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Only you, Lord, are a mighty rock! Don’t refuse to help me when I pray. If you don’t answer me, I will soon be dead. Psalm 28:1 (CEV)
Government tells us that safety and prosperity will come from new programs and equality.
Religion tells us that safety and prosperity will come from following certain dogmas and rules.
Education tells us that safety and prosperity will come from new books, higher learning and giving everyone an equal chance.
Society tells us safety and prosperity will come from acceptance and loving relationships.
But governments come and go and things haven’t gotten much better; religion has failed to give us any assurance that life is better by following those rules; education hasn’t solved any major issues of late and society seems on the brink of collapsing within itself.
So what can we hang our hat on every night? What assurance do we have that there is something better ahead? What comfort can we have when the bills are more than the money, our health is failing and the relationship we are in is unsatisfying on the good days and unbearable on the bad days?
A rock climber will tell you that a good foothold in the sheerest of cliffs gives you all the confidence in the world to move on. I’m not a rock climber, but I know about sheer cliffs. I know about getting into a place where there seems to be no way out and having one thing you can count on makes all the difference in the world.
I’m reminded of an old joke I heard years ago. A motorcyclist was driving through the mountains. He navigated one curve after another with no problem. Then the unthinkable happened. He took one curve too fast and ended up going over a sheer 500 foot cliff.
Halfway down he managed to grab a scraggly pine tree growing out of the rock. Suspended 250 feet from the rocky valley below, he screamed for help.
“Is there anybody up there to help me? He screamed at the top of his lungs.
“I’m here,” he finally hears a voice coming from nowhere.
“Well, who are you and can you help me?”
“I’m God, and of course I can help you.”
A bit confused he yells, “Good, can you get me out of here?”
The voice answers back, “Sure, let go of the tree.”
After a moment’s hesitation the man screams again, “Is there anyone else up there that can help me?”
Too often we fail to trust God completely. We acknowledge him as creator God, as controller of the universe, but when life seems impossible we turn to our own resources instead of complete trust in God.
Are you clinging to a tree hoping for some magical rescue? Trust God for who he is and let go of the tree!
PRAYER: Father I’m facing obstacles in my life I neither understand nor have an answer to. I’ve tried everything I know of to get out of this predicament. Now I turn to you and ask you to help me trust you with my entire life. Amen.
Test me, Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind; Psalm 26:2 (NIV)
When we aren’t feeling right the proper thing to do may be to go to the doctor. We sit in the exam room and he checks our ‘vitals’ and may do a surface examination, checking our posture, ears, nose, throat, reflexes and the like. We’ll be asked about symptoms and changes in energy and bodily functions.
If no problem is detected the doctor will order tests, like blood work or perhaps an x-ray or CT scan. Until the problem is discovered a good doctor will, in a sense peel away at surface issues until he gets to the root of the problem. Until he can do that, a solution can’t be found and treatment won’t be able to happen.
Once the issue is diagnosed a treatment will be prescribed which will solve whatever our problem is. If you want to feel better, you will follow the doctor’s advice, take your medication and allow your body to heal.
What’s true in the physical realm is also true in the realm of our emotional and spiritual health. Sometimes when people are feeling poorly physically they will try to ‘heal’ themselves by asking friends what they think, or going onto the internet. Sometimes this can lead to deeper more serious problems or simply treat the symptoms without getting to the real cause. The best thing to do when you are feeling physically sick is to go to the doctor because the doctor is trained to know where and how to look for the problem.
When you are struggling emotionally or spiritually the best place to go is to your Heavenly Father. Unlike the doctor who makes an educated guess about your condition, your Heavenly Father made you. He knows everything about you. He watched your hands, your feet, and your personality form while you were still in the womb. He knows every fear you’ve ever had, every mistake you’ve ever made, every thought, word or deed you’ve ever done. He knows the things everyone sees on the outside, but he also sees the most secret, intimate, hidden things in your soul.
The Psalmist asks God to examine him. He uses three words to describe that examination: ‘Test me, try me, examine me’. Those three words describe an intense, thorough examination deep inside your soul. Those kinds of examinations are scary whether they be physical or spiritual/emotional because they may reveal some things we don’t want to know about ourselves. But in order to be healthy we need to look into every part of our lives and deal with the issues we find. Otherwise we are only treating symptoms. When God examines us it may be painful, like purifying gold needs intense heat, so our lives must go through some fire to purify and heal our inner wounds.
The good news is we don’t need to fear what God finds and what he shows us about ourselves. God doesn’t examine us to find fault, he examines us to find areas where we can grow stronger. He doesn’t show us our faults to shame us, he shows them to us so we know what to work on to be better. Don’t be afraid to do some self examination of your heart. Ask the maker to look deep within your soul and reveal areas that he can help change to make you better. It’s the best medicine you’ll ever take.
PRAYER: Father, I’m afraid to look at myself too deeply. But I know I must in order to be healthy. Like the psalmist, I ask that you would go with me as I travel deep inside myself. Show me where I need to change and empower me with your Holy Spirit to make those changes. I’m done treating symptoms; I want to be spiritually and emotionally healthy. Amen.
My problems go from bad to worse. Oh, save me from them all! Psalm 25:17 (NLT)
The great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, writes, “When the darkest hour of the night arrives we may expect the dawn; when the sea is at its lowest ebb the tide must surely turn; and when our troubles are enlarged to the greatest degree, then we may hopefully pray, O bring thou me out of my distresses.”
There are times in our lives when it seems our trouble goes from bad to worse with no relief in sight. It might be something relatively simple like a day in which everything seems to go wrong or something major that will change your life forever and threatens your faith and your ability to go on.
The struggles we endure can come from the hands of others, those intent on getting what they want at any cost without regard to the needs and emotional state of others. Their attacks seem relentless. The wounds they inflict may be unseen by men, but cause you to die internally one blow at a time.
Hard as it is to take the abuse of others the abuse of our own heart is the most destructive. The self-inflicted wounds of an unforgiving spirit entangle us. We won’t forgive them. Not after what they did. They won’t control us anymore. While our abuser may not control us physically anymore, our refusal to forgive keeps us in chains.
Another enemy of the heart may be more dastardly than the refusal to forgive others is the refusal to forgive ourselves. Isn’t it true that many of the things that keep us awake at night are those things that we’ve done to ourselves? The financial choices we knew were a risk but took them anyway and now the house is in foreclosure? The affair that you want so desperately to hold on to but know you need to end? The secret sin you harbor, but live in fear of being found out?
You may not have any control over the attacks of others. You can free yourselves of the shackles of guilt and shame. You can forgive your attacker and be released from that bondage. That forgiveness is for your sake, not theirs. It frees you from the shackles; it doesn’t free them from the responsibility for their actions.
You can be free of the problems that are keeping you down. You can’t do it alone. It will take time and hard work. But the rewards are worth the battle. The Psalmist knew where his help came from. He knew that with the help of his Heavenly Father he would once again see the light of dawn on the horizon.
We have that same hope. Your struggle may be emotional or physical. It may be self-inflicted or the cruel actions of others. Whatever is keeping you in bondage can be destroyed through Jesus Christ, with the help of the Holy Spirit. Your troubles may seem to be going from bad to worse with no hope on the horizon, but there is hope through faith in a loving Father.
PRAYER: Father God, I feel like my problems are too overwhelming for me to go on. I struggle to forgive others and myself for things that I now suffer the consequences for. I ask that you free me from these chains. Empower me with your Spirit to live free. Help me to see the dawn in the midst of my present darkness. Amen.
My God, I trust you. Do not let me be disgraced; do not let my enemies laugh at me. Psalm 25:2
People let us down.
That’s not by any means an earth-shattering statement. Sometimes they let us down unintentionally. They have every intention of fulfilling their promise but are unable to do so because of some unexpected circumstance.
Other times they are unable to fulfill their promise because they underestimated their ability to carry out the work they said they would do.
Sometimes, they just forget the obligation they made to you.
And, there are those who, much as we hate to admit it, make a promise that they had no intention of keeping. They quite simply intended on deceiving you.
When promises are broken they cause wounds. The wounds broken promises cause are directly proportional to the importance of the thing promised to us. As an adult, the broken promise of a friend to meet us for coffee is relatively small and easily handled. The broken promise of a parent to be at a child’s ball game may seem small to the parent, but is very painful to the child.
The worst part about a broken promise is the destruction of trust. You trusted your spouse to stay true to the vows they spoke. Now you find out they’ve been cheating on you and you can never trust them again. Your boss promised you the promotion but filled the position from outside, and now your confidence in your job (and yourself) has been dashed. Your parents promised you a family heirloom when they died and you discover they’ve given it to someone else.
Broken trust wounds the soul. Broken trust makes you feel like a fool. Broken trust makes you feel like you are the object of ridicule to all those around you.
“You should have known better.” they say.
“Don’t know why you didn’t see that coming.”
“What did you expect?”
The arrows hit home. They lodge deep in the soul. As a child you may think, I can never trust my mom and dad. God promised me things too. If my parents don’t keep their promises, God won’t keep his either.
As an adult you resolve that you will never be hurt again. You will never take the chance on love. You will never let anyone control you to that extent again. You will never allow yourself to feel this pain.
It’s with this in mind that David pens the words of Psalm 25. David knew about broken promises. David knew the hearts of men could not be trusted. His prayer to his God is that he would not be let down, not embarrassed, not disgraced or laughed at or ridiculed for his faith in a God who was unseen and at times unpredictable.
We serve a God we can trust. Unlike humans, there is never a promise he was unable to keep. Sometimes we need to look back to see how he fulfilled his promises. Sometimes he fulfills them in ways we don’t expect. But you can trust him. He is willing and able to do just as he said he’d do…in his way…in his time. You can count on it. He promised.
PRAYER: Father there have been many times I’ve broken promises to others. I confess sometimes those promises were broken intentionally. Other times I was unable to fulfill my obligation. I thank you for never, ever letting us down. Thank you that I can trust you to do just as you say. Amen.
The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Jonah 1:1-2
I’ve heard the story of ‘Jonah and the Whale’ retold hundreds of times in Sunday School,VacationBibleSchool, Sunday sermons and even a few theology classes. I know all about the typology of Jonahs three days in the belly of a fish and Jesus’ three days in the tomb.
I know the lesson about not running from God, about the faith Jonah had and how ungrateful he was. I know the story about the faithfulness and forgiveness of God as evidenced by his holding back the judgment promised because of the repentance of the city ofNineveh.
Yet there is another part of this story that escaped me until recently. The Biblical record tells us little about Jonah’s background other than the fact that he was a prophet and that he chose to run from God rather that go where God sent him.
Jonah was most likely a good prophet. His ability to preach the word of God is evidenced by the fact that his message brought a city of 120,000 people to their knees, literally. But Jonah was also a proud and stubborn man. When questioned on the boat about whom he was he proudly testified to his heritage (“I am a Hebrew”) and his theology (“I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Jonah 1:9).
His stubbornness is evidenced by the fact that he refused to follow the leading of the very God he professed to worship and then became angry when God relented of his judgment over repentantNineveh.
Stubbornness and pride are two things God can not honor in a ministry, and all of us, regardless of our walk in life are ministers in some way to the Father. We can be successful, but we will never experience the full measure of God’s blessing if we are governed by pride and stubbornness.
Nineveh can stand for anything that goes against our cultural heritage and our doctrinal/theological distinctives. Ninevehwasn’t the squeaky clean, suburban ministry. It was the little rural church made up of people who were content to stay the way they are. It was the inner city ministry with little money and large problems. It was no place for someone who rigidly stuck to their doctrine.
Nineveh didn’t need more religion, they needed relationship and Jonah was unwilling to give it to them. The story of Jonah is a story of grace. God asked Jonah to show grace to a people he disagreed with culturally, religiously and socially and Jonah refused. His story begs an answer from each of us. If we believe we are called to be ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ (and Matthew 28 gives us that charge) are we willing to passionately pursue those who are different than us in order to show them the forgiveness, mercy and love of Jesus Christ? Jonah wasn’t called to preach his own opinions; he was called to turn people towards the God of heaven, a God who passionately desires to bring ALL people to himself. If your Father calls you to preach to a group of people you dislike, are you willing to go in love?
PRAYER: Father, the message of Jonah is renewed in my heart today. I confess to you that I’ve been close-minded in ministry because of my own standards and doctrine. Open my heart and my eyes to those to whom I’ve been withholding your word by my deeds and attitudes. Amen.
Mike Fisk & Built with Grace 