#DailyDevotion So Where Do Your Troubles Really Originate?
Psalm 25 22“O God, free Israel from all their troubles! 4O LORD, help me know Your ways and teach me Your paths. 5Lead me in Your truth and teach me, because You are the God who saves me. I am always looking to You for help. 6Remember, O LORD, how merciful and kind You’ve always been. 7Don’t remember how I sinned and did wrong when I was young. You are so kind – remember me and show how good You are, O LORD.
The Psalm for Pentecost Sunday begins with verse twenty-two. It is a plea to God to free Israel from all their troubles. The troubles they have are not the Assyrians, the Egyptians or the Babylonians. They troubles they have are their own sins, their rebellious hearts and their stiff-necked spirits. They had hearts of stone that did not trust in the LORD their God. We too are born into this world with the same stick-necked spirits and rebellious spirits. So we like David and the Israelites must call upon the LORD to free us from our troubles, all of which are of our own making.
To free us from our problems we must know the ways and paths of the LORD. But apart from the Holy Spirit it is impossible. Certainly we may and others without the Spirit may sound and look an awe-full like we have the Spirit. But in actuality we do not. We need a complete paradigm shift in our thinking. We are sinful. To sin is be off target. You don’t have to be a lot off target. Spirituality or rather life with God isn’t like horseshoes and hand grenades. There is no close enough. To be on target with God you need to be born from above. You must have the Holy Spirit.
So it is no wonder these verses are used in the introit. It is Pentecost when Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes us born from above. He changes our minds. He puts us on target. The Holy Spirit makes known to us the ways of the LORD. He teaches us the LORD’s paths. Now the world may see knowing the ways of the LORD and his paths as do all the right things and don’t do all the wrong things. They are quite insistent on it. It’s why they look and sound a lot like Christians. Christians indeed are concerned about such things but…in a different paradigm.
The ways, the paths, the truth of the LORD is to be taught humility before the LORD Jesus Christ and humility before our fellows. To be humble before the LORD Jesus Christ is to be utterly, totally, completely and thoroughly dependent upon the grace and mercy of our LORD Jesus Christ. It is to trust him for all things, not least of all the forgiveness of our sins, our justification, redemption, ransom and a good conscience before God the Father. David acknowledges Jesus is the God who saves him. David is always looking to Jesus for help. He confesses Jesus is the one who has always been merciful and kind to him. David looks to Jesus to forget his sins and the wrongs he did. We must have such a change in thinking too. The best we can do without the Spirit is to be terrified of our sins. Only with the Spirit the rest comes to us. So we plead with Jesus to always give us this Spirit so we may always be humble before Jesus and receive all good things from him. We remind him of all his kindness to us and to remember to show us how good he, the LORD Jesus Christ is.
Then we can be humble and be of service to our fellow man as our LORD Jesus Christ has served us.
O almighty and merciful Father, give us your Holy Spirit what we may be born from your heart, be humble and trust that we receive all good things from you through your son, our LORD Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.
Thanks