Psalms 33:10-12 ESV
“The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the Lord stands forever,
the plans of his heart to all generations.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,
the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!”
So, I slept for about 2 hours last night and then I was
awakened by what I can only imagine are critter noises, and there were a variety
of them. I tried going back to sleep, but to no avail. The noises did not stop.
But as soon as I turned on the light the noises went away. But now I was awake
and the Lord had a song in my head so I got up and I wrote a devotion.
But I was still so sleepy, so I went back to sleep after I
had been up two hours, only to be awakened 1.5 hours later by more noises. These
were different than the noises before. These sounded like someone with hiccups.
And we do live in an apartment building, so it could have been our neighbor
upstairs, but again, as soon as I turned on the light, the noises stopped.
But I was not really awake and I really wanted to go back to
sleep, so I went out to the living room and I lay on the sofa hoping to go back
to sleep, but then the nerves in my body began twitching, which they do sometimes
because I have permanent nerve damage. And so I gave up and I got back up and I
headed back to the bedroom, but I can’t say I was rejoicing.
Well, my plans to sleep were definitely being frustrated,
and then the Lord put this song in my head, “God is with us,” and the line that
was standing out to me was, “God will help us as mornings arise to be faithful
to His design.” And then I had to smile! God got me up for a reason. My plan
was to get more sleep, but his plans were greater than my plans.
Psalms 33:13-17 ESV
“The Lord looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.”
No matter how much I wanted to sleep, and hoped I could
sleep, that wasn’t happening. There was nothing I could do in my own strength
or willpower to be able to sleep, not even when I moved to the sofa. Then the
nerves in my body started fussing at me. So all my attempts to do what I wanted
to do failed. And then I was reminded that God is my helper and that he helps
me as mornings arise to be faithful to his design.
And I believe the Lord allowed all of this to go down the
way that it did this morning to teach me a lesson and then so I would share
that lesson. And that lesson is a reminder of God’s absolute sovereignty over
all things and over our lives, and that if we are his chosen ones, and he has
something he wants us to do, he can and he may frustrate our plans in order to
move us in the direction he wants us to go.
We may try as we will to go the way we want to go, not
necessarily on a sinful course, though it could be, but just not according to
his plans, and perhaps not doing so knowingly. And so he may frustrate those
plans so that we will look up, and so we will listen, and so we will yield to
his course for our lives. Sometimes he will close doors we try to open, or we
leave open, or he will open doors we try to close because he doesn’t want them
closed.
And the other thing I noticed about this was every time I
turned on the light, the noises stopped. And turning on the light spiritually
usually has to do with sharing the light of the truth of the gospel, which is
what the Lord has me doing in these daily writings. And it can have to do with
living the truth, too. And noise can be interference or disturbance or a
hindrance or an obstacle, which in this case I believe are hindrances to the
gospel.
The Lord allowing me to hear those noises is what awoke me,
and symbolically speaking the Lord did help me to hear the interferences to the
gospel of our salvation, too, so that I would be awakened to them, and so that I,
in obedience to him, would shine the light of the gospel to make the noises
stop. Now “the noises” haven’t all stopped, but there are people who are being
awakened to the truth and so that is a good thing.
Psalms 33:18-22 ESV
“Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.
Our soul waits for the Lord;
he is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.”
Those who fear the Lord are those who are walking in his
ways and in his truth, who have undivided hearts, who take God and his word
seriously, and who are walking in obedience to the Lord’s commands (New
Covenant). We are not perfect people. We have not arrived. But we are walking
in truth and righteousness, and we are listening to the Lord, and we are
yielding control of our lives over to him, and so his watchful eye is on our
lives.
But the only way we can make it in this life is to put our
hope fully in the Lord. We must put our trust in the Lord and not in ourselves.
And we must listen to his counsel and not try to go our own way. And we must
obey him, even when our emotions are not there, and even when our brains are
only partially awake or not yet awake at all. For God can and will do miracles
when we let him work through us for his glory and praise.
[Lu 9:23-26; Jn 6:35-58; Jn 15:1-11;
Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-17; Eph 4:17-32; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21;
Tit 2:11-14; Jas 1:22-25; Rom 12:1-2; Eph 2:8-10; Heb 12:1-2; Jn 6:44; 2 Pet
1:1; 1 Co 15:58; Php 2:12-13; Col 1:21-23; 1 Co 10:1-22; Heb 3:1-19; Heb 4:1-13;
Heb 10:26-27; Rom 2:6-8; Gal 5:16-21; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 5:3-6; Col 3:5-17; 1 Jn
1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Matt 7:21-23; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15]
God is With Us
An Original Work / June 11, 2019
Based off Psalm 46
God’s our refuge. He is our strength,
A present help to us when in pain.
Therefore, we will not be afraid,
Although the earth beneath us gives way.
Though the mountains be moved to the sea,
Roaring waters abound so free,
And the mountains now tremble so,
We will not fear, God is near, we know.
God is with us and He makes glad
The hearts of all who to Christ have fled.
Christ is in us, so we’ll not fall
When on our Savior our hearts do call.
God will help us, as mornings arise,
To be faithful to His design.
Nations raging, and tempers flare.
Our God is with us. We know He cares.
Come and see the works of the Lord.
He’s armed for battle with His great sword.
He’s the Word, and He is the Life.
He gives us strength in all of our strife.
Be still and know that He is our God.
He’s exalted where’er He trods.
The Lord Almighty, with us still;
The God of Jacob, our citadel.
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