Friday, June 16, 2017

Listen For The Voice Of God



June 16, 2017
Listen For The Voice Of God

“O 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”
Psalm 95:6-7 (NRSV)

Psalm 95:1 is a beautiful Call to Worship:

“Come, let us sing to the Lord!
Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation.”

This psalm is also a warning, as the psalmist remembers the failures of Israel to trust and obey God during their journey through the wilderness: “Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did . . . ‘They will never enter my place of rest’” (Psalm 95:8, 11b). This remembrance of Israel’s wandering in the desert for forty years is brought forward to the New Testament church in the book of Hebrews where the writer of the epistle quotes Psalm 95 five times in chapters 3 and 4. He forcefully made strong the admonition of the psalmist: “If only you would listen to his voice today!” (Psalm 95:7b)

I believe we desperately need to hear God’s voice each and every day! God’s people have always been long suffering. Sometimes our suffering comes through persecution for being the people of God. Sometimes our suffering comes as a result of our own willful disobedience to the commands of God. Sometimes our suffering comes as the consequences of mistakes or misjudgments we have made. No matter our circumstances, in the midst of our suffering, Psalm 95 calls us to listen for the voice of God. May I suggest the best place to listen is here:

“O 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” (Psalm 95:6-7 NRSV).

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 © 2017 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

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.

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