Believing God’s Word about Who We Are

Meditations on Christ in the Psalms 

October 19, 2022

Believing God’s Word about Who We Are

 

O God, your ways are holy.

Is there any god as mighty as you?

You are the God of great wonders!

Psalm 77:13-14a

Many of our hymns, old and new, have been written when the author was in despair. (Examples: Abide with Me, Henry F. Lyle; It is Well with My Soul, Horatio G. Spafford; Blessed Be Your Name, Matt Redman). The author of the letter to the Hebrews defines faith as, “the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see” (Hebrews 11:1). The prose of the author of Hebrews, the hymn writers, and the psalmist expresses faith that is securely resting on the Word of God, not on emotions and feelings.

In the first ten verses, the psalmist is focused only on his feelings and his circumstances. I counted nineteen personal pronouns in those ten verses. It is perfectly alright to express your anxiety and feelings of depression to God. We learned in Psalm 56 that God keeps our tears in a bottle; He is for us. But it is not a good thing to stay focused on our feelings. There comes a time when we need to say, “Rain on my feelings!” (Bill Gillham, Lifetime Guarantee). What matters most is what God has said in His Word, not my feelings.

How do we come to that place where we trust God’s Word in our lives? How do we find our way to the place where we are content to rest in God’s smile of affection for us? I think Corrie ten Boom answers those questions best when she said, “You’ll never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” You will never come to the place where Jesus is all you have until you first exhaust your confidence in your own power and resources. We can only be dependent on God after we have come to the end of our own independence.

My Takeaway: Don’t confuse dependence on God and resting in God’s love for you with passivity. God created each of us with our soul, which is our mind, will and emotions. Becoming dependent on God is a matter of allowing our mind to be grounded on God’s word, training our will to be conformed to God’s will, and choosing to believe God’s Word about who we are.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2022 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.