I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised,
and I am saved from my enemies.

My God is worthy of praise. When I call on Him, he will save me because of his love and grace. This gives me great hope and courage.

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

I think this passage is pretty self-explanatory, so I don’t know how much reflection I need to provide. It’s just really convicting for me.

The one thing I’ll say is this. I think it is possible to be saved, but not really know God. God himself and a relationship with Him is the far and wide best thing that exists and being given Him is the ultimate blessing that humans can receive. Not knowing our Almighty God when it’s offered to us, is an epic fail on our part. In a sense, too, it blocks us from truly enjoying anything else God blesses us with.

How do we get to know God? Well, we start by obeying Him…

Over the past years of my life, I’ve found myself more and more wanting to understand what God’s love really is. In that time I’ve done a lot of thinking and reading and here are a couple thoughts I’ve had. Take a read:

1.) Love isn’t just a feeling. In our culture we think of love as something you feel—more or less feeling good about someone. If God’s love for us was just Him feeling good about us, it would be nice, but it wouldn’t really be life-changing. I feel good about a lot of people and things and it usually doesn’t result in anything other than a smile here and there. But, that’s not what love is. Yeah, love involves feelings for sure, but love is way more than that. True love is a decision and commitment to put someone else’s interests above your own. It’s acting to benefit another above one’s self.

Love understood in this light is profoundly different! God does not just feel good about us, God actively seeks out our best interests. If you haven’t thought about that before, take a second to let it sink in. The Almighty God takes real action to help you and bring about good in your life. You might not see the good and you might not see all your circumstances as good, but it’s there and it’s true.

2.) God’s love for us affects His emotions. Love isn’t a feeling, but it does involve feelings. This is pretty cool to me, in fact, a realization of this is what is prompting my writing today. Check this out:

Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.

God isn’t just some stoic, uninvolved power force. I want to unpack this verse for a second. Look at it by line:

1. The LORD your God is in your midst – This means that He is near to us. He’s not far off and uninvolved, but rather He is close and he cares.
2. [God is] a mighty one who will save – God is mighty to save and He, in His love, has saved us. We have this problem of sin—we think we’re better than God and that we don’t need him. Sin, though, destroys us because good can only come from God. God hates sin because he loves us so much that he hates seeing us be destroyed and missing out on good. God sent his Son, Jesus, to die that He might rescue us from the consequences of our sin, and bring us back into right relationship with Him. That’s intense love.
3. [God] will rejoice over you with gladness – God rejoices over us; in His proactive love, He is excited and full of joy. He doesn’t resent us, He’s not disappointed in us. Rather, He is glad that He made us and that we are His creation.
4. [God] will quiet you by his love – I have to read into this a little bit, but saying that “He will quiet you” implies there’s anguish and maybe some hurt. God longs to bring us peace and comfort through his love. Incidentally, this also alludes to how deeply He cares about us and our circumstances.
5. [God] will exult over you with loud singing – Have you ever heard some really good news (like a favorite sports team victory, a great job offer, etc.) and just started shouting for joy? I know I have. That is how God feels about us every single day. He’s that excited. Sounds crazy? I think it does, but when you love someone, you do crazy things… and God loves someone… everyone, actually.

To me the notion that God gets excited or that He shouts for joy is pretty crazy. But, I know that I feel things, and I get excited, and I shout for joy. Maybe we feel those things because God feels those things. And maybe, too, God gave us those emotions so that we would better understand Him and how He feels about us. Think about it.

God cares about us deeply; He proactively works to bring about good for us; and He shouts with joy over us because His love for us is so intense that it fills Him with excitement. That is what it means when people say, “God loves you.” :)

Psalm 94:14-23

For the LORD will not forsake his people;
he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous,
and all the upright in heart will follow it.

16 Who rises up for me against the wicked?
Who stands up for me against evildoers?
17 If the LORD had not been my help,
my soul would soon have lived in the land of silence.
18 When I thought, “My foot slips,”
your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up.
19 When the cares of my heart are many,
your consolations cheer my soul.
20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you,
those who frame injustice by statute?
21 They band together against the life of the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
22 But the LORD has become my stronghold,
and my God the rock of my refuge.
23 He will bring back on them their iniquity
and wipe them out for their wickedness;
the LORD our God will wipe them out.

I really don’t want to get political on here, but I guess I will just say that there is a lot of injustice in our world—and not just overseas or in a far corner of the country. There’s a lot of injustice in your and my neighborhoods. Whether it’s the life of unborn children being brutally snuffed out, people’s hard-earned tax money being spent foolishly, or anything in between, we are suffering. We might not know it yet, but this world is not functioning the way it was intended to function.

This condition of our world weighs on me. I see it, I feel it, and it hurts as I watch people suffer from it. Verse 16 really echos a cry of my heart; I wonder who will rise of against the wicked? Verse 19, too, really is my heart as well. When my cares are many, God is the only one that really cheers my soul. I know I can hope in His steadfast love and I will not be let down or forsaken.

Verses 20-21, again, I feel are so applicable for what I think about. I see political leaders making foolish and often wicked decisions and I wonder why God has allowed them to be in power. They do appear to band together in corruption and leverage for things I truly believe are evil. Again, though, God is my stronghold and I am thankful that He will bring justice. When people die and face Him in judgement, they/we will all give an account. I can rest assured that no injustice will go unpunished, no wrongdoing will be left unaccounted for.

While this is a truly sobering thought (because we ALL sin and NONE of us is perfect), it’s also comforting as my heart yearns for justice. I am so thankful that God has redeemed me by the blood of Jesus Christ and that he offers redemption and salvation to all who will humbly turn to Him. I am glad that through Jesus, God has offered a way for us to have our Sin forgiven so that we don’t have to face the painful day of judgement in the same way. My hope, of course, is that everyone would repent and be forgiven (including those political leaders I here refer to), but knowing that not all will, I am comforted that justice will be served.

Matthew 5:44-45

“But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! ⁴⁵In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.”

I really love nature and I have long told people that my two favorite things are the sun and water. Something about the light of the sun, just really lifts my spirit, invigorates my body, and makes me want to live. Because of this, I have often praised God just for showing me his love by blessing my days with sunlight.

The thing that struck me newly today as I read these verses, was how God does, in fact, bless us with sun and rain. The crazy thing, though, is how as be blesses he doesn’t discriminate. Those who hate Him and those who love Him both get to experience His goodness. I am so thankful for this because it reminds me of His character: God is such loving, gracious, and merciful God—even to those who might not want His blessing and good.

This truth about God’s character has significant implications for the way followers of Christ should live. If God is merciful to those who hate him, what ought we to do? If God perseveres in giving grace to apathetic hearts, how should we interact with people who are such?

Be thankful today for God’s blessings and next time you see the sun shining or rain falling, remember that it’s shining/falling for the righteous and unrighteous alike. Praise God for giving good to those who don’t deserve it—yourself included! :)

I guess that is a little bit of where I am and have been. In these moments my need for help—my desperation for grace and salvation—becomes so apparent that I often find myself crippled with anxiety or overjoyed at the fulfillment of my need. I find (and am finding) that my deepest moments of despair can be the greatest opportunities to learn to trust God and find peace and joy in Him.

Now, if you’re a Christian and especially if you’ve been one for any period of time, this will sound very cliché. The notion of crying to God when we’re at the end of our rope and finding His grace there is common. What I am finding, though, is that when I actually find myself at the end of my rope, I don’t know what to do. I haven’t been here that much and all the sermons, books, and teachings on trusting God through trials seem to be just vague shadows in my mind. I’m on that border of the lands of theory and reality. The land of theory where the solution is a cliché is comfortable and familiar to me; the land of reality where one must take each step by faith instead of by reciting a phrase to make things right is unfamiliar and scary to me.

But in this land where I must walk by faith and not rely on what my eyes tell me or my heart wants me to believe, I find there is overwhelming peace and joy. These not, though, because of the faith I’m expressing, but completely because of the one in whom I am expressing the faith.

Isaiah 30:18 (NASB) says,

Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you,
And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you
For the LORD is a God of justice;
How blessed are all those who long for Him.

God wants to give us grace and he wants to show us compassion! How often we stumble in the dark instead of just reaching for His hand? We forfeit such grace in doing this.

Psalm 43:5 (ESV) says,

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
   and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
   my salvation and my God.

Again, why do we get down? Why do we fear? God is worth trusting! We must believe it!

And finally, Psalm 44:3 says,

They did not conquer the land with their swords;
   it was not their own strong arm that gave them victory.
It was your right hand and strong arm
   and the blinding light from your face that helped them,
   for you loved them.

The reality at the end of the day is that victory only comes at the hand of the Lord. Our success is totally up to Him. If we only would seek Him and look to Him when we’re in trouble, we would live lives that would be so much more peaceful and so much more full of joy.

Psalm 16:11 (ESV):

You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

1 Corinthians 1:22-25

For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, ²³but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

This makes me love God. I don’t know how exactly to articulate it, but I love that God has shown himself in ways that this world might say are foolish. I want to write more on this, but don’t have time at the moment. Possibly coming soon.

Let me know your thoughts on this passage, it might help me make better sense of it myself. (Or at least better sense of my thoughts that seem muddled right now.)

“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!

1 John 4:10