As I sit here and type, I can’t help but think about how blessed I am.  When this blog is posted, Thanksgiving Day will have passed, thousands will be lined up at the front of different stores to claim that “prize” of a gift or supposed necessity that they have to have, some may be eating leftovers of a feast we shared with family or friends, others may choose to sleep all day…Either way, I have so much to be thankful for.  I have an amazing husband who couldn’t have been more perfect for me, I have an awesome job that allows me to operate in what I’m gifted in, I have family and friends who love me even in spite of myself, I have no lack in anything when I think about it, and most importantly, I have a loving, merciful, and gracious God who gave the ultimate gift….His Son!

This series we just closed out called “The Poet”, may be over, but I have really enjoyed it.  God showed me so much (too much to write here and plus I don’t want to hear Pastor Eric ask me if there’s a caboose to my train of thought).  Anyways, I want to leave you with this thought as you read Psalm 150.  When you have an attitude of gratitude, praising God for who He is and what He has promised to do, will come naturally.

Praise the Lord !
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heaven!
Praise him for his mighty works;
praise his unequaled greatness!
Praise him with a blast of the ram’s horn;
praise him with the lyre and harp!
Praise him with the tambourine and dancing;
praise him with strings and flutes!
Praise him with a clash of cymbals;
praise him with loud clanging cymbals.
Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord !
Praise the Lord !

I love the last part, “Let everything that breathes sing praises to the Lord!  Praise the Lord! Obviously I am breathing!  I want to live my life this next year with an attitude of gratitude where each morning  I wake up and praise God for all He is.  He is worthy of it.  Don’t you think?

Hope you enjoyed “The Poet” series and this blog.  Have a very safe and happy holiday season!

And in my research of channel surfing, I also have discovered a reoccurring theme in how the media is targeting my specific demographic. All the commercials begin to look the same to me. Same car commercials, same exercise programs, and same beer commercials. You would think that this is all men are thinking, or should be thinking of. Well, unlike the vast channels being surfed, some things never change.

The Poet is nearing the end of his collection of Psalms and begins to expound in Chapter 147 on what he feels is important for his nation to hear. After a few verses of describing some the his observations about God, he writes the following.

¹⁰ His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his delight in the legs of a man;

¹¹ the LORD delights in those who fear him,
who put their hope in his unfailing love.

Did you catch that? It’s not about “horsepower” or even man’s personal strength that gets God’s attention. If God was “channel surfing” though the mortal resumes of the world, he too would skip over those parts. Instead, God stops and looks for those who write in their soul-felt resume that their strength come from their hope in God’s unfailing love. Sorry, “Tim, the Toolman, Taylor“, more horsepower isn’t the answer to all life’s questions. Sorry, annoying “Sham-WOW”  guy, you won’t be able to fix this mess.

From generation to generation it seems that some of our worst problems are never original. But we must also realize our best answer is not original either. Whether it is having a broken heart (vs 3), or a lack of resources (vs 8-9), God’s love never fails. And you don’t have to pay $19.95 or have your credit card ready.

]]> http://www.psalmreader.org/?feed=rss2&p=53 1 http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=37 http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=37#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:00:24 +0000 Eric Partin http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=37 http://www.psalmreader.org/?feed=rss2&p=37 0 http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=25 http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=25#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:00:38 +0000 Brian Buonassissi http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=25 http://www.psalmreader.org/?feed=rss2&p=25 0 http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=44 http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=44#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:00:10 +0000 Samuel Blowes http://www.psalmreader.org/?p=44 Read Psalm 127

This psalm is written by the son of David, so he has some pretty big shoes to fill when it comes to psalm writing! But Solomon knocks it out of the park with his simplicity.

When God spoke to Solomon, He gave him an incredible opportunity: Ask for absolutely anything you want… and I’ll give it to you. The possibilities are endless. I’m not sure I would have responded the same way Solomon did. Instead of asking for fame or fortune, he asked God for wisdom. God was so impressed by his response that He granted Solomon incredible wisdom, and then threw in the fame and fortune for good measure. So what did this wisdom produce? These words:

“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.”

Profound. Whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish, if God’s not in it, your wasting your time. Whatever it is you’re trying to say, if God’s not behind your words, you’re wasting your breath. Whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, if God’s not driving you, you’re wasting your energy.

We had this passage of Scripture read at my wedding. I don’t want be caught trying to make my marriage work in my own strength. I want “God the Builder” building my marriage, and my family.

Psalm 112

¹ Praise the LORD.
Blessed is the man who fears the LORD,
who finds great delight in his commands.

² His children will be mighty in the land;
the generation of the upright will be blessed.

³ Wealth and riches are in his house,
and his righteousness endures forever.

⁴ Even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man.

⁵ Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely,
who conducts his affairs with justice.

⁶ Surely he will never be shaken;
a righteous man will be remembered forever.

⁷ He will have no fear of bad news;
his heart is steadfast, trusting in the LORD.

⁸ His heart is secure, he will have no fear;
in the end he will look in triumph on his foes.

⁹ He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor,
his righteousness endures forever;
his horn will be lifted high in honor.

¹⁰ The wicked man will see and be vexed,
he will gnash his teeth and waste away;
the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.

Now if you’re not familiar with Proverbs, King Solomon (David’s Son), records his fatherly advice to his sons. Proverbs is a book of wisdom that should be a guideline to help any young man (or woman) to make the right decisions. Now we finally know where Solomon got his cadence, he stole it from “the Poet”!

So I’m right. Let’s all agree to move Psalms 112 to Proverbs. It would fit right in with the “if you do this, than this will happen” logic that Proverbs regularly uses. It also talks about the “Fear of God”, which is mentioned a billion times in Proverbs. It also contrasts the “life of a godly man” vs “the wicked man“, which is a obvious copyright violation of the book of Proverbs.

Maybe Solomon instead should sue David. Or maybe these kings actually knew what they were talking about and both thought it important to share. Naaah! Let’s just all cut and paste this passage and admit this was a royal mistake.

In 1995, I became the full-time kids’ pastor at East Coast Christian Center. As we ministered to kids in the local community, we noticed a lot of need. A man in our church who had three daughters in the youth ministry purchased an old city bus for the youth ministry. After awhile, the youth ministry got too big to use it anymore and it sat at his house. One of his neighbors, who attended another local church, approached him about picking up kids from the local housing projects and bringing them to their church. The neighbor asked if he would be interested in doing so. Alan, the man who owned the bus, jumped at the chance. He started a bus ministry and began bringing kids from the housing projects to this church.

About six weeks passed. One Sunday morning after making his route and pulling up to this church, the Senior Pastor was waiting out front for the bus to arrive. He informed Alan that they could no longer handle these kids and that he needed to take them home. Alan, not one to back down on a commitment to children who it seems have had everybody else in their lives abandon them, thought, “I know, I will take them to my church.”

It was my first day of kids’ church and Alan arrived unannounced with 45 kids from the housing projects. It was the longest two hours of my life. It became the start of a huge discipline problem in our kids’ church. I knew I did not want to send them home and put myself and the church on the long list of people who made commitments to them only to quit after it got hard. But what were we going to do?

They had no relationship with me and in their eyes I was equivalent to the cafeteria lady or the PE coach. (Because those who can’t do – teach; and those who can’t teach – teach PE.) What were we going to do? We didn’t want to reject these kids, but at the same time, we had church families keeping their kids out of kids’ church because of the riots and gang warfare. Not a good tool to get visitors to come back a second time when their child was in a knife fight after the flannel graph lesson.

One evening while visiting my mom (she had HBO), I watched the movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Minds.  In the movie, Michelle, who played a high school teacher in a predominately black school in Los Angeles, also struggled with behavioral problems. A light bulb went on in my head when in one scene, she visited some of her students in their homes in the housing projects, not because they were in trouble, but because she wanted to let the mothers of these kids know just how wonderful they were. When she did this, the students began to rise up to the level of her belief in them. In the meantime, not only did the students’ grades go up, but the behavior problems disappeared.

So, I began to visit kids every Friday afternoon. Sometimes I would ride my bike down there, other times I would drive. At first, I would get stopped by the police. They thought I was either a white boy lost in the wrong neighborhood (not good) or I was there to buy crack (also not good). But after awhile, they got to know me and encouraged me. Actually everybody got to know me, including the crack dealers, who were most of these kids’ big brothers, sisters, aunties, and even their moms. They liked me, as well, because they would say, “If you can keep them from doing what I am doing, power to you.”

It got to where every Friday afternoon the kids would be waiting for me. I would play with them, encourage them, and be excited for their grades or sporting accomplishments. I would brag on them to their moms and even listen to their moms’ issues and give them some counsel if the timing was right.
After this, our discipline problems all but disappeared. There was something we learned after that: rules without relationship equals rebellion. To those kids, kids’ church was just a bunch of rules. But once there was a relationship, the rebellion disappeared.

That’s what this Psalm says about the country of Israel. Read vs. 7 again:

“He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel”

The people of Israel only knew God by what He did. He parted the Red Sea, He fed them with manna, He supplied them with water… but they still rebelled against Him. Even though they knew who He was, they did not know Him the way Moses knew Him. Moses knew Him by His ways. Moses knew Him because he spent time with Him.

It is the same with us. We can know God by what He does or we can know Him by who He is. By the way, think about this in light of your teenager.

Just by doing these devotions this month, you are purposing to know God by His ways.

We recently sang at church the song, “Here is our King”, by David Crowder.  Click here to listen to it.  I enjoy the majority of the songs that David Crowder writes and they usually help me connect with God when I’m singing them.  This particular song I’ve always liked, but lyrically, I have had a hard time fully understanding it.  While practicing the week I was planning on singing this song at church, I really felt like God opened my eyes to what this song was saying, at least to me.  Here are the lyrics first for you to read:

From wherever spring arrives to heal the ground
From where ever searching comes to look itself
A trace of what we’re looking for
so be quiet now, and wait

The ocean is growing
The tide is coming in
Here it is:

Here is our King
Here is our Love
Here is our God who’s come
to bring us back to him
He is the one,
He is Jesus

And what was said to the rose to make it unfold
Was said to me, here in my chest
So be quiet now, and rest.

Majesty!
Finally!

I realized the God that spoke this world into existence is the same God who softly whispers to my heart to be still and take rest in who I am in you.  His burden is light and yoke is easy (Matthew 11:28-30).  The second verse of this song clearly talks about this….”And what was said to the rose to make it unfold, was said to me here in my chest, so be quiet now, and rest”.  It was just an A-ha moment that now whenever I sing this song, I am reminded as to how much in awe (reverence) I am of who God is.

I think about Psalm 97:5-6

The mountains melt like wax before the Lord ,
before the Lord of all the earth.
The heavens proclaim his righteousness;
every nation sees his glory.

God is a God who is worthy of all our praise and if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out instead.  When God created the earth, He designed it so that it all brings glory to Him.  When you get a glimpse, just a glimpse of who God is, how much He loves you, how much He wants to bless us, your natural response will be one of complete reverential awe.  You won’t have any other option than to praise Him.

Read David Crowder’s story behind the song here

How many of you have played the game “Simon Says”? Remember the object? Do only what Simon says. If you don’t, what happens? You’re out and you lose the opportunity to experience the thrill of winning the game. This particular Psalm reminds me of this game.

David is the “worship leader” here and he’s urging us to come and praise the Lord. Like an inspiring “Knute Rockne speech” (the infamous Notre Dame coach from the early 1900s), he implores us to remember all that God has done for us, created for us, and most of all that He is the God of the universe. The poet desires that we move beyond mere “words of worship” and have a “heart of worship”. He doesn’t want our worship to be a recited poem learned for “religous sake”, but a true reflection of our gratitude for everything God stands for. He goes into detail in this Psalm of all the things God has done.

Everytime I have a chance to lead a worship session, I try to keep in mind what God has done for me in providing a way for eternal life. By keeping that in mind, it allows me to truly digest the truth in what I’m singing, praying and saying and I let God work through me to inspire others in their worship.

When I have a chance to sit out in the audience and be led by another worship leader, I love it! I soak up what he/she says and allow my heart to be open for God to speak to me through that leader so that I don’t miss an opportunity to have a “God moment”.

Have a great week!