Psalms 34 & 35

Happy Sunday! I am so blessed by the time change. I think this is the first time I’ve actually been glad for it. lol I love the long evenings and the time change always starts those. I went to bed at a decent hour as well and that helped! Lol I hope that you find the blessings in the time change as I did. It is amazing to me how when I’m in God’s word, I am so much more positive. I pray I remember that when I face those times where I just don’t feel like doing it.
The first Psalm today is about how God cares. This is a really uplifting subject to me. Often I feel like I don’t matter. I’ve felt like I was either an afterthought or on the outside a lot of my life. That isn’t a fun feeling. I still struggle with it now. I try not to take things personally when I am not included but it is hard to do that. The thing is that I’m never left out where God is concerned. He may put me through some pretty crazy things and sometimes it’s not even directly for my benefit but for someone else’s, but he always cares about how I feel. I am always in his close circle and won’t ever be left out if I do my part to be there.
This psalm actually piggy backs on what I wrote in the first part of this blog. We should bless the Lord, which means praise him, all the time no matter what is happening. That is a difficult thing to do in our humanity. Yet, if you’ve ever tried it, you know that praising the Lord can make things seem much better and lift your spirits. In the very beginning it says that his praise will always be in my mouth. I don’t do that very well a lot of the time. We need to be constantly telling the world what God IS doing for us, not bemoaning what he is not. We see that in verse two. When we focus on what God is NOT doing for us, we tend to give a bad picture of who he is. Next time I am worrying about what God is not doing in my life, I am going to think of something he is doing so that I can focus on that. Maybe then I will walk around praising him constantly. We also see in the next verse that we should praise him together. That is my favorite part of worship on Sunday morning, when we are all singing our hearts out for the Lord in our own way. I can just see him up there on his throne smiling and moving to it just like we would to the radio in our car. This is our main purpose in life, to praise God and bring him glory. How well have you been fulfilling your purpose?
I want to focus on one verse because it really speaks to me. Verse 4 says that the author went to the Lord. He didn’t sit around and whine, he didn’t wait for God to come find him, he went and found the Lord himself. How do we do that? We go where we know he is very present. We go to our Bible, to prayer or to church. Yes, I know God is everywhere, but if you are talking to him, its prayer, doesn’t matter where you are physically. The verse goes on to say that God heard him. God always hears us, even when we don’t get the answer we want and feel like he’s ignoring us. We don’t spend a lot of time in prayer for the most part. I have gotten back to a habit I started at Biola of talking to God whenever I am alone. Even if I’m walking around the house doing things, I talk to God. It has done amazing things for my attitude. I don’t always get answers I want, and sometimes he is chastising me for something but I have relationship with him and it lifts my heart. Now, the next part is the most important and it gave me an “A-HA!” moment. It doesn’t say God will destroy my enemies, or take away my troubles, or change what is going on around me. It says that “delivered me from all my fears.” Wow, that is amazing. We may not get an answer where things are all better outside of us. We may have to stay in a bad situation, deal with people who treat us badly, or do something we wouldn’t normally do. God doesn’t take away those things; he takes away our fear of them. We can trust him to heal our hearts and make them brave and strong to get us through the things that challenge us. So what are you asking God remove that you really should be asking him to strengthen you through? It goes on to say that if we fear God, making him Lord of our lives, we have nothing else to fear. God has it. Later in this psalm, we see David touch on the fact that the righteous have a lot of troubles. Being a follower of God does not make you immune to that in a physical sense, but if you let him, he can make it bearable inside.
What does David say the way to fear the Lord is? He puts it right out there in verse 13. Don’t speak evil or lie. Don’t talk negatively, gossip, yell, cuss, or anything else that is negative. That is the main impression we give to others. How we speak. For some people, that may be the only thing they ever see of you. That is your witness much of the time. I used to have a really bad habit of cussing. I picked it up because I hung out with a lot of people who thought it was part of expression. It is actually a lack of expression. It shows ignorance of vocabulary. The words are place holders because you can’t find a better word to express yourself. It is not expression, it is a lack thereof. I see kids at the park cussing and yelling and being mean to other children and I get concerned that my kids will begin that sort of behavior. I don’t think very highly of those other children and try to keep my kids away from them. I don’t know if they would care or not, but if someone felt that way about me, I wouldn’t like it. Yet it is due to the actions they choose for themselves. How do you look to other people? What does what is coming out of your mouth say about you?
Okay, on to Psalm 35. This is a prayer for help. The feeling of persecution brings the author to God for help. Have you ever felt like everyone was ganging up on you? Have you ever felt hat you couldn’t do anything without someone punishing you for it? Is there a time you’ve felt like nothing was going your way and everyone hated you? Or that following Jesus brought you nothing but ridicule and shame? When I became a Christian, a lot of my friends turned from me. My boyfriend, who I was supposed to be marrying when I graduated, rejected the changes in my life as well. It isn’t easy to feel like people are persecuting you. The author begins to complain about all of the bad things happening. This may seem to be contradictory to what I was saying before about being positive, but there is a difference here. The author is not lamenting to everyone around him. He is taking his tears to God. He is telling God all the sucky things going on in his life. God is the one we need to be telling because he is the only one that can really do anything about it.
The author pleads for God to help him. We see hope in the last sections saying that God has done it many times, and he will continue to do it for those who are faithful to God. He asks for trouble to those that are trying to harm him and that God would keep them from getting him. He totally expects it because in verse 9 we see him already thanking God for helping him. He has no doubt that God will come through. I wish I could have that attitude all the time. I tell myself that it is people I don’t trust, but God is in control so I need to not worry about what other people are doing, he will come through.
Our reading tomorrow is Deuteronomy 4-5 and Mark 14:53-72.