Hear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.
Guard my life, for I am devoted to you.
You are my God; save your servant who trusts in you. (Psalm 86:1-2)
The Cross in view and many are still waiting. The Psalmist did not have the Cross in view. He pleaded and prayed and praised and cried out for God to save him. You have the Cross in view and yet many still wait.
For God to save them.
The Cross is in view.
Grace and peace to you.
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When I am afraid, I will trust in you.
In God, whose words I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal man do to me? (Psalm 56:3-4)
Make me confront my own cross?
Cry out for the love of God to flow through me?
Both can be equally terrifying to us. Jesus knew what lie ahead and yet set His face like flint towards Calvary. When we consider what His sacrifice bought, can we do anything less?
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53:11)
Grace and peace to you.
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Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried, “tear it down to its foundations!” (Psalm 137:7)
In the midst of Passion week, as we walk the final steps with our Lord feeling the weight of the Cross atop our shoulders and sensing the increasing tension, the world mocks what we purport to stand for. They shop for candy, baskets, and spring clothes without a sense of the sacrifice that the holiest of days represents and we are to blame. We often don’t live out what we say we believe.
If your faith is not being actively lived, today is the day to meditate on why. We should walk quietly in whatever circumstance God brings us, showing our faith as guiding our purpose. The absence of protest on our part will both warn and attract.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53:7)
Grace and peace to you.
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The Psalmist issues a plea from self interest meant to intrigue God:
Turn, O Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love.
No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave? (Psalm 6:4-5)
Modern ears hear this differently than the contemporaries of the psalmist. To them, death was the opposite of life. They did not have the history of the resurrection to guide their thinking. Christians cannot claim this ignorance however. We know that his life is not all there is.
The reality of the Cross looms closer than ever. Though we don’t fear the grave, we should not also fall into the trap of treating salvation as an insurance policy. It is not just for the life beyond, it is for the hear and now. Life includes Jesus now and the Kingdom of Heaven is now. Find your purpose and fulfill it, lest you reach the final moments and realize that the Lord had called you to accomplish so much more.
Grace and peace to you.
image by Mark Landells
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” (Psalm 14:1a)
The fool says in his heart, “Jesus is my savior but I am Lord of my life.”
Really? Can you drink from the cup?
Grace and peace to you.
image by Kaptain Kobold
Though we pride ourselves as otherwise, our perspective is limited. A few moments of darkness can cause despair and test our faith. To see the Lord hanging upon the cross was certainly one of those moments. To see Jesus release His final breath in the gloom must have sent minds racing. The body releases adrenalin to fuel our escape from fear and our heart races. The mind must quickly rehearse the truths that it has acquired to direct the next critical move.
Readers of the Old Testament have the advantage of seeing over and over how God reminds His people of all of the bondage that he has freed them from throughout history. Faced with silence, the psalmist remembers:
Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
Has his promise failed for all time?
Has God forgotten to be merciful? Has he in anger withheld his compassion? (Psalm 77:7-9)
We know these feelings, the despair from thinking that our unworthiness has overwhelmed God’s grace. In these moments we need to remember.
Then I thought, “To this I will appeal: the years of the right hand of the Most High.”
I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes I will remember your miracles of long ago.
I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.
Your ways, O God, are holy. (vv 10-13a)
God does not change.
Grace and peace to you.
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We plead with God for mercy and security, ratcheting up the intensity when we feel that we might be treading on especially dangerous ground. When the voices were raised to free Barabbas, there is no doubt for whom we would have been calling. Like the psalmist in Psalm 140, we see ourselves clearly on one side:
Rescue me, O Lord, from evil men; protect me from men of violence,
who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war every day. (vv 1-2)
Does the mirror tell a different story? The Cross offers salvation but it also acts like a mirror, requiring us to look deeply and to realize that we are the people of evil, the people who caused the Lord to be crucified. The observation of Lent is intended to focus our hearts on not only the glory of the resurrection but on the brokenness that lies within that made the Cross necessary. Perhaps our plea should be “Lord, rescue us from ourselves.”
Grace and peace to you.
image by Mance
In that day you will no longer ask me anything. I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.
“Though I have been speaking figuratively, a time is coming when I will no longer use this kind of language but will tell you plainly about my Father. In that day you will ask in my name. I am not saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. (Jn 16:23–27)
In the Christian life, spiritual growth proceeds in stages. We begin as infants overjoyed with our salvation and new birth and proceed into an adolescent, young adult stage that can last for some time as we assimilate what it means to live as new creations in the world. We learn, we test, we fail, and we rise again the challenge. The final stage is a maturity in which our fellowship with Jesus, the Spirit, and the Father are settled and our knowledge and wisdom can benefit the younger folks who are transitioning through their own stages.
Our life of prayer has similar stages. In our initial immaturity we learn to know the Father with our hesitant and largely self-focused petitions. Our growth phase is the period in which we learn to trust the Spirit to guide our prayer and our ability to intercede on behalf of others. The trust we gain is rooted in our understanding of the Kingdom in which we dwell and our role within it, allowing us to look away from ourselves and toward others. Finally, in our maturity our center is found in the will of God and the goals of the Kingdom. We trust our place in it, we understand the Kingdom to some extent, and we no longer need to worry about our daily needs.
As Murray says, “what our prayer avails, depends upon what we are and what our life is. It is living in the Name of Christ that is the secret of praying in the Name of Christ; living in the Spirit that fits for praying in the Spirit. It is abiding in Christ that give the right and power to ask what we will : the extent of the abiding is the exact measure of the power in prayer.”
We all know the feeling, even if we are unable to bring forth the words:
Why have you rejected us forever, O God?
Why does your anger smolder against the sheep in your pasture? (Psalm 74:1)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent. (Psalm 22:1-2)
From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” –which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:45-46)
God has not turned his back on you, it can only be that in some way, you have turned your back to Him.
Grace and peace to you.
image Sean Dreilinger
In one week we will be in the first days of Passion week. It will a time of mixed emotions; the joy of Easter is tempered and sometimes shadowed by the horror of the extraordinary cost of the Cross. The one innocent man to have walked the face of the earth must be sacrificed that we might live. Jesus the divine reveals God to us in human form and yet, we still struggle to grasp the necessity of the cross. We work to make the juxtaposition of mercy and sacrifice understood by our hearts but lack the words.
The psalmist knows this duality well, speaking in Psalm 5,
You shall destroy those who speak falsehood; the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
But as for me, I will come into Your house in the multitude of Your mercy;
In fear of You I will worship toward Your holy temple. (vv 6-7)
How rarely we see ourselves as those who speak falsehood or practice deceit and yet, like Nathan did for David, the Spirit reminds us that we are that man. We are the reason for the Cross, the reason that such an enormous cost must be paid. We continue forward toward Calvary in His mercy alone.
Grace and peace to you
image Leonard Matthews
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 