It's an encouragement from the Lord this morning as I listened to a sermon from Tim Keller - couldn't be more timely and the context / topic couldn't be more right on.
How do we answer the question, how do we face distress and adversity with peace? The Bible is full of petitions to God asking for deliverance, healing, comfort etc and that is exactly what we did, and of course we should do it and in fact we did it. The Bible talks about it.
But, Psalm 57 talks about a different way to face this tough time with peace, which I through experience, should acknowledge to be true. It is through worship - utter amazement of God and God alone, the alpha and omega, the end in itself.
The psalmist, in the midst of all his valley and trouble, does not ask for God to change his situation. He asks for neither deliverance nor success nor victory - there's no petition at all. Instead, after he accounted and listed all his inventory of troubles, he exclaimed "Be exalted oh God, above the heaven; Let your glory be over all the earth". It is through worship that he calms himself, not through determination or loud petition. If the psalmist can find peace through this, so do we.
What are these compared to God's glory and majesty? What are these compared to grace? Everything pale in comparison to the salvation and hope that awaits us ahead. Thus, for me, I will bring this salvation that I have, present it daily to my very heart to get it appraised, to be reminded over and over again of its value, to let its glory shine before me so strong that all other problems, anxieties, and sufferings become a blip on my sight. So minuscule that they are easily overlooked. Yes, ignorable, brushable and neglectable.
"They say of some temporal sufferings, "No future bliss can make up for it", not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory" C. S. Lewis
No comments:
Post a Comment