Daily Mercies

Today, as I sit down to write, there is a lovely cool breeze stealing in through the open window, perfumed with the scent of a fruitful garden on a warm day. The room is flooded with natural light and whichever window I look out of, I see trees. Looking around me, I see many things to be thankful for: my air conditioner, the chair in which I sit to write, (an heirloom from a grandmother), four bookshelves stuffed with books, a laptop, a tablet and a multitude of journals in which to write, my favorite fountain pen nearby, and nick-knacks everywhere that remind me of things God has taught me and people I love. I can hear the muffled voices of my family in other parts of the house, and the street is quiet, with birds singing and only an occasional car passing. This morning, I am struck by just how much there is to be thankful for.

I am reminded of a Scripture passage that has been very dear to me over the years:

“This I recall to mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21-23)

God’s mercy is not limited to salvation. He has shown Himself merciful on the grand scale of redemption, but He also shows Himself merciful every day. These “daily mercies”, as I like to call them, are all around us, even when we are too self-absorbed or distracted to notice them.They should be a constant reminder of His mercy and care for us.

But don’t get me wrong: the grander demonstrations of God’s mercy are enough for our hearts to live on for eternity, but to those great mercies, He has added innumerable others, little touches of His mercy sprinkled here and there throughout our every day. As Charles Spurgeon once wrote:

“God is so good that every moment of His love demands a lifetime of praise.”*

When I think of all that God has done for me, I cannot help but feel as Jacob did when he told God, “I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant”(Genesis 32:10)

 

 

 

*Spurgeon, Charles. The Practice of Praise p.43-44

Tune My Heart

One of my favorite hymns over the years has been "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing". As I played it for church recently, I got to thinking about its words which were penned by Robert Robinson in the 1700s. Whether or not you're familiar with these words, they bear reading again:

Come, Thou Fount of ev'ry blessing, 

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing, 

Call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

Sung by flaming tongues above; 

Praise the mount --I'm fixed upon it--

Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer-- 

Hither by Thy help I'm come; 

And I hope by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, 

Wand'ring from the fold of God;

He to rescue me from danger,

Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I'm constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee;

Prone to wander-- Lord, I feel it--

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here's my heart-- O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Our hearts need to be "tuned" to sing of God's goodness. After all, if the only thing we had to praise God for was our salvation from sin and an eternity in His presence, we still would have enough to keep us busy praising Him every moment of our lives. 

Charles Spurgeon once said, "God is so good that every moment of His love demands a lifetime of praise."* God's goodness is what, as Robinson wrote in his hymn, binds our wandering hearts to God. We are prone to leave Him, to get distracted and wander off spiritually. But the remembrance of His goodness to us should bring us right back to His feet, hearts tuned to sing His praise. 

Romans 2:4 states that "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance". When we consider God's goodness, we are naturally led to a deeper realization of just how far short we fall in comparison. A heart tuned to sing God's praise is a grateful heart, but also a humble heart that acknowledges just how much God has done for us, and how gracious He was to do it, considering just how unworthy we are apart from Christ.

So as you get ready for church tomorrow, consider: is your heart tuned?

"I will sing unto the Lord, because He hath dealt bountifully with me." 

Psalm 13:6

*Spurgeon, Charles. The Practice of Praise p. 43-44

What Do You Expect?

I think it's safe to say that this year hasn't gone the way any of us had expected. So many plans have been cancelled, events have been postponed or called off altogether, and our daily lives have been upended. Even as things begin to open up again, things change so suddenly and so frequently, it's hard to make any plans at all. Never before has my generation of Christians (at least in the United States) been forced into such a literal practice of James 4:13-15.

"Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that"

I don't know about you, but it's hard to hold loosely to my plans and expectations about the future, let alone my plans and expectations of what today will look like. Yet, the Bible clearly teaches that we cannot expect things to go as we planned. Honestly, we can't even expect them not to go as we planned.

So, what can we expect?

I ran across Psalm 62:5 this morning. "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him"

We wait upon God when we keep our eyes focused on Him, waiting humbly for Him to unfold His will for our lives. It is a moment-by-moment seeking of God, looking for His hand at work, holding our plans on open palms instead of tightly-clenched fists. To wait upon God is to expect only that whatever He does will be done for our good. It is to rest in the knowledge of God's goodness.

The rest of Psalm 62:5 mentions some things we can always expect of God:

• He will be our source of salvation and deliverance v.7
• He will be the only object worthy of our glorying in v.7
  
• He will be our source of strength v.7
• He will be our refuge v.7
• He will be trustworthy v.8
• He will be attentive to our prayers v.8
• He will be omnipotent v.11
• He will be merciful v.12
• He will be just v.12
  

In a world where we don't know what will happen next, we can confidently expect that God will still be God; unchanging, good, and sovereign over all creation!

Psalm 37: Truth for Tumultuous Times Part 2

In my last post, we saw from Psalm 37:1-15 that God wants Christians to respond to the chaos and clamor of the wicked world around us by delighting in Him, resting, ceasing from anger, and doing good.

Of course the reason we can rest in the midst of the wicked world is because we know that God is the Judge of all, and because we trust that He will make it all right in due time. If you haven't read the post, click here to read it.

The next two verses of Psalm 37 continue the theme of how to respond when the wicked are prospering. 

"A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked. For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the Lord upholdeth the righteous." (16-17)

It can be so easy to look around and wonder why the wicked seem to "get away with" their wickedness, and even seem better off for it, but we who try to do right just barely scrape by financially. Or perhaps it is that the wicked seem to get far more attention than the righteous. The world shouts their message, but tries to silence ours.

Whatever it is that strikes you as most unfair about our current situation, God again calls us to respond oppositely to the world. The world shouts "that's unfair!" and stamps its feet like a tantrumy child, demanding to be noticed and placated, but God calls us to be content. After all, the little we have is better than their riches, because, unlike them, we have God on our side, and He owns it all!

We can meet unfairness with contentment, because we know God, and because He knows us. Look at the next verses in our passage:

"The Lord knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away." (18-20)

God knows, and will provide for us. However the wicked seem to prosper, they prosper only for this time. They have their riches for now, but we will have ours for eternity! Again, we are reminded that God sees the wickedness of the wicked, and will judge in due time.

Next, God contrasts the behavior of the wicked and the righteous in another area:

"The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous showeth mercy, and giveth. For such as be blessed of Him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of Him shall be cut off.

Not only are we to delight where the world would worry, rest when the world would rage, and be content when the world would demand recompense, we are also to meet the world's dishonesty and greed with mercy and generosity. Again, we are to respond to the wicked by doing exactly the opposite of what they are doing.

I admit, it is hard to be generous to a greedy or stingy person. But isn't that what God does for us every day? Notice also that our generosity is fueled by His own. We can give because we are blessed by God, and are destined to "inherit the earth". I could go down a theological and eschatological rabbit trail here, but I'll save that for another day. The point is, we can afford to be generous, because everything we have has been provided by the One whose provision is limitless! He is more than capable of refilling anything we pour out to others. As my pastor likes to remind us, you just can't out-give God!

This generosity is not just financial, though. We are to be just as generous with our mercy. The knowledge of the eventual judgement toward which the wicked are heading should provoke pity in our hearts. After all, they are hurtling headlong into the hands of the Just and Righteous Judge, whose laws they have broken. It ought to burden our hearts, to motivate us to do all we can do to seek their salvation. After all, the greatest mercy we can ever show is to point a hell-bound sinner to Christ!

I'll end this post with some of the most encouraging verses in this passage. Against the backdrop of the darkness of this wicked world, God holds up a bright gem of hope:

"The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and He delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with His hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. he is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed." (23-26)

Here is a real life testimony of God's hand of blessing on the one who walks in His ways. When the world tries to trip him up, the Lord is there to catch him. When he gives generously, the Lord provides his needs. Despite the hopelessness of the world, God is there, and has promised to take care of His own.

Spurgeon’s 5 Tips for Remembering God’s Goodness

I recently found a little paperback on my parents’ shelves entitled: The Practice of Praise. I picked it up and realized it was by C.H. Spurgeon. I suppose I’m not used to seeing books by Spurgeon in paperback, which might be why I had never noticed it before. Well, anyway, I did notice it, and this past Sunday I sat down and read it. It took me about three times as long as it would have otherwise, because I kept having to stop and jot down quotes, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and there were many challenging ideas in it about the importance of praising God.

             

The book itself seems to be a collection of sermons on the topic of praise. The sermon which made up the first chapter dealt with remembering God’s goodness, which will of course prompt us to praise God. According to Spurgeon,

“We cannot utter what we have forgotten. Thus, we need close observation to establish a strong memory concerning the Lord’s great goodness.”*

He then goes on to state five ways we can do this. Here they are:

1. Be acquainted with the documents in which His goodness is recorded. -In other words, read your Bible! There is no better way of becoming versed in the goodness of God than to read about it in His Word! 

2. Diligently observe memorials. -The first two memorials he mentions are baptism and communion, both of which are memorials of the goodness of God demonstrated in Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. Spurgeon also mentions personal experience as a source of memorials. I know many people who celebrate their spiritual birthday with more enthusiasm then their physical birthday. As Spurgeon says,

 “O, dear heart, were you ever born again? Then you will remember His great goodness”**

Another way Spurgeon suggests using memorials is to use the objects around you as reminders of different aspects of God's goodness. For example, I have some objects in my room that were given to me by dear friends, and when I look at those things, I am reminded of God’s goodness to me shown through their kindness and love. There are other things that God has provided in response to a specific need, like my car. Whenever I drive my car, I am reminded of God’s goodness in providing for me. If you think about it, anything you own can be a reminder of God's goodness in some way or another.

3. Classification or Memory devices -As I read what Spurgeon had to say about these two categories, it all basically boiled down to what we now would call journaling. Spurgeon recommends that the forgetful Christian 

“Take care to set God’s mercies in order. Enumerate them as you can, and so fix them in your memory.”***

4. Utterance -Speak them! Whether to yourself, to your family, to Christian brothers or sisters, or to the lost world around you, God’s goodness is to be proclaimed!

5. Sing -This is similar to speaking, but it is a widely-acknowledged fact that putting words to music is one of the best ways to memorize them. Take any hymnal and you will find it full to overflowing with songs of God’s goodness. Having songs about God's goodness filed away in your heart and mind can be such a blessing. The other morning, I woke up with a song about God's goodness stuck in my head, and it was such an encouraging way to wake up! 

These are just a few ways to remind yourself of God’s goodness during these difficult days, but I hope you will find them as helpful as I have!

*Spurgeon, C.H. The Practice of Praise Whitaker House: Kensington. 1995 p.20

** Ibid. p.23

*** Ibid. p.24