Psalms for the Soul: Psalm 53: Daily Bible Study, Daily Devotional, Hearing Jesus

Daily affirmations for peace and trust in God's plan. I will say the statement and then I will wait for you to repeat the statement and then I will read the scripture 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 26-3, 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 5-7, cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. I will not be anxious. I will pray and trust God. Philippians 4, 6, and 7 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 46-1, 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, O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how insurchable 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 never fails. 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. Psalm 55-10, cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you. 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. I think sometimes it may be difficult for us to feel like we relate to the Israelites and some of these things that we read in the Psalms. Yet, if we think about it in terms of our emotions, Psalm 53 today talks about feeling overwhelmed with dread. And I don't know about you, but I have certainly felt that before. I've certainly had seasons of my life or even instances in my life where I have felt overwhelmed with dread. And then what we see is God intervene on our behalf. And the encouragement is that we serve the same God today that is revealed in the pages of the scriptures and the Psalms. So today, as we listen and we learn about how David talks about this opportunity to trust God in all things, I pray that that is an encouragement for you if you are going through a season of overwhelming dread. And you recognize that there is a God who loves you so, so much and he's right there alongside of you. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Hearing Jesus podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Grohl. Today we are in Psalm 53, which is a Psalm of David, beginning at verse one. The fool says in his heart, God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand any who seek God. Everyone has turned away. They have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one eat bread and who do not call on God. There they were overwhelmed with dread. There was nothing to dread. God scattered the bones of those who attacked you. You put them to shame. You put those who attacked you. You put them to shame for God despised them. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion when God restores the fortunes of his people. Let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad. If you have been reading the Psalms with us for a while, Psalm 53 may sound familiar to you. There's a couple reasons for that. Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 are almost parallels. There's a lot of similar verbiage and language. A lot of scholars believe that they are adapted versions of each other. And then also Psalm 52 that we read yesterday had a lot of the same language, whereas Psalm 52 kind of talks about the mighty hero in his arrogance. Psalm 53 talks about the fool, but they both have that same kind of general descriptions about them that are very, very similar. In Psalm 53, however, the historical setting for that is probably an event after some sort of invasion, like maybe the invasion of the Assyrian king or after some sort of enemy has attacked. And not only has that enemy attacked, but God has fought on their behalf. It talks about how God has scattered their bones and put them to shame all throughout Israel. And so while the evildoers in Psalm 14 was really Israel, who was kind of coming against the poor, in Psalm 53, the evildoers are a foreign enemy. And so those are the major differences that we see. And just as a general outline, what we would see is it would start off, of course, Psalm 53, verse one talks about the fool says in his heart, there is no God. So this is coming from the fool's perspective. And then verses two through four, it switches to God's perspective. Then verse five, we see this idea of dread and judgment. And then in verse six, we finally see hope for Israel's salvation. And so in a very short Psalm, I mean, what is it? Six verses in a very short Psalm, we see kind of all this come together, where it's very quick. But we see this kind of process of going from this foolish perspective to then leaning into God's perspective to understanding the judgment that's coming, but then resting in this place of hope because of who God is. I think the focus for today is where I always focus on to read this verse is down in verse five, it says, there they were overwhelmed with dread, where there was nothing to dread, God scattered the bones of those who attacked you, you put them to shame for God despise them. It's really a turning point that we see God intervening on their behalf. And while we don't 100% know which victory this is talking about, what I always think of and what some scholars also believe this to be is back when King Hezekiah was fighting Sinatraab. And at the time, King Hezekiah's army was tiny, it was this tiny little town that they were trying to defend. And as he was basically standing up to this king and decided to fight on behalf of Yahweh and not pay the tribute to this king and stand up for just the one true guide, there was very little hope in that scenario that they were going to come out on the other side alive. And yet if you remember, if you don't if you don't remember, go back and read it, you can read it, King Hezekiah's story in 2 Kings. But if you remember what happened in that story is God delivered them like literally 180,000 troops of Sinatraab's army was just killed overnight, just miraculously an angel of Lord came and took care of them. And so much so that he turned around and he went home. And I always get to this place of thinking about King Hezekiah right before that happened. Now, of course, we have seen God move miraculously in King Hezekiah's life. He turned the sun backwards, he healed him of this disease he had or injury or I think it was a boil. It was a boil he had. But anyway, we see God moving on behalf of King Hezekiah throughout his life. And so I know that King Hezekiah was in this place of having faith that God was going to work. But if you think about what happened and the place that he was likely in right before that happened, where this army is attacking them, he's done everything that he can, he's double fortified the walls, he's brought the spring inside the city gates, he's he's done everything he can in preparation to get to a place of being able to hold out as long as they can. But the army that they were fighting was huge. They had war machines, they had, you know, weapons, they that King Hezekiah didn't have, it did not look good in the physical. And so as the enemy is kind of closing in on him, I've tried to picture myself in King Hezekiah's position. And then, and then we see God move on his behalf. And, and the behalf of the people of Israel where God just intervenes and rescues them from that situation. Now, of course, there was later Babylonian captivity, they got, you know, the fall of Israel, it happens later. But in this situation, when King Hezekiah was listening to God's voice and being obedient to God's voice, we saw God interact and act on his behalf. And so here we are, verse five. And this is, you know, the scene that I think many of us have had in our lives where we are overwhelmed with dread. I don't know if that resonates with you the way it does with me, but they're overwhelmed with dread. Verse five says, there they were, overwhelmed with dread, where there was nothing to dread. God scattered the bones of those who attacked you. You put them to shame for God despised them. God was present in the company of the righteous, even though the evil doers did not perceive it. I love that. I love this idea of God working on our behalf, even when those that are attacking us have no idea. God is there moving and working on our behalf. And so in Psalm 53, what we see is God proving his presence and taking care of their enemies. And we see that over and over in Israel. Now, in the highlight of their entire story, there's lots more, lots more to that story with their disobedience to God and all that. But what we see is these moments where they are up against impossible circumstances, yet we see God intervene on their behalf. I don't know if you've ever felt that way. If you've ever experienced things like that, I have. I have to the point where if God didn't intervene, we were going to have some very terrible circumstances on our hands. And I've talked about that on the mission field. I've talked about that financially. We've had that happen. There was one time even just practically, you know, as you live your life for a believer, even things like tithing, and you might think I'm making a stretch right now, but let me just explain what I mean. Even things like tithing can be something that if you've never tithed before, and then you start tithing to a church, the enemy gets upset about that. And even people around you, especially if you don't have a lot of believers around you, are going to kind of, you're going to kind of feel attacked. Like why would you give 10% of your income to the church? And realistically, what we know is that all of it is God's money and God can do more with our 90% than we can with our 100%, but that's a different conversation for a different day. But I remember when we were very young in our marriage, my husband and I, and we had hardly any money, like we were living off of coupons, literally living off of coupons and WIC at the time. And WIC is free food from the government when you have a baby. We literally were living off of those things and generous neighbors like the food pantry and things like that. And we needed fuel for our home that we were living in. It was like a fuel oil situation where the tank, now I don't even know what it would cost to fill it up. But at that time it was $800. And it was $800 that we did not have. And it wasn't like there was a payment plan where you could just pay $50 a month or something. I mean, this was, you know, $800 was a lot of money for us at the time. And yet God called us to tithe. And so we tithe and at the time people around us, even family members were like, why are you giving the church your money? You can't afford to do that. All this stuff. And we don't know even to this day exactly how it happened. It was wintertime. And we went to church for the evening. And we just believe like if God was calling us to do this, then he was going to provide. We did not know how we were going to get money to heat our home. And we had little kids at the time. And when we came home from church, the heat was on. And I was kind of confused by that. And I thought, well, maybe there's just a little bit left in there to kind of squeak out another day or something. And yet my husband was like, no, we were completely out. And we what ended up happening was is there was a truck that had come and filled up our fuel tank for that winter while we were going to church. And we to this day don't really know that how it happened. We didn't really tell anybody. Our family knew of our situation because that's kind of where we were at financially. But nobody really knew. And we don't know what happened. We don't know what happened. Now, I'm sure there is some sort of logical reason or explanation, but we were never charged for that. We just don't know. And there's been times like that throughout our lives where we have had people around us, you know, maybe we don't necessarily have an enemy coming to to to knock down our walls. But we do have an enemy, a very real enemy, that will try to discourage us, will try to keep us in any way, shape or form from stepping out on faith and doing what God has called us to do. And so sometimes that comes in the form of finances, sometimes that comes in the form of pressure, sometimes it comes in the form of a boss or even friends or family of all these negative voices that can kind of crowd out the voice of God in our lives. And yet what we see is God intervening and coming in in that place of dread. When we have surrendered our lives to him and said, Okay, God, I trust you, I've done all I can do. And I trust the rest to you. He steps in and he says, Okay, what did you even have to dread? Like, you know, there, there are moments where I think back over that same feeling. And I think that's what I'm trying to explain that feeling, that dread of worry and anxiety and like, how are we gonna, how can we give this money to the church when we don't even know how we're gonna heat our home? And yet God intervened. And like I said, God math is different than our math. And there's been so many times in our lives where we've gotten to that place. And so now what I know is that when I'm I when I am in that place with the scriptures says that that overwhelming dread when I'm in that place, I have to get on my knees, I have to say, Okay, God, I don't know how this is going to work out, but I trust you. And what we've seen over and over is God work on our behalf. That's exactly what we're seeing in Psalm 53, as God works on the behalf of the people of Israel. And what we know about God, what I say all the time is we serve the same God that we see revealed on the pages of the scriptures. And while there are some things that I say are descriptive and some things that are prescriptive, when we're talking about God, God is the same. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And so if we serve a God who be worked on behalf of those in the scriptures, when they were overwhelmed with dread, then we know that God will do the same for us. We know that we have a God that intervenes when we are overwhelmed with dread. So I'm going to read this again. And hopefully that insight is helpful. Starting again in verse one, The fool says in his heart, there is no God, they are corrupt, and their ways are vile, there is no one who does good. God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt. There is no one who does good, not even one. Will the evildoers never learn those who devour my people as many bread and who do not call on God. There they were overwhelmed with dread, where there was nothing to dread. God scattered the bones of those who attacked you, you put them to shame for God despised them. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion, when God restores the fortunes of his people. Let Jacob rejoice, Israel be glad. God, we thank you for the turning point that we see here, the turning point even in our own lives, where you engage with us and you show up for us when we are overwhelmed with dread. So God, I pray that right now for any of my friends that are overwhelmed with dread that you would make yourself known, that we would recognize that there's nothing to fear, that you are with us, that you are present, that there's never a time that you are not with us, that you are a God who restores all things. That you, as we see in verse 6, oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion, when God restores the fortunes of his people. Let God, let Jacob rejoice, Israel be glad, that you are a God who restores. God, we thank you that you reveal yourself to us through your word and we thank you that you work on our behalf, even behind the scenes, even when we don't understand or know how it's going to work out, that's the God that you are. You are a good Father. So Lord, I pray for my friends today that may be in that place, that they would be reminded of how much you love them and that you are working on their behalf. It's in Jesus' name, we ask these 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 in sponsoring a child through Compassion today.