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Devotions

Daily Devotion April 23rd

THURSDAY 23rd

Psalm 100

There are some Psalms that perhaps we can recall being used more frequently than others in Sunday morning worship services, and for me, when I hear particular Psalms, my mind immediately remembers individuals who I can recall who used to regularly read them or they take me back to a particular time  – they were the favourites. Psalm 8 immediately reminds me of a lovely lady called Sonia that worshipped in the Church in Wrexham. Psalm 103 reminds me of an elderly man who used to make us smile as youngsters because he always used to say Psalm one ought three instead of one hundred and three.

This Psalm for today, Psalm 100, takes me back to my childhood Church in Madley, a little village in Herefordshire, the same place as Mr one ought three attended. I can remember verse 2 being displayed on the wall as a motto, ‘Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!’

This Psalm like many other Psalms, calls us to ‘come and to worship the Lord’.

Come with a joyful noise – that means that not all noise is joyful!

Come with singing, there is something powerful about song, and I believe that there is something especially powerful about congregational singing.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving, we of all people should be a thankful people when we think of what God has done for us.

Enter his courts with praise, his praise should always be on our lips.

It gives to us the core for a worship service. Joyful noise, singing, thanksgiving, praise and blessing. But it also says serve the LORD with gladness, everything we do in the service of the Church should be done unto the Lord with gladness and in verse 3, ‘Know that the LORD, He is God!’ We come together in worship to KNOW the Lord, I believe worship should draw us closer to the Lord, and also expand our understanding of who he is and of what he has done and is doing and yet will do for us. Worship should excite us, but it should also ignite us, because the more we worship in spirit and in truth, the greater should be our awareness of God in our lives and the stronger our desire should be to get to know him more.

Returning to verse three, it also says. ‘It is he who has made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.’

When we come to worship, we are coming to bow down before the great Creator. He not only deserves our worship, but he has the right to demand it! He has made us, we are his, this reminds me of 1 Corinthians 6:20 ‘For you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body.’

We don’t belong to ourselves; we belong to God we are his people and the sheep of his pasture. There is a personal challenge to each of us here, as to glorifying God, in that we need to be careful that we don’t dishonour God through our actions, in the things which we do and the things we say each day.

Psalm 95:6-7 says, ‘Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.’

Then the final verse (100:5) reminds us ‘For the LORD is good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.’ 

This is why we worship, why we praise, why we bring joyful noise / songs, and serve with gladness because the LORD who has made us is a GOOD God, he loves us with enduring love and he is faithful to all generations – as he was faithful 4000 years ago, 3000 years ago, 2000 years ago, 1000 years ago so he still is today and will be in 1000 years, 2000, 3000, 4000 . . . . Lamentations 3:22-23 ‘The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’

Why should we make, serve, come, know, enter and give – for many thousand reasons but in particular because of Gods steadfast love and faithfulness.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father

There is no shadow of turning with Thee

Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not

As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be

Great is Thy faithfulness

Great is Thy faithfulness

Morning by morning, new mercies I see

All I have needed Thy hands hath provided

Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord unto me

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest

Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth

Thine own great presence to cheer and to guide

Strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside

Thomas Chisholm CCLI 788682

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Devotions

Daily Devotion April 20th

MONDAY 20th

Psalm 8

This short Psalm ends the same way that it starts, ‘O LORD, our LORD, how majestic is your name in all the earth!’

It is a declaration of who God is – He is the LORD, ‘O LORD’, but it is also a further declaration that he is ‘OUR LORD’ and then a third declaration that is ‘name is majestic in all the earth.’

I can imagine that the psalmist David has stopped wherever he was and with whatever he was doing and looked up into the sky, maybe from a high vantage point, and then looked at all he could see around him and suddenly become overwhelmed with the splendor, majesty, grandeur and greatness of the LORD God. He says, ‘When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers; the moon and the stars, which you have set in place . . .’(v3) In a later Psalm, David declares; ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.’ (Psalm 19:1) In seeing all that God has created, it is as if he sees God’s signature in it all, the very majestic name of God written in everything for all to see.

But then, after trying to comprehend the greatness of God in all that he has seen, imagine it, the beauty of the delicate flower, the incredible wonder of the buzzing bee, the thunderous roar of a waterfall, or gentle flowing of a stream, the incredible vastness of the ocean and the almost unbelievable expanse of the heavens on a clear night where the eye is drawn from one star after another, till if you start to count, well in no time at all you have to give up, because there are so many, he then looks at himself, and he thinks of his fellow human kind and says: ‘What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?’ (v4) The CSB puts it this way, ‘What is a human being that you remember him, a son of man, that you look after him?’ (See also Psalm 144:3-4)

When we stop and think about it, it is a very good question. In the scheme of all that God has created, in the vastness of it all, and we know that scientific technology is getting better all the time, causing man with the use of telescopes to see far further out than ever before, what is man? And secondly that God should be mindful of him or that God should care for him? It’s a big, vast universe God, surely you have got better things to do than to look after me? And the answer would come back ‘No, I care about you and I care for you and I think about you all the time.’ To re-quote a verse I used yesterday, David said in Psalm 139:17-18 ‘How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them.’ He then continues in the next verse, ‘IF I could count them, they are more than the sand!’

Let’s pause there for a moment – as I am preparing these thoughts, I stopped myself and wondered ‘Why am I using this same verse two days in a row, how come the Holy Spirit has led me this way again?’ and this is my answer. Someone needs to hear this, someone needs to be reminded of this very thing – God cares for you, God is mindful of you, and God is thinking about you. I’m reminded of the chorus that goes; ‘I’m special because God has loved me, for he gave the best thing that he had to save me, His own Son Jesus, crucified to take the blame for all the bad things I have done.’ You are special to God – the words he spoke over Israel are words he speaks over his children today -Isaiah 43:1 ‘But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob (REPLACE THIS WITH YOUR NAME), he who formed you, O Israel (REPLACE THIS WITH YOUR NAME): “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  In the words of Malachi 3:17 (“They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.) You are God’s treasured possession, the KJV says; ‘my jewel.’

What is man? If we go back to the creation story, we have the various days of creation and as we know it was on the last day, day six that God decided to create man. This is what he said, Genesis 1:26-27 ‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.’

Then in the following verses 28-31, ‘And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”  And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.’

These verses indicate that the creation of man was the pinnacle or the high point of Gods creative work. Yes, the heavens and the earth were amazing, the sun and the moon and the stars, the sea and oceans, the rivers and streams, the trees and the flowers, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and the creatures roaming on the land they were all good and worthy of magnifying the name of the LORD but after God had created man, he gave him dominion over everything, he gave him the responsibility of being the caretaker as it were of the created world all around him, and whereas everything else that God created was good, after the sixth day, when man had been formed and completed the creatives work, God declared ‘it was very good.’

Of course we know that because of the forbidden fruit being partaken of, it all went pear shaped, But although God banished the original pair out of the garden of Eden, he didn’t forget mankind, he immediately put into action the plan he had prepared before the foundation of the world to redeem man back unto himself.

And ever since that sixth day of creation, God has always been mindful of mankind, God has always cared for mankind, God has always worked for and toward mankind both with his common grace towards all and with his saving or special grace toward all who would believe. Yes, in comparison to all that we can survey, we may as individuals seem to be like a tiny spec, insignificant and unimportant, but not to God, he has loved each one of us with an everlasting love. He cares for you, he cares for me.

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the works Thy Hand hath made,

I see the stars, I hear the mighty thunder,

Thy pow’r throughout the universe displayed,

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,

How great Thou art! How great Thou art!

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,

How great Thou art! How great Thou art!

When through the woods  and forest glades I wander

I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,

When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze,

And when I think that God His Son not sparing,

Sent him to die – I scarce can take it in,

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died to take away my sin.

When Christ shall come, with shouts of acclamation,

And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!

Then I shall bow in humble adoration

And there proclaim, “My God, how great Thou art!”

Stuart Hine CCLI788682