We are a “What have you done for me lately?” culture. A football coach will win the Super Bowl, then get fired two years later. A star player has a breakout year and signs a huge contract, only to get cut or traded when his production falls off or is beset by injury. “What have you done for me lately?” is the engine that drives our culture’s romantic relationships today. People hop from boyfriend to boyfriend or girlfriend to girlfriend because the initial shine has worn off and the butterflies have fallen asleep, but there’s a new shiny person that has entered life who offers these things again. People change out of sexual relationships today as easily as they change outfits. It’s no surprise that we treat God the same way.
Psalm 20 Devotional – The Paradox of God’s Power
I’m not going to lie, the psalms continue to puzzle me and bend me theology in different directions. A psalm like this can feel a slam dunk that God is always going to answer all of your prayers and always bring you victory. But as we read through the entire book of psalms, we know that wasn’t always the case for the very psalmists writing these prayers. We know that many of the psalms are filled with prayers crying out to God in the midst of suffering and asking God why he is so silent.
Psalm 19 Devotional – The Signs That Are All Around Us
Psalm 19:1-6 describe what is called “general revelation.” This is how God has revealed himself to everyone. These verses tell us that the sky declares God’s glory and proclaims the work of his hands. That the sun, moon, and stars are literally talking. Literally saying, “God is awesome! God made this! God is God!” That when we look at the majesty of the stars or the brilliance of the sun, it is obvious that God is God. It is obvious that these things couldn’t never be matched by humans and could never have just appeared randomly. My Psalm 8 devotional talks about the disadvantage we have today versus people from ancient times in being able to see God in this way.
Psalm 18 Devotional – God’s Hype Music
Psalm 18 is God’s hype music. Hype music is what a sports team plays in the locker room before a game or what blares from the speakers as a fighter does his walk up to the ring. Hype music is loud, it gets you pumped up, and it has the air of victory to it. Psalm 18 is all of these things.
Psalm 17 Devotional – Hidden in God’s Wings
Psalm 17 plays like a greatest hits album, replaying many of the common lines and themes we’ve seen from the psalms so far. Greatest hits albums are comforting because they show that this material lasts. They show that these concepts are not just one-hit-wonders, but are a deep well we can come back to again and again. In Western Christianity and Western culture at large, we are obsessed with solving our problems. If it is conceded at all by Christians that we’ll have problems in this world, in the next breath we are being told a 3-step plan to solve those very problems. The repetition of the psalms tell us problems don’t work that way.
Psalm 15 Devotional – What God Cares About
Psalm 15 helps us in understanding the things God cares about. As new covenant Christians (I explain here how this relates to the old covenant under which the Psalms were written), we know it’s by the grace of Jesus that we may dwell in God’s sacred tent or live on his holy mountain (Romans 3:23-24). With that in mind, we can now look Psalm 15 as a clear list of things God cares about. I don’t think we spend enough time in modern Christianity looking at the things that are on God’s heart. In any love relationship, you want to know what is on the other person’s heart, and out of love, you want to be about those things as well. This is particularly true with God, who is not only our spouse, but is also our Father and Lord and King. So let’s take a look at this short list in Psalm 15 of some of the things God cares about: