Today’s message comes to us from Psalm 102. The psalm is a prayer of one in the throes of affliction. “All the day my enemies taunt me; those who deride me use my name for a curse. For I eat ashes like bread and mingle tears with my drink,…” (V9) We can see how the enemy wears us down in our weakness. This makes me think of those times when you’re doing that self talk, convincing yourself that God could never forgive you, never love you, or love you after all that, etc. Words like, “stupid, worthless, hopeless, etc.,” come to mind. That’s the enemy taunting you. He loves to put those doubts about God and His love for us into our hearts. He loves to beat us up with lying words. He’ll tell you everything you aren’t. God sees you in Christ Jesus. You are precious and honored in His sight. Precious, because He came to die for you; to pay the price to redeem you from Hell. Honored, because you are created in His image, after His likeness, and He believes in you. If God didn’t believe in you, He wouldn’t have entrusted you to care for His creation; to manage it, and to harness it’s power. And, He hardly would have died to save you from going to Hell, if He didn’t think you could overcome the world and worldliness, and the devil, who rules it.

Verse ten is the one that gets me. Every time I read it, I just want to shout, “No, no, no! God doesn’t pick you up just to throw you down!” We, unfortunately, have this tendency to sabotage ourselves. We squirm and fuss and fight Him, until we slip from His arms and fall. I finally figured out that I need to check myself for self-sabotage when I feeling not in sync with God. This is usually the case whenever I’m stepping into new territory, or moving on to the next level in something. See, that’s the devil pushing your doubt and confusion buttons again.

Verses 16-17 are powerful. “For the LORD builds up Zion; he appears in his glory; he regards the prayer of the destitute and does not despise their prayer.” God always builds you up. He’s never the one who casts you down; we do that to ourselves, or allow others to do that to us. He appears in His glory. This is an important statement. At first glance, you’d think, “Oh, I need to expect bells and whistles, and radiant blinding lights, etc.” God is love, so His glory is love also. Do you know who that little old lady was, that walked with you from her house to the corner of your block when you got lost? Yeah, that was God; His glory resting on that little old lady. That little birdie on the wire, that flirted with me that day a few years back was God. Same thing, His glory on that little bird. That scripture in Philippians 4:8 comes to mind. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” These things are some of the things that make up God’s glory. They’re all in His character. We need to learn to look more closely at those little, seemingly insignificant things and events. God is in everything; and is everything. His glory fills the earth.

Love you from Cafe du Mondieu

Copyright by Marina Morrison (aka) Eden Stillwater, June 15, 2021, 1:35 p.m.