Skip to main content

An Unfailing Love

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, his love endures forever." Psalm 107:1

Psalms are certainly a wonderful place to really get to know how God can work through a person.  David, the writer of many of the Psalms is a man after God's own heart, but he certainly had his fair share of failures in his life.  We can learn a lot from people who have been on the mountaintop and also in the valley.  

This week I really had it on my heart to talk about "lists."  I'm talking about all kinds of lists.  For example:  Your list of things you want to accomplish this year, your list of tasks you have for work tomorrow, your lists of the seven things you need to do to be a happy and healthier you.  Lists can be both motivating and discouraging.  I find that when I have a long list of things to do, I can get discouraged when it feels like I don't make a dent in the tasks at hand.  However, lists can certainly be motivating when you get to draw a firm line through a task marking its completion.  

In today's world, the things that make it on our list are all trying to get you to a better place.  It's difficult to not find a list of things to do on any news website to help you be a better you.  But what happens when you do all of the things on the list and you're not better?  What happens if you do A and B, but you don't get C?   Do you feel like a failure?  Do you blame others?  Do you blame God? 

As mentioned in a previous post, God gave us the ultimate commandment and that is to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul.  Here in Psalm 107, you read about the valleys that many have fallen into and how the unfailing love of our Lord redeems them.  "Then they cried out to he Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.  He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle.  Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind, for He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things."  -Psalm 107: 6-9.  

How great is it that we have the unfailing love of our Heavenly Father for our failing works!?!  How great is it to know that our failures only bolster the love He has for you and me?!  Jesus knew all of your past, present, and future when He died on that cross.  Jesus did not fail in order to deliver us from our failures!  

The song Reckless Love has the line where is says:  "Oh the overwhelming, never ending, reckless love of God.  How it chases me down, fights til I'm found, leaves the 99."  God's love is not reckless, it just seems that from our perspective.  Our world would argue the fact of leaving 99 sheep to chase after the one lost sheep.  God's love will chase you down and meet you wherever you are.  God will fight for you until your eyes are open to His amazing love that NEVER fails.  

This week I'd really like for you to think about the lists in your life and how they align with what God wants for you.  If you're trying to accomplish something, or if you're beginning a new journey and you've got your list laid out as to what you need to do, I want you to pray to God that through all of steps that you ultimately get closer to Him and that you're in His company pursuing His calling for you.  And remember, with God's list on your heart, though you may fail at accomplishing everything laid out, Jesus's blood has drawn the ultimate line through everything for you.  What you cannot do, He can.  What you have not done, He did!    

Have a great week,

Cameron

Song of the week:  Reckless Love

 

 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

God Doesn't Need your Ability. He Needs your Availability.

The past couple weeks I've been diving (pun intended) into the story of Jonah.  We all know that he spent three days in the belly of the beast, but do you know how he got there?  Jonah decided to disobey God by going towards another city.  Jonah got on a boat to run away from where God had told him to go.  Here are my three key takeaways from Jonah's story: 1) God will use "bumpers," 2) God can use you whether or not you're available, and 3) God is bigger than anything you can even dream of.  1)  God will use "Bumpers" Jonah decided not to go towards Nineveh, instead he headed towards Tarshish.  Jonah is on a boat with other sailors and as they are traveling they encounter a great storm.  The storm was so great that the ship "threatened to break up."  This storm and the risk to the ship was great enough for the sailors to start throwing cargo off of the ship and cry out to their own gods.  What was happening?  I am fortunate to k...

Pursuing Righteousness

The past month my church group has been focusing on the Sermon on the Mount for which we get the Beatitudes from Jesus.  The cool thing about going through this has been that I learned that the order of the Beatitudes is important as Jesus was giving His people a road map of how to be transformed through Him.  Jesus lived His life perfectly and is our example for what we should strive for.  Two times Jesus talks about righteousness in the Beatitudes:  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied" and "Blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  As I learned more about this and dove deeper into my own prayer time it occurred to me that Jesus didn't say blessed are THE righteous, or blessed are those that are persecuted for THEIR righteousness.....no, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst, blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of righte...

Peter's Advice for When You Encounter Suffering

As I mentioned in my last blog post, things have been moving fast for me.  I'm so fortunate to now be leading a life group at my church (Chet's Creek).  It's truly an incredible thing to look back over the last five plus years in my life and see the changes that have taken place all because God wanted my focus to be on Him.  Today I want to talk about Peter and what he tells us to do when we encounter suffering.  Unlike in Peter's time, in today's world I believe that many of us suffer internally rather than externally.  In our daily walk we are likely not stoned by others, or physically beaten, rather we are entrenched more by internal sufferings.  The suffering of being different than the world, the suffering of not fitting in, the suffering of not measuring up to what the world wants for you.  Peter gives us some great advice for when we encounter suffering:  First we must discern if we are suffering due to God's will.  Second we must comm...