Tag: Faith

psalm 68

God springs into action.
His enemies scatter;
his adversaries run from him.
As smoke is driven away by the wind, so you drive them away.
As wax melts before fire,
so the wicked are destroyed before God.
But the godly are happy;
they rejoice before God
and are overcome with joy.

🔹🔹🔹🔹

Psalms 68:1-3, NET

The Goliath you’re facing day in and day out, the one that’s been harassing and intimidating you, rattling your cage and kicking sand in your face? That devil is still ‘God’s devil.’ (Martin Luther)

To the army of Israel, Goliath looked huge from a far distance, but David discovered that he was just a scalp on his belt up close. Even the champion’s arsenal fit quite nicely on David’s mantle.

Psalm 68 is a victory psalm. It’s ten stanzas of battle hymns and rah-rah emotion. The writer, presumed to be David, is electrified by God’s feats on the field of battle. He recalls how the ark once went out with the armies of Israel and every time the enemy was soundly defeated. Now he’s bringing the ark home.

The Bible tells us God is our rear guard. A soldier might say he has our “six.” He goes before us. He covers us. Beneath are his everlasting arms holding us up. Everywhere you look God is … there.

he fights for you

Maybe the devil is having his way in your life. It seems so. The preponderance of evidence says so. But take heart, believer; your Lord, the God of the angel armies, is orchestrating his doom.

My young godson, Maddox, wants to know if the devil is stronger than we are. With all the principalities and powers and rulers of darkness at his disposal, we are not a match for him in ourselves. But he’s not greater and stronger than our God. When we trust the God of heaven, and take our strength from him, the devil is no match for us!

You are the apple of God’s eye (Deut 32:9-10; Psa 17:8), a stone on his breastplate; your name is engraved on his palm (Isa 49:16). As a benefactor of the blessing of Abraham, the Lord God Almighty is your shield and reward.

Early in our ministry I did a lot of singing. A few of you know that Sandy and I recorded three albums of music and I wrote a few of the songs. One of them, Encourage Yourself in the Lord, is based on 1 Sam 30:6. Years ago I was blessed to share it in a conference where Joni Earekson Tada was speaking.

He fights for you

He lifts up the fallen

And he cares for you

He meets all your needs

He wants you to rest in his promises

And yearns for you

To trust and obey

So encourage yourself in the Lord, my friend

Encourage yourself in the Lord!

There’s a whole story about how the sound guy didn’t cue the accompaniment track correctly and started it in the middle of the song. I was completely lost, humiliated, and ready to stone the sound guy. But I digress.

The point is God fights for you when things happening to you are out of your control. The devil will have his “Pyrrhic” victories here and there; that’s not in dispute. The truth of it is better than the shame of it. God is working even your defeats into triumphs and your failures into glories.

if the devil’s been defeated, why am I getting beat up?

Good question, that. Goliath, vanquished forever, is still out here intimidating and spewing curses on the Church. He’s defeated, yes, but still he roars.

What he cannot do is unsave you. He can lie to you but he can’t lie to Jesus. He can’t separate you from the love of God. He can boast but he can’t back it up. He can beat you today but he can’t defeat you ultimately. He isn’t more powerful than the God who is in you.

He’s been de-fanged and de-clawed. Neutered. The Christ of the Cross has crushed his head. Whatever you’re facing, God stands between you and it. At times it’s difficult to see the Lord when there’s nothing but smoke and blackness of night, but he’s there all right, an imposing pillar of fire. The enemy doesn’t have a snowball’s chance with God on your side.

The devil is still God’s devil. You think he’s running amuck in your life when he’s really on a leash held by Christ. He can’t do a thing to you without the Almighty’s permission. The enemy intends evil, but your Savior Lord intends good.

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Romans 16:20, CEB

The God of the angel armies rides on the clouds. Jesus walks on the waves, the Spirit follows with resurrection power. Believe me, nothing can overcome you. You are safe. But not only safe; in Christ, you are victorious. God’s plan is for you to be overcome…with joy.

I pray you are overcome today.

Selah, beloved.

finally, a hallelujah

After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out,


Hallelujah!

Revelation 19:1

“Hallelujah” appears twenty-four times in the Bible. Only four of those times is it found in the New Testament and Revelation 19 lays claim to those. Think of that for a moment. The first time the word “hallelujah“ shows up in the New Testament is at the very end.

One could imagine a hefty hallelujah following the huge buildup in the previous 256 chapters of gospel and epistle. Like the swelling of a musical piece to its finale, ‘hallelujah’ hits just the right note.

I spent a little time grousing to the Lord this morning about unanswered prayers. After finishing out my little pity party, I opened the Word and picked up where I left off yesterday. The first words I saw are what you just read in the quote-box above.

For the 247th time this year, I mentally threw my hands up and said, “Okay, God, I get it. You win.”

I’m sure you can’t relate to that at all.

Laura Story sang about such things in her single, “Blessings.”

What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?

—Laura Story, Blessings © Capitol Christian Music Group, Capitol CMG Publishing

If you’re out here struggling against unanswered prayers, hard labors, injustices, and dark nights of the soul, don’t lose hope. We’ll all sing “hallelujah” when all is said and done. Few are fortunate to get vindication in this life; most have to wait till it gets nearer to the end of the book.

Let’s say it again — louder — for the people in the back:

Once more they cried out,


Hallelujah!

Revelation 19:3

Amen. Boy do I feel that.

This “hallelujah” is for all whose theology is outpacing their doxology. For everyone who lived righteously and didn’t receive their reward in life but were rather hated and jeered and despised, this hallelujah belongs to you.

It’s for all the smoldering wicks and bruised reeds. The ones Paul Simon called “the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.” It’s for the publican at the door of the temple who can’t possibly know he’s been justified until the book comes out.

For every parent who trained up their children in the way they should go but whose child departed from it anyway, this is your hallelujah.

For the followers of Christ who were promised they could “reign in this life” but were crushed by it instead, you get this hallelujah too.

Those who prayed and believed for healing in this life but you still had to carry it like a thorn in your side anyway, your hallelujah is coming.

For every survivor of rape and physical and sexual abuse who was told to keep quiet about it ‘for the good of the church,’ or, worse, not believed, this hallelujah belongs to you.

To the saintly ones who’ve been silenced, canceled, vilified, and shown the door by the mob, here’s your hallelujah.

When you opted rather to bless than retaliate, God sees you and invites you to own this hallelujah. All who were crushed by oppression but held to Jesus anyway can take your place in the choir. To the one who seemed to have the devil on your back all the way to heaven, this hallelujah’s especially for you.

Spoiler alert for those still not sure about how it ends:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

🔸🔸🔸🔸

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Revelation 21:4,5

The page is turning; we’re getting closer to the end of the book. 2023 fidgets around the corner. For those who have made Jesus their Life in spite of every human reason not to, perhaps this is this year we finally get our hallelujah.

Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.

I’ll close out with the video to Laura Story’s song I referenced earlier. Hallelujah is not found in the lyrics, but it expresses a hallelujah heart better than anything I could say.

So for now I’ll be waiting to sing that Most Holy Hallelujah with you in that off-in-the-distance-yet-to-be Day when all the dots finally connect and all those unanswered prayers make perfect sense,

Pasture

Laura Story, Blessings

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oh well, noël

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

There’s a 10-foot tall Christmas tree in Tustin, California for families who grieve the loss of their children to addiction. It’s put there yearly by Solace of Hope, a family support group for grieving parents. The tree is filled with ornaments and photos of the many lives lost far too soon to the damnable plague of opioids.

Alan Berkowitz and his wife Kathy lost their 26-year old son to heroin six years ago.

The toughest part for my wife and me is Christmas morning. Now it’s just the two of us. We get up and have coffee. And, well, it’s kind of hollow.”

Sandy and I share that isolating grief with the Berkowitz’s. Our Graham also became an ‘ornament on a tree’ nine Christmases ago at twenty-four. He had just completed a few months in rehab and we were happily working on getting him a flight home from Minnesota. On December 16th, word reached us he would not be coming home.

Our Christmases can still feel hollow for us too. More’s the pity because Sandy loves Christmas like no other day of the year. She can decorate to beat the band and transform any house or apartment into a glowing hearthfire of peace on earth. Fittingly, she’s a Christmas Day baby, but each year her birthday is eclipsed by a lingering shadow of grief.

I was streaming the first episode of a murder mystery which was mostly meh until the chief detective said something I immediately put in my notes app. Offering comfort to the victim’s teenage daughter he said,

“grief is love with no place to go.”

For parents like us who have lost a child at Christmas, we totally get that.

While many associate Christmas with “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,” (even better in Linus voice) others are further down in the Luke narrative. There’s the headline we all know and love, but then there’s the fine print:

And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (AND A SWORD WILL PIERCE THROUGH YOUR OWN SOUL ALSO), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

Luke 2:34-35 (emphasis mine)

Way to bury the lede, Luke!

Years ago many older hymns were passed down through oral/auditory tradition. The First Noel is one of them, which is why The Cornish Songbook (1929), printed the first stanza as:

O well, O well, the Angels did say
To shepherds there in the fields did lay;
Late in the night a-folding their sheep,
A winter’s night, both cold and bleak.
O well, O well, O well, O well,
Born is the King of Israel.

The season of noël is, for some, a painful ordeal. From the Latin ‘natale,’ meaning “birth,” Noël feels like anything but.

For a myriad of reasons, not only loss, it instills dread and invites depression. Scrooge’s dark night of the soul resonates more deeply than his Christmas morning grace awakening in some.

His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom

—Aragorn, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien

Sandy and I fight the good fight yearly to not get cheated out of Christmas. She still decorates and I still play the music. She wraps gifts in upscale department store fashion and I don’t. We make sure to see the lights, watch White Christmas, and sit graveside with our boy on Christmas Eve.

The two of us have found our safest place to be is with each other. We don’t do big family gatherings on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We prefer our holidays quieter. It’s worked for us nine straight years and we don’t plan to change.

If the manger means anything, it means the Savior swaddles our sorrows. Slowly, over channels of time, the comforted begin to realize their bandwidth for moving through the hard days has increased. The sword pierces a little less. You can surprise yourself by having the wherewithal to do stuff again.

Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, our Wisdom from heaven, has gifted us with a deeper Noël. Even in the midst of our bleak midwinter, and as a hurting world moans in unrequited protest, our grief becomes love that suddenly finds a place to go.

Joyeux Noël, beloved.

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