Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Psalm 5 … To study these chapters, go to this link -
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Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Psalm 38 … To study these chapters, go to this link -
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Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: Psalm 41-42 … To study these chapters, go to this link -
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Highlight Passage : Psalm 5: 1-5 … 1 Listen to my words, Lord, consider my lament. 2 Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. 3 In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly. 4 For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness; with you, evil people are not welcome. 5 The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong;...
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Highlight Passage #2: Psalm 38: 1-2; 18 … 1 Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. 2 Your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down on me. … 18 I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.
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Highlight Passage #3: Psalm 41: 4 … 4 I said, "Have mercy on me, Lord; heal me, for I have sinned against you."
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My Journal for Today: Here this morning, as I am every morning, pursuing my relationship with God in prayer and in His word; and this morning I feel in a kinship with King David as he wrote three of the four psalms I was led to study by my reading plan today. In Psalms 5, 38, and 41, … highlighted by the passages I have copied for you above, we read of a believer, David, who was desperately seeking after God’s mercy and forgiveness, being convicted by his own sinful nature. Psalm 42 is not a Davidic psalm, however; and it does not really fit with the other three today in theme. It’s a wonderful psalm about a believer seeking after his God; and I’ll leave it to you to mediate on its content. However, this morning I’m led to journal about the first three of the four psalms in my reading plan.
And right out of shoot today, I’m confronted by a truth which I discovered a long time ago and one which I’m exercising here this morning – as I do every morning; and that is to come to God with my voice of need EVERY DAY … EVERY MORNING. Apparently David had discovered the reality that starting every day by coming to the Lord in prayer and supplication was the only way to start each day; and years ago I discovered that reality as well. It’s really a personal discipline which fulfills the truth in Proverbs 3: 9, which says that we’re to honor God with the “first fruits” of all of our possessions or increase, … which says to me that we’re to give God the first part of each day, … that day which God has given to me for His glory. And I know that some of you are saying, “But I’m not a morning person!” And to that I would answer that giving the first part of YOUR day to God would honor Him all the more since it’s more of a sacrifice for you to spend it with Him since it’s more difficult for you to do so than for those of us who’re already “morning people.”
But that’s only a small part of what I got from David’s song writing this morning. The biggest portion was the attitude of David in these psalms as he was so broken over his own sinfulness. It’s obvious to me that these psalms seem to be written after the Bathsheba incident; because David, in writing these songs, is truly broken before God, recognizing his sin nature and confessing so openly, expressing his desire for mercy and forgiveness from his God.
Have you noticed, as you have grown in your Christian discipleship, that you become more and more sensitive to your own sinful nature; … where sins that used to seem small now seem very large. And your conviction threshold is much lower now than it was years ago when it took a lot more to convict you than it does now. That, my friend, is a red flag of our salvation and a sign that God is doing business in our hearts through His sanctification process. David felt that; and he wrote about it in these psalms. And maybe you feel it; and like David, you feel the need to confess your sins, keeping short accounts – daily – before God as to your sinfulness.
Hence the need to begin each day with God, my friend, as did David. Each day we need to walk freely and humbly into the shower of God’s grace, confessing our sins, and being cleansed by the generous grace of God’s love and forgiveness. It’s the expression of a close and abiding love for God which would bring us into God’s presence EVERY MORING, recognizing our sinfulness and desiring the cleansing God has promised to us (see 1st John 1: 9).
That’s reason enough, in my estimation, to be with God, humbly, each morning and to start off my day as David sung about in the psalms I’m blogging about this morning. What are your thoughts about this? Do you devote “the first fruits” of every day to be with God, praying and asking for forgiveness? If not, is it because you don’t need to start each day with God or because you choose not to? Obviously it’s our choice; isn’t it? … But I’d be fearful to start my day assuming that I’m okay and can handle the day on my own. What about you?
My Prayer Today: … Lord, I come to You each morning, as did David, seeking Your forgiveness and direction for the day … TODAY! Amen
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