Astounding!

        Reading Psalm 106 this morning.  If this Psalm doesn't say it all....I'll eat your hat!  It recounts how, time and time again, God's people forgot His works, disobeyed Him, walked on His mercy.  And yet, every time, He returned to them at their first hint of repentance.
     Read it.  If you can't plug yourself into every verse, then you are a much better person than I .  I see my life throughout every verse in this Psalm.  A mind forgetful of what He's done .  A heart deceitful and cold.  A selfish desire to live my life for me rather than for Him.  And yet......
     Time after time after time, He turns His mighty head back toward me at the slightest evidence of  return to Him.  I would have stopped the senseless bouncing back and forth long ago......but not Him. He loves and wants us so much, He keeps thinking " This time will be different.  This time she will be steadfast.  She will get it right this time."
     And yet He already knows.  He knows what I will do.  He knows what my future holds, which makes it even more miraculous that He puts up with it.   Even knowing I will fail Him again, He still loves me enough to hang  in there with me.
     Read the Psalm.  And marvel, as I am this morning, and the amazing, penetrating, powerful love of our God for us.  Astounding!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In Case of Emergency

      Well, as I sit here full of drugs for bronchitis, I'm mellow enough to tackle the last part of James 1:19 regarding anger.  Of all the emotions we experience, this one can be the most damaging to us and those around us.  Anger, combined with the tongue James speaks of later, can destroy relationships, lives, jobs, government entities, even countries.  It is a powerful and vicious tool that is almost always used in the wrong hands.       We all remember the example of Jesus becoming angry at the temple.  Since we know Jesus did not sin, this demonstration was more about righting a wrong than an expression of anger.  We sometimes call this righteous anger.  I fear that we use this example as Christians to justify our anger outbursts.       As I write this I am thinking about the last time I was really angry.  I have been doing much better with this due to the hel...
Read more

When Silence Breaks Your Heart

Image
"How long, Lord, must I call for help but you do not listen?  Or cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you do not save?" Habakkuk 1:3 We've all been there. Prayers that bounce off the wall.  No answers when we cry out day after day, week after week, month after month.  We question the goodness of a God who seems silent when we, desperate for answers and solutions, beg Him with tears, moans, and sometimes anger.  Why????? Often, when we look back, months and sometimes years later, we see what The Plan was.  Sometimes we don't. But when we are actually going through the experience of petitioning our God for our needs and we feel unheard and unloved, it's not easy. If you are familiar with Lysa Terkeurst, she's faced a number of battles recently when she has cried out to God for answers.  She experienced a marriage crisis and breast cancer within the last two years.  But in her new book, "It's Not Supposed to Be This Way", Ly...
Read more

Who Will Pray?

"When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven."         - Nehemiah 1:4 My friend and I are planning a retreat.  There are a lot of things to do to put a retreat together, and as with any project there are a lot of people 'behind the scenes' that contribute to the project.  I met with one of those people this week, and I think I got my "retreat experience" when having that 15 minute conversation. One of the things that happens before the retreat is a lot of prayer.  We have one prayer warrior we count on for a lot of this.  I met with her to give her the names to pray for, people who have registered for the retreat so far.  This lady is 86 years old.  She has not had an easy life.  She has a child to cancer, has watched other children suffer with it, and faced many other difficulties and trials along the way.  Her body does no...
Read more