The older I get the more I love the Psalms.  Most people do not go to the Book of Psalms to be taught, but it is one of the greatest teaching books in the Bible.  This is why; whereas most of the Bible instructs your mind in how you think about God and yourself, the book of Psalms teaches your heart.  It teaches you how to feel, how to lament circumstances, how to mourn sin, but most importantly, how amidst all things to have love, joy, and trust in the LORD.
In 2 Timothy 1:6 as Paul is readying himself to be matyred, his opening exhortation to his disciple and partner in ministry Timothy is to fan into flame the gift of faith.  Our passion for the Lord is a heart matter.  1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says it this way – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  Finally Proverbs 4:20-23 tells us “My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.  Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart.  For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh.  Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”

So today, I want to share some of the Psalms that I have kept within my own heart that have been a great help to me.

When I have felt far from the Lord because I have allowed something else in the world to become more important than God, or when I feel like my world has fallen apart and just need a reminder that God is always with me, and will finish the work He began in me, I’ll go to Psalm 73:21-26 – “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.  Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.  You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.  Whom have I in heaven but you?  And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.  My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”

When I need to be reminded that true joy is only found in Jesus, that He is my portion, I’ll go to Psalm 16:5-11 – “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.  The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.  I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.  Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.  For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.  You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  In the presence of God, there is a fullness of joy.  Yes, and Amen.  I could preach that to my soul all day – a fullness of joy is found in Christ alone.  If you want to be happy, pursue Jesus.  It’s good to have a job, it’s good to have a spouse, it’s good to serve, but do all those things intentionally pursuing Jesus through them.  Work hard at your job for the Lord not for your boss.  Love your spouse sacrificially, to model Christ to them and encourage their growth in the LORD.  Serve others, as Jesus served, to know more of your Savior and the love He has for the lost and needy.  Sorry, that all just came out… back to the Psalms 🙂

When sorrow overwhelms me, when it feels like the darkness will not lift, and the temptation of depression would have me immobalized, I run to Psalm 42:1-5 –  “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and appear before God?  My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul:  how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”  There have been many days I have felt this way – where I asked my own soul as the Psalmist did – “why are you cast down”?  Hope in God.  God, willingly gave Himself up for us by dying on a cross – His love is immeasurable for us who hope in Him. 

When I am caught in sin and broken before God, I go to Psalm 51:1-12 and pray along with the Psalmist – “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.  Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.  Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.  Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.  Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.”

On this side of the cross, I know that that prayer has been met fully in Jesus.  My sin became His sin.  His righteousness became my righteousness.  I still need a right spirit to be renewed within me as much as the Psalmist.  I still long for the joy of the salvation of God, and to be upheld in my faith by a willing spirit.  That is the grace and mercy of God to have that, and it is right to pray and ask for it. 

I could go on, there are many other passages from the Psalms that encourage me to know that God is not distant from our emotions and struggles, but is there with us.  Reading the Psalms is a good start – it is encouraging and refreshing to our souls, but my exhortation would be to hide these passages in your heart.  You may not always have a Bible with you, but if you have memorized these passages, it will be a great help to you during times of trouble, and in everday life to have your heart tuned to the love of God for us in Christ Jesus. 

Grace and Peace,

Adam

If there is a constant in the fallen world we live in, it is that we all experience disappointment and loss.  In 1 Peter 3:3-7, we are told that we will encounter trials and that for us as believers, the good goal of those trials are to push us closer to Jesus in faith that He is our Treasure and He is our inheritance now and in eternity.  1 Peter 3:3-7 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.“ (Bolded by me for emphasis)

Why do things happen the way they do?  I don’t know.  I do know that when we encounter times of suffering, trouble, disappointment, etc. there are two ways our heart can go.  The first is to pursue comfort in the world.  I would be lying to you if I said I never tried that myself.  The lie is that the sin and the world can comfort us, when it was sin and the world that brought us the suffering, trouble, disappointment, etc. to begin with.  Inevitably, God in His mercy and grace will reach us, reminding us that food, money, sex, and anything else will never be a subsitute for our Heavenly Father.  He is our portion.  He is where true lasting joy is found.  Everything else is a mere shadow meaning to point us to Him.  That is the second place where our heart can go during trials, is to God.  This is where healing and refreshment can begin as we strengthen our faith and trust in Him.  

God gives us a picture of what it means to pursue Jesus admidst loss.  We all have limited time, limited resources, and limited energy/emotions in life.  Everytime we experience loss whether of our own will or not, there is an opportunity to put more of ourselves with Christ.  In Philippians 3:7-16 Paul gives himself as an example – “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.” (Bolded by me for emphasis)

My own salvation was marked by loss.  For me, it was the loss of a relationship that pushed me towards Jesus.  I had placed my whole identity in a person and the future I had planned in my head, and the most loving thing God could do was take that away.  Painful, yes.  But the surpassing worth of Christ is far greater than any loss.  He is my inheritance for eternity.  Where would I be if God had not done that?  I don’t really want to know.  I know the sin that is still being put to death in me, and if there was no light of the knowledge of Jesus Christ pushing that back, I would not be someone you would want to know or be around.  That I can say with confidence.  God made space to grow me closer to Him.  I needed that to grow.  In time God would show me that unless someone I was with was pointing me to Him, pressing me closer to Him – no matter how good everything else was, they were not truly loving me, nor were they someone I should covenant myself with.  A tough lesson, but good.  One of the most important lessons as a Christian is to forget what lies behind and press forward.  Easier said than done, and this does not mean that we should not mourn our losses – we should, there is a time for that.  Forgetting and pressing forward means trusting that God has a plan for each of us, a good plan, and He is our inheritance.  We labor now through various trials so that we get more of Him, and more of Him is more peace and joy for us, because our joy is not found in our circumstance, but in Christ.  He is with us and for us, every moment of every day.  He demonstrated His love for us by dying for us, dying for the mockers who spat on Him as He went to the cross.  Jesus is our portion.  If you’re going through a time of loss, suffering or trials, my exhortation is not to ignore your emotions, but to take them to the LORD.  He loves you and is for you.  

Grace and Peace,
Adam 

It has surprised me over the years how many of my questions of God are answered in the first few chapters of Genesis.  We live in a time where we are pulled in a thousand different directions at once, it can be easy to lose sight of things, to get off course with our lives.  Such was the case for me personally recently, and I hope my sharing will be an encouragement for all of you.  The question I was going to God with, which had been weighing on me for some time, was “who am I?”.  There are so many ways I could label myself – son, brother, friend, corporate finance worker, teacher of God’s Word, foodie, dog-lover, wanna-be-fisherman, evangelist, gym/health conscious, and on and on I could go.  Each of these labels represents time and outside forces/desires that press on me from time to time to conform me to be that thing.  Ultimately, any of those things, even good things like going to the gym are empty and easily replaced by the next thing to come along in a day.  It’s exhausting.  It’s life-draining.  It’s soul-killing.

So I spent some time last night reading through Genesis, asking the question – “who am I?” to God.  Am I the sum total of my relationships?  If so, that would be sad because I have failed those around me many times, and they have failed me.  Am I the work that I do?  It certainly reflects on what I see is important, which again is sad, because as a sinner often my “work” has resulted in pain and suffering.  Am I the love I have for those around me?  Certainly this has a more pleasant taste to consider only the best of me, but it would fall short in reality, because I know it does not encompass my whole person.  No, none of these answers would do, because I was asking a question I could not answer.  If you want to know the meaning of a painting, and you have the means, you wouldn’t ask a random observer, you would ask the painter.  If I want to know who I am, I had to find the answer from my Creator.
Genesis 1:26-27 – “God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

God gave the answer simply – I am an image bearer of God.  You are too.  You are not the work you do, you are not your last relationship, you are an image bearer of God.  He has molded you, formed you through life’s good times and bad, such that you might bear the image of God more brightly to the world.  The rest of the world will pull on you, push you down, and claim rights over you, but their voice does not matter because the Truth is already known by you – you are God’s, you were made in His image to reveal the light of His glory into a dark and dying world.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 11:29-30 – “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  We were not meant to be defined by anyone or anything apart from our identity from God.  If your soul needs rest, find it in who Jesus says you are in Him.  You are saved by grace alone – there is no “work” you need do, save believe that Jesus has done all the “work” that needed to be done on the cross in your place.  John 6:28-29 – ” they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” You don’t even have to try to muster up faith on your own, Jesus gives us the faith to believe.  Ephesians 2:8-9 – “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

We have one label, one identity – and that is that we are image bearers of God.  It is who we were created to be.  We are conformed into the image of God by God Himself, the Holy Spirit in us, more and more as we see and savor God from the Bible.  Everything else we do in life must flow out from that identity, or it will be an idol – separating us from God seeking to own you.  Everyone around you who helps remind you of the gospel and your identity in Jesus is a friend and a help.  Everyone else is a mission field – an object of God’s love to call people away from darkness and into light.  We are all susceptible to allowing the world in too much where we lose sight of who we are in Jesus, it is necessary and good to daily surround ourselves with God’s people to remind us of the Truth.  Hebrews 10:23-25 – “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” 

My hope is that this will lift burdens off from you as it has me.  We don’t have to do 100 things today, we just have to do one – be an image bearer for Jesus.  We don’t have to make 100 people happy – we just have to be who we were called to be by Jesus.   Everything else will flow from that.  The only “good” that will come in my life will be what comes from Jesus in me, more of Him and less of me is a good thing.  He must increase and we must decrease for our good and joy.

Grace and Peace,

Adam