Psalms for the Soul: Psalm 63: Daily Bible Study, Daily Devotional, Hearing Jesus

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It comes from, Breathe in God's peace and exhale your worries. This day is a gift, and no matter what's ahead, you can trust that God is in control. His love is steady. His plans for you are good, and His presence goes before you. Let these affirmations remind you to trust Him today. God's peace rules my heart and mind today. Isaiah 26, three, you will keep in perfect peace. Those whose minds are said fast because they trust in you. I cast all my worries onto Jesus as he carries them for me. First Peter five, seven, cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. I will not be anxious. I will pray and trust God. Philippians four, six, and seven, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. God's plans for me are good, and I trust him. Jeremiah 29, 11, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope in a future. I do not need to worry about tomorrow. God provides for me. Matthew 6, 34, therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. I will rest in God's presence today. Exodus 33, 14, the Lord replied, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. God is my refuge and strength. Psalm 46, one, God is our refuge and strength and ever present help in trouble. I will not let my heart be troubled. I trust in God. John 14, 27, peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. The Lord directs my steps. Proverbs 3, 5 and 6, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him and he will make your path straight. Even when I don't understand, I will trust in God's wisdom. Romans 11, 33, oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out. I do not have to be afraid because God is with me. Deuteronomy 31, 8, the Lord himself goes before you and will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged. God is fighting for me. Exodus 14, 14, the Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. I am not alone, God walks with me. Isaiah 41, 13, for I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, do not fear, I will help you. God is my rock and my salvation, I will not be shaken. Psalm 62, 6, truly he is my rock and my salvation. He is my fortress, I will not be shaken. I find rest in God alone. Psalm 62, 1, truly my soul finds rest in God. My salvation comes from him. God's love never fails me. Lamentations 3, 22 and 23, because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed. For his compassion's never fail, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. I have peace because I am in Christ. John 16, 33, I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. I wait on the Lord and he renews my strength. Isaiah 40, 31, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. I will trust in God even when I don't see the whole picture. 2 Corinthians 5, 7, for we live by faith, not by sight. God is working all things for my good. Romans 8, 28, and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. God's peace rules in my heart today. Colossians 3, 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace and be thankful. I give my burdens to the Lord and he sustains me. Psalm 55, 22, cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never let the righteous be shaken. I will be still and know that he is God. Psalm 46, 10, he says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. I trust God's timing and his ways. Ecclesiastes 3, 11, he has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I will rejoice in the Lord always, knowing he is my strength. Philippians 4, 4, rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. Father, I surrender my worries to you. I choose to rest in your peace today, trusting that you are in control. Fill my heart with faith instead of fear and let your peace guard my mind. In Jesus' name, amen. I hope these affirmations spoke to your heart today. If you want to go deeper, just keep listening. Your full Bible study episode is coming up next. As we spend time listening for God's voice, there are moments when he invites us to step out of our normal routines and to follow him more intentionally. Bible Study Live is an in-person Bible study experience that I've built around traveling with that kind of purpose. We gather to open scripture together, to pray, to learn and walk through the Bible in community, all while being fully present in these meaningful places. We've recently added a second location and many of the spots are already filled by alumni who've gone on previous trips with me before. Because of that, space is limited. If you've been sensing that God may be inviting you into a deeper season of growth, I'd love to have you join us on one of this year's trips. You can learn more at Biblestudylive.org. Hey friends, I'm Rachel Grohl and I'm your host for the Hearing Jesus podcast where I help you to know God and to make him known. One of the things that we see throughout the Psalms is that David spent a lot of time either running or hiding from enemies and he spent time in the wilderness and the scripture talks about it being a dry and parched land. And I think while many of us don't necessarily identify with running away from our enemies, we do understand what it means to be in a season of being in a dry and parched land or being in a season where we are thirsting and longing for something. And we can be searching and longing for God or we can be searching and longing for other things. And the difference affects the outcome. So today we're gonna talk about that and look at David's example when he was facing one of these situations. I pray this episode blesses you. We are working our way through the Psalms because the Psalms was the prayer and hymn book of Jesus and he mentions it more than any other book in scripture. And so we are spending our time working through the book of Psalms. So Psalm 63, I'm gonna start at verse one. This is a Psalm of David. Oh God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I've seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory because your love is better than life. My lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods. With singing lips, my mouth will praise you. On my bed, I remember you. I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I will sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. They who seek my life will be destroyed. They will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. But the king will rejoice in God. All who swears by God's name will praise him while the mouths of liars will be silenced. That's Psalm 63. And again, I use the NIV unless I say otherwise, I'm using the NIV. So Psalm 63, the big idea in Psalm 63 is that David is in this dry and parched land. And I think we can identify that because we all have dry and parched lands of problems. And what we're seeing by David's example is that God's love is still better than life even in the midst of those seasons. The key themes for Psalm 63 is really when we are famished, spiritually famished, our satisfaction for that craving only is fulfilled in God because God's love is better than life. Psalm 63 fits into the category of lament and we've talked a lot about the lament. A lot of David's Psalms are laments and we went into depth about what laments are in a previous episode. But this one kind of falls into the subcategory of a prayer song where he's talking about being persecuted and accused. The background of this Psalm is it was written at the time of Absalom's rebellion. And there's a couple of reasons we know that. If you go back and you read in 2 Samuel, you can see the parallels between what David's saying he's experiencing and the things that were, the events that were recorded in 2 Samuel. During this time when David was fleeing from Saul, so remember King Saul wanted to kill David, he was on the run. He spent time in several places in the Judean wilderness and this is called the Desert of Judah. And it lies between the Judean hill country and the Dead Sea. And so the context of this is he's literally in this wilderness, the desert, and rainfall is so minimal. And some of those regions are so arid, like in this Eastern part especially, that the area is called the desert, but it's not like what you would think of a desert with sand and sand dunes and that kind of thing. It's a wilderness essentially that is very, very dry. So I don't know what we would like in that too, in the States, maybe like parts of the West, parts of Arizona where it's like not sand desert, but it is dry and arid. And so what we're seeing is David is in this place, literally, he's literally in a place that is dry and parched and he's liking his literal thirst to a thirst for God. He was in a place where he was weary and exhausted from being on the run and he is longing for this place of sanctuary and not just sanctuary in terms of being in the temple and what we would think of when we talk about the sanctuary, but really sanctuary as far as rest. Yesterday we read about him seeking soul rest. He's seeking the safety of God, the sanctuary of God. And the actual temple, the actual sanctuary was not yet established in Jerusalem. And so we know that he's talking about his relationship with God and then maybe even longing for the actual temple that we know that he's eventually gonna be a part of, building. And just as a reminder, there's a lot of war and warrior type imagery that we see in David's writings. And so when he talks about the sword, he's talking about literally feeling like he's on the run for his life because that's essentially what he's doing. And I think that's important backdrop to understand as we were reading through the Psalm. Overall, I think this is a Psalm that can relate to believers today and it's something that we can even pray because it describes this deep longing for God. And that is a longing that can only be satisfied by a close and personal relationship with God. And so I always say this, especially when I'm teaching children that we were all created with this God shaped whole. And I will put how you put your fingers together to make it like a heart. When I'm explaining this to the kids, I will put this heart shaped whole over my chest and say, we are all created with this God shaped whole and we try to fill that with all sorts of things with money and wealth and power and status and relationships and sex and alcohol and the list goes on and on on social media, whatever it is. And the reality is is until we allow God's spirit to fill that whole, it's just like a vacuum. It's not going to get filled up. You can try and maybe even some of those things would temporarily fill it. Like I may have this appearance of being filled, but it's not gonna last. That's temporary at best. And I think about that when we read this Psalm because it's this longing that I think is common to the human experience because we were created for a relationship with God. And so for believers, for people that claim to know God, it's important to examine ourselves to just kind of ask ourselves these questions. Like, do I really have this strong desire for God's presence and even his purpose in my life? Am I in this place of longing him? And if I'm not, why not? If I'm not longing for God, what does that say to me, perhaps where am I spending too much of my effort and time pursuing other things? And then also, am I going through my life with a focus on things that are temporary, things that aren't gonna last, things that once this life is over, that they all fall away? And that is a key indicator of perhaps maybe why we are not hearing God's voice. If we're not, that's the place that we have to start with. We have to examine. And it's not just enough to come to faith in Christ and just, okay, we prayed this prayer one time, so we're going to heaven. That's essentially fire insurance, so you don't go to hell. But the Christian experience of Christian life is about so much more. It's about this relationship with God that is so fulfilling, that fulfills us in a way that we were created for, where these other things are all just temporary pleasures. And so this Psalm can be a prayer that we pray, even though our situations might be different than what David was experiencing as he's fleeing and he's in the wilderness, we can all identify with this idea of thirsting after God. And so in verse two, when he says, "'I've seen you in the sanctuary "'and beheld your power and your glory,'' he's essentially talking about how he has already seen Yahweh at work and experienced his relationship with him. And I think that's important because if we have come from a place of true relationship with God, where we have experienced what it's like to be filled up and overflowing by God's spirit, I think that changes things for us because it helps us to recognize what that feels like, what we should be chasing after, so that when you are not in that place, when you are in a dry season, you can look back and think about the times that God has been at work in your life, and it's like a stepping stone for you to stand on, a foundation stone for you to stand on and say, okay, God, I know what it's like to experience relationship with you, and I'm longing to be in that place again. And I think that's the key for us is being in this place of longing to be in relationship with God. It's Toyota Truck Month. Time to get a truck that works as hard as you do. 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Like this, bro, amaze this grass, looks this good and this heat. Has to dodge the bikes and the recycling bins. Oh, perfectly struck. True green, the easiest way to get a golf course quality lawn. Click the screen now and get started today at truegreen.com. Exclusion supply, see truegreen.com for details. Verse three talks about how, because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. And so here, David is convinced, most likely because he's had this Yahweh experience, this relationship with experience previously, and up until this point, he's convinced that life without God's love is not even worth living. And I think that's an indicator of a goal for us to get to a place where we recognize that, you know, we could be chasing the career or we could be chasing these relationships or whatever it is. But without God fulfilling that longing, we're gonna always be left longing. We're always gonna be left wanting more to be driven to go higher in our careers or higher in our education or higher, higher, you know, you want a bigger car, a bigger house, whatever it is. Because all of those things, even that feeling of accomplishment when you work for something, it's temporary. If we're not chasing after God and allowing God's spirit to fulfill that desire, that longing that we have as a foundation. Verse four, I wanna just point out because I think it's important. It says, I will lift up my hands. And it's talking about this gesture of worship as a symbol of not just surrender, but reaching up to God, like this expression of just desire longing to be filled up. Okay, God lift up my soul, fill me up. And I say that because sometimes, depending on where you fall theologically, sometimes people are critical when they see others raising their hands in worship. And if you were raised in a more conservative church or faith background, you may feel that way. But I just wanna point out that we see this validated throughout the scriptures where it's not about being showy, it's not about anybody else seeing what we're doing or anything like that. It's an expression and overflow of our heart where we're saying, okay, God, my hands are outstretched. I'm longing for you, fill me up, God. And so my encouragement is, is if you were somebody that might be critical of other people as they're lifting up their hands in worship, I want you to examine your heart a little bit with that. And I want you to look at the example we see in scripture where David is lifting up his hands in worship. And maybe check that a little bit. And I'm not saying that you have to do that, but I'm saying guard your thoughts when you are judging other people for doing something similar. So that was a side note, just wanna point that out. As a charismatic, I have seen all opposite ends of the spectrum with that. And I just always am hesitant to judge somebody else's worship experience. And now if they're doing something crazy, that's different. But lifting up the hands is a very simple expression that we see throughout the scriptures. So in verse eight, let me go down to verse eight. My soul clings to you, your right hand upholds me. I wanna mention that. We've talked about the right hand before in depth. So you can go back and listen to previous episodes that talks about this. But this idea of the right hand in Deuteronomy, there's a verb that's translated here as cling where it's talking about Israel's intimate relationship with God. And so the right hand, which is usually the stronger hand in scripture anyway, it's talking about, it's really showcasing God's strength or even God himself. And so this is talking about the right hand of God, meaning God's whole being in the context of the relationship between Israel clinging to God. And so if he's saying, I cling to you, your right hand upholds me, it's talking about this close intimate relationship where God's right hand is strength and supporting him in the midst of some really difficult challenges. The experience that David has in the wilderness is obviously brought about by an enemy that is chasing him that wants to kill him. And instead of that driving him to a place of depression, I mean, we see anxiety and depression in other places in David's writings, but instead of the circumstances that drive him to say, oh, God's not speaking to me, I don't know, whatever, he's getting to a place where it's driving him to thirst for God. And one of the things we hear about David often is that David was a man after God's own heart. And again, it's this picture of how the trials of this life can do two things. It can either draw us closer to God or can drive us farther away. And what's the difference? The difference is our relationship. If we are experiencing God and we are driven to long for God, it really doesn't matter what the circumstances of our life are because we can get to a place where we say, okay, God, I don't understand, but I trust you. And we can use these foundational stepstones of our experiences with God in the past seasons of our life to help us rely on the faithfulness of God in this next season, even when things feel dry, even when things feel like they're piling up, we can push all those things away and recognize that our need, our thirst for God is what's going to get us through and drive us to the other side of that season of wilderness. I think that when the enemy works to try to drive us away from God, there can be two results. And if the result is to drive us farther away from God and we drift farther away because we're looking at our circumstances instead of the opportunity for God's spirit to intervene, that is one direction. The other, and what we see here with David, is that contrary to what his enemies had intended, it results in their own destruction. It has kind of like this boomerang effect because it drives him farther into dependence in his relationship with God. And I think that's the key takeaway for us. The situations, the wilderness, the dry seasons of our lives, it can make us long for God more. And then the prayer of our heart is, this is a dry season, I am longing for you. And that can be the prayer of our heart instead of, I'm thirsty and you must not be around because I'm thirsty. The differences is the posture of our heart, the differences based and entrenched in our relationship with God. And that's why it's so important that this is not just, okay, I opened my Bible, I read through, I close my Bible and I don't understand what it has to do with the rest of my life. That's why I'm such an advocate for slowing down, meditating on God's word, understanding what it says, so you can recognize the way that God wants to operate in the same way in your life today. Because what we know from the scriptures is God's character and God's nature does not change. And so the way he operated with David is an example of how he wants to operate with us. So I'm gonna go ahead and read it again. And hopefully that brings you some insight as we read. Starting back at verse one. Oh God, you are my God, I earnestly seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you in a dry and weary land where there is no water. I've seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live and in your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods, with singing lips my mouth will praise you. On my bed I remember you, I think of you throughout the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you, your right hand up holds me. They who seek my life will be destroyed. They will go down to the depths of the earth. They will be given over to the sword and become food for jackals. But the king will rejoice in God. All who swear by God's name will praise him while the mouths of liars will be silenced. God, I thank you for the example that we see in David and with holy hands outstretched, we say, God, we long for you. We long for you for your presence, for your provision, for your protection, but most of all for your spirit and dwell in us, God, so that we could sustain the dry and weary seasons of our lives. Lord, I pray for my friends that feel like they might be going through a dry season. God, would you intervene on their behalf as they approach you with open hands and open hearts, long for you, God. I pray that you will make your presence known in such a real tangible way that it will be undeniable that this vacuum that they've been trying to fill with all these other things, with wealth, with career, with social status, with relationships, with alcohol, with addiction, whatever it is. God, I pray with religion. I pray that you would push all of that aside and overwhelm them and fill their heart up with your spirit because it's the only way we're gonna be satisfied in this life. God, help these situations, these dry and weary situations of our lives, drive us to our knees, drive us to a place of longing for you, God, so that you can be present. We can experience you in the sanctuary of our lives, God, that we can understand your willingness and your readiness to step in on our behalf. God, I thank you for your word and the way you reveal yourself, your nature and your character to us. I thank you for your presence in our lives and the way you continually draw us to yourself. I thank you and I praise you in all things. Amen. The Hearing Jesus podcast is so excited to partner with Compassion International. We believe in compassion's mission to release children from poverty in Jesus' name. I've seen the impact myself through the letters and the updates that I've received as a sponsor. It's not just changing the lives of children, it's changing entire families, whole communities, always through the local church and always in Jesus' name. When you sponsor a child, you ensure access to quality education, medical checkups, healthy food, clean water, and most importantly, the love of Jesus, delivered through a church in their community because of a generous, caring sponsor like you. And you can speak life, love and hope to your sponsored child through personal letters that you'll exchange. I hope you'll join me in sponsoring a child through Compassion today. All you have to do is pull out your phone, open up a text and text Hearing Jesus to 83393. You'll get back a text with a picture of a child who is waiting for a sponsor and a link to sponsor that child. You can also go to compassion.com forward slash hearing Jesus to choose a boy or a girl to sponsor. When you sponsor a child, we will send you a copy of She Hears, Learning to Listen to Jesus, My Bible Study, as a token of our thanks for investing in the life of a child. Thank you for joining me and sponsoring a child through Compassion today. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road. Tread confidently with new tires from TireRack. Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, TireRack makes it easy. Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection and convenient installation options. Go to tirerack.com to see tire test results, tire ratings and consumer reviews and be sure to check out all the special offers, tirerack.com, the way tire buying should be. 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