Click here for AUDIO
There seems to be quite a growth industry for all sorts of organisations in producing little memes ... pretty pictures or designs with some deep or uplifting short phrase on them that's bound to get you lots of 'likes' and 'shares' on social media. They're tickling the ears to get approval.
And there's a similar sort of thing in Psalm 9 verses one and two, but it comes with some tweaks that do make quite a difference.
The Psalmist wants to grasp at the GOOD things, the positive things, the blessings He has known.
Why is he doing that?
Well, a rather ancient preacher (John Flavel) famously said "Ecstasy and delight are essential to the believer's soul ..."
The trouble is, life isn't always easy and the psalm our verse is taken from is very open about that.
What you get here with Psalms 9 and 10 is ...
Two psalms for the price of one
You see, Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 are constructed starting each new section of those psalms with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and that continues from Psalm 9 into Psalm 10, which lets us know that they were constructed to work together to tell a whole story.
The psalmist starts out
expressing his firm resolve to praise God, then
takes us into a lament at the start of Psalm 10, before
Psalm 10 finishes by returning to worship for the victory of God
over the sad circumstances which the psalmist
recounted in the lament section.
That's important because it is precisely when there are very sad things going on that the psalmist speaks the words of our Verse for the Day:
"I will thank the Lord with all my heart!
I will tell about all your amazing deeds.
I will be happy and rejoice in you.
I will sing praises to you, O Most High"
Psalm 9:1-2
The psalmist is disciplining himself to praise God against the background of sad times.
Two things stimulate this praise:
- God's acts
- God's character (because that was felt to be bound up in His Name)
And then two things characterise that determined praise. It is done
The Point
The psalmist has learned how to thrive in adversity.
And thriving in adversity, for the believer, involves praise raised towards God, not for our circumstances but for Who God is and what God has done ... the facts not the feelings of the faith.
And that is the believer's response and the believer's characteristic 'go-to' self-administered soul care in adverse situations.
It is NOT a hoping against hope.
It is not feeling a duty to be happy (a sort of 'mustn't grumble' response).
It's a discipline.
It is the discipline to lay hold of the facts of faith ... what God is and what He's done in the past in our personal and corporate history ... and to praise Him for the truth of those REAL things, however horrible things are here and now 'in the moment'.
And that's the reality that makes a Christian response stand out from basic memes.
The Takeaway
These verses challenge us to a determined militant praise - based in the reality of God's deeds and personal perfection - joyfully and in public - to drive back our times of deep darkness.
Where are your pools of darkness today, and what sort of defiant praise might you drive those dark pools away with?
No comments:
Post a Comment