father. Faith like this is possible because of who God is, and because in Jesus we are assured of our place in his family.

Faith to face a challenging reality does not mean screwing up one’s nerve, but turning one’s gaze upon Jesus every single day – a discipline, yes, and also the way that we keep going. To come before God in every situation is to trust him with every part of our lives – the psalmist simply cried out a statement of fact about his condition, but behind that lay the conviction that his situation mattered to God, to the Almighty, the Maker of the galaxies. This is trust, faith in action – and as we get to know him better, as Paul prays for the Ephesians, we will deepen our trust, becoming more childlike in simply presenting God with each day and hour and need, fully expecting that he is able to carry us through, to be at work in what is happening, and to keep us close to him through all things. And in Romans, Paul assures his hearers that when words fail us, even then we can be sure that God has heard and understood because the Spirit within us speaks.

Let us then be encouraged to pray for one another, for the God in whom we trust will not fail us, even though we may be more aware of our weakness and failures than anything else. Let us also pray for one another against the spirit of pride, or complacency which is perhaps more dangerous to faith, since it leads us to walk carelessly, presuming on our own wisdom and abilities. May God keep us from that danger, and keep us humble, childlike and trusting in the Father who is always listening, whose arms are always extended, and whose power is always being exercised on our behalf. Let us make this song our prayer for ourselves and one another, to his glory and our blessing!

When I fear my faith will fail, Christ will hold me fast;
When the tempter would prevail, He will hold me fast.
I could never keep my hold through life’s fearful path;
For my love is often cold; He must hold me fast.

He will hold me fast, He will hold me fast;
For my Saviour loves me so, He will hold me fast.

Those He saves are His delight, Christ will hold me fast;
Precious in his holy sight, He will hold me fast.
He’ll not let my soul be lost; His promises shall last;
Bought by Him at such a cost, He will hold me fast.

For my life He bled and died, Christ will hold me fast;
Justice has been satisfied; He will hold me fast.
Raised with Him to endless life, He will hold me fast
‘Till our faith is turned to sight, When He comes at last!

(AR Habershorn 1861-1918, and Keith & Kristen Getty)

Thank you letters…

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Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

(Phil.4.6&7)

I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live…Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you…How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people…I will sacrifice a thank-offering to you and call on the name of the Lord. 

(Ps 116.1,2,7,12-14,17)

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures for ever..It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man…I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation…Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord…This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it…The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine upon us. With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will give thanks; you are my God and I will exalt you. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures for ever.

(Ps 118.1,8,13&14,19,24,27-29)

Young children find the business of writing thank you letters a dreadful blot on a special day like Christmas, but as an adult, receiving written thanks from friends, and family after birthdays, or special occasions, I understand why we were trained in this discipline. We give the gift – our time, our money, our thoughtful present – and hope that it will be noticed, be acceptable, hope that we have been a blessing! And then the letter arrives, and we KNOW that we did a good thing, and can enjoy the pleasure that we gave all over again! The good things will not be wasted or undervalued.

Now, I am not suggesting that our eternal, all-knowing and mighty God is in need of our thanks in order to make him feel better. We can do nothing to change how God feels about us, the children for whom his son died. We can however glorify him and be blessed ourselves in so doing when we take time to explicitly recognise and thank him for the good things we have. Thanking God and enjoying his good gifts in his company – using them for the purpose he designed, and giving him all the credit for the results – are things we are commanded to do for our own good and as the only sensible response to his incredible generosity.

When I take time to recognise the miracles which go into providing each thing that appears on my plate at breakfast time, I find myself praising the God who ordained seasons, who gives the power of germination to seeds, who presides over the rain and sun and is Lord of creation – in all its glorious complexity and beauty.

When I take time to acknowledge the miracle which is my own continuing existence – I woke up today; I can breathe and walk, I can think and see; I have a secure place to live and a land where the rule of law keeps me safe – then I find myself praising the God who rules over all power and authority, and who has ordained already all the days of my life. I am reminded that I can trust in him, and in nothing else, since I cannot control any of these things.

When I take time to see what God is doing in my life and those around me – people who encourage and help me; daily opportunities to love and serve and witness; evidence of growing faith, strengthening love, earnest persevering obedience – then I find myself praising and leaning on the God who has promised never to leave or abandon his children, and also to bring to glorious completion the work he has begun in their lives.

Perhaps most significantly, when I take time to acknowledge the difference which Jesus Christ makes in my life – my Lord and Saviour, the one who created a new heart in me and who died that I might be free from guilt and the power of sin, that I might look forward to a life without death in a new earth and new heaven – then I find myself prostrate, flat out in worship of God who for sheer love, made me his child and called me home to his arms.

When my daily life consists in spoken and unspoken thank-you letters to God, then I will live humbly, obediently, trusting and at peace.. May God have mercy and stir up in me the habit of thankfulness.

 

 

Doing what comes…. naturally?

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May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen

(Hebrews 13.20&21)

How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will fulfil my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

(Psalm 116.12-14)

This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.

(Jeremiah 31.33)

Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men..For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And He died..that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again..if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

(2 Corinthians 5.11,14&15,17)

My parents made promises before God and their fellow christians when they brought me to be baptised as an infant, promises which bound them among other things to “teach the truths and duties of the Christian faith” to me, their child. I was blessed by their keeping of those promises, and grew up in a home where life revolved around the priorities of worship and service, primarily in their local congregation. It was entirely normal that the weekend should be dominated by the Saturday prayer meeting, and then two services on Sunday, usually with generous hospitality shown over a meal to visitors.

The sense of ‘duty’ extended beyond mere attendance, to personal devotion, professional integrity, sacrificial giving, opening their home and hearts to hundreds of people over the years, in addition to the hard work of parenting, discipline and patient forbearance with three children! They kept their promises, as far as they were able, and clearly demonstrated what Christian duty looked like.

That word ‘duty’ has come to bear a less than positive aspect, bringing with it a burden and a weariness which makes people avoid any sort of responsibility for fear they will be shackled to an unbearable weight! But is this how I should think as a Christian? Surely not!

My ‘duties’ as a follower of Jesus are an expression of my sense of indebtedness to him, recognising that his sacrificial love for me has placed me forever in his debt and that nothing I can do to serve and glorify him is too much to give! It is this which the psalmist puts so clearly in Ps116 above, as he boasts not in his ability to fulfill his vows, but in the greatness and worth of the God to whom those vows are made.

Those same ‘duties’ are also my privileged and appointed tasks, commanded by my King and Lord, who has the right to direct and spend my life according to his perfect pleasure and will. He has told me that these things are what he desires of me, that they are for my blessing, and will bring him glory – should I not be all eagerness to fulfill them?! What reasons could I give for rejecting his command, for denying myself the privilege of serving such a Master?

Our daily grief as believers is, that in spite of our best aspirations, and deepest sense of sweet obligation, we find it so hard to do our duty, to live according to the pattern which Christ commends to us. We are disappointed in ourselves and tempted to give up, to resent that God asks so much, instead of asking for his help.  Because the wonderful truth is that help is readily available, and we already have the basic provision that we need.

The bible makes it clear that as those who call on Jesus as ‘Lord’, we have been transformed, given a fresh start, made ‘new’ as Paul says in 2 Corinthians. Our nature has been renewed by the indwelling Spirit, and it is as though God had written his desires upon our hearts, so that our natural inclinations are now a mirror image of his own – although still badly clouded by the deceptive remnant of rebellion that haunts us!

That deep desire to honour God through fulfilling my duties as a believer – that is my new nature at work; those little victories over old bad habits and selfishness – that is my new nature, growing stronger under the influence of the Spirit; the increased ease with which I reach out in love to serve, and the joy which it brings – are the fruits of God’s gracious equipping of me with all that I need to do his will.

Instead of despairing over my failures, let me promptly bring them to God in repentance, and then set off in joy and renewed trust to try again, confident that his power and provision for me, the new nature he is nurturing in me, will bear good fruit. In doing my duties as a Christian, I express my debt to my Lord, and serve him with delight, exulting in the privilege of such a position and resting in his understanding love.

May God continue to give us daily the things we need, and strengthen his likeness in us, so that we may serve naturally and gladly, bringing glory to him and blessing to others.

Buried in the cause…

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How can I repay the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord, I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints..

I will sacrifice a thank-offering to you and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people..

(Psalm 116. 12-15,17&18) 

I recently heard this phrase used by a preacher who was referring to the Scottish athlete and missionary, Eric Liddell, a man who surrendered himself to the call of Christ to make disciples of all nations, and followed his parents to the mission field in China – where he would die in a Japanese interment camp at a relatively young age.

Liddell, and many others over the centuries, have been literally “buried” for the sake of the gospel, as they died in the lands to which they went – African deserts and Ecuadorean jungles – sometimes of disease, and other times deliberately martyred by those who opposed them. Some, like Jim Elliott and his colleagues, had their stories broadcast to the world, and God used their dying as a witness to the living, of how powerfully the gospel inspires and what an amazing gift it is we have to share. But so many others have died invisibly, silently, and only God knows their story. Does that make their lives and deaths of any less value?

The psalmist would certainly not say so! His words in Psalm 116 are such a tender declaration of God’s care and delight in every individual child, they always touch me deeply. But I think they also reassure me that my life is precious in God’s sight! So  many of the figures in the bible narrative are people who lived ‘small ‘lives, in a limited geographical area, without political or military power, and who were barely noticed while they lived, let alone died. And yet, time and again, our attention is drawn to them as the story of their lives is woven into God’s great plan for redemption. Consider Rahab, the woman of Jericho, whose courage protected the spies and who would be absorbed into the people of Israel after the destruction of her city. Or the young girl – whose name we do not even know – who sent her master Naaman to seek out the prophet Elisha, and receive healing. There is Mordecai, in exile and under continual threat from powerful opponents, who yet was used by God to protect and deliver all the Jews in captivity.

As our family prepare to leave the city for a new ministry, these examples of ‘small ‘ lives, faithfully lived in obedience to God are an encouragement to me.

It does not matter whether the world considers that we are burying ourselves in a small place and a small work. What is small about sharing the transforming power of Christ with the people for whom he died?! It is no matter to us whether we are called to 5,000 or 2,000; our worth does not depend on the number of people in our parish, but on the love which God has for us, his beloved children. We are called to obey: to pray for lives to be touched by the gospel: to make disciples, through teaching and walking alongside them: to walk closely in fellowship with God ourselves, so that our own lives might be a story by which the gospel is told. All of these are valid whether anyone is watching or not; and our worth does not even depend upon the fruit of our labours, but simply on God’s love for us.

Yes, it will be hard if we are called to work without seeing what God is doing, to sow the seed and trust that someone else will tend the crop and reap the harvest in God’s good time. But it is our calling simply to fulfill our vows, to obey, and to find our contentment in knowing that – however faltering the effort – our heart’s desire has been to say ‘ Yes Lord, I will.’ Our inspiration is the cross and our reward is his constant, loving presence.

Upon that cross of Jesus, mine eye at times can see

The very dying form of One who suffered there for me;

And from my smitten heart, with tears, two wonders I confess – 

The wonder of his glorious love, and my own worthlessness.

I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place;

I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of thy face:

Content to let the world go by, to know no gain nor loss – 

My sinful self my only shame, my glory all, the cross.

(from “Beneath the cross of Jesus”, E.C Clephane 1830-69)