My wife and I are reading through the Psalms in our evening reading and occasionally a nugget of the Psalms jumps out of the page. Don’t you love it when, after years of reading the “Old Book” passages become alive, reinforcing old teachings or simply warming your heart.
This is the book of Psalms, and it is rich.
I pray I can communicate a portion of the blessing we receive from this wonderful book.
Psalm 61
8 So will I ever sing praises to your name, as I perform my vows day after day.
In our previous post, I skipped over the concept of vows. He had mentioned vows in verse 5, and I find this repetition to be worthy of a short discussion. Let’s read verse 5 once more.
5 For you, O God, have heard my vows;
David had earlier mentioned that God had heard his vows. In our final verse, he speaks to the Lord, reminding Him that he will perform his vows.
It is interesting that the vows are not connected with the results he is requesting. It isn’t a tit for tat type of discussion here. David isn’t entering into a bargaining stance with the Creator of all, hoping to get one over on Him.
We have all heard of the fox hole vow – Get me out of this trouble God and I will serve You the rest of my life. Yet this rarely sticks, and as soon as the trial is over, so is the remembrance of the vow.
But notice that is David’s final statement to the Lord, the cause and effect seems to be turned on it’s head. My common understadning of vows in relation to God goes something like …
I will continually and constantly, out of a previous legal obligation, perform my promise as a payback for a previous rescue! (I know it sounds crass, but that is how my little brain works!)
No, notice that David states that he will sing praise, in order to perform his vows to God.
God does expect us to keep our vows, especially our vow to follow Jesus, but we cannot follow properly simply out of a spirit of obligation. Now don’t get me wrong, we are obligated to Him due to His great sacrifice, yet in the goodness of God, He has provided the power, the energy, the strength to perform our vow, to follow after Him as we sing praise to Him. As we have a spirit of joy in our lives, thankful for His goodness and mercy, may we be faithful “singers’ of His goodness.
Even for those of us whose natural singing voice leaves much to be desired. Yikes!
May our lives honor the One who is good!
Thanks again for coming to visit. I hope you found something of interest in this post and would appreciate a comment, to begin a discussion.
Considering the Bible 