“⁵ Gracious is the LORD, and righteous;
our God is merciful.
⁶ The LORD preserves the simple;
when I was brought low, he saved me.
⁷ Return, O my soul, to your rest;
for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”

Let me just say that I love this passage. For me, so much of the time, I find myself really fighting to find joy in the Lord and rest in Him. It is always because I forget who God is, I forget who I am, and I forget, therefore, what my fitting response to these truths should be. This verse concisely points me toward the truth regarding those three areas.

1.) About God: Verse 5 reminds me that God is gracious: He shows me favor when I don’t deserve it; that God is righteous: He’s not going to harm me or try to abuse me somehow; and that God is merciful: He spares me the punishment that I deserve for falling short of his standard (Romans 3:22-24).

2.) About me: Verse 6 reminds me that God has preserved me and that he saved me. I know that I am not right on my own apart from Jesus Christ. This reminder is helpful for when I’m feeling proud or when I think I have it together. God saved me and I am therefore indebted to him–but it’s debt of gratitude. I can’t every begin, even, to pay it back.

3.) Response: The last verse is so beautiful to me because it shows us the fitting response to these truths. By nature I am a person who worries, so that makes this is even more helpful for me. This verse clearly reminds us to stop and rest in the Lord because he has shown us so much favor that we don’t have anything left to be concerned with. He has dealt very bountifully with me! The salvation of my soul, of course, being the most generous gift He could have ever given, but that’s really only the beginning of the blessings He’s shown.

Love the Lord today!

I found this video by Brennan Manning on youTube this weekend. I haven’t been able to stop watching and thinking about it. I’m pretty convinced that what he is saying is true. Watch it.

1 John 4:10

Something that I have long been obsessed with is the reality that the way I live can bring God glory. That is really cliché, so I think that sometimes it’s easy to overlook, but it has really impacted me. I am not anyone special–I’m just 22 year old college student at a small school in a small state who’s pretty mediocre all around. But, the idea that the way I live, could bring Glory to the Almighty God sort of gets me going. It’s something that I really want to do.

I say I’m obsessed with it because I have thought a lot about it and the goal of bringing Glory to God has really permeated me in a lot of ways. There are certain ways of living that bring God glory. For example, by telling the Good News to people so that they will understand God’s love and praise Him; by serving people in need, so that they will praise God for the blessing you are to them; and by encouraging people through maybe a kind word or stimulating thought.

Today as I was reading, I found another way to bring God glory. Here it is: Psalm 50:15 says, “Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory.”

So, when I’m in trouble, I’m going to call on God and let him rescue me to bring him Glory!