Has it ever been your continual feeling that
you're never ready?
And if you could postpone the moment, you
would.
So just to let you know that that's
not a peculiarity that's unique to you.
That's universally experienced by anyone who has assumed
any responsibility in God to be an expositor
of his word to men.
You will never feel ready.
You always want the delay.
And if you can, even avoid the obligation
and the responsibility.
But nevertheless, the moment comes, and you're obliged
to open your mouth.
The question is, do I read anything from
today's Spurgeon, which is a selection of a
kind you'll not hear from anyone ever, but
only uniquely from Spurgeon, that speaks of the
eternal bliss that awaits us and is our
everlasting home with such cogency as if he's
already been there, and he knows it in
such a depth that it affects his present
days.
And it's so rare, it's just a note
that is struck that only God can sound
through Spurgeon.
Do I read that, something from Chambers?
Do we go into Psalm 69 at all?
It would be a pity to pass that
over, because it contains some of the most
remarkable and essential constitutive elements of the Psalms
themselves, of a man facing duress, opposition, persecution,
not as something inadvertent, but in total proportion
to the quality of his relationship with the
Father, that he would not suffer those things
if he had been satisfied with a lesser
knowledge of God.
It's because he has the unique esteem and
deep affection and regard for the Lord that
he opens himself and is made a candidate
to experience the hatred upon himself as a
visible presence in the earth of those who
hate God but can't reach him.
Got the idea?
So when they got hold of the Son
of God, you know what they did.
They marred him more than any man.
They left him a visible wreck, because they
ventilated on this object now in their possession,
what they have long harbored in their hearts
as a bitterness, enmity, hatred against God himself.
It's remarkable even to understand such a phenomenon,
but anyone who is so identified with that
God has this kind of relationship, makes himself
a candidate to receive some measure of that
brunt, and David is continually crying out in
bearing it.
So where is the God that he loves
to protect him?
Why does God allow him to experience it?
Because it evokes a cry out from the
psalmist to God that God desires and waits
to answer.
So it serves even the purposes of God
of driving the psalmist yet into a deeper
cry to God, a deeper quest and a
deeper response.
So in that way we can understand why
he's not totally shielded and protected from the
remarkable opposition that comes upon him, though he
cries out from the very first line, Save
me, O God.
From the waters that have come up to
my neck, I sink in deep mire where
there is no foothold.
I have come into deep waters and the
flood sweeps over me.
This is poetry and it has to be
poetry because mere prose cannot capture the essence
of this predicament to which a son makes
himself available by virtue of his love and
relationship with the father.
Got that?
This would not come up, these flood waters
would not rise, he would not be sucked
into the mire, he would not be crying
out for his very life as the waters
reach even to his lips if he himself
were not in this quality relationship.
This is the consequence of a love relationship
and he's not asking for it to be
removed but for a deliverance to come.
And he's crying, his throat is parched, his
eyes grow dim, waiting for my God.
A son will wait, a son will wait
for salvation, a son will wait for deliverance,
he knows it will not be immediate and
he doesn't have to have an explanation of
why it is that God will not relieve
his immediate distress though the waters are virtually
up to his mouth and his feet are
sinking into mire.
His confidence is that that deliverance will come,
that God is hearing the cry and if
there's a delay, it is serving purposes in
God for which he need not be instructed.
God has no obligation to explain to him
why he's not being immediately delivered and why
that distress is mounting up to the point
even of virtual death.
But his relationship with God is such that
he's willing to abide that.
He doesn't demand explanation.
He cries for deliverance but it will come
in God's time and one will wait for
that.
And then he says in verse 4, more
in number than the hairs of my head
are those who hate me without cause.
Is that really literally true?
Is this hyperbole, is this an exaggerated statement?
Yes, more than the hairs of his head.
So why does God allow this poetic use
of exaggeration because the psalmist is feeling as
if there are as many as oppose him
as he has hairs on his head.
It's not the issue whether that's literally true.
The issue is, is it felt to be
true?
Is he experiencing it as truth?
And the answer is yes.
So reality is not the issue of specifically
how many are actually opposing David.
The issue is experientially and existentially what is
this man bearing in a form of suffering
and opposition because he represents God and stands
for him in a world that is at
enmity with him.
Got the idea?
It's like Elijah saying, I alone am left.
He felt, what was he, God says no
there are 7,000 but as far as
Elijah is concerned he is alone.
As far as we are concerned you will
feel alone.
And that's the issue.
The issue is not numerics.
The issue is not statistics.
The issue is existential and experiential reality.
Are you willing to feel alone?
Are you willing to experience this reality as
if it represents the numbers of hairs on
your head?
See what I mean?
And the answer is yes.
So we have to have a respect for
what's being said and how it's being said
and only poetry can say it.
The prophets are prophetic.
The psalmists are prophetic.
God is prophetic.
The only ones who are dum-dums who
are not poetic are we.
The world has robbed us and even insulated
us from poetry as if it's some kind
of effeminate endeavor and unbecoming to men.
Quite the contrary is true.
It has everything to do with truest manhood
and sonship is to have a poetic sense.
Not that you necessarily will write it, but
you will necessarily appreciate it.
And that appreciation will grow as you steep
yourself in the psalms and in the prophets.
Well that gives me opportunity to interrupt myself
with Spurgeon for today.
And this will sound like an echo from
another generation.
He quotes his, he always has a verse,
Revelation 21-23, The city has no need
of the sun, neither of the moon to
shine in it.
And then he begins, Yonder in the better
world the inhabitants are independent of all creature
comforts.
They have no need of raiment, their white
robes never wear out, neither shall they ever
be defiled.
They need no medicine to heal diseases, for
the inhabitants shall not say I am sick.
They need no sleep to recruit their frames.
They rest not day nor night, but unweariedly
praise him in his temple.
They need no social relationship to minister comfort,
and whatever happiness they may derive from association
with their fellows, it is not essential to
their bliss, for their Lord's society is enough
for their largest desires.
By the way, Spurgeon is the only one
I know who uses the word bliss, B
-L-I-S-S.
Where have you ever heard that word used
by anyone?
Bliss.
It's archaic.
It's out of usage.
It signifies a state of ultimate happiness beyond
anything that the word presently connotes to us
today.
Bliss is a sublime state of being that
will be our eternal and continuous condition in
the world to come.
Why is that important?
Because it's the anticipation of that bliss that
enables us to be sustained in the absence
of comfort and solace, which is often our
experience while we're in this life.
The contemplation of what is future is not
just some phantasmal thing.
It is a nuts and bolts provision of
God to endure in this present life.
It's not unbecoming to consider the bliss of
the life to come for that consideration will
save you and enable you to be sustained
in the absence of the most rudimentary comforts
and in the face of the most severe
oppression and persecutions in this life.
See what I mean?
Bliss is not a luxury.
It's something future but needs presently to be
integrated and taken into our present consciousness and
that sustains Spurgeon.
See what I mean?
And that's why he can speak of it
as if he's already tasted it.
Maybe that's the reason why he died when
he was 57.
If I had anything to do with it
I would have said he should have lived
to 157 because look at the treasure which
is ours just from his prolific production of
sermons and books, articles, his commentaries in his
57 years.
Why then was he taken so early?
But he did more in those 57 years
than most will do in twice that number.
He's talking about no social relationships are needed
in heaven that whatever happiness may be derived
from association with one's fellows it is not
essential to their bliss.
It's still a delight to have eternal fellowship
in heaven with other of the saints and
to have it unhurriedly and undistractedly because we
have all the time in the world to
enjoy one another and speak with Paul and
the patriarchs and the saints who have gone
before.
But what he's saying is that's not essential
to their bliss.
Whatever happiness they may derive it is not
essential to their bliss for their Lord's society
their fellowship with the Lord now which is
not through a glass darkly but pure and
unmitigated and whole is now their experience.
Their fellowship with the Lord is enough for
their largest desires.
They need no teachers there they doubtless commune
with one another concerning the things of God
but they do not require this by way
of instruction.
They shall all be taught of the Lord.
Ours are the alms that the kings gave
to them and they feast at the table
itself.
Here we live from alms little handouts there
we are at the Lord's table and we
lean upon and they lean upon their beloved
and upon him alone.
Here we may have the help of our
companions but there we find all they want
in Christ Jesus.
Here we look to the meat which perishes
and to the raiment which decays before the
moth but there they find everything in God.
We use the bucket to fetch us water
from the well but there they drink from
the fountainhead and put their lips down to
the living water.
Here the angels bring us blessings but we
shall want no messengers from heaven then.
They shall need no Gabriels there to bring
their love notes from God where there they
shall see him face to face.
O what a blessed time shall that be
when we shall have mounted above every secondary
cause and shall rest upon the bare arm
of God.
What a glorious hour when God and not
his creatures the Lord and not his works
shall be our daily joy.
Our soul shall then have attained the perfection
of bliss.
There's that word again.
You like that?
Does that sound strange to our hearing?
I would put it this way.
We need so to seek the Lord, to
find him that this sounds less and less
strange and more and more normative and it
begins to color and to affect not only
our own thinking our own contemplations but our
own speaking.
This, what Spurgeon is writing however ephemeral, ethereal
excuse my language it appears to be is
definitive and normative for every saint.
It only strikes us as unusual and strange
because it's so rare to hear one have
this kind of understanding and express it so
aptly.
Is that the idea?
Spurgeon is a provision from God of what
is his beck and call to us all
and that we're so far below what he
intends so that the word bliss needs to
come into our vocabulary and not to be
ashamed of it.
There's a reward in heaven and it's proportionate
to what we've had to bear in this
earth as the psalmist is crying out in
his own experience not only in Psalm 69
but virtually every psalm almost every other psalm
is another cry of David for relief from
the oppression the persecution that he bears just
being a son of God in the earth
who loves him and serves him and makes
him a candidate to be hated in verse
4 without cause.
Many are those who would destroy me.
It's not enough to oppress a David the
object of the oppression is to annihilate the
David because David like Paul is not fit
to live the world cannot tolerate the existence
of such a one in its midst because
even when such a one is silent and
lives modestly and to himself his very presence
is an indictment against all that is false
in the world that is celebrated as truth
or is honored as being of value can
you understand that?
The very presence of a David blows the
whistle on all that is fraudulent and counterfeit
in the world that is ruled over by
the prince of lies that's why David's presence
cannot be permitted even when it is silent
he's an indictment against the lie and that's
why the Anabaptists from which our dear Hutterites
are derived who are but a bare shadow
of that reflection were burned at the stake
drowned in rivers confined in dungeons because and
moved and most were expelled there are whole
statements of their sufferings where entire communities are
out in the field in the winter time
without covering, without protection with their elderly people,
with their babies out in the open elements
because they have been completely expelled from their
communities where they have labored to build their
homes, their farms what about them I've often
asked the question what was there so horrific
about them that their presence could not be
tolerated every other variety of scum could be
tolerated the drunkards, the revelers Luther made room
for everyone but the presence of this people,
there was no room why?
for the same reason David David's life was
sought the same reason that men in the
time of Paul vowed they would neither eat
nor drink until Paul was killed because he
was not fit to live there was a
statement that was so offensive to religious sensibility
that it required his elimination that's why Jesus
was crucified and if we go on in
godliness we will make ourselves candidates equally for
this historic kind of opposition that is intrinsic
to faith so stop where you are go
no further, desire no more deep relationship or
intimate union with God or to express it
or you'll begin to experience uncanny forms of
opposition and if it doesn't come to you
externally from the world there are ways in
which the lord will allow it even to
come under your own roof and within the
framework of your own family so and yet
in verse 5 David is not saying that
he's free from from sin himself, oh god
you know my folly, the wrongs that I've
done are not hidden from you do not
let those who hope in you be put
to shame because of me oh lord god
of hosts, do not let those who seek
you be dishonored because of me, oh god
of Israel, this is a pregnant statement you
dear saints because if it were not for
our responsibility before God to his sons and
daughters, our own lives personally would be much
less than what they presently are this is
one of the dynamics of faith, that because
we have an obligation to be something for
God's people as his mouthpiece where we have
a factor working, disposes us to be more
concerned for the truth of our own life,
it's moral quality and character than we would
otherwise be can you follow that?
this is not an accidental point, this is
an elemental thing that our obligation to be
for God before others compels us to attend
to ourselves more seriously in the observance and
maintenance of our own life morally and spiritually
than would be the case if we had
no obligation at all to each other see
what I mean?
I'm much more the man the godly man
because of you than I would be independent
of you, if it was just me alone,
I would be much more slack I would
take much more liberty I'd be much more
careless in the maintenance of my own life
there's an imperative requirement to keep myself before
the lord in a way that would not
otherwise be the case and what I'm saying
is, this is not an accident of life
in God it is an intrinsic element of
that life so if you want to be
kept you need to open yourself to be
more responsible before God's people see what I
mean?
that we're in something together and that we
affect one another and therefore we have a
greater requirement to see to the truth and
the reality of our own life our own
integrity and that's what David is trying here
he's acknowledging his faults I'm not without fault
and my wrongs are not hidden from you
but don't let those who hope in you
be put to shame because of me that
would really hurt him that others will be
adversely affected because of his faults and his
folly do not let those who seek you
be dishonored because of me, so this is
a dynamic of the faith that we are
in something together and because we are in
something together and affect one another and affect
nations in the world how much more then
do we need to be careful and regard
our own walk and the condition of our
own life, its consistency and its truth and
therefore how much more do God's people have
obligation to pray for men who are being
used in our mouthpieces and objects of God's
service against whom powers of darkness conspire and
seek their end if not physically morally to
bring them down and that they need to
be prayed for and kept by the faithful
prayers and intercessions of the saints because we're
in something together have I made that point
clear?
if you're not an obligation to God for
the souls of others, if no one is
affected by what you are in yourself before
God you are not rightly related to the
body of Christ you're not in the right
place of God in your service to others
and it doesn't require you to be a
professional even in your own hometown, your own
locality, this dynamic is available that should be
embraced for your own spiritual good, we need
to see ourselves affecting others and therefore attending
to the truth of our own lives more
seriously than we otherwise would because that's a
demanding thing so, in verse 7 it's for
your sake that I borne reproach that shame
has covered my face I have become a
stranger to my kindred and to my mother's
children so it's not just from those that
are without that I'm catching flack, but even
closest to home, my own flesh and blood
are offended and alienated to me because it's
the zeal for your house that has consumed
me, the same thing that the child Jesus
said at the age of 12 I must
be about my father's business, didn't you know
he says to his parents, I have to
be about my father's business, I'm in my
father's house, so this concern marks every son
and David himself expresses it, the zeal for
your house has consumed me the insults of
those who insult you have fallen on me
but my prayer is to you O Lord
in verse 13, and at an acceptable time
O God, in the abundance of your steadfast
love, answer me, not only because your answer
will relieve me from the distress, but because
your answer will sanctify your name and honor
you as one who shows his love and
faithfulness to those who are his it will
be a statement to those who reproach you
that you are a faithful God, and that
those who call upon your name will not
be disappointed, I'm asking you to save me,
not just to be relieved from the distress,
but that your name should not be reduced
and slighted, that you should be honored rather
than defamed, that's why I want you to
come and answer to my distress, because my
jealousy is more for your name than the
alleviation of my own distress that is the
statement of a son and he'll wait for
that answer and knows that God will give
it, why?
because he knows God as God, God's very
nature will require that because God is faithful,
and his steadfast love is Chesed C-H
-E-S-E-D the Hebrew word, is
intrinsic to God and must have its final
expression his faith is in what God is
in himself, and how does he know that
God, that he can count upon it even
before the answer comes, because he has a
history because he has a relationship because previous
distresses have been answered by God so the
God who was faithful in the past will
be faithful now also, how come?
because God is faithful faith comes from a
God who is faithful this is his nature
so the one who knows him like this
can have the waters come right up to
his mouth, his feet sinking into the mire,
and know that his deliverance will come, and
if it doesn't come, so be it yea,
though he slay me, yet will I trust
him, that evidently my death now is more
serving the purposes of God's glory, than my
deliverance got the picture?
how can you lose, if the issue is
God's glory and not your deliverance per se
have you noticed in this psalm something that
seems unbecoming to the psalmist, where he prays
for God's vengeance in verse 22, let the
table be a trap for them, a snare
for their allies let their eyes be darkened
so they cannot see, make their voids tremble
continually, pour out your indignation upon them, let
your burning anger overtake them, may there can't
be a desolation, let no one live in
their tents for they persecute those whom you
have struck down and those whom you have
wounded, they attack still more this is another
remarkable aspect of psalms is to hear the
cry for vengeance that often comes from the
assaulted psalmist upon the enemies of God because
they really believe that in the last analysis
two categories of beings, the righteous and the
wicked, and the wicked are consciously and willfully
wicked, they have forsaken any redemptive benefit from
God they are consciously and willfully his enemies
and persecute those who are his and therefore
he's asking that God's righteousness and justice be
expressed as judgment upon them, and in fact
if you take these verses and view them
in light of subsequent Jewish history, there almost
seems to be a fulfillment, word for word,
of all that the psalmist is crying, I
think Paul quotes may their table be a
snare unto them, and that somehow this is
not unbecoming this is not some human indignation
this is a cry for God to show
forth righteous judgment in those who hate him
and ventilate their hatred on those whom you
have struck verse 26 in those whom you
have wounded they attack still more, isn't that
remarkable now why would God strike anyone whom
he loves and that once being struck the
enemy finding opportunity will seek to deepen that
grievance and compound it yet the more how
come can you answer questions like that I
would think any son could, the psalmist says
God has wrought that now the enemy finds
opportunity to yet worsen how do we understand
that those are the wounds of a friend
this is the chastisement of God for sons
whom he loves but the enemy seeing the
opportunity comes in to yet do greater damage
why doesn't God then preserve the son from
this further onslaught because even the further onslaught
is part of the total chastening that he
has allowed the son to bear in his
love and yet the psalmist cries out over
it so you mustn't think it a strange
thing that while the Lord himself is inflicting
the enemy is adding his own extra little
zets but the Lord is allowing it as
part of a total chastisement for those he
loves those whom you have wounded they attack
still more so add guilt to their guilt
it will come back upon their own heads
for taking such an advantage let them be
blotted out of the book of the living
and so on let them not be enrolled
among the righteous but verse 29 I am
lowly and in pain let your salvation oh
God protect me I will praise the name
of God with a song not when the
salvation comes but now now in the midst
of this affliction even though the enemy is
compounding it now while I'm bearing this I
will praise your name with a song put
that in your spiritual pipe and smoke it,
it's not that the praise waits for the
answer the praise is forthcoming with the cry
because he's deserving, you don't have to wait
for God to punctuate and give the answer
for which you're asking it's certain that it
will come and even if it doesn't he's
still the righteous God so we give him
praise and that praise when it comes in
affliction devastates the enemy and has a powerful
consequence beyond anything we can know a wonderful
example in the New Testament, Acts 16 Paul
and Silas publicly whipped and beaten, tossed into
an inner prison but at midnight the darkest
hour when the enemy is there to browbeat
and you really missed it you should have
remained in Asia what did it get you
for coming to Philippi, Europe and all you
got is a demoniacal woman that got you
in trouble and only one Lydia and now
you're going to rot in this jail, gangrene,
no aid and then the stink and the
unholiness and vile environment that this dungeon is,
you'll perish and you don't even have a
cell phone to call home for a cry
for help at midnight in the midst of
all of that oppressive da da da da
da you really missed it Paul and Silas
prayed and sang praises unto God and the
prisoners heard them and suddenly there was a
great earthquake and the fetters of everyone were
loosed and the bars opened the prison doors
sprang open because where the spirit of the
Lord is there is liberty and the spirit
of the Lord is prominently in the place
of praise, not just when we're comfortable, well
fed and in hospitable environments, but all the
more when you at least expect praise to
be sounded in the place of suffering, chastisement,
bruise woundedness, beatings there, God is compacted yet
the more that even the fetters were burst
by the presence of the Lord in liberty
so this is remarkable I will praise the
name of God notice I will this act
of assertion this insistence this is the son,
remember?
sonship is activity sonship is acting doing, praying,
praising son is not silent except he's called
to a silence I will this assertion is
the very formation of identity of personhood of
personality, of being the existential moment by which
a person is defined defined as a real
entity comes when he summons out of his
deeps a determination to praise God when every
factor is contrary to justifying praise in that
moment, so to speak, the man is born,
the reality of the entity is established and
the praise itself of course, devastates the powers
of darkness whose wisdom cannot understand it I
will praise the name of God Israel is
about to suffer a remarkable affliction at God's
hand called the time of Jacob's trouble, but
the enemies of God and of Israel will
take occasion to rub salt into the open
wounds and to drub them yet more and
this has always been Israel's history that the
enemies though they are the rod of God's
chastisement for Israel, go beyond God's intention and
inflict yet more grievous wounds upon the victim
taking advantage by the occasion but what it
does then is earn for them a judgment
and so will it be in the last
days, those nations that will take advantage of
Israel in their flattened condition of these last
days to rub in more than God intended
or required of them will be obliterated as
nations they will be dismissed from history just
in the same way that the psalmist cries
out, blot them out of your book they
will be blotted out from nations as a
judgment for going further than God intended so
we need to expect this and of course
we can go on for the rest of
the day, the psalms like the word of
God anywhere is inexhaustible but just to direct
your attention to the conclusion let heaven and
earth praise him verse 34, the seas and
everything that moves in them, for God will
save Zion, there's always almost an eschatological note
struck of the largest cosmic kind that ends
these psalms it begins with the personal and
intense suffering of the psalmist the son David
but it never remains there, always it's a
statement at the end of the largest things
that pertain to God that are cosmic and
eternal, Zion and you'll see it in Psalm
22 they have pierced my hands and my
feet, my God, my God why hast thou
forsaken me, read that psalm all the way
through, when you come to the end of
it, you come to an end like this,
the victim is not just addressing his own
concern he's crying out for God's ultimate eschatological
universal and cosmic purposes to be fulfilled now
is that an accidental insertion or is there
a divine logic in that what begins with
personal suffering ends with a revelation and a
cry for the fulfillment of God's universal and
cosmic purpose or is there a logic, a
connection and a connection that we need to
recognize that our personal suffering has a cosmic
end and we can bear it when we
see that there's a larger end than the
way in which we are personally afflicted and
that in fact we would not have seen
that larger end were it not for this
affliction so you see why the psalms are
so precious, the whole environment of the psalm
is such a provision for us who are
called to be the sufferers of the last
days but we need to see our suffering
in the context of God's ultimate universal and
cosmic purpose and celebrate it because the same
God who's going to save us out of
our distress will perform that final thing by
which you'll be glorified forever now can you
see how important it is to be able
to anticipate the bliss of our eternal reward
for which this life is but preparation anticipating
that bliss enables us to bear this let's
conclude this so we can get to our
subject the end of that psalm let the
heaven and earth praise him the seas and
everything that moves in them for God will
save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah
and his servants shall live there and possess
it the children of his servants shall inherit
it and those who love his name shall
live in it seems to be a statement
of why it is that the present state
of Israel cannot be the locus of such
a people and have to be expelled and
fitted through that trial as many as will
survive it to return and be the servants
for whom God has prepared that land and
for their descendants so it's an eschatological note
a reaching out to something that is yet
future for us where the psalms were written
seven centuries before Christ the last statement is
pointing to a future that we have not
yet realized and is full of prophetic insight
and accuracy and probably a grace in proportion
to what the psalmist prophet has suffered or
is suffering so don't miss that because it's
so characteristic of the psalms that will often
end with a cosmic future prophetic note that
is right on and that somehow is related
to the suffering that is described in the
earlier part of the psalm and what it
brings forth is a deeper revelation of himself
and a more perfect refinement of their own
souls so that they are being fitted at
the same time for the eternal bliss and
will have a greater capacity for that bliss
all the more because they bore in this
earth the sufferings that their relationship opened to
them if we don't see this in the
context of that, we're not seeing so it's
more than an accident this morning that the
Lord would have spoken here from Spurgeon on
future bliss and read a psalm that is
so descriptive of the suffering of our saints
in every generation praise God for God and
for the reality of God and for a
psalmist who even cries out Lord let not
my own, you know my own sins my
own follies but let me not be a
factor in offending those who look to you
and I'm not denying my follies, my wrongs
that are not hidden from you, so I
love this reality none of the greatest saints
are without these imperfections and faults and failures
the greatest, Paul himself David as we know
and this is not accidental but this is
intrinsic to reality and to a God who
loves us in that condition and who ultimately
is bringing us to his own image and
is not turned off and alienated as others
are by those imperfections okay let's pray a
little prayer to conclude this portion, this devotional
portion and the Lord would give us a
second wind when we come back to the
subject which is not unrelated to this of
sonship, relationship with the Father so Lord we
just thank you for Spurgeon we thank you
for Chambers, we thank you for David, we
thank you my God for the harmony of
these today's selections that fit together in not
just a remarkable way but a sublime way
and for the testimony of the saints that
have been stirred by what we are considering
Lord and having their own experience pass through
these things and have glorified you thereby by
their ability to praise you in the midst
of what has had to be suffered so
we bless you Lord, thank you my God
give us a love for the Psalms a
love for the poetry of the Psalms the
propheticness for the essential insight content, the knowledge
of you the trust of yourself as a
deliverer whenever that deliverance comes and even if
it doesn't come you're still deserving of all
praise we bless you Lord give us a
few minutes now of respite of recovery, of
restoration and bring us back my God with
a second wind for what is yet on
your heart for us this morning, we thank
you and give you praise in Jesus name,
Amen