As we
consider all that God has done in human history by creating this world and
everything in it with all the wonders we experience every day, we can’t help
but be drawn into thankful admiration of what He is capable.
The nature of God
is couched in love concerning everything He has created; it is the essence of
His character. God has received a bad rap through many who have accused Him by
saying God is vengeful or angry, which is not a valid argument, can a leopard change its
spots? No more than God can or would turn His character into something He is
not.
King David
experienced God’s loving nature first hand and wrote about it so we could know
what God is like. David wasn’t just writing the psalms because he had nothing
else to do, he was writing because he was inspired to declare the true nature
of God amidst numerous generations of prophets and leaders who only recorded
glimpses of God.
And then they filled in
the rest with opinion and conjecture based on tradition rather than a personal
relationship and intimacy with Him.
David
recognized that God wanted to be everything to us, which is why he penned the
words: “With my whole heart, with my whole life, and with my innermost being, I
bow in wonder and love before you..”
David recognized that there were three
ways in which we understand God in our lives.
- In our feelings and emotions (our soul)
- In our daily interaction with life itself (our body)
- In our thought life, our imaginations (our spirit)
God not only
deserves our affection and the love of our heart, which is our feelings and
emotions for God, but that God deserves appreciation and acknowledgment in how
we lived our day to day lives.
So living for God was about how to conduct
ourselves by our knowledge of Him being integrated into every aspect of what we
do.
And lastly, David saw a need for us to shape the mind (our thought life) into
hearing and knowing God with our spirits. (our innermost beings)
“I bow in
wonder and love before you, the holy God! Yahweh, you are my soul’s
celebration.”
David
celebrated and expressed his feelings and emotions to the Lord freely because
he recognized that our God was a feeling God who loved His creation and desired
us to respond to Him. He celebrated God in song, with music, and in the dance.
In spite of
David’s failings, God still honored him because his heart always sought after
the Lord. In this way, it was said of David that “he was after God’s own
heart.” David still was humble enough to recognize his failings before the
Lord, and yet he never let that stop him from celebrating God’s love and mercy.
“How could I
ever forget the miracles of kindness you’ve done for me? You kissed my heart
with forgiveness, in spite of all I’ve done.” Humbleness is quiet strength,
which recognizes that God is the source of forgiveness amidst all of our epic
fails in life. God never holds our failures against us, and we can celebrate in
knowing that we are forgiven.
“You’ve
healed me inside and out from every disease.” We tend to look for some kind of
formula for healing so that we can live lives that are free of disease, but
healing doesn't come that way, it comes from relational interaction with the Lord, not from a formula.
David lived a life interacting with the Lord on an intimate level, integrated
with his mind, will, and emotions by trusting the Lord fully in every aspect
of His life.
“You’ve
rescued me from hell and saved my life.” The word for “hell” here is “Sheol” or
the grave. David was saved from his enemies so many times from his life being
killed, and he recognized it was the Lord’s protection upon him that preserved
his life.
“You’ve
crowned me with love and mercy.” Again
the nature of God, David recognized that not only was God showing him love and
mercy, but now it was becoming part of his life of who he was. David became the
most benevolent king in Israel’s history.
“You satisfy
my every desire with good things.” David’s desire was becoming the Lord’s
desire, for as the Lord was encountering David, his heart was changing to know
the Lord’s desire being demonstrated it through him.
“You’ve
supercharged my life so that I soar again like a flying eagle in the sky!”
There is so much power that comes from God’s unfailing love, which
“supercharges” our lives and puts a desire within us to love as God loves and
to respond as God responds that we are transformed into the likeness of God
Himself. The net result is we soar in the heavenlies with wings like eagles,
which is where David sees himself.
We, too, can
learn from David’s heart of love for the Lord and be drawn into the deeper places
of intimacy with the Lord so that we can know Him and His desire for us on many new levels. Love, healing, restoration, mercy, God's love is like an endless ocean that never runs dry.
Be Blessed;
Stephen
Barnett
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