God’s Invitation to Us - Psalm 27 Episode 119

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Today we are taking a look at four verses from Psalm 27, which is an excellent passage of the Bible to read if you are in need of some extra encouragement or some reassurance that God does hear and answer your prayers. 

 

It’s one of David’s psalms, and those are always encouraging to me in part because they are honest and real and kind of raw. What a good reminder to be honest with God when we pray. He can handle our honesty! He made us with emotions, and He can handle us having emotions. But hiding stuff quote / unquote away from God when we pray, well, it really only harms us, and stuffing stuffing stuffing emotions is hard on us - look, He already knows what we are struggling with and how we are feeling. So let the words of Psalm 27 spur you toward more and more honesty and transparency with the Lord when you pray. 

 

In today’s episode I would like to take a look at verses 7 through 10 of Psalm 27, and I am going to read from the NLT. 

 

7 

Hear me as I pray, O Lord.

    Be merciful and answer me!

8 

My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.”

    And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”

9 

Do not turn your back on me.

    Do not reject your servant in anger.

    You have always been my helper.

Don’t leave me now; don’t abandon me,

    O God of my salvation!

10 

Even if my father and mother abandon me,

    the Lord will hold me close.

 

Asking God, crying out to Him, almost pleading with Him to hear you as you pray - that’s heart cry praying, isn’t it? Be merciful and answer me! Sounds very much like a man crying out from the depths of his heart, and there is actually a boldness to this kind of praying. Now I am not saying you get to wag your finger at God and tell Him what to do. No, that’s irreverence and that is unbiblical. However, boldly asking Him to hear you, because you are in a bad way and you really need to be heard! That's boldly coming to His throne of grace to find help and to obtain mercy at your time of need (that’s from the book of Hebrews). 

 

My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me,” and my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”

 

Did you know that the Lord calls out to you to come and talk with Him when you are in those hard, long, taxing places of life? He does! In our modern era, we can so often miss Him calling to us because we are so busy, almost undone at times due to the hectic pace of life, and the constant scroll on our phones only adds to our inability to hear Him calling to us. Remember Elijah’s experience with the Lord, when the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake or the mighty wind or the fire, but was a still small voice, more like a rustling. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. The God of the Bible is the God of right now. He didn’t yell when Elijah needed to hear from Him, and He most likely is not going to start yelling at you and me today. We need to listen, to pay attention, to heed Him calling to us, saying, “Jan, come and talk with me.” and our response should be, “Lord, I am coming.”

 

We are not always the best about that, if we are totally honest and forthright. 

We want Him to hear us and answer us right away.

But we don’t hurry to spend time with Him when He calls us to come and talk with Him.

Let’s have an attitude of listening well for His call, knowing that His Word says He will call us to come and talk with Him, and then let’s answer Him. Like, without delay. As soon as possible, just get busy about going to talk with Him. Put the phone away. Get somewhere quiet, even if it’s in your car or in the bathroom. Use the john, hit the head, to use old school dude terminology, and shut yourself away for a bit to talk with Him.

 

With.

Talk WITH Him.

Not at Him. Not just to Him. Not you talk talk talk and then go back to your work or grab your phone again or whatever.

Talking with Him is a conversation, it goes both ways. Talk to Him, yup. And also, be quiet and listen. He has something to say to you, if He is calling you to come and talk with Him. But, are you really listening? 

 

In verse 9 we see what is kind of like David dumping out his feelings, like literally doing a pour out. Maybe that’s not an actual thing, but I like to think of it that way - do a pour out of all the things that I am feeling, thinking, my emotions that are screaming loudly and want to dictate my decisions and what I believe about God. Get that all out, pour it out to the Lord and just purge it. Don’t bottle it up inside. 

 

Let me read verse 9 again - Do not turn your back on me.

    Do not reject your servant in anger.

    You have always been my helper.

Don’t leave me now; don’t abandon me,

    O God of my salvation!

This is kind of intense! David had so much emotion, he really was dealing with a whole slew of emotions and feelings that could have left him overwhelmed. 

 

Don’t let your feelings make your decisions. 

Take them to the Lord and do a full pour out, share it all with Him in prayer, and then hear what He has to say to you after that. 

 

Just tell Him that you feel like you are on the verge of being rejected or abandoned, if that is how you are feeling. Ask Him not to leave you, but to be a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Ask Him to keep His promise to never leave you nor forsake you. And He never breaks a promise, because our God is a perfect promise maker and a perfect promise keeper.

 

It’s like a good cry, remember that my female friends, from your teen years? Cry it out. Have a good, long cry and then feel so much better. I’ve heard there is some science to prove why you feel better, that it actually releases endorphins after a good hard cry and also that toxins are expelled through your tears. It’s not a bad thing to cry! Maybe we could start normalizing the “have a good cry” again. I kind of would love that for all of us! How helpful would that be?

 

The God of your salvation is not going to leave you or abandon you. In fact, dare I say, the God of your salvation isn’t going anywhere! Hang your hat on that truth, my friend!

 

Verse 10 declares that even if my father and mother abandoned me, the Lord will hold me close. David, the psalmist, is making a very strong point here. He is speaking in extremes so that you can be 1000% certain about this - hope in this - rely on this - know this to be true - even if the craziest things happen in your life, your God, He ain’t going no where. He will not budge. Not one iota. His love for you, it will not stop. It will not cease. He is there, right there with you and that is where He will remain.

 

This is your promise. 

 

And all of God’s promises prove true, it says in the OT book of Joshua.

In the NT we read that all of God’s promises are yes and amen through Christ Jesus our Lord. 

So in the Old or New Testament, we are guaranteed that every single promise is true, will keep on being true, and will come to pass. 

 

Today is going to be a slightly shorter episode of the podcast, but I want to mention just a couple of things real quick.

 

God is for you, my friend. He is more for you, more in your corner, than you may realize. But I am praying He shows up, shows off, shows out how in your corner He is this fall!

 

Hang on to Him, do the pour out as often as you need to, and listen to Him in your prayer time. He wants to bless you, and I am encouraging you to believe Him for the blessing today!

 

See ya next time!

Bye bye.