Daily Meditations

Psalm 56:7 Praying in His Will In our “House of Prayer” ministry we often remind ourselves that when we pray for the nations, for national or world events, even for our families and friends, our prayer requests could so easily be way outside of the Will of God. We pray for peace and harmony and righteousness, for good to triumph over evil, for problems to go away. Long term, of course, that is the Divine Plan and it will happen, be sure of that. However, God uses many means to achieve His Will. David could not see any sense or purpose on his being on the run from Saul or from the Philistines however, a Plan was unfolding and later in life he might have reflected that even in this precarious state, he was perfectly safe and part of something much bigger than his temporary well-being. So, do we pray for Covid to go away or is this part of the judgement of God upon the nations? Do we pray for the evil rulers of a country to be overthrown or does God intend to use them for a greater purpos...

Psalm 56:5-6 All day long they twist my words I have worked in many places in my life, mostly offices, and mostly with a mixed crowd of individuals. There was one era where every day was dominated by gossip. The discipline by the managers was slack and there were a couple of ladies who did nothing but pass on tittle tattle. The place was a breeding ground of insinuations, rumours and scandalous hearsay. Eventually this affected everyone, most wanted to engage in the fabricated stories and the embellished chatter and those who didn’t were often the subjects of the scheming that went on. The result was an office dire with mistrust, broken relationships and a real sense of wariness affecting the whole workforce. I tried to ride above it, but I knew I was the subject of some of what was being said, it was so hard to ignore it all.  David suffered in a similar way, he knew that there were evil people around him who took his every action and his every word and twisted them for their own ...

Psalm 56:3-4 What can mere mortals do to me? I have commented before about a period in my life when I was gripped by fear. I was in my early thirties and had broken down under the pressures of work and church and family and my own ridiculous lifestyle. After weeks of inertia, I knew that I had to try to pick up some of the reigns and move forward. And that is when the fear kicked in – fear of almost everything. Fear that cast an icy spell around my soul and made me want to hide away – forever. That fear remained with me for years and could be the subject of a book all on its own. That is why these verses are so precious,  “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You. In God, whose word I praise – in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”  It was trust in Him that brought about my deliverance. For some of us faith is rooted in an awareness of our own inadequacies, life has taught us that we cannot do things in our own and that we are dependant. For others t...

Psalm 56:1-2 Fear v Trust We are back to that time in David’s life when, as a younger man, he had to flee from King Saul. Saul was intent on killing him and relentlessly pursued the young fugitive who was accompanied by a loyal band of followers. David was an outlaw in his own land and constantly on the move as the king’s spies discovered his latest hiding place. It seemed to him and his friends, that there was nowhere to find safety, so they decided to take a gamble and put themselves under the shelter of a foreign nation, in this case the Philistines. The fear in their group must have been incredible, to go over to the Philistines! Why, we all know about David’s reputation with the Philistines, he had killed their talisman, the giant Goliath, an event which led to the rout of the Philistine army and a great victory for Saul. But that was the problem, the Israelites knew it was David who had obeyed the Lord and killed the giant, so they sang his praises. Saul was jealous and that was ...

Psalm 55:23 Only half a life! This is a sad end to the Psalm! It’s a job to know whether to take it as a prophetic statement that had application only to Absalom, or to see it as a more general indictment of the ways of the wicked. Certainly, Absalom was brought down into the pit of decay, and he did not live out half of his days. As we have seen, he was caught by his long hair, in the branches of a tree, and left hanging in the air. Joab sealed his doom with the tip of a javelin through his heart. Whether we can consign all wicked people to an early grave is probably a matter for dispute, it is the Lord who gives and the Lord who takes away, so I think I would rather leave such matters to Him. However, we do see that those who live their lives to excess and who deliberately gamble with their health and their sanity, can bring a premature end to their time in this world. It is also true that those who have lived violently and who sacrifice the lives of others to their dictatorial ways,...

Psalm 55:22 Cast your cares on the Lord This is one of the most comforting verses in the Bible. It is an invitation to bring all of our worries, our fears, our anger, our frustration, our hurt and pain, our grief and sorrow, our loneliness, and all other inner anxieties and burdens, and cast them on to the Lord. This is more than just an invitation to “tell all”, it is a command to throw these negative afflictions away, to throw them at Him! To take them off ourselves and cast them on to Him. This is the Lord’s Counselling Manual at its very best for it does not ask us to psychoanalyse ourselves or to look deep within and then think positive thoughts. It tells us to name the problems and then chuck them over to the burden-carrier, to give them to Him. Hallelujah! Then comes the promise!  “He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.”  The life of a “follower of the way” is all about letting go, about trusting, about laying-down, about surrender and obedience...

Psalm 55:20-21 Flashbacks Well, if you thought that David had had enough of complaining about his adversary, you were wrong. Just at the point when he appears to be making progress and trusting in the Lord, he has another swipe at the one who is his enemy; the one we believe to be his son, Absalom. “My friend, my companion, the one whom I trusted; he is duplicitous beyond words. He treated us so amiably, we yet he was stabbing us all in the back. Nothing he said was true, every promise, every agreement has been broken. All the while we thought him an ally and true friend, he was maliciously plotting our downfall and his own prominence. How smoothly he talked, how utterly believable he was, yet every soothing word was a sword, every smile hid a scheming assassin. He cared nothing for us, his thoughts were only of civil war and division.” Listen carefully my friends, when we are on the road to recovery, there will always be flashbacks, moments when the old hurts are resurrected, and the ...