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 66:8 Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard,
Psalm 66:9 who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip.
Psalm 66:10 For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.
Psalm 66:11 You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
Psalm 66:12 you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance.
Up to this point in the psalm, some may think that the believers life is described as all rosey, full of cotton candy, chocolate balls and sweet gummies.
Yet to praise God for His awesome deeds is not to imply that the believer has no problems, no trials, no troubles. His deeds are awesome on their own merits, and His awesome deeds are performed for us in the midst of our pain, our suffering, our self inflicted trials and rebellion.
He rescues us from our own foolishness at times, and sometimes He allows the consequences of our foolishness to work a better life into us. The psalmist states in verse 10 that God tests us. This should not surprise any believer, for it is in the testing that we come to know of His faithfulness and of our weakness, for if we do not trust in His power, we ultimately fail, and continue to suffer through our foolish decisions. If we trust Him in the midst of the trial, in the midst of His test for us, we grow as a believer, we can confidence in His power and love, we leave behind a good witness to others, and eventually, we find ourselves in an abundant place, a place of expansion and wonder, a place of freedom to obey and a desire to follow.
His test for you may be very difficult, may be crushing you, bring tears to your eyes and a pain in your heart. The test may be through the fire or through the water, but the psalmist wants to remind us that
…He brought us out to a place of abundance.
He is a delivering God, One who seeks to bring us to a place of abundance, though through pain, and suffering at times. We must remember He is the One with wisdom, He is the One who has all knowledge.
Notice the psalmist returns to the “we/us”. As the ancients followed and suffered, us moderns are also called to follow, and possibly suffer. But the end is the same for us as it was for them.
We will come to a place of abundance. Or better said, we will come to have life abundantly and with the One who knows us best.
May His name be praised, even in our trials. May we speak out loud of His awesome deeds, even in the midst of hard lessons!
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Considering the Bible 