Thursday 5 May 2022

May 5: Psalm 66:16-20

Key Verse: Psalm 66:18
If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened;

Devotion:
Do you worry God is not going to listen because you have sin in your life, or because you have done things wrong before? This section of the psalm starts off with encouraging all who fear God to come and listen to what God has done for the psalmist… it does not say only people who have not sinned can come to listen; nor does it say only sinless people can talk to God!

What it does say, though, is the psalmist had a certain reverence toward God. In other words, they believed in God and they knew what God was capable of. When we know what God is capable, then we have a certain respect for God. We may still have sin in our lives, but we don’t hold on to that sin in our hearts… or, at least, we should not be!

God wants us to try and turn our lives away from sin because we want to and because we know this is God we are obeying! God, like Jesus, hears the cry of the believer or the one who wants to believe. When we cry out for the first time, we probably don’t think of ourselves as believers, but we are taking that first step as a believer when we call out to God! He listens!

The psalmist learned through repeated prayers that God was listening and He also answered those prayers. It may take us a while to realise God is answering our own prayers because we often find ourselves caught up in the world. But when we look back on our prayers and how they were answered, we will realise just how awesome our God is!

Points to Ponder:
Do you fear God is not listening?

Do you fear God?