Hello, everyone! I hope each of you and your families are well this week. God continues to be gracious to us every step of the way. I am constantly amazed at his commitment to us and his patience with us and his ability to take every situation and relationship and transform us in the midst of it, both for his glory and our ultimate good. I’ve run across several verses this week that seemed to jump off the page at me as I read them. One of them comes to us in the form of a psalm – a hymn, prayer, song, poem. This particular psalm communicates a variety of mediations and prayers that revolve around God’s law, his commandments and statutes. In the NASB Psalm 119:17 says: Deal bountifully with Your servant, That I might live and keep Your word. At first this might not seem like a knock-you-off-your-rocker kind of verse. But think about it for a minute. Meditate on it, consider it. It occurs to me, as I meditated on this verse, that what the psalmist is saying to God here is, “If You don’t deal bountifully with me, then I have no chance of living, or keeping Your word!” God’s bountiful, or completeness or abundance, in dealing with us is the gateway to life. Without his bountiful dealings in our lives, we’re as good as dead and we have no hope of keeping the word he reveals to us. As I continue to look at this verse, I realize how easy it is for us to pray for God’s bountiful dealings in our lives, but how few times we tend to connect the dots from his work in our lives to the flourishing of our lives. In our culture we tend to take credit for all the good in our lives, and push the blame for all the bad onto someone or something else – and God is one of our favorite scapegoats. Many people think of God as an oppressive being, but this verse indicates that he is actually a liberating being, the one who, in fact, brings us the very life we need through the fullness of his work in our lives. He leaves nothing untouched – he deals with the whole person, thoroughly. What an awesome reality to be reminded of today! This is, actually, why Paul could write later on, “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6) When God loves, he loves completely. When God teaches, he teaches fully. When God gives grace, he gives grace abundantly. He deals bountifully with us every step of the way, because he knows our very lives depend on it! My hope is that you’ll see God’s bountiful dealings with you, even in the midst of trial or temptation. My hope is that you’ll experience the life-giving impact of his dealings with you, perhaps especially when your life seems to be most threatened. My hope is that you’ll see Jesus’ death and resurrection in a whole new light as a result of this beautiful verse in Psalm 119. And my deep prayer is that you’ll keep walking this faith in Jesus out, enduring bravely until the day of Christ, when all that we hope for will be fully and permanently realized. May God deal bountifully with you, both now and always! Pastor Stephen
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 20:53:22 +0000
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