Let’s do another one.
Thank You, Lord, for the reading of Your Word.
You are Faithful and True. You are our Mighty and Amazing God, our Glorious and Gracious Father.
You never fail. Your timing is perfect. You have brought us breakthrough after breakthrough in the past, always in Your perfect timing.
Even when we don’t understand what’s going on, even when all we see is against us, or when all we feel is just bringing us down, we will continue to stay confident, and we will continue to choose to praise and worship Your name – not because we are faithful, but because it’s You who’s faithful, especially in the bad times.
We’ve seen You work before, and You will continue to act and react according to Your infinite power, Your eternal wisdom, and most of all, according to Your everlasting love.
Our trust will continually be upon You, our hope will always be in You – Because You are great and good, You are willing and able to help us;
We trust and hope in You, and we will never be put to shame.
Thank You, Lord, for the reading of Your Word.
Psalm 74
A Plea for Relief from Oppressors
A Contemplation of Asaph.
It’s Asaph again, and he continues to compose, calling upon the Lord again in this psalm – for help, for relief, for rescue. In the words of Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday: ‘Kind of reminds me of… me.‘
1 O God, why have You cast us off forever? Why does Your anger smoke against the sheep of Your pasture?
2 Remember Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, The tribe of Your inheritance, which You have redeemed— This Mount Zion where You have dwelt.
3 Lift up Your feet to the perpetual desolations. The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary.
4 Your enemies roar in the midst of Your meeting place; They set up their banners for signs.
5 They seem like men who lift up Axes among the thick trees.
6 And now they break down its carved work, all at once, With axes and hammers.
7 They have set fire to Your sanctuary; They have defiled the dwelling place of Your name to the ground.
8 They said in their hearts, “Let us destroy them altogether.” They have burned up all the meeting places of God in the land.
And who could blame Asaph for calling out to the Lord, in his day? Consider all that’s going on against him and his people… and thank God for His leading upon him, because for all he could be doing, he chooses to take time and write everything down, chronicling when he could easily be crying out in the temple, and/or praying and calling for everyone else to pray with him.
I suppose it’s during these times that I’m led to another reason to be thanking God, here and now, in this current day – because for all I could be doing, for all I could be writing about, for all I could be wailing and crying out for, here we are – reflecting, dwelling on God’s word by way of our own words.
Asaph reminds me of me in that we both can choose to do one of so many other things, but here we are, writing. If we’re letting it all out, we’re letting it all out to the Lord primarily, and primarily by writing – not with the wishes that He would somehow open His divine laptop and stumble upon this website (that would be cool, not gonna lie), but in boldness knowing we can cast our anxiety upon Him, because He is always thinking about us.
And with that said, we can also cast our anxiety upon Him, because nobody else thinks about us like He does.
…Maybe Asaph was very aware of this. Maybe he observed David enough to move as he does, to respond to crisis as he does, hence his writing of these things, even repeatedly, in every chance he gets.
So he writes, even when those who would call themselves his enemies (and enemies of the Most High) have desecrated His sanctuary, and have defiled and burned up His meeting places.
So, similarly, we write, here and now, even as countless temples of the Holy Spirit are threatened with real attempts against them and their families, by men and women who persecute thinking they do God a service.
We write; We call upon the Lord, trusting in Him and in Him alone, in spite of the ways we are impacted by events and circumstances arising on the other side of the planet.
We call upon the Lord, we place our hope and trust in Him – not ‘regardless’, but ESPECIALLY because of all that’s coming against us personally, from the inside out and from the outside in; We cry out to Him for the pain inflicted against us in the present, the bitterness that comes up again and again from the past, and the anxiety that triggers us when we place considerations and focus upon the future.
9 We do not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet; Nor is there any among us who knows how long.
10 O God, how long will the adversary reproach? Will the enemy blaspheme Your name forever?
11 Why do You withdraw Your hand, even Your right hand? Take it out of Your bosom and destroy them.
12 For God is my King from of old, Working salvation in the midst of the earth.
13 You divided the sea by Your strength; You broke the heads of the sea serpents in the waters.
14 You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces, And gave him as food to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
15 You broke open the fountain and the flood; You dried up mighty rivers.
16 The day is Yours, the night also is Yours; You have prepared the light and the sun.
17 You have set all the borders of the earth; You have made summer and winter.
18 Remember this, that the enemy has reproached, O LORD, And that a foolish people has blasphemed Your name.
19 Oh, do not deliver the life of Your turtledove to the wild beast! Do not forget the life of Your poor forever.
20 Have respect to the covenant; For the dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty.
21 Oh, do not let the oppressed return ashamed! Let the poor and needy praise Your name.
22 Arise, O God, plead Your own cause; Remember how the foolish man reproaches You daily.
23 Do not forget the voice of Your enemies; The tumult of those who rise up against You increases continually.
I thought I’d go through all of this and just say that as it is with Asaph, so it is with all of us in the body of Christ, whether we are writers or not, whether we are handy with words, or novices in composition: Through the generations, the body of Christ calls upon the Lord, cries out to Him, chooses to complain to Him – and the Holy Spirit has always been faithful through all this time to remind us of the greatness, the glory, the goodness and the grace of our Father.
Even if we cry out as the disciples once did to Jesus in the middle of a boat in the middle of a raging winds and waves, the Holy Spirit is faithful to eventually pull us out of reacting from what threats our senses immediately perceive… into reminding us of what our Father has done in the past, to the point that we peacefully call upon our Father to remember the covenant established by His Son, ensuring our righteousness and reconciliation.
In John 16 we read of Christ’s describing the conviction of the Holy Spirit – and that last paragraph was a stretched out, hopefully concise version of how the Holy Spirit convicts us of righteousness.
So Asaph called upon the Lord and gave Him all he knew about the situations that bothered him, and all his heart about how he felt about the whole mess of a matter… and judging from the progression of his thoughts and words in this Psalm, it brought him to just pledging his trust and hope upon the Lord, once again.
This leads me to believe that there is definitely truth to our never being separated from the love of God; Clearly, no matter how heavy our burdens may be, we are always reminded of the power, wisdom, and love of our Father.
I dare say that this has been the Truth that not only stands for us here and now, more than two thousand years Anno Domini… but it’s the Truth that has endured and stood for our countless brothers and sisters throughout all the ages and through all generations and centuries.
They may not have all written about it, but we’ve all been led by the same Holy Spirit to pray and trust in the Lord… that no matter how immediate the threats to our lives and/or of those of our loves ones are, no matter how intense the temptation is to relinquish all belief – the Truth is always sweeter than all the facts that are before us.
So we don’t all write words… but by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are always saturated by the Word, in every season.
So what do we all think about this?
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