EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them." (Psalm 34:6-7)

This is a Psalm of thanksgiving, which becomes a teaching, almost like the proverbs, on the benefits of fearing God and shunning evil. It is a Psalm that contains the well-known verse of "Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." (vs.8). A verse we most often hear in our communion liturgy. It is also the Psalm that contains what the Gospel writer John takes as a prophecy about Jesus crucifixion in verse 20: "he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken".

This morning however I want to pick up on these lesser known lines in verses 6 & 7, as I believe they hold deep truths.

This is a Psalm written by David, and so it makes for an interesting thought that he refers to himself as "This poor man…" In many other cases David would refer to himself as the king or the like, and yet here he lowers himself to the level of a poor man. It's important to note that poor does not necessarily denote one who has no possessions – rather it can mean one who is without resources to save his own life or secure his own well-being. And who knows it.

We so often in life live a lie that we are in control. We believe somehow that we have everything in hand. We write memoirs and take photos, do back-ups on our computers and have safety deposit boxes to protect the past, we take out medical aid and have security companies guard our houses to protect our present and take out life cover, house cover, dread disease and disability cover, (I am amazed by the number of different things insurance companies have come up with to 'cover') all to safeguard our future.

And so we feel safe. We feel in control. We believe we have it all together.

Yet the truth is that we have very little control over what happens tomorrow or even in the next ten minutes. While insurances and back-ups are great safety mechanisms to have in place, if we place our trust there we will fall horribly short of reality. One car accident, one fire, one phone-call… and our worlds can fall apart.

This is why our trust belongs with God. Our faith needs to be in Him and in His goodness and faithfulness regardless of the circumstances around us. God is the only unchangeable dependable force in our lives. He has the power to deliver, to restore, to heal, and to command angels to encamp around us, or hold us up in their hands when we need it.

While this may be a scary truth, the powerful reality is that we are never alone. God will never leave us nor forsake us regardless of trial or tragedy. I pray that you will base your life on this truth, recognising that we are all poor, and all in need of a God who will never let us go.

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EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD" (Psalm 27:14)

This Psalm again like yesterday speaks of trust. It is a beautiful Psalm – one of those that deserves memorising. It's also a very well-known Psalm starting with the captivating lines of, "The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?" The lines ring with the same message as yesterday.

And yet it finishes with the words, "Wait for the Lord."

Waiting is not something we are very good at. We live in an instant society, instant messaging, instant pudding, instant cash and instant answers. We have drive-throughs and google and 24 hour hot lines. Everything in life is aimed at being quick, efficient and faster. And so everything that slows us down gets us frustrated. Traffic, queues, waiting rooms and the little loading sign that appears on my blackberry from time to time. If our computers don't boot up in 30 seconds there is a problem. If I get put on hold and have to listen to delicate piano pieces on the phone I'm tempted to hang up. If the truck in front of me decides to drive at 40km/hr I find myself tempted to cross the solid white line to pass him.

But in reality – in the real world – things of importance take time. There is no such thing as instant love, instant character or instant relationships. These things of value require intentional and extended time. My relationship with Tim (my husband) grows and matures as we travel through the years together. My fitness improves with many hours at the gym. My understanding of life and ministry comes with time and experience. My knowledge and love of God comes through years of watching his faithfulness and his goodness to me.

God is never rushed. When we hit a crisis, he is not short of time to meet our needs. He knows, he cares, and he loves you enough to know that sometimes instant answers produce shallow character and limited faith. When Jesus' good friend Lazarus was ill, Jesus took so long to get to him, that he had been dead for several days when he arrived. Was Jesus late? No. He was precisely on time to demonstrate God's mercy and power in what seemed to be a hopeless situation.

Waiting on the Lord is a strong feature in our trusting him. As hours or days tick by and we question why God has not answered, trust calls us to humbly wait on his timing and his purpose to be revealed.

Take a deep breath. Still up in your soul. And wait. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart, and wait for the Lord.

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EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?" (Psalm 56:3-4)

Psalm 56 is a Psalm of trust in the midst of fear. It was composed during the time that David was fleeing from Saul who was trying to kill him. It links to the stories of David in Gath in chapters 21 and 22 of 1 Samuel. Here David has fled alone, and once he arrives in Gath, he realises that the people there have heard about him and so he is afraid. He pretends to be mad and thus manages to escape and hide out in a cave. It is here that he writes this Psalm, trusting in God even though there are enemies on every side, and trusted friends had even turned against him.

Fear is a very real emotion that we all encounter. We experience it in exam rooms, in doctor's offices, in hospital waiting rooms, and before performance appraisals. It creeps into our souls when the phone rings at three in the morning or a loved one begins a conversation with, "we need to talk…" We live in a country where there is a shortage of work, where we are uncertain of the trustworthiness of our police and justice departments, where crime covers our newspapers and fills our twitter feeds.

And fear is a dangerous thing – it can cause us to make rash decisions, to lash out at someone we love or to hoard possessions. When I look back at some of my worst failures, so much of the cause was a fear – a fear that people would think less of me if I told the truth, fear that if I was generous here that I wouldn't have enough to make it through the month, fear that if I showed people my vulnerability that they would reject me.

David in this Psalm uses opposing words to make his point. He contrasts fear and trust, God and man. "When I am afraid, I will trust in you." He shows us that faith is not based on feelings – in fact without fear, without doubt, without worry there would be very little reason for trust. Calvin talks about this when he says, "Fear and hope may seem opposite and incompatible affections and yet hope never comes into full sway unless there exists some measure of fear." Trust belongs in situations where fear or anxiety or terror is possible.

Our trust is not baseless- it is placed in a God who has proved himself time and again. The Bible is full of times where it confirms that He is trustworthy and never changes.
"Fear not, I am with you." (Isaiah 41:10)
"This I know; God is on my side" (Psalm 56:9)
"If God is for us; who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)

May you find courage in the situations you find yourself in this week. May you pray together with the Psalmist, "When I am afraid, I will trust in God."

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EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips. Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds…" (Psalm 141:3,4)

Psalm 141 is a prayer to God that He will protect and rescue the author from wickedness and the pervasive evil that he sees around him. The author, David, offers up this petition as an offering to God. In verse 2 he even describes this prayer as incense – an image which we find again in Revelation chapter 18, where the prayers of the saints together rise up to God together with incense.

The central text to our Psalm though, is the one we have read here this morning – a plea to God that he would guard his mouth and his heart from that which is evil.

This is a prayer I need to pray every morning. The reality is that so many of the problems we face in life begin with what we say. A careless comment here can tear down self-esteem. A thoughtless passing on of information can destroy trust. A little white lie here can lead to a web of deceit. An angry word can break a heart.

James talks about the power of the tongue and says,
"So it is with the tongue: small as it is, it can boast about great things. Just think how large a forest can be set on fire by a tiny flame! And the tongue is like a fire. It is a world of wrong, occupying its place in our bodies and spreading evil through our whole being. It sets on fire the entire course of our existence with the fire that comes to it from hell itself. We humans are able to tame and have tamed all other creatures---wild animals and birds, reptiles and fish. But no one has ever been able to tame the tongue. It is evil and uncontrollable, full of deadly poison. We use it to give thanks to our Lord and Father and also to curse other people, who are created in the likeness of God." (James 3:5-9)

The second part is a plea to guard his heart. Jesus tells us in Matthew 12 that it is out of the heart that the mouth speaks, thus the condition of the heart is revealed in the words we say. Bitterness, arrogance, cynicism, racism, self-pity are all revealed in the words we say. Thus in order to keep what we say pure and holy, we need to keep our hearts from wickedness too.

We live in a world where we are bombarded by coarse language and joking, where we are tempted by materialism and lust, where we are confronted with negativity and pessimism.

Into this we need to realise daily that a faithful life depends on the faithfulness of God. We need to constantly throw ourselves onto his mercy and grace to set a guard over our mouths, and protect our hearts from wickedness.

May this Psalm challenge you in your prayer life today.

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EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
Look on me and answer, O Lord my God...
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me."
(Psalm 13:1, 3, 5-6)

This is a typical albeit short Psalm of Lament. It is a cry to God for help in the midst of perceived separation, struggle and heartache. Yet while it is only six verses long, it teaches us so much about prayer and about who we are before God when we bring our hearts to him.

The Psalm begins with a protest, a protest that the Psalmist feels abandoned, feels that God has withdrawn from him, that God has forgotten him. The earnest cry of "How long?" is one that we all can relate to, whether personally or even simply looking at the evil in the world around us. There are those situations in our own lives, struggles with depression, habitual sin, a persistent illness or consistent pain caused by a loved one. There are those situations we watch in other's lives, unhappy relationships, addiction problems or loneliness and there are those situations in the world, the recent bout of horrific child murders in our country, the injustice of corruption, the horror of abuse…
And for all these things we cry out to God and ask "HOW LONG"?

The Psalmist doesn't stop there though. He moves from Protest to Petition. Lord, you know and only you can help. I know that you have the answer. He addresses his Lord personally saying "my God" showing a move to trusting the One who has called him. This Psalm contains the double ask of Hear me and Help me!

And finally he moves into Praise. Yesterday we spoke of the word 'Hesed' and again we see it here – The psalmist is saying that he trusts in God's active love and faithful helpfulness. This is the kind of faith that cannot separate God from any experience of life – including life's worst. It is the kind of faith that cannot imagine a future apart from God's salvation and his work. Luther referred to the stance of this prayer as the "state in which hope despairs and yet despair hopes."

This prayer is thus speaking to us in our congregation's theme this year, "Singing the Lord's song in a strange land". That agony and adoration, pain and praise hang together in this life that we journey alongside Jesus. We live in the situation where we are saved, renewed by his grace, and building his kingdom of light and love around us, yet we are surrounded on every side by troubles and pain and injustice.
Thus we can cry along with the Psalmist, "How long, O Lord?" and with the same breath sing to the Lord for he has been so abundantly good to us.

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EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords:
His love endures forever." (Psalm 136:1-3)

Psalm 136 is one of the well-known liturgical psalms. It is set out in call – response fashion where the priest would call out the first part of the verse and the people would respond with the refrain: "His love endures forever."

The psalmist continues to list throughout the rest of the psalm the great wonders that God has performed in the lives of the Israelites, starting with creation, but continuing up to and including the present time. It ends up becoming current and personal in verses 23 & 24, where the first parts read,
"to the One who remembered us in our low estate… and freed us from our enemies."

The word love in the refrain has been translated in other versions of the Bible as 'steadfast love', 'loving kindness', 'mercy' or 'faithful love'. The Hebrew word here is 'hesed' which commentators translate as the characteristic of reliable helpfulness. 'Hesed' is thus an action rather than a feeling. Each of the wonders that are listed is thus an outworking of this 'Hesed.'
Three awesome things to note then from this Psalm:

Firstly, the repetitive nature of the refrain, "His love endures forever" can also be seen as a poetic device to drive the reality of 'forever' into our hearts. Just as we repeat it over and over again, so God's love goes on and on and on. It's a love that cannot be measured or quantified. Paul writes to the Ephesians saying, "I pray that you… grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge."

Secondly that this love is not a general 'God loves the world' kind of love, but rather that it is a personal intimate kind of love. This is the kind of love that cares about sparrows falling from the sky, and that knows the numbers of hairs on our heads. God loves each of us, personally.

And finally, that this love is made visible in God's action. The praise in this Psalm is not thank you God for what you've done, but rather thank you God for WHO YOU ARE and how we see this identity in the wonderful works you do.

"Give thanks to the God of Heaven.
His Love endures forever."

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EMMDEV Snippets from Psalms

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your heart to God."

Good Morning!

For my first devotional I am simply going to tell you a little about the coming weeks and the series that I have felt led to write about.

I'm calling it "Snippet's from Psalms" and rather than tackling full Psalms, or an entire book, I am selecting key verses from a variety of the Psalms and unpacking a few each day. I'll be commenting briefly on the context of the entire psalm that the verse will come from, and would encourage you, if you find a moment in the day, to read through the rest of the Psalm.

The Psalms is most probably my favourite book in the Bible, and I believe it has so much to offer us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great theologians talks about its unique place in the Scriptures saying that; "It is God's Word and, with a few exceptions, the prayer of men as well"

Some commentators have even argued that the entire message of the Bible is contained in the book of Psalms. Martin Luther (the great reformer) was one of these as he wrote that the Psalter "…might well be called a little Bible. In it is comprehended most beautifully and briefly everything that is in the entire Bible. It is really a fine …handbook."

But beyond its theology and scope, for me the psalms are intensely personal. They provide words and expressions and ways of relating to God when I find that my own words and ways fail. We find every possible human emotion captured from anger to praise, grief to rejoicing, confusion to clarity and apathy to encouragement. We find that while David and the other authors may have lived centuries ago, they faced the same struggles and heartache that we do, and so in their writings we find ourselves.

A little while back, I was reading through the Psalms in my quiet times and when I came across a verse that specifically spoke to me, I made it my facebook status and tweeted it (more for my record that anything else). I was amazed at how many people commented on these few verses and how much they had meant to them that day. It is many of these verses that I will be unpacking and exploring in these devotionals.

I pray in the next few weeks that you will be blessed by the words, poetry and prayers of the psalmists.

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EMMDEV A quick heads up.

Dear Dev-readers,
For the next couple of weeks our daily devs are going to be written by Jackie Barker who is the probationer who has been doing an internship at Emmanuel and Grace for this year. For the dev-folk who aren't connected to Emmanuel or Grace and don't know Jackie, here's a quick intro:

Jackie and Tim Barker

Jackie and Tim

Jackie is a probationer, having completed her Theological studies, and journeying towards ordination. She has spent the last five years working with youth and young adults at St Mungo’s Church in Bryanston, where she met and married the man of her dreams – Tim, who is a high school teacher.

Prior to that she worked as a Sign Language interpreter for students in University having completed a BA in Psychology and South African Sign Language.

Tim and Jackie are both passionate about ministry and seeing lives change because of Jesus. They also love anything Scottish (Jackie does Highland dancing), anything outdoors and in the mountains, and most recently, archery.

Their family is made complete by two yorkshire terriors, Rodin and Raphael, the most awesome tiny dogs in the world.

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Jackie will start sending devs tomorrow - enjoy!

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Theo Groeneveld
theo@emmanuel.org.za Cell: 082-5510752
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Here's how I'm doing 2013:
"They who wait on the Lord will renew their strength They will mount up on wings like eagles..." (Isaiah 40:31)

EMMDEV 2013-10-25 [Treasure Cupboard] Prayer

This is one of those between-series devs. This one is from the "Reality Bytes" series I did a few years ago and this one came up for me - so this is a three-fingers-pointing-back EmmDev. Much love, Theo
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Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Romans12:12

Reality bites us and we think that we are too busy to pray.
If we want to avoid running out of steam, the reality byte we need to download is this: "Be faithful in prayer."

I have an over-busy mind and always seem to be over-run with things that must be done. When it comes to maintaining spiritual fervour through prayer, I am still learning.

Here are some quotes from people who have mastered the truths that I am still learning:

Martin Luther said: "I have so much to do today that I _need_ to spend the first hour in prayer."

Someone else said: "Seven days without prayer makes one weak!"

What about this one? "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go." -- Abraham Lincoln

"One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying." --Catherine Marshall

"Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?"-- Corrie Ten Boom

Fredrik Wisloff said: "You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day."

And this awesome one: "Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan" --John Bunyan

What I'm learning is to stop making excuses about being busy, about not knowing how to pray and just not quite managing to make time to pray, and I am simply grabbing moments to connect deeply and intimately with God.

And whenever I do, it's like taking a huge breath of fresh oxygen and realising that I've been holding my breath and that I actually _want_ to breathe more often.

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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/

EMMDEV 2013-10-23 [Hosea Highlights] Concluding...

O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols?
I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a green pine tree;
your fruitfulness comes from me."
9 Who is wise? He will realize these things.
Who is discerning? He will understand them.
The ways of the LORD are right;
the righteous walk in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them. Hosea14:8-9

And so we get to the end of Hosea.
It has been a powerful message:
- God reveals Himself as a faithful husband and loving father.
- He has spoken urgently to the Northern Kingdom (Ephraim) who won't listen.
- He offers blessing to those who embrace Him...

And so the book ends on a "Proverbsy" note...

What more does God have to do with idols??
The no-brainer answer is "nothing" and neither should we.

God is depicted as the fruitful pine tree - we should come to Him.
If we were wise and discerning we would get it.
(Unfortunately Israel wasn't and didn't)

And so the conclusion of the book is this:
God's ways are right and we have a choice to make!

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Hope you have enjoyed our journey through Hosea.
Any suggestions for the next couple of weeks??


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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/