steadfast love

Tuesday Prayer: Our God

~ Heather Davis ~ Leave a comment

Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.
(Psalms 63:3-4)

Last week, Lord, we expressed our thanks for the gifts You’ve given. Today we thank You for being our God. For creating us, for coming to us for rescuing us from the depravity of our sinful tendencies. You are wondrous, our King, and  we stand in awe of You. Your mercies are never ceasing, and yet we do not love You only for Your mercy, but for who You are. It is not the gifts we worship but You, the Giver.

You are the God who is Love, the Light of the world, the never-ending Fount of Living Water. Our Creator. Our Redeemer. Our Messiah and King. You are the God who saves us and who provides for us. As Lord of Hosts, the full might of angelic warriors is subject to Your commend. God Almighty who works wonders and makes the impossible, possible. From death, You bring life as You did in Sarah’s womb. As You did in the flesh of Your own Son.

Lord, the list of Your names and attributes goes on and on, for You are the Eternal One; the beginning and the end. When we concentrate on even a few of Your qualities, our minds still stagger with the enormity of Your majesty. Your Name is holy and Your benefits are without end. Great and merciful are You, our God!

Thank You that we are privileged to glimpse Your glory, clay pots that we are. You made the first man from the soil of the earth and stamped the Divine Image on him. And if that wasn’t enough, You breathed life into that still, clay form.

then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
(Genesis 2:7)

Thank You for being a Merciful God, the Lord whose steadfast love never ends. As Messiah, You took on a body of flesh, pouring the exact representation of the Divine Image into an animated earthenware jar. Far from being a distant and impersonal God, You are a God – the only God – who has suffered alongside His creation, giving Himself to redeem it. What a privilege to bear Your image, to have been saved by the blood of the Son, and to be quickened to new life in Him by Your own Holy Spirit!

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
(Romans 8:11)

O God, never let our familiarity with You as a Man drive out our reverence for You as the Most High. You are Holy, Just, and True. In You is no shadow of change nor even the faintest taint of impurity. Your word is Truth. King of kings and Lord of lords, Father to the fatherless, Your honor and virtue are without spot or failing. We give thanks to You today, for You are good and we bow before Your holy Name in gratitude. May Your name be forever praised, amen!

Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! Who can utter the mighty deeds of the LORD, or declare all his praise?
(Psalms 106:1-2)

Changeless

~ Heather Davis ~ 2 Comments

I am not sure how the rest of the country has fared this year, but the seasons in Tennessee have been rather confused. We had summer until Thanksgiving, and autumn lasted until mid-March except for a single weekend interlude of winter.

But just when we thought that winter might just give us a pass entirely; once all the trees were in bloom and many of the daffodils had already bloomed and faded, winter stuck once more. Weather-wise, it has been a very unpredictable year.

In my home, too, the season has been relatively unstable. With two teens and one nearly-teen, you really never know what each new day will bring. And apparently 16+ years of sleep deprivation have caught up with this old girl, because suddenly I find I am struggling with fatigue the likes of which I have not felt since early pregnancy.

Some days, I feel like Forrest Gump is standing nearby chanting, “Life is like a box of chocolates,” in that oddly-cadenced voice…

Despite the general craziness and emotional chaos of our lives right now, there is one thing that never changes. The steadfast love of my Lord never ceases, and the mercy of the Eternal One never comes to an end; they are new every morning.

Today, I am inexpressibly grateful that in an ever-changing world, I have the privilege of knowing and serving an eternal and unchanging God!

Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Psalms 90:2

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!
Psalms 107:1

 

Overwhelmed

~ Heather Davis ~ 1 Comment

And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.
Genesis 32:9-10

Reading through the Old Testament as a new Christian, I remember being overwhelmed by sheer frequency of  slaughter documented in its pages. I knew then that God is good and that His purposes are just, but in those early years I really struggled with the annihilation of peoples and nations that are recounted in the Book.

In more recent years, God has brought me to an even more acute understanding of my sin and His sovereignty than ever before — and that’s saying quite a lot. I can see, quite painfully, how sin still taints my choices, my thoughts, even my understanding of God’s will and my service to Him.  Perhaps because of this or for some other reason, now when I read through the Old Testament it isn’t the wrath of God that is overwhelming; it is His mercy.

As I consider the ancient accounts of deceit and trickery, of faithlessness and arrogance, of unabashed defiance against the Creator, of murder, rape, and incest, I find myself wondering why He would choose to have mercy on any nation or on any single person at all. To be honest, it astonishes me that He did not simply scrap the whole business of humanity entirely and move on.

Reading of the spiritual failures and successes of the forefathers of the faith, I see echoes of my own, wandering heart. I, too, have been pompous and full of pride. At one time in my life, I openly defied the very One who breathed life into me, refusing to believe He even existed.  The life I had before I met my Savior was one of immorality that frankly disgusts me now. If I were my own Creator, I do not think I could have mustered any mercy for one who offered so little to love as I did.

And yet, He did have mercy on me. Though, like Jacob, I did not acknowledge Him in my early years; though, like Abraham, I sometimes act in faith and sometimes in fear; though I try to “help” Him accomplish His promises as Abraham and Sarah did; though I have wrestled with Him until I have nothing left but to cling to Him, He had had mercy and spared me the wrath I deserve. More wondrous yet, He also repaid all my unbelief and stubbornness with grace, bringing me to know His Son, Jesus, whose obedience and sacrifice has paid in full the tremendous debt of my sin and offered me eternal life.

In His grace, as with Joseph, all the pain and hardship I have suffered, God has used for His good purposes. Because of this, I know that present and future suffering will be used for His glory just the same. This sure knowledge gives me comfort and hope when afflictions loom.

Oh, how I love my Lord and His word! I delight in my days with Him –communing in prayer and by reading His word and meditating on it –simply because I am overwhelmed by His steadfast love and faithfulness!