A SNAPSHOT OF GOD

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Praise awaits You, our God, in Zion; to You our vows will be fulfilled. You who answer prayer, to You all people will come. When we were overwhelmed by sins, You forgave our transgressions. Blessed are those You choose and bring near to live in Your courts! We are filled with the good things of Your house, of Your holy temple.

You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas, who formed the mountains by your power, having armed Yourself with strength, who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations. The whole earth is filled with awe at Your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, You call forth songs of joy.

You care for the land and water it; You enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so You have ordained it. You drench its furrows and level its ridges; You soften it with showers and bless its crops. You crown the year with Your bounty, and Your carts overflow with abundance. The grasslands of the wilderness overflow; the hills are clothed with gladness. The meadows are covered with flocks and the valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing.

Psalm 65

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

We truly serve an awesome and amazing God. There’s little doubt about that. If you wanted to get a snapshot of the God we love and serve, you need only go to the 65th Psalm. In it David does a good job of highlighting many of the Lord’s greatest qualities. Consider the following things about God and how they apply to your life:

1. God answers prayer.

“You who answer prayer”

Sometimes people wonder if God really answers prayer. Perhaps this is because He hasn’t answered the way they wanted Him to. I mean, we’re like that aren’t we? Don’t we pray expecting for God to do our will, the will we are expressing to Him?

If you carry that attitude, it’s not going to take very long before you’re going to realize prayer doesn’t work like that. For it is all about God’s will and never about ours. Remember that Jesus taught us how to pray saying, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6:10

I think an old saying about prayer comes as close as any explanation about God and answered prayer. For God does answer every prayer and He does so with one of three responses: Yes, No, or Wait. Yes and No are easy enough to understand but what about wait?

Here God is saying one of two things: Either He wants you to wait because He is about to do something better than you could ever have hoped for or He’s telling you to wait because He’s trying to teach you patience and perseverance through faith and trust in Him.

Remember this always: God answers prayer.

2. God is always there for all who come to Him.

“To You all people will come.”

We could certainly go to a buffet table full of people in our lives, each providing us a particular service we need. Or we simply go to where we have one-stop shopping for everything we need. We could simply go to God.

Truly, when a person comes into a personal relationship with God, underscored by trust and faith, there isn’t anyone else they need to go to because God is the One who can provide them anything. Why would they go elsewhere?

3. God forgives.

“When we were overwhelmed by sins, You forgave our transgressions.”

There isn’t a human being alive today who isn’t a sinner (Romans 3:23). We are all afflicted by sin, sometimes overwhelmingly, so it’s a great comfort to know that we serve a God who forgives us with a grace, mercy, and love like no other.

4. God fills us with happiness as we experience His goodness to the fullest.

Blessed are those You choose and bring near to live in Your courts! We are filled with the good things of Your house, of Your holy temple.

When we choose to allow God to live and abide within our hearts and minds, then we live with Him. And when we live with Him by way of Him living in us, then we are filled to overflow with the good things of God, filled with the riches that are only found in Him.  

5. God performs awesome and righteous deeds.

“You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Savior.”

The God who answers prayer doesn’t do so with mere words. No, He often answers with amazing, miraculous works that proclaim the mighty power of His hands. Perhaps no other act was more amazing and powerful than God saving us through His one and only Son Jesus. For it wasn’t enough for our forgiving God to offer Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins on Calvary’s cross. He reserved His greatest act for the third day after Jesus had been put in the tomb. On that day, God showed all humanity that He held power over even death, resurrecting His Son from death to life and raising Him to power at His right hand in heaven.

It is this God who is for us. It is this God who answers prayers with miraculous deeds.

6. God is the hope of all the earth.

“God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.”

Can you think about the world without thinking about God first? After all, everything came from Him including all mankind.

With this, the earth and everything in it exists because of God and is only sustained by Him. He and He alone is the only real hope we will ever have, our only hope in this life and our only hope ahead through Jesus.

7. God’s creative power is on display in turn the earth is filled with his wonders.

“You formed the mountains by your power, having armed Yourself with strength, who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations. The whole earth is filled with Your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades.”

The creation work of God is all around us and He continues to show us that He is the grand Conductor of life, everything ebbing and flowing in a perfect symphony of His work called life. And we are in the midst of it, in the midst of God’s astonishing, astounding, remarkable wonders.

If this Psalm doesn’t lift your spirits as it brings God and His nature to the forefront in a mere snapshot of eleven verses, then I don’t know what will. It calls us to praise our Maker and Creator and to be as faithful to Him in our ways as He is faithful to us.

For this God who enriches, cares, and loves His creation abundantly is truly great and worthy to be praised. Let us, like Isaiah, tell others about Him saying:

“I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the Lord has done for us— yes, the many good things he has done (for Israel), according to his compassion and many kindnesses.” Isaiah 63:7

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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