THURSDAY JULY 1st
Psalm 44
NIV (v1) – ‘We have heard it with our ears, O God; our ancestors have told us what you did in their days, in days long ago.’
ESV (v1) – ‘O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old . . .’
This psalm, another Maskil, (a well-crafted song) commences with a backward look to what God had done for the people of Israel through verses 1-8 and then from verse 9 there is a lament for the LORD has seemingly rejected the people and disgraced them, (verses 9-22) even though the composer of the psalm is sure that they are in a right place with God (vv17-18) it ends with a plea or prayer for the Lord to visit them again ending with the words in 26, ‘Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!’
There is a lesson we can learn from this psalm that can be applied to the Church, firstly we can take the first 8 verses and look back, especially in the infant days of the modern Pentecostal Movement and see the amazing and spectacular things that God did among them, we only have to pick up and read some of the books that were written to record the exploits and we can say without any shadow of doubt that the power of God was at work, bringing many souls to salvation, setting many who were bound by the enemy free, and bringing healing and deliverance to those who were sick and diseased. It was also evident by the spectacular growth that took place as the pioneering took place, bringing about the establishment of churches throughout the United Kingdom and the whole world, to use a phrase that the Apostolic Church used, ‘Belting the Globe’(which was a feature of all the main Pentecostal movements) with the good news of the gospel. But a period came about which we could call the stage the psalmist refers to in verses 9-22, the various Pentecostal Movements have continued and survived and could apply verses 17-18 ‘. . . we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way . . .’ Yet the spectacular things that happened in the early days are not happening on the same level today and haven’t done for many years, (although we thank God for the pockets of amazing things that are happening) and we need to come to verses 23-26 and in our own context refine them to become a prayer to ask the Lord God to come again, to visit us again with revival, with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit so that the things we can refer back to in the early days, no longer remain something of the past, but become something which we will experience ourselves. ‘Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us (restore us, revive us) for the sake of your steadfast love!’
Revive thy work, O Lord,
Thy mighty arm make bare;
Speak with the voice that wakes the dead,
And make thy people hear.
Revive thy work, O Lord,
Disturb this sleep of death;
Quicken the smould’ring embers now
By thine almighty breath.
Revive thy work, O Lord,
Create soul-thirst for thee;
End hung’ring for the Bread of Life
O may our spirits be.
Revive thy work, O Lord,
Exalt thy precious name;
And, by the Holy Ghost, our love
For thee and thine inflame.
Revive thy work, O Lord,
While here to thee we bow;
Descend, O gracious Lord, descend,
Oh, come and bless us now.