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Psalm 8:1, 19:1, 29:1,2 O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth! You have set Your glory above the heavens. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hand. Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness.  I have noticed many times the lack of true awe of the Lord when we are praising and worshiping Him. We sing the same songs. We sing the Gloria Patri. But do we really mean what we are saying? Do we really know the words we are speaking or are we simply singing by rote, saying routinely the Lord's prayer without really understanding what those words mean? Do we really mean it when we ask for His will to be done?
God's word tells us that even the stones will cry out if we don't offer praise. Psalms tells us that that He has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants. He inhabits our praises. I sometimes wonder what kind of residence He is inhabiting. Do we offer Him mansions of praise or hovels? Our songs of praise are the habitation we offer Him. Our prayers are filled with the true feelings of our hearts. God, the Father has offered us mansions in heaven. He has offered us streets of gold and seeing the Son face to face. We cannot begin to comprehend what He holds in store for us. We can, however, offer Him praise worthy of Who He is. "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name". Set your spirit free to worship Him. Let your praises soar high into the heavens to sail on the winds like the wings of the eagle. If you are uncomfortable in public settings, the shower or the car during travel time suit the Lord just as well. He loves to hear your praise!
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Proverbs 3:5, Jer 29:11 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Over the last few months, I have been dealing with some personal challenges and frustrations. I have felt angry with the Lord and then wondered where He went. I have felt deserted and very lonely. I felt as if He has been far from me.
Yet when I am really honest with myself, I find that the truthful reason I am angry is because I didn't get my own way. Things didn't go the way I thought they should. I didn't see answers to prayer happening the way I wanted. While I should feel joy at seeing answers, I sulked because God didn't follow my plan. It all came down to the fact that I was only trusting Him when things went my way. I wasn't putting my trust in the One that holds my eternity in His hands. Trust for me is a very difficult process. I have found it easier to not trust than to become vulnerable to others or even to the Lord. This is one of the things the Lord is working on in my life. Learning to trust in the Lord with all your heart means to submit to His will. It means to believe what the scripture tells us. It means that when we feel led to step out of our comfort zone, we truly believe that we don't step out alone. He has promised to never leave us nor forsake us. The enemy will try to tell us that God doesn't love us because of the things that happen in our lives, but true faith means that we tell the enemy to take a long walk off a short pier. It means we trust the Lord even in the valley. It means that after the mountain top experience, when we face the journey back to the valley, we still trust His ways. There will always be a valley after the mountain top. When we deal with that journey, we grow in trust and we grow stronger in faith. The one thing to remember in the journey is that God never moves. We do. He loves us enough to keep calling us back to fellowship with Him. Deuteronomy 4:9 But if from there you will seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and all your soul. Psalms 46:10 Be still and know that I am God Psalms 45:10 Listen O daughter, consider and give ear. Be still before the Lord your God and listen for His voice. Let your petitions be known then still your heart for His guidance. He knows your heart. Now is the time to learn His. Psalms 103:7 He made His ways known to Moses, His deeds to the people of Israel.  Moses took the time to get to know the God of Israel, Who He is and why He did the things He did. Moses wanted to know Who he was following. He wanted an intimate relationship with the creator of the universe.
Until we become intimately familiar with our Savior, we will always spend too much time questioning and not enough time listening. We tend to search all the latest books, read this theologian or that one to find our way to a closer relation with Jesus. Here is an old theory for getting up close and personal with our Lord and Savior. Read His love letters, all 66 of them. Search for His personality, His goals and His mission. Our goals will become so much clearer. He doesn't ask us to study under some great learned scholar, He asks us to sit at His feet and learn of Him. I heard a dialogue one time. The actor said, "The stripes on my shoulder mean I don't have to explain. I just expect you to trust that I know what I am doing and obey my orders." When I heard that, I lost track of the movie and started thinking about the stripes on the back of our Savior. He, too, expects us to trust His plan for us and follow Him. He gave us the outline for our future. Sometimes it isn't all that clear but we have to trust our Leader to lead us to victory. |
AuthorPlease join us as we grow in Christ through our weekly devotions, written by Catherine Donaldson 
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June 2021
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