Monday, May 3, 2010

Words of Encouragement


The Love that Never Ends

Psalm 44:2-4 (New International Version)


With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers; you crushed the peoples and made our fathers flourish. It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them. You are my King and my God, who decrees [a] victories for Jacob.


As you read this Psalm you can understand the psalmist praises about the love of God. The psalmist tells of the wonderful things that God has done as he begins to enumerate God's blessings. The first point is that God drove out the other nations from the land and planted or placed his people there. Secondly he allowed them to prosper. The psalmist reminds the readers that it was not by the people's strength, power or ability that gave them this land and these blessings. The psalmist tells it very simply, it was because of the love of God.
 
What does this tell us today? It is a reminder that we must be grateful for the doors that God opens for us. He sees his children and he knows their needs. He removes the obstacles that stand in front of his children that keeps them from going into the places that he has set for them. He not only gives his children a place to dwell, but he prospers them in those places.
 
God does it all because of his unending love for us. God wants to take us into some places to occupy. The problem is we often do not see that we can make it and we began to complain, grumble and lose focus. We then try to work things out, we try to figure it out and use our own natural abilities.
 
Yet the psalmist reminds us that these things cannot help us to enter into the places God has for us. Though we often get in our own way, God's love for us is what keeps us. I simply marvel at how much God loves us and how he prepares for us, even when we don't always listen and we lose faith. Today I want to remind us that God knows how to prepare for our needs. He knows how to open those doors that will never be opened by our own hands and ability.

I pray for us today to stop looking at our situations and thinking we are defeated. I pray that we do like the psalmist and remind ourselves of what God can do in us, for us and through us. I pray that we enumerate to ourselves the doors God has opened in our favor that we could not only open but we did not even know how to find the door knob!

Prayer: Lord today we seek you to help us be reminded about your unending, unfailing love. Help us when the enemy of our soul comes to try and discourage us, to be reminded that you are the one that removes our enemies that stand in our way trying to keep us from entering into the places you have ordained for us. We pray today that you will help us be reminded but also to remind someone else that is feeling hopeless or discouraged to find comfort in your unending love. Amen.