Thursday 22 Jul 2021

July 22: Psalm 43:1-4
 
Key Verse: Psalm 43:4
Then I will go to the altar of God, to God, my joy and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.
 
Devotion:
If you are still worried about how much doubt you have in your life, then go through this group of Psalms and find out how much doubt David had in his life! We think of King David as a stalwart of trust and faith who we can look up to and be encouraged by. Various places in our bible tell us of his faithfulness and his dedication... but we can still read about the doubts and worries he had all the time.
 
What we need to do when we do have doubts or worries is to lift our spirits up so we can re-focus on the good God does in our lives. This could mean stopping what you are doing and listening to a worship song, or maybe tuning out of the worldly worries and thinking on what God has done in your past. There are so many ways we can encourage ourselves, but far too often we brush them under a carpet instead of doing them!
 
My dad would quite often remind me to ‘help myself’ rather than waiting on God for everything because I would spend a lot of time waiting on God. This is not to say he was encouraging me to do it all myself, but rather to take the step forward and do something. God opens doors and shows us the ways forward, but if we do not step through those doors or follow the paths He shows us, we are going to stagnate and even begin to doubt...
 
When we open our eyes to everything God does, we will see the good and the bad! There is a whole lot of bad and evil things in this world we have to live in. God wants to direct us through the minefields laid out in front of us by the world. God wants us to be safe. He tells us how to be safe. He guides us daily... but if we don’t do anything about it, we will start to needlessly blame Him instead of ourselves for what we don’t do!
 
Points to Ponder:
How often are you guided by God?
 
How often do you act on that guidance?