A Prayer for the New Year - Let All That You Are Praise the Lord - Psalm 103 - Episode #170

Well hey there! Welcome back to the podcast, and I hope you had a truly blessed Christmas. Celebrating the birth of Jesus, of God with us, and pondering what that has meant for you personally. How has your life changed because of what Jesus has done for you? The little pause between Christmas and a new year is a time to reflect on this and to thank God for as many things as come to mind when you consider what your life and what your eternity would be without Jesus. 

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Quick bit of info and then we’ll jump into this special new year’s episode. If you are like me, you often have a word for the year, and looking back at the end of December, it’s really something to see what the Lord did. Now I have had years when I did not have a word for the year, it just wasn’t something the Holy Spirit laid on my heart and I just did not have one. Many years, though, I do get a sense of a word that the Lord wants me to be aware of, in a way, and to see Him do things in my life that glorify Him, mature and sanctify me. The word isn’t magical - it’s just a way that I sit up and pay attention and take note of things He does. I often write down Bible verses that have to do with whatever word God has given me, and I like to write out praises and thanksgiving in my daily Bible study journal thanking Him for things throughout the year. I have a little printable download that is all about the 2024 word of the year, and it is yours by clicking the link in the show notes. Also, I wanted to share that I have been dealing with some “new” issues with my health, you might know I was diagnosed with heart failure in 2016 and I have been dealing with thyroid problems for a couple of decades now, and so this health problem cropped up recently and you know, my team at the Cleveland Clinic has told me many times that quality of life management is sort of the overall goal of my health care, and this is just another layer to that. It just is what it is, and God is so good, so gracious to me, I am not at all questioning the Lord and do not want to be whiny or complaining about any of this. Sharing this is more to let you know, if you are used to seeing me around and I’m sort of missing in action, this is why. And there are some other things going on that have to do with other aspects of life for my hubby and I, and this is the season of different things, I suppose, so that’s what’s going on. Not gonna share more than that on a platform like this, I have adults kids and a husband and it can get weird for them if I overshare so I’ll leave it at that. But I am mostly at home, and still able to podcast and am also hoping to start sending an email weekly with links to the new podcast episodes for both shows and I have bandwidth to create some free items to share with my email list, so if you’d like to get those, if you grab the 2024 Word of the Year free item I created for you all, then you’ll be added and will start getting emails with podcast links starting in the new year. 

 

Thank you for listening to The Burt (Not Ernie) Show, which can be found via the Edifi app, as well as all the places you find podcasts. This is episode number 170.

 

Psalm 103. Written by David. An astounding passage from the Bible that can transform the way we pray, the way we see the Lord at work in our circumstances, and the way we view ourselves. For those reasons and so many more, Psalm 103 is the focus for the final episode of the podcast for 2023, and I am treating it as a blessing for each one of you, no matter when you find yourself listening to this episode. 

 

I’ll be reading from the NLT today. 

 

Psalm 103

A psalm of David.

1 

Let all that I am praise the Lord;
    with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name.

2 

Let all that I am praise the Lord;
    may I never forget the good things he does for me.

3 

He forgives all my sins
    and heals all my diseases.

4 

He redeems me from death
    and crowns me with love and tender mercies.

5 

He fills my life with good things.
    My youth is renewed like the eagle’s!

6 

The Lord gives righteousness
    and justice to all who are treated unfairly.

7 

He revealed his character to Moses
    and his deeds to the people of Israel.

8 

The Lord is compassionate and merciful,
    slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.

9 

He will not constantly accuse us,
    nor remain angry forever.

10 

He does not punish us for all our sins;
    he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.

11 

For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
    is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.

12 

He has removed our sins as far from us
    as the east is from the west.

13 

The Lord is like a father to his children,
    tender and compassionate to those who fear him.

14 

For he knows how weak we are;
    he remembers we are only dust.

15 

Our days on earth are like grass;
    like wildflowers, we bloom and die.

16 

The wind blows, and we are gone—
    as though we had never been here.

17 

But the love of the Lord remains forever
    with those who fear him.
His salvation extends to the children’s children

18 

    of those who are faithful to his covenant,
    of those who obey his commandments!

19 

The Lord has made the heavens his throne;
    from there he rules over everything.

20 

Praise the Lord, you angels,
    you mighty ones who carry out his plans,
    listening for each of his commands.

21 

Yes, praise the Lord, you armies of angels
    who serve him and do his will!

22 

Praise the Lord, everything he has created,
    everything in all his kingdom.

Let all that I am praise the Lord.

What if we ended 2023 and rolled right on into 2024 doing this exact thing: letting all that we are, every bit of ourselves, praise the Lord? Wouldn’t that be a powerful way to exit the old and walk into the new? 

 

Let. it’s a key word in this psalm. Let. It implies that we have a choice, we have a big say in the matter. Let all that I am, not some or part or most, but all that I am praise the Lord. No part of your life, your thoughts, your heart’s desires and your broken places, are left out here. All of you, all of me, is to be about this praising of the Lord. With my whole heart, I will praise His holy name. I’ve decided to praise Him and my whole heart is going to do just that. This is a decision. It is not a feeling and it is not fickle and it is not to be determined by circumstances, health issues, bank accounts, married or single, young or old. The decision is made and then we praise Him with the whole of our heart, not keeping some of our heart back just in case things don’t work out well for us, just in case we need to run and hide and wallow in self pity or have some excuse for bailing on Jesus (who, btw, never bailed on us…all the way to the Cross, the grave, and then out of that grave, He never bailed on you or on me). 

 

May we never forget the good things He does for us. Never. What a way to end this year and start the next one, deciding that we never want to forget the good things He does for us! 

 

Let’s list some of those good things now:

Forgives all our sins

Heals all our diseases

Redeems us from death

Crowns us with love and tender mercies

Fills our lives with good things

Renews our youth like the eagles

Gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly.

 

That’s just the tip of the iceberg! Think of what we have in Christ Jesus! The treasure never ends for those of us who are in His Kingdom, members of His family. We are so blessed, we are super-blessed!

 

He is compassionate and merciful, slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, abounding in it. Does anybody need to be reminded of that truth today? Has it been brutal in some part of your life, and this is the reminder you need? Let it fall afresh on you today, and carry this truth, these promises, with you into the new year. Don’t set it down, set it aside, drop it on the curb. Hold on to these words from Psalm 103! Let them be your oxygen, and let them anchor you to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of your faith. 

 

He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. What a comfort these words are! Living in a post-Christian society, and that’s what we are here in America, words of hope like this mean so very much. We deserve, as a whole, a lot of punishment. Wickedness and hate of God run rampant. And yet, He is merciful. Now, does that mean we can be grace abusers and there will never be punishment, consequences, for what goes on in our land? Nope. He is God, and we cannot begin to fathom His holiness. Let us stay close to Him, keep short accounts with Him (that means repent often, repent quickly, and repent for real - stop doing those things you repent of)! He is not a chump, but holy and righteous and just. And yet, this is what He promises us in His Word. Is He not good? Is He not kind? What a God we serve!

 

His unfailing love is toward those who fear Him. He removed our sins as far as the east is from the west. He is a tender and compassionate Father to His children who fear Him. He knows how weak we are. Our days on earth fly by. He never forgets this!

 

His love remains forever with those who fear Him. His salvation extends to the children’s children of those who are faithful to His covenant. How’s that for a promise that has more hope, more power, more depth to it than we can even begin to plumb! 

 

He rules over everything, it says in verse 19. No part of your life is out from under His rule. He is Sovereign, and those who fear Him remember His sovereignty. 

 

Praise the Lord, everything He has created, everything in all His kingdom. Let all that I am praise the Lord. Those are the final words of Psalm 103.

May this be your blessing for the coming days and weeks and 2024. Maybe you’ll have a break this week when you can sit and read Psalm 103 for yourself, thanking God for the promises He makes and of course keeps, and trusting Him for the hard things in your life and the things you sense coming in the new year. He is trustworthy above all others, in ways that we can never fully understand. So trust Him to keep His promises to you in the coming days. Won’t He do it?

 

Let me mention one thing here at the end of the show, I have a friend who is a fellow podcaster and he does some fundraising for his podcast, and he is also a pastor so in full time ministry plus podcasting, and he has been totally honest about the costs incurred in running a podcast and he has shared that this has been a blessing for others as well as himself, to take the cost burden sort of off his shoulders and out of the family budget and others get to share in the podcast ministry, which is a global ministry for him and that’s also true for The Burt (Not Ernie) Show. If you’d like to be part of offsetting the cost of my two podcasts, I’d be so thankful. It does, at a bare minimum, cost several hundred dollars per show per year. And you are welcome to touch base with me about what exactly the cost breakdown is and I’ll share that with anyone at anytime. I’ll add the link to my Buy Me A Coffee in the show notes, because to add a donate button via the podcast platform I use would be another $700 per year for two shoes…so, I went with Buy Me A Coffee. All donations will go toward the show production costs, none will buy me any coffee! Thanks for listening and for helping move the hope of God’s promises to countries all over the world. Every download moves the show up in the search ranks and helps push it out to more people when they search for new podcasts to listen to, and you did that. Thank you! This podcast gained 75% of it’s new listeners last year, so growth is happening every time you download an episode and listen to it. Every single person who subscribes to The Burt (Not Ernie) Show is helping push it out to more potential listeners. The part you play in this cannot be overstated, and the end of the year is the time I want to take to tell you that I am more thankful for you than I will ever be able to express in mere words. Lord bless you a hundred times over in return!

 

And I’d like to close out the show, and the year, with these words, the very last words from the book of Revelation. This is my blessing spoken over you, and I am so very grateful for you.

 

Revelation 22:20-21, NLT

He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s holy people. 

 

May you be blessed as you leave 2023 and doubly blessed as you enter 2024. The blessing of the Lord makes one rich and He adds no sorrow to it.

 

And next time on the show, we’ll be back in our series, Every Book A Promise, where we are going through every single book of the Bible, all 66 of them, and grabbing hold of God’s promises to us in each and every book. Looking forward to that (and on The Prayer Podcast we will resume our series on praying through the book of James). Oh, one last thing, in my prayer group on Facebook we will be going through all of the Psalms and praying them starting in January, and if you’d like to join that group, please click on that link and you’ll be in the group (also it is a private group in order to keep prayer requests confidential, so no need to worry about sharing prayer requests in that group for worry they’ll be able to be seen outside the group). 

Have a blessed start to your 2024, and thank you for being part of the podcast. Bye bye!