Psalm 25, 29, 33, 36, 39

What a great groupings of Psalms to remind us that we are in a conversation with God, not a series of encounters. God is not a concert we attend to be entertained, thrilled, adrenalinized...He longs for us to be in a passion filled, life defining, moment by moment governing, loving, covenantal relationship with Him, our Father! These Psalms remind us as such.

Psalm 25 is bringing to Him our needs, our cry, our desperation, our reality and then come on...Psalm 29 gives reveals how our conversations with God flow, He answers! But He doesn't answer in ways that are difficult to discern if it is in fact His voice, He is unmistakeable! His voice "shatters the cedars...flashes flames of fire...shakes the wilderness."

We must not over-elevate Elijah's post Carmel encounter with the voice of God. We must remember that the WHOLE of Scripture is our truth, not in part. The great truth of Elijah in the cave is that He speaks to us in a manner that is unmistakeable, which sometimes for us, as it was with Elijah, is a still small voice and yet other times as it was for David...universe splitting volume!

Then as we progress through these Psalms, we come to 33, a great praise and celebration in response to our hearing His voice. We celebrate, we declare, we proclaim, we worship!

But as conversations go, they have moments where they rise and fall in feelings, in volume...and even flow in subject matter. These Psalms remind us that while we may find His voice in response to one prayer and in turn rejoice in our having heard...we have other matters outstanding. Like a masterfully written novel, our God conversation is filled with concurrent plot lines, characters, both friendly and foe...our lives are complex...we move back into other needs, others situations for which we are equally desperate for His reply.

The final Psalm is a great capstone to this look at a God conversation as it reminds us that even though we should engage these conversations as if we are God's only child, engage these conversations as if our needs are His only concern! His love is so grand that we are made to feel as such, but we must never forget that this life is but a mere moment of our eternity and whatever may feel unresolved, unanswered is never because we have lost His attention or that He has reached His capacity to respond concurrently to so much of humanity or that...but only and always because in perfection and sovereignty, our waiting is a result of sovereign intentionality. Our impatience is oftentimes because we fail to see how our finite story is so wonderfully woven into the infinite purposes of our Father! But remember, na epiphany of the brevity of life and the smallness of our humanity is never to belittle us but rather give us a greater revelation of His love, we being so small yet still His love for us so very great.

How's your God conversation going?

Pastor Fred